It never seems to fail, good or even great things always seem to come to end. Generally it happens abruptly and there’s always some sort of bullshit that happens behind the scenes that ends up bringing it down. As much as it pains me to use this quote, I’m gonna do it anyway, “If things didn’t end badly, nothing would ever end.” For the most part this is 100% correct. It’s a very rare exception that breaks this rule. If you can name me the movie that came from, then you’re following the career of a huge actor and some of his B grade movies (actually its still a good movie, but it is cheesy).
I bring this up today because of what happened last night at a place I’ve started frequenting recently on Tuesday nights. That’s right, the Backstage Cafe in Beverly Hills. As I wrote in an earlier post a few weeks back, I was invited to go hang there by a friend. The main reason is that it’s a bit of a hangout for music industry folks and he was helping me to branch out and meet more people. Expose me to others whom I might work with. I actually kept going because of the new people I met there. Actually there’s other reasons that this is an appropriate choice for today that I can think of that have happened with another friend of mine too.
Last night I had brought my guitar as I was planning on getting up and jamming with the house band. A group of guys that are always rotating because they’re in and out of town on tour with major artists. Well the leader was cool with me and told me last night he dug my CD Practical Insanity. He introduced me around to the other guys and made me feel welcome to be there.
As it turns out, it was to be their last night there and to make matters worse they didn’t even get to set up and play. I don’t know the back story on what happened. I decided not to pry as it wasn’t my business, however I do know they were a bit bummed and said there was some bullshit that was being pulled, so the band yanked the plug on it. I fully understand the situation. If you’re a working pro and a venue decides to yank your chain about payment or even by booking other acts in your spot without telling you, its a sure sign its time to move on. Which is exactly what this house band decided to do. I’ll likely follow them to whereever their new hang ends up being. They’re cool guys.
Thus it’s the reason I ended up choosing this song for today. I feel like it expresses the very idea of time to move on. It does so with any lyrics. Actually if you don’t know who Jeff Beck is (and no I don’t mean Beck the guy that did I’m A Loser Baby), then you really need to expand your musical horizon. He’s only one of the greatest guitar players in the history of the planet. You can hear his amazing phrasing going on here.
One of the things I was taught as I was learning to play was to steal from lots of different people and to not borrow too much from any one source. Well Jeff Beck is one of those sources from which I’ve stolen one idea and incorporated it into my own playing. In fact, it’s from this very song. I spent time at one point tearing this song apart, note for note, phrase for phrase, tone for tone. See if you can pick out exactly what lick I ripped off and which song of mine that I actually incorporated it into (bonus points if you can do that, you could even win a guitar pick signed by me).
The story behind this song is sad in and of itself, and thus leads to the title. You’re aware who made a song called Superstitious famous right? Please tell me you know that it was Stevie Wonder. A brilliant songwriter in his own right and definitely an influential singer on numerous artists including me. But did you know that Stevie didn’t write that amazing lick that makes up the backbone to Superstitious? That’s right, if you can put two and two together it was Jeff Beck. Stevie didn’t give Jeff any credit and if I’m not mistaken he snaked the songwriting royalties too. To repair the relationship Stevie wrote Cause We’ve Ended As Lovers for Jeff. Jeff being the stand up guy he appears to be, credited Stevie with the authorship of the song and probably didn’t ask for the publishing or the writing share.
While I don’t know all the details behind it, that’s the gist of what I’ve learned through the grapevine. If you have more concrete details about this song and it’s origins please post them here, I’d love to learn. This song is perhaps my favorite song I’ve ever heard Jeff Beck do, with maybe the exception of his version of A Day In The Life. So if you don’t have this song, and/or the album Blow By Blow you need to get yourself to the local record store ASAFP and get it. If you can’t do that, you best go to iTunes right now! I mean it, don’t come back for any further Single of the Day posts until you purchase this song.
(** Disclaimer: Should Jeff’s label decide to end my love affair with this song due to this blog post, I will remove the audio faster than Jeff Beck can play a scale. I’ll still show my love for the music via the text. **)