The AT40 Blog/September 26, 1970: A three-piece story from Sweet Baby James

According to the man who made the song famous, James Taylor, "Fire And Rain" was written in three parts and during a very dark time in his life.

In Rolling Stone magazine during a 1972 interview, Taylor said, "The first verse is about my reactions to the death of a friend (Suzanne Schnerr). The second verse is about my arrival in this country with a monkey on my back, and there Jesus is an expression of my desperation in trying to get through the time when my body was aching and the time was at hand when I had to do it. And the third verse of that song refers to my recuperation in Austin Riggs which lasted about five months."

Schnerr was a childhood friend of Taylor's, who, while Taylor was in England recording his first album, committed suicide. Taylor's friends and family made the gut-wrenching decision to keep the news from Taylor while he was recording that album for Apple Records and getting help on it from none other than Paul McCartney and George Harrison. It would not be for six months after her passing that Taylor found out. He was devastated by her passing.

The second verse was also that dark period after finding out of his friend's passing and coming home from England, feeling a bit like a failure because that self-titled debut did not sell well, and Taylor became depressed over it.

As for the third verse, Taylor wrote it about that time he was coming to grips with the early part of his career, recovering from his drug addiction at the Austin Riggs Center in Massachusetts, still battling the depression of letting famous people down and feeling melancholy over the breaking up of his first group as highlighted by the last line of that verse -- "Sweet dreams and Flying Machines in pieces on the ground" referenced the failure of the band Flying Machine, not to be compared to the British group who scored the Top 10 hit "Smile A Little Smile For Me" in 1969.

Taylor was only 21 years old when he finished his composition he called "Fire And Rain." His producer on that self-titled debut, Peter Asher of Peter & Gordon fame, saw something in Taylor even though that first album did not sell well. Even as Apple Records dumped his contract, he got picked up by Warner Brothers. Asher believed he can shape Taylor into an artist everyone would recognize.

On December 8, 1969, Taylor and Asher arrived at the Sunset Sound Recorders studio in Hollywood to begin work on that second album. The centerpiece of the album was to be the title track from it -- "Sweet Baby James." Once that track and others were finished, Taylor showed Asher the composition he had written which would turn out to be the breakout single. Asher liked it and set up the recording with people who knew their way around songwriting and recording.

On piano was a friend to both Asher and Taylor, the one and only Carole King. Session musician Russ Kunkel played the drums, opting to go with brushes instead of sticks for most of the song. And Bobby West played bass guitar. Once he understood the mood of this dark, lonely song, West changed up basses, going with the deeper-sounding double bass, which would underscore the entire meaning of "Fire And Rain."

The song took a few takes to put down. The album took 10 days to record in December 1969. And by February 1970, "Sweet Baby James" was released as the second album by Taylor. And the plan was to release "Sweet Baby James" as the first single from the album. To this day, Taylor states that "Sweet Baby James" is the best song he's ever recorded.

Problem was that audiences were not keen to the single when it was released and "Sweet Baby James" did not even make the Hot 100 chart, another setback in the young career of the 22-year-old born in Boston and raised in North Carolina while his father was a professor at the University of North Carolina in Chappell Hill.

The album lingered with little fanfare and Taylor went off to Hollywood to make a movie with Beach Boys drummer Dennis Wilson and actor Warren Oates called Two-Lane Blacktop.

Nearly six months passed by from the album's release until August 1970. Taylor had finished working on that movie and was in between living in Asher's house and good friend and fellow guitarist Danny Kortchmar's apartment. Warner Brothers wanted to give another song a chance to succeed and impressed on both Asher and Taylor the song they thought would work was "Fire And Rain," the deeply personal record Taylor didn't see any commercial success with, saying he never thought people would be that interested in his life.

Without much else going on in Taylor's life, "Fire And Rain" was released in August 1970 and on September 12, 1970, made its Hot 100 debut at No. 83. The next week, it pounded up the chart 33 places to No. 50.

And on September 26, 1970, "Fire And Rain" jumped into the Top 40, debuting at No. 40. The song had caught lightning in a bottle and many music fans were caught up in the message of Taylor's depression, his deep feelings for losing his friend Suzanne and the failure of his first album.

