THANK YOU ROD, FOR THE SOUND TRACK TO MY LIFE - RIP

[stevetwosheds]

Nothing made me want to be a songwriter more than hearing BOOGIE NIGHTS by HEATWAVE in the late 70's and I wish to God I could have met you at the time, Rod, cause if anyone could've taught me how to move my songs that crucial step forward with a stronger groove and hipper lyrics, it would have been you.

OK, I'm talking as if Rod could hear - I wish I believed that.

I have to be honest and confess that I only learned who Rod Temperton actually was a few years ago - The guy who wrote some of Michael Jackson's biggest hits like THRILLER, ROCK WITH YOU and so on, plus many more of the very best hit songs that kept me going out of the 70's into the 80's; kept me feeling it was still WORTH being a songwriter despite some of the unbelievably AWFUL music that emerged at the start of the 80's. Guys like Rod Temperton kept reaching out through the airwaves with gob-smacking songs to keep me going, keep me inspired - "Ya mo b there" - I didn't even know what it meant, only that it sounded W O W.

I had no idea they were all written by the same, rather ordinary looking guy from Cleethorpes, a small place in England, no more important sounding than the small place I was from - If I'd known, it would have given me hope to realise that it REALLY doesn't matter where you are from and it REALLY doesn't matter if you look like your face was run over by a bus - IF you are writing RIDICULOUSLY hooky tunes, those decision makers in London or where-ever are gonna NEED you.

As it happens, I was the biggest dumbass for "logically" thinking, "well, 80- 90% of the new 80's stuff is naff, therefore the bar can't be that high - just keep writing to that easy standard and one day I'll get lucky" WRONG... We have to be BETTER than what's generally going on - only emulate the stand-out hits.

I needed to be emulating the VERY best, the ROD TEMPERTONS, the guys who were harder to equal or come anywhere near -

It's not as if he was writing in a foreign language or using sounds and tunes from another universe - So what was so hard about writing as good as him?

Perhaps I was lazier than I realise. I think he wrote 100 - 200 titles before he came up with THRILLER - How many of us do that AND have the intuition to know that was the perfect choice?

Incidentally - It made me laugh how the Vincent Price voice on Thriller came about when Rod spotted him and seized the opportunity, scratching out some words very quickly to take advantage of the situation....

...WHERE IS VINCENT PRICE WHENEVER I'M MAKING A DEMO!?

Sadly, Rod died a few weeks ago while I was having a break from Taxi forums etc and I imagined it would be the hot topic, like here in the UK newspapers.

I'm slowly realizing that songwriters aren't widely regarded as important, not compared to the stars who sing their songs - I THINK stars as big as Michael Jackson get all the credit, 99% of people merely assuming that MJ wrote all his hits and certainly his biggest ones like Thriller, Off The Wall etc.

Well, no. Guys like US.

Guys from small towns no-one has heard of.

Guys with faces that threaten to distort the space-time continuum.

Guys who try that bit (sorry - LOT) harder .


Hat's off to one of them - Rod Temperton.

I couldn't find a single reference to him on here, which seemed sad, so this is my clumsy attempt to rectify the matter.

There's a great radio documentary about him you can simply listen to while you are hoovering up. Hope someone enjoys it. Just listen to 5 minutes of it - we all owe him that much.

BBC Radio 2 The Invisible Man The Rod Temperton Story
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGiwMKX ... XWSi02HKDS

Thanks for reading.

Steve

[davekershaw]

Hey Steve.

Thanks for taking the time to post this.
Rod was born, and raised, in Cleethorpes, about seven miles from where I live.
I never met him, but did go see him while he was in Chicago's Heatwave (as they were billed at the time) at a local pub... must have been around 1975. It was just before they had that major hit with Boogie Nights.
He seemed quiet and unassuming sat there at his keyboard. Who'd have known what great things he would go on to achieve.
I remember a feature in the local telegraph some years later... a photo of him, with the bright lights of Hollywood behind him. The local boy had made it real big! I believe he bought a home for his parents in The States, and they moved out there from Cleethorpes.
As you say, his death did make the national news in the UK, which was nice to see. I've not been around the forum much lately, so hadn't noticed whether it had been mentioned at the time.

Video wouldn't play, but here's a nice little tribute:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?list=PLvMuS ... ode=NORMAL

RIP Rod.

Dave.

(Post got duplicated for some reason, hence the following empty post. Can't delete it altogether)

[davekershaw]

Ah, I see.. I pressed quote instead of edit, and edited the quote!

[mojobone]

...WHERE IS VINCENT PRICE WHENEVER I'M MAKING A DEMO!?

I dunno, but I can tell you where he was in 1982; he was in line ahead of me at a grocery store on Sanibel Island, FL. I was too star struck to even speak to him.

[LamarPecorino]

Thank you for posting this. I had not heard the sad news. He was a great talent!

