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...
(Don't even start me on the unforgivable "Your" / "You're" confusion.)
Can a bawdy joke spoil a great song?
This is the question I ask myself whenever I hear Dr. Hook's biggest hit. Because it's a great song - if you like that sort of thing, obviously, and growing up with Radio 2, I grew to love it - but the hokey pun innuendo soon outlived its welcome.
I was pretty certain I knew who wrote this song - but it turns out I was wrong. I was sure it must be another Shel Silverstein composition, given Shel wrote a number of Hook's hits, including their very best song...
Now that's a classic. Even if you don't care for Dr. Hook's particular brand of laid-back country pop, you have to at least appreciate the way Silverstein's desperate lyric is perfectly matched to Dennis Locorriere's plaintive vocals. I swear when he sings, "Please, Mrs. Avery," I feel his yearning right down to the tips of my toes. What a performance.
And 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. And Mrs. Avery became such a famous figure, she even inspired a sequel song from The Men They Couldn't Hang...
But I'm not here to write about Sylvia's Mother, am I? Let's get back to the song in question. The reason I figured When You're In Love With A Beautiful Woman was a Shel Silverstein composition is that Shel was known for being a funny guy. As well as being able to break our hearts with songs like Sylvia's Mother and The Ballad Of Lucy Jordan, Shel wasn't afraid to write a song with a sense of humour. Like these...
You've got to admire the nerve of a man who can rhyme Loretta with Irish Setter, and then get Loretta Lynn to sing it. Silverstein was also responsible for another witty Dr. Hook hit, although it's one I have mixed feelings about...
Now the problem with this tune is the way the Hooksters laugh at their own jokes (or at Silverstein's jokes, anyway) as they sing them. Ironically, ...Rolling Stone is one of their only songs to feature Dr. Hook himself, Ray Sawyer, on lead vocals. Maybe that's part of the problem. Much as I wish to argue in favour of humour in pop songs, I have a problem with people who laugh at their own jokes. Now I've no problem with people laughing in songs, otherwise I wouldn't love this...
You hear Whitney giggling away (around 3'57" if you're in a rush) and you can tell she's genuinely having a good time. She's enjoying herself and having fun. The laughter is natural. Similarly, one of my favourite tracks by this up and coming pop hopeful...
Hey Stephen is a great "why are you wasting your time with those vain cheerleaders when I'm right here?" song, made even better by the line...
All those other girls, well, they're beautiful
But would they write a song for you?
The little chuckle Taylor gives after delivering those lines (approx. 2'50", busy folk) is priceless. And again, it feels genuine. Not so the self-congratulatory laughter in The Cover Of The Rolling Stone. I wish they'd played that song a little straighter. Or got Locorriere to sing it.
All of which brings us back to When You're In Love With A Beautiful Woman (It's Hard), which I'm still surprised to learn wasn't written by Shel... except, maybe not so surprised the more I think of it, because Shel was classier than that. Further warning bells sound when you discover the song was actually written by Even Stevens. No, no Evan. Even.
Stevens - real first names Bruce Noel - is a man who appears to love a good pun. He's clearly got a sense of humour, as demonstrated below...
...although, hang on, they were both written by Shel Silverstein too. Clearly Even Stevens' own songwriting was influenced by Shel... but I can't help but think Shel would have stopped short of the innuendo that upends When You're In Love With A Beautiful Woman, a sleazy 70s sexual allusion that's only "bettered" by this...
That one was written by David Bellamy himself. Well, gwapple me gwapenuts!
Not that David Bellamy, obviously. I might look more kindly on it if it was. To be fair, at least innuendo is the whole point of If I Said You Had A Beautiful Body... there's not a better song trapped underneath, begging for your respect. It is what is is and seems quite happy that way.
My contention then is that When You're In Love With A Beautiful Woman is a great song - especially the bridge, which is as heartfelt as anything Dennis Locorriere ever sang...
Maybe it's just an ego problem, problem is I've been fooled before
By fair-weathered friends and faint-hearted lovers
And every time it happens it just convinces me more
That's the bit I love. The bit that keeps me coming back to listen to this track again and again, the bit that gets me past the embarrassment of the smutty innuendo. (I particularly struggle with the "You know it's hard, you know it gets so hard" call-back - yeah, we get it, Even. No need to belt us over the head with it!)
Legend has it that Even Stevens followed Dr. Hook's manager into the studio bathroom to pitch this song. That says it all, really. If only he'd showed a little restraint... When You're In Love With A Beautiful Woman, It's Tough would have been much better, in my opinion. Or did this song only get to the top of the charts in the UK because of the lowest common denominator sales? If so, I hope Even Stevens sleeps soundly on his mattress stuffed with money, safe in the knowledge that he was one word away from writing a classic...
I think it's fair to say that Raquel Welch must be the oldest actress I've ever featured here. After all, she has been acting since One Million Years BC.
When Stephen King wrote the novella that The Shawshank Redemption was based on, the poster on Andy DuFrense's cell wall was Rita Hayworth. In the movie, to better show the passage of time, he has three posters: Hayworth, Marilyn... and the iconic image above of Raquel Welch in One Million Years BC, surely one of the most famous posters ever printed... after that one of the tennis player scratching her arse. Iffypedia tells us "Welch helped transform America's feminine ideal into its current state", a statement which is as questionable as it is disputable. To her credit, Welch herself once said, "I was not brought up to be a sex symbol, nor is it in my nature to be one. The fact that I became one is probably the loveliest, most glamorous and fortunate misunderstanding".
Whatever you think of Raquel Welch, it's fair to say that poster may well have decorated the bedroom walls of many of the songwriters below...
Not actually about Raquel Welch, just a girl with the same first name as her. However, Ms. Welch does get a mention... and extra points for rhyming her surname with "squelch".
(In case you're wondering, Gruff did his research. Raquel's parents are Bolivian daddy Armando Carlos Tejada Urquizo and Irish mummy Josephine Sarah Hall.)
OK, so those are the only songs I found with Raquel in the title. What about lyrical nods?
Oh, look, here's a song with Two Parts! You have to scroll through to the beginning of Part 2, around the 4 minute mark, to hear a brief reference to Raquel... but I think it's just a playful nickname for Freddie's co-singer.
Loana was the name of the character Raquel played in One Million Years BC. Clearly they're not Christian fundamentalists, otherwise they'd be rubbishing the film's depiction of dinosaurs which, clearly, never existed.
Oh, and here's our token Mark Kozelek track for this week...
At the age of 37 She realised she'd never ride Through Paris in a sports car With the warm wind in her hair
The chorus of Dr. Hook's The Ballad of Lucy Jordon (sic) is surely one of the saddest collection of words ever set to music. The song was written by poet and country songwriter Shel Silverstein, telling of a tired and jaded housewife who puts her husband and kids ahead of her own freedom and happiness... to the point that she's either driven insane... or to suicide, depending on your reading of the song's final lines.
One person who thought Lucy ended up in the loony bin was Marianne Faithful, who covered the song in the late 70s. You may prefer her version, but for me it's too much a product of its time and the tinny synths spoil Faithful's otherwise powerful vocal performance. (That said, I prefer the heartbreak in Dennis Locorriere's own vocal... that guy always sounded like he was on the verge of a breakdown, even when he was trying to get Sylvia's mother to persuade her daughter to take his call.)
6. Dr. Hook - The Ballad of Lucy Jordon
This is a song about realising that your best years are behind you, and in the 70s, that came at age 37, apparently.