"Fire And Rain" continued its strong flight up the chart, from No. 40 to 30 to 17 and right into the Top 10 at No. 10 on October 17, 1970. After a leap to No. 6, "Fire And Rain" jumped to No. 3 on October 31, 1970, where it would hold for three straight weeks in that peak position.

Though it wasn't exactly the song Asher and Taylor saw doing the job, Taylor was now a star. And as "Fire And Rain" became a huge hit, many fans bought the "Sweet Baby James" album. Not only did it feature the hit song and title track, it also featured the folksy "Country Road," the blues "mocker" "Steamroller" (which Elvis Presley would make into a Top 40 hit with his Hawaiian concert version called "Steamroller Blues") and a track Taylor wrote called "Suite For 20 G," which stood for the $20,000 Taylor was promised once this album was delivered from studio to record stores.

Like "Fire And Rain," "Sweet Baby James" hit No. 3 on the album chart. More importantly, the strong reviews for Taylor's album got him recognition in the business and the album earned a Grammy nomination for Album of the Year. Taylor's album, though, would lose to Simon & Garfunkel's opus "Bridge Over Troubled Waters."

For as depressing a tune as "Fire And Rain" was, it did have an underlying positive tone to it and turned Taylor into an underdog-who-made-it status. King, it was said years later, was inspired to write "You've Got A Friend" because of the line "I've seen lonely times when I could not find a friend" in "Fire And Rain." She recorded "You've Got A Friend" for her historic 1971 classic album, "Tapestry," but would also give to Taylor to record. Put on Taylor's next album, "Mud Slide Slim And The Blue Horizon," also produced by Asher, "You've Got A Friend" would climb to No. 1 in July 1971 and be the lone No. 1 hit in Taylor's career.

In 2015, Taylor was invited on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert to talk about "Fire And Rain" and to do an "update" to the song with the host. Putting in numerous pop culture references since the song was first released 45 years earlier, "Fire And Rain" became "Fire And Rain ... And Calzones." For the new lyrics, Taylor sang, "I've seen man buns, Myspace and the Baha Men, but I never thought I'd see a new Star Wars again," as well as "I've seen grandmas reading 50 Shades of Grey" and "Quidditch teams and skinny jeans cutting blood off from my thighs."

It absolutely put a peppier feel to the original version that Taylor wrote at 20 years old because failure was all he saw.

After 14 Top 40 hits, five of which were Top 10s and that one No. 1 hit, it's safe to say James Taylor's fortunes changed in an awfully amazing way.

The AT40 Blog/September 17, 1983: Politically "Fixx-ing" a hit record

So what exactly was "One Thing Leads To Another" by the British group The Fixx all about?

Turns out: Politics.

"If you're going to be a liar, you'd better be a damn good liar and remember what you said, or the whole thing's going to get pear-shaped," said the song's lyricist and group's lead singer, Cy Curnin, for SongFacts in 2011. "That was 30 years ago, and look where the system is now. A lot of people stand on ballot boxes and say a lot of things and lie in order to get elected and do nothing. So those songs I'm pretty proud of."

Turns out that a number of tunes Curnin wrote with the band had political motivation to it, like "Stand Or Fall" and "Red Skies."

"I was feeling that sense of impotence back then in the early '80s or late '70s when Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher were getting in bed together, metaphorically speaking, and designing a whole defense system that involved Europeans' lives without asking us -- it was never on any electorate ballot that I can remember," Curnin said in the same interview. "That struck a chord."

Curnin and the band hit the American shores at the perfect time in 1983. With MTV growing as an entity and with American tastes changing from the stars of the 1960s and '70s to a younger generation wanting their "own" music in the form of hard rock and New Wave acts, The Fixx was a group waiting to explode. Curnin and drummer Jamie Woods formed the group in 1979 as The Portraits in their native London, then placed an ad in local periodicals to help fill out the band.

That ad was answered by keyboardist Rupert Greenall, guitarist Tony McGrail and bass guitarist Russell Mckenzie. Mckenzie would ultimately leave and replaced by Charlie Barrett. The band recorded a pair of songs for Ariola Records as Portrait -- "Little Women" in 1979 and "Hazards In The Home" in 1980.

McGrail would leave the band in 1980 and would be replaced by Jamie West-Oram. At that point, the group decided on a name change and went by The Fix. In 1981, recording for 101 Records, they recorded the song "Lost Planes," and that song and others began getting airplay on BBC Radio.

