Bob Dylan – "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" (1973)

It’s getting dark

Too dark to see

Bob Dylan wrote “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” – the last of this year’s 2 OR 3 LINES “GOLDEN DECADE” HIT SINGLES HALL OF FAME inductees – for Sam Peckinpah’s 1973 Western movie, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid.

Dylan mumbled his way through his role in the movie – I swear I can’t understand a word his character said.

Bob Dylan in Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid

He did better as the composer of the movie’s soundtrack.  “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” is used to great effect in a scene depicting a shootout between members of Billy the Kid’s gang and Garrett and his allies – one of whom is an old sheriff who is mortally wounded during the gunfight.

The old sheriff was played by Slim Pickens, a veteran actor who is mostly remembered for his comic roles.  After his character was wounded, he walks slowly to a small pond, sits down on a rock, and gazes off into the distance – clearly aware that he is near death.  His wife, who had accompanied him to the shootout (where she dispatched one of the outlaws with two irrefutable blasts from her double-barreled shotgun), watches him from a distance.  Neither one speaks.

Pickens’s performance as the dying sheriff is understated but utterly convincing.  Click here to see for yourself.  

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The two brief verses of “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” would have been appropriate words for the sheriff to have said to his wife if he had spoken to her – which he didn’t:

Mama, take this badge off of me

I can’t use it anymore

It’s getting dark, too dark to see

I feel I’m knockin’ upon heaven’s door

Mama, put my guns in the ground

I can’t shoot them anymore

That long black cloud is coming down

I feel I’m knockin’ on heaven’s door

Dylan’s biographer called the song “an exercise in splendid simplicity,” and he was right.  Like Slim Pickens’s depiction of the dying sheriff, “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” is proof that less is often more.

(Why did the album title used an ampersand
when the movie title didn’t?) 

Unfortunately, Guns ’N’ Roses didn’t realize that when they covered “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” in 1990.  I give them credit for recognizing what a great song it was, but their version is full of Sturm und Drang that signifieth nothing.  (I understand that there’s no point in covering a song if you’re just going to replicate the original.  But if Guns ’N’ Roses thought their cover of “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” was what the song all about, they just plain didn’t get it.)

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Click here to listen to Bob Dylan’s “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.”

Click here to buy that recording from Amazon.

Click here to learn more about “Heaven’s Door” whiskey – which is co-owned by Bob Dylan.

Raspberries – "Go All the Way" (1972)

I never knew how complete love could be

'Til she kissed me and said, "BABY,

PLEASE GO ALL THE WAY!"

[NOTE: I was thinking that "Go All the Way" might be the best record never to have been featured on 2 or 3 lines.  But I just discovered that I featured it in a February 13, 2015 post.  (Who knew?)  A lot of people think that "Go All the Way" was mixed to sound great when it was broadcast by an AM station and listened to on a cheap transistor radio – not a fancy-schmancy stereo rig.  So maybe the best way to listen to it today is on your cell phone's itty-bitty internal speaker.  In any event, "Go All the Way" would be in the 2 OR 3 LINES "STICK OF DYNAMITE" RECORDS HALL OF FAME if such a hall of fame existed – the Raspberries held nothing back when they recorded it.] 

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I know it's Friday the 13th, but if this song doesn't get the job done for you tomorrow night, you need to work on your game, bro.

Here's a Valentine's Day tip for all of you: no homemade cards, please!

Dale Carnegie, the author of How to Win Friends and Influence People, wrote that "There is no sweeter sound to any person's ear than the sound of their own name."  (He should have written "the sound of his or her name," of course, but we'll overlook that for the time being.)

Carnegie's words are true for most people, but are not true for teenaged boys.  If you are a teenaged boy, there is no sweeter sound to your ears than "BABY, PLEASE GO ALL THE WAY!"  (By "teenaged boy," I of course mean "male of any age.")

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The Raspberries released "Go All the Way" in the summer of 1972, and it was a big hit.  Which should come as no surprise, given that it may be the ultimate AM radio song.  

"Go All the Way" is crammed full of hooks and riffs and other pop-music goodies.  A parsimonious songwriter might have squeezed three or four songs out of "Go All the Way."

But God bless Raspberries frontman Eric Carmen, who wrote "Go All the Way."  Instead of prudently setting off each of his Fourth of July rockets and fountains and Roman candles one at a time, he just threw a match into the box and then ran like hell before the whole kit-and-kaboodle blew up in one magnificent eruption of sound and fury.