[stevetwosheds]

Thanks for the follow-up comments folks - I'm glad I posted it now I know one or two people do care about the guy. He was a fellow songwriter, just like us really - Would've been fun to have him on the forum - I like that he wrote some of those huge hits sat next to a smelly laundry basket in Cleethorpes, not in some posh LA apartment then.

Dave, I bet you wish you'd knocked on his door in the 70's, living so near. I love how he ignored advice to cut the long harp intro when advised that America wouldn;t play it, nor Radio 1 here - Wrong wrong wrong - I know it's very wrong of me but I DO take pleasure seeing just how often experts are wrong, because it IS a heck of a lot - but a Taxi forum is perhaps the wrong place to hammer that point too hard - But if anyone wants a list!!! just kiddin.

I made a SLIGHT error re how Vincent Price ended up on THRILLER - but I'll let the official documentaries tell the story in case I cock it up again.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNaJ1YT ... XWSi02HKDS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUr6z-j ... DS&index=3

What was Vincent Price buying, Mojo? It would make my day if you said "four candles" - A long standing british joke but not that funny really...
"Four Candles sketch" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gi_6SaqVQSw


Talking of the making of THRILLER...
You GOTTA listen to this one - The original version of THRILLER when it was still called STARLIGHT..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_Eb7MYSPd4
If the link doesn't work try searching Youtube for "MICHAEL JACKSON STARLIGHT 1982 DEMO RARE THRILLER ERA"

Dave, That link to the radio2 show about Rod, didn't work for you? Odd. It's in the same collection of YouTube video's on the Rod Temperton topic, same as the one you posted, where Rod has put down a temporary work-vocal on ROCK WITH YOU - That's a GREAT one to listen to, for anyone who wonders "How good does my singing have to be?" - The answer seems to be "As bad as you like! - A hit's a hit"...

...I'll NEVER feel embarrassed about another of my work vocals after that. You'd never think that was a hit song in the making - I probably like it because he sounds as bad as me yet had hits. Can't imagine presenting the likes of MJ or Quincy J with such out of tune me-maw-ing - But I LOVE that his total inability to sing didn;t stop him being a massive hit songwriter! Bang goes MY excuse! Luckily I've got plenty more... (excuses, not hits)

And there is a wonderful example of this with JOE MEEK "singing" (if you can call it that!!!) TELSTAR ...
Now Joe Meek really WAS bloody awful - You've GOTTA hear how bad!!!!!... Joe Meek With The Tornados - Telstar (1st stage demo) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ujtILe4BeY

Yet he KNEW what he wanted to hear on tape. I could highly recommend the Joe Meek story film - Very interesting but totally heartbreaking tale...

...He never got paid a penny for making the first Trans-Atlantic number one - Sadly, through endless stress about money to buy tape etc and a lot of paranoia, working too hard (yes, you can) he shot himself a few weeks before a court finally ruled that it WAS his song, after all - but the money still never went to his heirs. I presume the UK Government pocketed it. Anyone know? The closing title sequence implies all his royalties "vanished" into thin air. I think Patrick Pink, his loyal friend should have got the money but didn't.

...There seems to be a LOT of suicide attached to unpaid royalties in the UK - I always feel particularly sad for Pete Ham and Tom Evans of BADFINGER, who wrote WITHOUT YOU, the Neilson hit in the 70's, killing themselves for financial reasons, unpaid royalties in either one or both cases...

...Which, yet again, seems ridiculously sad when you consider what a gift they gave us with that song, so many huge covers. But if you asked 100 people who wrote it, 99.5 would probably GUESS Mariah Carey - Look at karaoke songs - it's usually the ARTIST'S name that comes up on the screen and NO mention of the writer.

This, apparently, is what most of the world wants. To live in blissful ignorance of who did what. I've already had my moan about Edison VS Tesla in another post - I guess it's the desire for justice in the world, - Yeah, that fantasy.

BACK TO MJ...

I like this "unmixed" version of ROCK WITH YOU too... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMkoeAp579s

Who IS the lucky geyser who has the master /work tape??? Here's a VERY short video he must have done, showing the Westlake Audio tape box notes, filmed on a crappy mobile phone - all 40 seconds of it,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Z_N5v8Qtic


Steve

[davekershaw]

...I'll NEVER feel embarrassed about another of my work vocals after that. You'd never think that was a hit song in the making - I probably like it because he sounds as bad as me yet had hits. Can't imagine presenting the likes of MJ or Quincy J with such out of tune me-maw-ing - But I LOVE that his total inability to sing didn;t stop him being a massive hit songwriter! Bang goes MY excuse! Luckily I've got plenty more... (excuses, not hits)

Steve

Yeah, it would be nice to be in that position, where you have people wanting your songs, and you just have to sing enough to give them an idea of the song.
Haha yeah, fork handles! Very British humour. "Got any O's?"