It was from there that the band was contacted by MCA Records. The band signed, but there was an issue -- the label wanted to add an extra 'x' to the name so that people didn't get the name The Fix mixed up with that of what a drug-user has when he needs a hit of what keeps him going as a drug-user. The band went for it and they were The Fixx with two x's.

In 1982, the band recorded its first album for MCA in London called "Shuttered Room," which featured the aforementioned tracks "Stand Or Fall" and "Red Skies." That got them the attention from MTV and music critics liked the album. Though the band was becoming a success in its native land, there was still some resistance to the guys in the U.S. They had a cult following among those who were big on the New Wave music scene, but not everyone was on board.

While The Fixx began to take off as an act, Barrett left and it was now just a quartet -- Curnin, Woods, Greenall and West-Oram. But just before they went into the studio to record their next album, "Reach The Beach" in late 1982, they brought in a new guy for the position, Alfie Agius.

The quintet went right to work on the songs that would lead off the album as the first two singles from the new album, "Saved By Zero" and "One Thing Leads To Another." But after a short time, Agius left the band. The rest of the guys worked on the album without a bass needed on the next seven tracks. Then they brought in Dan K. Brown to play bass on one more track, "The Sign Of Fire," the third single release from "Reach The Beach." Brown would ultimately be the permanent bass player of the band.

The band and producer Rupert Hine were convinced that this time, the band would break through in the United States. The album "Reach The Beach" would get its release on both sides of the Atlantic on May 16, 1983.

This time, The Fixx had reached the U.S. audience masses thanks to the first single, "Saved By Zero," which would peak at No. 20 in August 1983 and would be one of the memorable sounds of the Summer of '83. Now was the time to spring "One Thing Leads To Another" on the American public that hadn't bought "Reach The Beach."

As the summer began to fade away, "One Thing Leads To Another" debuted on the Hot 100 at No. 65 on August 27, 1983. It leaped to No. 45 the next week, then into the Top 40 the following week at No. 38.

On September 17, 1983, "One Thing Leads To Another" was the biggest mover within the Top 40 by leaping nine places to No. 29. While the song was getting heavy airplay on radio, it, too, was getting heavy airplay on MTV via the music video that featured the well-dressed Curnin (he also wears a Flashdance-like, sleeveless shirt as well) in a dark tunnel that changes colors throughout while he sorta "dances," exposing his chest in the video.

Suddenly, The Fixx were being looked at as a new British star band as Culture Club, Duran Duran and Spandau Ballet. After another big jump from No. 29 to No. 21, it moved to No. 17 the week of October 1, 1983, passing up the No. 20 peak of "Saved By Zero."

Then one week later, "One Thing Leads To Another" made a huge leap from No. 17 to No. 9. After a jump to No. 6 the week after that, it held at No. 6. Then it moved to No. 5, and finally peaked at No. 4 on November 5, 1983, before falling back to No. 6 the next week.

While the hit was peaking in the Top 5 in this country, the country that first gave them notice outside of England, Canada, saw the song shoot up to No. 1.

"The Sign Of Fire" would be the third hit from "Reach The Beach" and it would peak at No. 32. The band would have three more Top 40 hits -- "Are We Ourselves?" got to No. 15 in 1984, "Secret Separation" peaked at No. 19 in 1986 and "How Much Is Enough" stopped at No. 35 in 1991.

In July 2012, The Fixx released their 10th CD/album, "Beautiful Friction," produced by Nick Jackson for Kirtland Records in the U.S. In the summer of 2016, The Fixx -- still the same quintet of Curnin, Woods, West-Oram, Greenall and Brown -- went on tour in the United States, playing mostly out west, up north and in the New England states, finishing the tour with a free show at the Madison Beach Hotel in Madison, Conn., on August 31.

Curnin is proud of the work he and his band have done these last 35 years. In that same 2011 interview with SongFacts, he looked back on that changing period in 1983.

"That period of music was a very original period of music," Curnin said. "There were so many different forms coming out that really today we would have different musical divisions. I think, globally, we as musicians don't see ourselves as separate or we don't compete with each other. The nature of competition was very much born in the whole excess of the '80s and striving for as much cash as possible. And competition was good. I don't think most musicians think that way.