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Carmen a Cleveland native, was a precocious little son of a b*tch.  At age two, he was entertaining his family by singing Tony Bennett and Johnnie Ray songs.  When he was six, his aunt – a Cleveland Orchestra violist – taught him to play the violin.  

Carmen was also a classically trained pianist.  After hearing the Beatles' early records, he taught himself to play guitar and started writing songs.  (There are a lot of self-taught guitarists, but I have yet to hear of a self-taught classical pianist.)

When the Raspberries broke up, Eric Carmen went on to have a successful solo career.  His first hit single, "All By Myself," was inspired by one of the themes in Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2.

Eric Carmen had fabulous hair:

But what was he thinking when he went blond?

"All By Myself" was released on Carmen's self-titled debut solo album, which I gave to a young woman I was seeing in 1975.  It was a very successful gift, although I don't remember her shouting "BABY, PLEASE GO ALL THE WAY!" when I gave it to her. 

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Click here to listen to "Go All the Way."

Click here to buy the song from Amazon.

Mountain – "Mississippi Queen" (1970)

You know she was a dancer

She moved better on wine

[NOTE: One author has described Leslie West’s famous “Mississippi Queen” guitar riff as sounding “like a carnivore choking on dinner.”  (That’s not a bad thing, is it?)  Here’s a lightly edited version of the original 2 or 3 lines post about “Mississippi Queen,” which was published on December 1, 2023.  Once you get past all the nonsense about bargain tortilla chips, you’ll find some interesting stuff about the record.] 

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When five o’clock rolls around, this man’s fancy turns to chips and salsa.

Frito-Lay dominates the tortilla chips market.  For many years, I bought their Tostitos brand chips.  But recently I discovered Frito-Lay’s Santitas chips.

The Official Chips of 2 Or 3 Lines

I can’t tell the difference between the two brands.  I suspect they’re identical except for the name on the bag – and the price.  

An 11-ounce bag of Santitas is only $2.69.  That’s barely half the price per ounce of a bag of Tostitos.

You’ll have to look a little harder to find Santitas on your grocer’s shelves – most stores give only a tiny amount of shelf space to Santitas.

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The only problem with Santitas – which is true of other brands as well – is that the bottom third of the bag tends to consist of broken chip fragments that are really too small to dip with successfully.

Here’s a tip for all y’all that will save you beaucoup bucks on tortilla chips.  Once you’re down to having only broken chips in the bag, drop a handful into a cereal bowl and pour your salsa on top of them.  Then eat them with a spoon:

I think that’s a pretty brilliant solution.  (You’re welcome!)

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Let me give you some advice when it comes to grocery-store salsa.  

Forget the very popular Tostitos and On the Border brands, and go with Pace.  Not the chunky stuff – stick with Pace picante sauce instead.  Mild, medium, or hot – that’s up to you.  (I think medium is plenty spicy.)  

There are probably some fancy niche brands that are better, but why spend a lot of dough gilding the lily?  Pace picante is just fine.

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Is “Mississippi Queen” the best record that has never been featured in a 2 or 3 lines post?

That’s a good question.  I’m not sure that it is, but I am sure that Leslie West’s playing is the best guitar playing on a record that’s never been featured on 2 or 3 lines.

It’s hard to believe that yours truly has managed to write almost 2000 posts without featuring “Mississippi Queen” – which has been a favorite of mine for years.

I think “Mississippi Queen” is the ne plus ultra of guitar-dominated classic-rock records.  Hendrix and Cream and Led Zeppelin produced a lot of great tracks, but I’m not sure any of them is better than “Mississippi Queen” – which has been described as “an enduring anthem [with a] guitar riff that sounds like a carnivore choking on dinner.”  (What he said!)

The record is also notable for drummer Corky Laing’s relentless cowbelling.  Spin magazine called it “the cowbell jam to end all cowbell jams,” and said that “Mountain are to the cowbell what Dostoevsky is to the Russian novel.”

Felix Pappalardi – who played bass for Mountain and also produced “Mississippi Queen” – was shot and killed by his wife in 1983 in their Manhattan apartment.  She basically got away with murder, serving only 18 months in prison after being convicted of negligent homicide.

Click here to listen to “Mississippi Queen.”

Click here to buy the song from Amazon.

