Craig Finn is one of the most literary songwriters out there. His songs, both with band The Hold Steady, and on his increasingly superior solo output, are like classic short stories... so it's unsurprising that he names Raymond Carver and Jack Kerouac as primary influences.
His writing is often compared to the storytelling style of Bruce Springsteen, particularly Born To Run era Springsteen. Songs like Meeting Across The River and Jungleland feel like templates for Craig Finn's entire career.
The most direct admission of Finn's Springsteen influence comes in a song from his first band, Lifter Puller. As is often the case with first bands, Lifter Puller were a lot more rough and ready than The Hold Steady, and you certainly wouldn't have predicted their lead singer to go on and create solo work as thoughtful and mellow as Finn's latest album, Always Been. But it's Lifter Puller who did the full-on Springsteen sequel. Here's the original...
Tear drops on the city, Bad Scooter searching for his groove
Seem like the whole world walking pretty and you can't find the room to move
Well, everybody better move over, that's all
'Cause I'm running on the bad side and I got my back to the wall
Tenth Avenue freeze-out
And here's the sequel...
Virginia slept with the sketchy chick
She was sick, they still clicked
Rhode Island slide with the skinny guy
Pawtucket pawnshops and Newport Lights
Made amends with your dealer friends
The truth is in the camera lens
So don't come home
With a stick in your nose
I hired a detective
He's got a tiny camera
It's not as catchy, but catchiness wasn't really the point of Lifter Puller.
Here's one I've featured on this blog before... but time is tight, so you'll have to excuse me.
The original, of course, is a Shel Silverstein song made famous by Dr. Hook. To steal a chunk from my post on another famous Dr. Hook tune, which mentioned this in passing...
It turns out Sylvia's Mother is a true story too - Shel was in love with a woman called Sylvia Pandolfi, but she ran off with another man and ended up as a curator at the Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil in Mexico City. Shel tried desperately to rekindle that romance, but the only contact he had for Sylvia was her mum, and she wasn't having any of it. Nowadays, she'd probably report him as a stalker. I guess "Please, Mrs. Pandolfi" didn't quite scan, so Avery it was.
Yes, Mrs. Avery made quite the impression on us. So much so that she (or her Namesake... though surely there can be only one true Mrs. Avery) also shows up here...
David Rotheray, former songwriting partner of Paul Heaton in The Beautiful South, produced a whole album worth of "answer songs" back in 2013, including this...
Our best hope for an official sequel to Sylvia's Mother comes from The Men They Couldn't Hang, on their 2009 album Devil On The Wind. Here, Mrs. Avery has to deal with the young man who kept pestering her over the phone in the original song. He's now camped out in her garden, bemoaning the disappearance of Sylvia, so Mrs. A has to call his dad to come sort him out... I'm not quite sure how she reacts when dad then puts the moves on her. But let's be charitable and hope for some kind of happy ending...
I have a list of Sequel Songs that I'm working my way through, but because time is limited at the moment, I've been trying to pick ones I think I can write about quickly. The problem is, when I start, I often fall down a rabbit hole...
For here
Am I sitting in a tin can
Far above the world
Planet Earth is blue
And there's nothing I can do
Theoretically, today's post was going to involve just three songs. The first, obviously, was David Bowie's first UK Chart hit, a song which was rush-released in July 1969 to coincide with the Apollo 11 moon landing (the BBC even used it to soundtrack their coverage). It was inspired by Kubrick's 2001, reflecting how alienated Bowie himself felt at this point in his career (having been knocking on the door of the charts for some time, with nobody letting him in), and musical inspiration came from the kind of thing the Bee Gees were doing at that point in their career. If you're surprised by that, I'd point you towards one of my favourite Bee Gees tunes, also from 1969, and I can kind of hear where Bowie might have been coming from...
Although Space Oddity did make the Top Ten, it would be another three years before Bowie returned to the charts, ironically with a song that's another thematic continuation, although by this point he clearly feels more like an alien than an astronaut.
After that, Bowie was here to stay. Maybe it took that long for the world to be ready for him. It wouldn't be any kind of stretch to call him "ahead of his time". Space Oddity was re-issued in 1975, when it became his first chart-topper. His second chart-topper came five years later... and it was the official sequel to Space Oddity.
Do you remember a guy that's been
In such an early song?
I've heard a rumour from Ground Control
Oh no, don't say it's true
By this time, Major Tom was floating in a very different kind of space, having succumbed to drug addiction... the autobiographical elements still clearly present.
Ashes to ashes, funk to funky
We know Major Tom's a junkie
Strung out in heaven's high
Hitting an all-time low
Now, I would have said that this was the last time we heard from Major Tom... at least from his creator. Many of you will know that others took up the story, most notably German singer Peter Schilling, whose 1982 single Major Tom (Völlig Losgelöst) reached Number One in both Germany and Austria in 1983... and though the English language version didn't make the UK charts, it did get to #14 in the US.
Schilling's song does appear to offer a little hope of a happy ending for the good Major...