"And no, I don't like the name ''80s' as a musical term. It just denotes a time period. There's no way of really describing what '80s music was. It actually was such a mixture. If you look at the radio formats, they were so fragmented; it was a lot of different things. It was big hair bands, it was R.E.M., it was The Police, it was Psychedelic Furs, it was The Fixx, it was INXS, it was Human League, it was Men Without Hats, it was Flock of Seagulls, a lot of little different deviations. You can't call it the blues or rock or funk or R&B, so they had to call it a timeframe."

A timeframe to try anything -- even politically speaking.

The AT40 Blog/September 6, 1975: A song fit for a 'Rhinestone Cowboy'

Glen Campbell paid his dues while trying to make it in the music business. He took a lot of bad jobs and he took a lot of good jobs. He was one of the top session guitarists in the 1960s, even known as the "unofficial" seventh Beach Boy. The work he did in the studio alone was Rock 'N Roll Hall of Fame worthy.

And so when the opportunity came along to record a song he heard that he could relate to, he jumped on it.

You see, Campbell's life growing up in Delight, Ark., wasn't easy. He was the seventh of 12 children and the son of a sharecropper. His Uncle Boo taught him how to play guitar and when he finally got to be old enough, Campbell left Delight and headed for Albquerque, N.M., to play with his uncle in a band called Dick Bills and the Sandia Mountain Boys. When he wasn't pickin' guitar and banjo with the band, Campbell was working at his uncle's radio station and doing a children's show on local television station KOB.

By 1958, Campbell had his own band, The Western Wranglers, but while it gave him satisfaction to play, it wasn't enough. And so by 1960, he and his second wife, Billie, packed up and headed for the big time in Los Angeles.

It was there that Campbell began the agonizing procedure of connecting with a record company in the City of Angels. To help alleviate the troubles that could come financially, Billie took a job as a teller at a local bank to help make ends meet. Early on, Campbell caught a break when he was invited to join a group called The Champs. It was two years after their one huge hit, "Tequila," but Campbell jumped on the opportunity. His work between the Champs and in the studio got him a very good reputation in Southern California, and so he was asked to join a group that was being formed by producer Phil Spector to create his famed "Wall of Sound." Campbell agreed and became a charter member of The Wrecking Crew as a guitarist.

For as good a singer as Campbell was, he was a better guitarist. His work got him to studios and play for such artists as Frank Sinatra, Ricky Nelson, Bobby Darin, Dean Martin, Nat "King" Cole, Ricky Nelson, Jan and Dean, The Byrds and even Elvis Presley.

Taking notice of the work he was doing was Beach Boys leader Brian Wilson. Wilson would commonly call in The Wrecking Crew to help be the background music to the group's vocals. And so impressed was Wilson of Campbell's work that he asked him if he'd like to go on tour with the band. He accepted and for three months in early 1965, Campbell sat in for Wilson on tour. In 1966, Wilson asked Campbell to play guitar and sing falsetto vocals on what would be the group's famous album, "Pet Sounds."

And that work with the Beach Boys may have helped Campbell reach the goal of being a solo star. But it was tough. Again, he struggled to find the right material that fit him. In 1965, he nearly scored his first Top 40 hit with Buffy Saint-Marie's composition "Universal Soldier," peaking at No. 45. The song was about individual responsibility for war, but Campbell had a totally different view of things, saying, "People who are advocating burning draft cards should be hung."

Meanwhile, Campbell was making a mark on the television show Star Route, hosted by Rod Cameron. He later became a regular on the shows Shindig! and Hollywood Jamboree. 

Still, things weren't peachy for Campbell. Signed for four years to Capitol Records, Campbell was still not getting anywhere as a singer and the label was ready to drop him. That's when fate stepped in. He partnered with a producer at the company named Al De Lory, who saw potential in Campbell after seeing him work and slave for years. They collaborated on the song "Burning Bridges," and it hit the Top 20 on the country music chart.

Then came the game-changer – they took a shot at a John Hartford composition called "Gentle On My Mind." With Campbell's distinct banjo as the backdrop, the song made it to the Top 30 on the country chart and peaked at No. 62 on the Hot 100. That recognition led to another meeting – this time, the meeting was with a 21-year-old songwriter named Jimmy Webb. He submitted to De Lory and Campbell a song titled "By The Time I Get To Phoenix."