Spiral Starecase – "More Today Than Yesterday" (1969)

I love you more today than yesterday

But not as much as tomorrow

[NOTE: 2 or 3 lines originally featured “More Today Than Yesterday” – the newest of the 2 OR 3 LINES “GOLDEN DECADE” HIT SINGLES HALL OF FAME – on May 14, 2019.  Here is a very lightly edited version of that post, which is certainly one of the very best of the more than two thousand that I’ve written since giving birth to this wildly successful little blog in 2009.]

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When I pick my grandson Jack up at day care, I usually sing along to the SiriusXM ’60s on 6 channel during the short drive to his home. 

A few weeks ago, today’s featured song popped up on that station.  Jack isn’t even three years old yet, and I wasn’t sure if the lines from the song that are quoted above would make any sense to him.  

But I started half-saying, half-singing those lines to Jack when I said goodbye after dropping him off at home.  I’m not sure if those lines are really true – do I really love Jack more today that I loved him yesterday? – but I thought it was a nice way to tell him how much I loved him, and might give him something to think about, too.

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Earlier today, my daughter Sarah – Jack’s mother – sent me two short videos of Jack singing to his baby brother Hunter, who just turned six months old.  To say that I was surprised by what Jack did in those videos is the understatement of the century.

Here’s the first video:

Here’s the second one:

(Note how Jack has captured the essential rhythm of these lyrics – the way he pronounces “yesterday” and “tomorrow,” and the pause between the two lines.)

Jack never really reacted to my singing those song lyrics to him – he certainly never sang along with me, or repeated the lines back to me.  

I hadn’t told anyone else about my reciting those lyrics as a goodbye catchphrase.  My daughter had no idea that I was doing that, so she couldn’t have prompted him to sing the lines to Hunter while she recorded him.

Jack has always seemed very taken with little Hunter – he stays pretty close to him when both boys are at home, and I’ve never seen him exhibit any jealousy or resentment when we are paying more attention to Hunter than to him.  But I can’t quite comprehend how his not-quite-three-year-old brain figured out that the song lyrics about love that I recited to him were appropriate for him to sing to his brother.  

I’ve been blessed with four grandsons, and a fifth is on the way – perhaps I’ll be fortunate enough to have even more grandchildren in the future.  I have a feeling there are other little miracles like this one in store for me, and I am very much looking forward to them.

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The Spiral Starecase’s “More Today than Yesterday” made it to #12 on the Billboard “Hot 100” in 1969.  

Pat Upton in 2013

In 2013, the group’s frontman, Pat Upton, talked to a newspaper reporter about writing the song:

I wrote “I Love You More Today Than Yesterday” in a motel room in Las Vegas.  I was thinking about Bobby Goldsboro singing it when I first wrote it.  Musically, I had a chord progression in my head, and I knew the only way I’d ever get to use it was if I wrote a song around it.  [The group recorded the song and] three months later, it took off.

After the Spiral Starecase broke up, Upton became a session musician and a member of Ricky Nelson’s band for a few years.  

On December 30, 1985, Nelson performed at Upton’s club in Guntersville, Alabama.  He was scheduled to play at a big New Year’s Eve show in Dallas, and invited Upton to join them, but Upton declined.  Nelson’s plane – a 40-year-old DC-3 with a history of mechanical problems – crashed about two miles from the airport where it was supposed to land, killing Nelson, his girlfriend, his manager, and all four members of his band.

Here’s a photo of Upton and Nelson taken just before Nelson’s ill-fated flight took off:

Upton died in 2016 at the age of 75.  I wish I had been able to share these videos of Jack with him – he had six grandchildren of his own, so I’m sure he would have enjoyed them.

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In 1889, the 18-year-old Rosemonde Gérard wrote the following lines to Edmond Rostand, a young playwright (he wrote Cyrano de Bergerac) whom she would soon marry:

Car, vois-tu, chaque jour je t’aime davantage,

Aujourd’hui plus qu’hier et bien moins que demain.

French poet Rosemonde Gérard

One English-language dictionary of quotations translates those lines as follows:

For, you see, each day I love you more,

Today more than yesterday and less than tomorrow.

Years later, a French jeweler came up with the idea of making a medallion engraved with an abbreviated version of the verse.  

The medallion depicted below reads has a plus sign followed by qu’hier, a minus sign, and que demain – in other words, “more than yesterday, less than tomorrow.”

The plus and minus signs on these medallions are often enhanced with gemstones – a romantic poem is all well and good, but diamonds are a girl’s best friend!

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Click here to listen to “More Today Than Yesterday.”

