For today’s Song Lyric Sunday Jim is asking us, as he tells us in his post Namesake Day, to play a song that mentions our name. If only mine was a name that featured more often in songs, like John or Johnny! I didn’t even bother looking for my surname – Pilcher – but have in the past Googled my first name – Clive – out of curiosity so I knew of a couple of possibilities for this. Having done another web search I did come across a couple more but didn’t really like them, so I’m going with the two I already knew. It is probably no ‘surprize’ that the Clive that they mention isn’t me: in fact, both refer to Clive Davis, a stalwart of the music industry as a producer and record label owner since the 1960s, who is still with us at the age of 92. Read all about him here, if you would like to know more.

In that Wikipedia article one of the bands mentioned as being discovered by him is Aerosmith, who have kindly provided my opening song for today, one which should really remove any early morning fuzziness:

That is a kind of autobiographical piece about the band’s beginnings. The mention of Clive Davis comes early, about 30 seconds in, as you can see from the lyrics, which I’m reproducing in full even though they are very long:

I also looked up the spelling the band use for ‘surprize’ as I only knew the word to be spelled the way that LyricFind have it. I thought it might be American, as you guys often use a ‘z’ where we go for an ‘s’ but this just seems to be an older spelling of the word which is apparently rarely used today. So there you have it: music and education all at once! No Surprize was the opening track on Aerosmith’s sixth album, Night In The Ruts, which was released in November 1979 and peaked at #14 in the US, #8 in Canada and #39 in Japan, going Platinum in the US for a million sales. It didn’t make the UK Albums chart – they had to wait until 1987 before achieving that with their ninth album, Permanent Vacation. The track wasn’t released as a single, but I think it should have been, as it fair belts along, though maybe some of the lyrics could have been problematic! Steven Tyler has been quoted as saying that this is his favourite of their songs. The recording of the album had stalled, and Joe Perry actually left the band at the time, but as Tyler describes it “For two months, I’d been totally blocked, writing lyrics for this track we had done with Joe. ‘My name is nah nah nah, I come from Yonkers High, and I get drunk at night.’ One night I had such a revelation to write the story of the band, how Aerosmith got started … I was so excited to be back on track.”

Joe Perry rejoined the band in 1984 and has been with them ever since: in terms of membership, they are one of the most stable line ups ever, having had few changes since they began in 1970. They haven’t released a studio album since 2012 but have in their time sold around 150m worldwide. They retired from touring last year, after Steven Tyler suffered a vocal injury during what had been scheduled as their farewell tour.

My second Clive (Davis) tune for today slips in by a kind of default, as he wasn’t initially mentioned in the lyrics but was added in later after a slight change. The song in question is Jack Straw, by The Grateful Dead, and you can hear him mentioned in this:

I don’t think that the band has recorded this on a studio album. As far as I can tell it first appeared on their live album Europe ’72, which was released in November 1972: it was a recording made in Paris in May that year. The album reached #24 in the US and #22 in Canada but, perhaps a little ironically, didn’t make the charts anywhere in Europe – or anywhere else, come to that. Jim is an expert on the band so no doubt he can correct any errors I might be making here! After Clive Davis founded Arista Records in 1974 he recruited The Grateful Dead to the label, and the story goes that Bob Weir, who wrote this song, had an affinity with Davis: “Clive was the one suit we weren’t distrustful of,”  he said in the documentary film, Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives. “He had the reputation for having ‘the ear’ you know? The ‘golden ear.’”

Starting in late 1978 and continuing occasionally until 1980, Bob would alter the lyrics to Jack Straw to reference the label head, changing “We used to play for silver, now we play for life” to “We used to play for silver, now we play for Clive.” Another change the band used was “We used to play for acid, now we play for Clive” but I’m sticking with the first change! As the clip shows this was taken from their extensive catalogue of live albums: Road Trips Volume 1 Number 1 was a collection of recordings made in late 1979, and was released in November 2007.

That’s all for today – I think I’ve stretched references of my name in song as far as I can but nevertheless I’m pleased to have found a couple of goodies. I hope others who take part in SLS have more suitable names and have more choice, and I look forward to seeing what they come up with: I can think of a few that the regulars might choose, but let’s see…

See you again for Tuesday Tunes 🎶