This time around, "By The Time I Get To Phoenix" made Campbell a Top 40 solo artist. It would get him to No. 25, while it almost became Campbell's first No. 1 country hit, peaking at No. 2 in late November 1967. Two singles later, "I Wanna Live" became his second Top 40 pop hit, peaking at No. 36, but would be Campbell's first No. 1 country hit, spending three weeks at the top. An established songwriter, John D. Loudermilk of "Indian Reservation" fame, wrote that one.

His next Top 40 pop hit was with Chris Gantry's "Dreams Of The Everyday Housewife," which got to No. 32 pop and No. 3 on the country chart.

That opened the door for the re-release of "Gentle On My Mind." In early November 1968, it finally hit the Top 40, peaking at No. 39.

But the ball started to roll in 32-year-old Campbell's career when he and De Lory got a hold of another Webb song titled "Wichita Lineman." It hit home about the loneliness of the lineman working odd hours to keep things going electrically in the area. It became a No. 1 country hit and this time, earned Campbell his first solo Top 10 hit on the pop chart, getting to No. 3 by January 1969.

That would be followed up by another Webb piece, the powerful "Galveston" about the wonderment of coming home from an unpopular war. It got to No. 4 on the pop chart and spent three weeks at No. 1 on the country chart.

Eight more Top 40 pop hits would follow, including the Oscar-nominated theme to the John Wayne movie 'True Grit." In late 1970, Campbell scored another Top 10 pop hit with his remake of Conway Twitty's "It's Only Make Believe," then followed that up with a No. 31 hit remake of Roy Orbison's "Dream Baby (How Long Must I Dream)." On top of that, Campbell finally got his own variety show in January 1969 at the beginning of the height of his success on CBS called The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour. It was a Top 20 show his first two seasons.

But the hits stopped coming. Campbell released over a dozen singles between 1971-74 and none of those hit the Top 40. He still was making a mark on the country music scene and that allowed him to stay with Capitol Records while he was trying to find a pop hit-making identity again. His TV show would be canceled in June 1972.

He kept himself out there thanks to doing numerous variety shows for the likes of Johnny Carson, Dinah Shore, Redd Fox, Mike Douglas and Merv Griffin. He made a 1974 television movie called Strange Homecoming with Robert Culp and 12-year-old Leif Garrett.

And Campbell continued to maintain a touring schedule. While on tour in Australia, he was listening to the radio one day and heard a song for the first time by the man who wrote it, Larry Weiss. Suddenly, a song he heard for the first time began to appeal to him. It was called "Rhinestone Cowboy."

Campbell began to play the song in his off-time. His goal: To surprise Capitol Records with a song he learned from the original that he'd like to record.

When he got back to the states, he was summoned to the Los Angeles offices of Capitol Records by vice-president Al Coury. Campbell was ready to pitch this song he heard on the radio in Australia as the next single he'd like to do. But Coury, who had suggested Capitol release "Whatever Gets You Thru The Night" as John Lennon's next single a year before and saw it become the ex-Beatle's first No. 1 solo hit, had a surprise that Campbell wasn't ready for.

He beat Campbell to the punch -- he told Campbell he heard the same song, "Rhinestone Cowboy, by Weiss on the radio and immediately thought of him, the man who paid a multitude of debts in his career to finally shine, for recording the song!

Campbell was dumbfounded, but after collecting his thoughts, agreed with Coury. A week later, Campbell was in the studio doing Weiss' song with his permission. Song co-producer Dennis Lambert played the piano opening and an act called Sid Sharp and the Boogie Symphony played the orchestral strings behind Campbell's vocal, one that he accentuated by overdubbing it to provide the harmony with his own lead voice because he felt so strong about Weiss' lyrics. Campbell would say later on that "Rhinestone Cowboy" was the best song he ever recorded.

His "unveiling" of "Rhinestone Cowboy" came on a national telethon in April 1975. One person watching the performance was Paul Drew, the programmer of music at radio station KHJ in Los Angeles. So impressed with what he heard, he called Capitol about getting a copy of the song for his station. So Capitol sent Drew an "acetate," or a "one-off" record. The company didn't think as highly about the song as Drew ... or Campbell for that matter. But once it got on the airwaves in Los Angeles, the phones lit up requesting Campbell's "new" single, which had not been released yet.