Click here to buy the record from Amazon.

Fifth Dimension – "Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In" (1969)

Mystic crystal revelation

And the mind’s true liberation

Aquarius!

A year after today’s featured recording was released, my high school jazz band performed an instrumental arrangement of it to close our spring concert.

My high school had a big-ass grand piano, and the lid was opened wide when I played it that night.  I was a pretty accomplished student pianist by the time I was a senior, but the thing I did best was play the piano LOUD.

I never played louder than when I played the second part of the “Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In” medley that night.  I banged the piano keys as hard as I could – after all, I was trying to be heard over four trumpets, four trombones, five saxophones, and a drummer.

A big-ass concert grand piano

I also ripped off full-length glissando after full-length glissando.  By the time the band got to the last chord, my knuckles were raw and bleeding from all those glissandos.

I’ve played the piano in public dozens of times, but I was never more jacked up during a performance than I was when we played “Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In” that night.

Is that why I decided to include the Fifth Dimension’s recording of that medley in the 2 OR 3 LINES “GOLDEN DECADE” HIT SINGLES HALL OF FAME?  Well, it’s certainly a reason – although it’s not the only reason.

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Berry Gordy – the man who built Motown Records into the most profitable African-American-owned business in the United States – didn’t make many mistakes.  But he slipped up on occasion.  

For example, he didn’t think Marvin Gaye’s recording of “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” – which was only the best Motown record ever made – was worthy of being released as a single.

And when the head of Motown’s Los Angeles recommended that Gordy sign the Fifth Dimension, he passed on the group.  

B-i-g mistake, Berry! 

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“Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In” held the #1 spot on the Billboard “Hot 100” for six consecutive weeks in 1969, and was the best-selling single of that year.  Not surprisingly, it won the Grammy for “Record of the Year.” 

The Fifth Dimension had also won the “Record of the Year“ Grammy two years earlier for “Up, Up and Away” – which is the song I think of first when I think of the Fifth Dimension.  (Somehow “Up, Up and Away” only made it to #7 on the Billboard charts – that’s very surprising.)

Between 1967 and 1973, a total of 20 of the group’s singles made the top forty.  They not only had another #1 hit (“Wedding Bell Blues”), but also had a #2 (“One Less Bell to Answer”) and a #3 (“Stoned Soul Picnic”).

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I didn’t pay a lot of attention to the Fifth Dimension when I was a teenager back in the sixties.  I heard their records on the radio hundreds (if not thousands) of times, but never seriously considered buying one of their albums.

As a teenager, I didn’t appreciate the craftsmanship and professionalism of recording artists like the Fifth Dimension when I heard it – now that I’m an adult, I get it. 

The three male and two female singers who were the group’s original members sang beautifully, but that was only one of the reasons their recordings were so good.

The Fifth Dimension with
Bones Howe and Jimmy Webb

Their producer, “Bones” Howe, was savvy enough to hire members of the legendary “Wrecking Crew” group of studio musicians to back up the group’s vocals.  (Those vocals were arranged by Bob Alcivar, who had worked with Howe when Howe produced the Association’s equally impeccable records.)

And the group had excellent taste when it came to choosing material.  They recorded songs by a number of first-rate songwriters, including Jimmy Webb (“Up, Up and Away”), Burt Bacharach and Hal David (“One Less Bell to Answer”), and especially Laura Nyro.

Sadly, Laura Nyro’s own recordings of “Stoned Soul Picnic,” “Sweet Blindness,” “Wedding Bell Blues,” and “Save the Country” never cracked the top forty.  But the Fifth Dimension’s covers of them made it to #3, #13, and #1, and #27, respectively. 

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The Fifth Dimension told Bones Howe that they wanted to record “Aquarius” after seeing the musical Hair on Broadway. 

Howe was skeptical at first.  But after seeing the show himself, he decided to create a medley by combing “Aquarius” – which was the first song in Hair – with part of the musical’s final number, “The Flesh Failures (“Let the Sunshine In).”  The transition from the first part of the medley to the second part is anything but smooth – the songs are in dramatically different tempos – but Howe decided to just “jam them together.”

Songwriter Jimmy Webb walked into the studio when the Fifth Dimension were recording the vocals.  “My God, that’s a number one record,” he told Howe after listening for a few moments.

(You da man, Jimmy Webb!)

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Click here to listen to the Fifth Dimension’s recording of “Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In.”

Click here to buy that recording from Amazon.