Across the stratosphere, a final message
"Give my wife my love," then nothing more
Far beneath the ship the world is mourning
They don't realize he's alive
No one understands, but Major Tom sees
"Now the light commands, this is my home
I'm coming home"
Iffypedia suggests other artists sought to continue the narrative, though Empty Glass by Canadian band The Tea Party feels more like a Bowie tribute song...
A version of that song, sung by Sheryl Crow, appeared on William Shatner's fourth album, thematically based on Bowie's character, entitled Seeking Major Tom. The album also included Shatner's own version of the Peter Schilling song...
I think it's fair to say Major Tom has really made the grade. No wonder the papers want to know whose shirts he wears.
However, you may have wondered about my earlier comment, "I would have said that this was the last time we heard from Major Tom... at least from his creator." Did David Bowie have anything else to say about his greatest creation. Well... yes, it seems he did. Many believe that his 1996 collaboration with the Pet Shop Boys contains an update on the Major Tom story...
But I'm told that Major Tom's final appearance comes in the the video to the title track of the final Bowie album, Blackstar. Many people (including the director) believe that the dead astronaut seen at the start of the video is Major Tom at the end of his journey...
I thought this would a quick one, but they rarely are.
In 1962, the "Singing Ranger" Hank Snow (originally from Canada) had a huge country hit in which he listed all the places in North America that he'd supposedly visited...
I had a sequel in mind for this tune, but what I didn't realise was that Hank's version was a sequel in its own right.
The tune was originally written by Australian country singer, songwriter and aircraft mechanic, Geoff Mack. The Aussie hit version was recorded by Lucky Starr...
Lucky Starr also recorded a UK version, and I'm pleased to note that he had visited Huddersfield. This particular sequel was also recorded by some bloke we won't mention because he died in jail, leaving a black mark on all our childhoods...
However, none of these is the sequel I had in mind when I planned this post. No, that one circles back to the man most famous for recording I've Been Everywhere (unless you count Johnny Cash's version, backed by Tom Petty's Heartbreakers): Hank Snow.
In 1970, Hank recorded a new version of the song... in which it appears he'd rather changed his mind.
And one more, in a similar vein, recorded during lockdown when all our options were limited. This should bring back a few memories...
In the year of my birth, 1972, Harry Chapin released his debut single, Taxi. As with many of Chapin's songs, it told a heart-breaking story. That was his stock in trade. But before becoming a successful recording artist, Harry almost became a taxi driver. In fact, he was waiting for his taxi driving licence to come through when he wrote this song... although he never did become a cabby, because he landed a job in the movie business and started following his dream of becoming a documentary film-maker.
Until his storytelling took him in a different direction...
Taxi tells the story of a lonely cab driver who picks up an ex-girlfriend one rainy night. They reminisce on roads not taken, dreams not achieved... before parting company, neither of them particularly happy with the lives they're going back to. The story was, according to Harry, about 60% autobiographical.
There was not much more for us to talk about Whatever we had once was gone So I turned my cab into the driveway Past the gate and the fine-trimmed lawns
And she said, "We must get together" But I knew it'd never be arranged Then she hand me twenty dollars for a two-fifty fare She said, "Harry, keep the change"
Chapin's songwriting chops proved so enticing to record company bigwigs that a bidding war ensued between CBS and Elektra over who would put out his first album... and when he performed Taxi on the Johnny Carson show, he became the first musical guest to ever be invited back to sing again the following evening.
Although Taxi was only the beginning of Harry's success, with much bigger hits to follow, fans kept asking him what might have happened to the characters after the song ended. To answer this, he wrote a Sequel in 1980, a song that picks up exactly where the last one ended... then jumps forward in time to find Harry the taxi driver now a successful musician, with Sue seemingly fallen on hard times, though a little happier in herself.
Don't ask me if I made love to her
Or which one of us started to cry
Don't ask me why she wouldn't take the money that I left
If I answered at all I'd lie
Harry Chapin joked that if he ever wrote a third act to this story, he'd call it "Hearse". Sadly, he died in a car accident a few months after Sequel hit the US charts, so we'll never know the final fate of Harry and Sue...
Finally, for those of you who appreciate such things as I do, here's William Shatner's unique interpretation of Taxi. I'm sure Harry was tickled pink...
In 1956, Johnny Cash released a single that Rolling Stone would eventually vote the greatest country song of all time...
It was a song about staying true to your wife, and not falling prey to the temptations of other women, particularly when you're on the road. When he wrote it, Johnny was still with his first wife, Vivian Liberto. Clearly, he didn't walk the line for very long... not with Vivian, anyway. With his second wife, June Carter, though, Johnny found it very, very easy to be true.
I find it very, very easy to be true
I find myself alone when each day is through
Yes, I'll admit that I'm a fool for you
Because you're mine, I walk the line
In 1998, Rodney Crowell released a sequel called I Walk The Line (Revisited). It features a new tune and fresh lyrics, written by Crowell, before switching to Johnny singing the original track, and back again. At this point, Crowell was the former son-in-law of Cash, having been married to Johnny and Vivian's daughter, Roseanne, between 1979 and 1992. Talk about complex family dynamics...
All these long years later, it's still music to my ears
I swear it sounds as good right now as anything I hear
I've seen the Mona Lisa, I've heard Shakespeare read real fine
Just like hearing Johnny Cash sing 'I walk the line'
In 2007, the former Vivian Cash released a memoir about her short-lived marriage entitled I Walked The Line.
Cathy's Clown was the biggest hit of the Everly Brothers' career, spending five weeks at Number One in the US, seven weeks at Number One in the UK, and selling over 8 million copies worldwide.
Phil and Don argued over who wrote it, though the tune was allegedly nicked from a section of The Grand Canyon Suite by American composer Ferde Grofé. I had a listen and couldn't hear any similarity myself. The Everly's close harmony singing style was particularly influential on The Beatles (who iffypedia says "once toyed with the idea of calling themselves The Foreverly Brothers", but I'm not sure I believe that). There's certainly a similarity between Cathy's Clown and The Beatles' debut single...
All of which brings us to a man who also named himself after a song: John Wesley Hardin. Here he is in 1990 with his own sequel to the Everly Brothers' smash...
Mick 'n' Keef wrote Wild Horses in 1969, recording a rough demo which they decided wasn't really worth taking any further. Mick denies popular speculation that the lyrics are about the end of his relationship with Marianne Faithful, while Keef reckons the song is about being sick of touring.
The Stones gave a copy of the demo to their mate Gram Parsons who liked the song more than they did, recording it for the second Flying Burrito Brothers album, Burrito Deluxe, in 1970.
Hearing the Burrito version encouraged Mick 'n' Keef to give the song another chance, recording it properly for the album Sticky Fingers and releasing it as the follow-up single to Brown Sugar in the US.
Neither version made the UK charts, but in 2009 the song made our Top Ten thanks to a version recorded by Susan Boyle following her performance on America's Got Talent. Boyle chose the song because for her it reflected "a personal story about how achieving such massive success extremely quickly has affected her life". Before you pour scorn on Susan's version, you might be interested to read that Mick considered it a "ghostly version... much better than anything I had ever done".
None of these are sequels though - they're just covers.
The sequel didn't arrive until 2022, thanks to this gorgeous story song by First Aid Kit from their album Palomino, in which two young lovers drive across America with Wild Horses on the car stereo... highlighting irreconcilable differences in their relationship.
We passed a canyon
We passed a fire brigade headed up the mountains
They said "The wood's ablazin'" and then we got hungry
Stopped at a diner
You flirted with the waitress and I didn't even care
Where do you go to when you look past me?
Do you see yourself miserable and free?
Such a strange notion, to see you clearly
When love's shadow stood up and left the room
We played Wild Horses on the car stereo
You prefer the Rolling Stones' and I like Gram's
No mention of Susan Boyle in this story. That really would have tested their relationship!
Back in the early 60s, a young man named Ronald Wycherley changed his name to Billy Fury and began to make waves in the UK charts. When he needed a new backing band, one of the groups that auditioned were called The Silver Beetles. They were offered the job minus their bassist, Stuart Sutcliffe, but they refused to make that sacrifice. Guitarist John Lennon did ask for Fury's autograph though, before the Silver Beetles left the audition.
A year later, Fury had his biggest hit with a cover of the Goffin/King song Halfway To Paradise. Or that's how history remembers it. In truth, Halfway To Paradise only reached #3 in the charts, one of three Fury singles to achieve that position. He did better with his follow-up release, Jealousy (a version of the Danish song, Jalousie, written in 1925) which got to #2.
Twenty-some years later, NME writer Cath Carroll formed the band Miaow in Manchester and began to make minor ripples in the UK indie charts. Miaow released a bunch of singles but split up before they finished their debut album (Carroll went on to join The Hit Parade and pursue a solo career in the 90s). One of the tracks that might have made the cut for that unreleased album is this radio session which takes a few more steps towards completing Billy Fury's journey...
Some time ago, I began making a list of songs which were sequels to earlier songs... occasionally by the artist who did the original, but often by a completely different act. Initially I thought this would make a good Saturday Snapshots, but as the list grew I realised it would be quite a tricky one... and there were far too many good tunes to waste on a throwaway edition of the quiz.
And so, devoid of much inspiration for ways to keep this blog going beyond the tent-pegs on Tuesday and Saturday, I thought I'd make Sequel Songs a series. Starting with Two Pints Of Lager... and a Packet of Crisps.
Of course, everyone here will know the original version by Kentish ambassadors of "punk pathetique", Splodgenessabounds...
You're probably also aware that the song inspired a long-running BBC sitcom starring Will Mellor, Sheridan Smith and Ralph Little.
However, you may not have heard this sequel, released late last year by promising Norwich five-piece Bag of Cans.
Not being a drinker, I don't spend a lot of time in pubs these days (you're far more likely to find me in a coffee shop), but I still think this is a worthy update. Those of you more familiar with propping up a bar or two might find it painfully accurate...