After weeks of nagging, Captiol finally relented and released "Rhinestone Cowboy" as a single in early May 1975. The song made the Hot 100 at No. 81 on May 31, 1975, then began climbing to No. 66, No. 53 and debuted in the Top 40 at No. 38 on June 21, 1975. It zoomed to No. 30 the next week, then got to No. 24 and then to No. 20 by July 12. But it started to slow. It moved to No. 19 the following week, then got to No. 16 after that and then No. 14 the week after.

While that was going on, country radio began to send the song up the chart. And with that being a bit of a factor, "Rhinestone Cowboy," like the old and tired man who paid dues time and time again to survive, found a second wind. On August 9, 1975, "Rhinestone Cowboy" launched up seven places to land at No. 7, while it entered the Top 5 on the country chart. Again, though, "Rhinestone Cowboy" slowed down. It moved up one notch to No. 6, then another notch to No. 5, losing its bullet that signified its strength on the charts. But as it got to No. 5, it became Campbell's first No. 1 country hit since "Galveston" six years earlier.

Though it dropped to No. 2 on the country chart behind the Twitty/Loretta Lynn duet, "Feelins'," it got another wind and moved up two places to No. 3.

Then in its 15th week on the Hot 100, "Rhinestone Cowboy" did the unthinkable -- it hit No. 1 on the pop chart the week of September 6, 1975. It took the perfect descriptive song of Campbell's career to give the 39-year-old veteran of the music scene his very first No. 1 hit. And while it held for a second week at No. 1 the next week, "Rhinestone Cowboy" knocked "Feelins'" out of the top spot on the country chart, giving Campbell simultaneous No. 1 hits on the pop and country charts, something not done since Jimmy Dean did it in November 1961 with "Big Bad John." By the end of 1975, "Rhinestone Cowboy" would finish as the No. 2 song of the year behind only the Captain & Tennille's "Love Will Keep Us Together."

"Rhinestone Cowboy" became Campbell's embodiment the rest of his career. He was that guy Weiss wrote about in the song. Though Campbell would have five more Top 40 pop hits, one of those, the Allen Toussaint composition "Southern Nights," would be his second No. 1 hit a week after his 41st birthday in April 1977.

Campbell continued to entertain fans for decades after "Rhinestone Cowboy" until finding out he had Alzheimer's disease in June 2011. He continued to tour and make many fans happy until finally, it was time to stop. But before he did that, he put on a Tour de force performance at the 2012 Grammy Awards in which he performed "Rhinestone Cowboy" to a packed crowd at the Staples Center in Los Angeles.

Though Larry Weiss wrote and recorded it, the song for over 40 years has belonged to Glen Campbell. It meant just about everything to him.

Weiss didn't mind one bit, either. Little did he know, he was writing about the man who would make him famous for his song.

The AT40 Blog/September 6, 1986: How not one, but two British trios starred

In the 1970s, three remakes of No. 1 songs found their way to the top of the Billboard Hot 100 charts again. In 1971, 13-year-old Donny Osmond remade a Gerry Goffin/Carole King classic first done by Steve Lawrence and hit No. 1 with it again, "Go Away Little Girl." In 1974, another Goffin-King classic, first done by the duo's baby-sitter at the time in 1962, Little Eva, got louder and bolder when Grand Funk took it to the top, "The Loco-Motion." And in 1975, Motown Records' first No. 1 hit, "Please Mr. Postman," first done by the Marvelettes, hit No. 1 for the Carpenters.

There would be no remakes of a No. 1 hit for another 11 years. Then one of the most challenging songs for the original act to record in 1969 made its return to the top of the Billboard Hot 100 on September 6, 1986.

In the summer of 1969, the Dutch band Shocking Blue recorded guitarist Robbie van Leeuwen's composition, "Venus," but the group had to do the song in both their native Dutch and in English because they knew this would be a worldwide release. Recording the song in Dutch was far from being an issue.

Recording it in English was. Lead singer Mariska Veres spoke no English, and so when it came time to record the English version of the song, the words had to be translated phonetically, meaning they were written out in syllables for Veres to sing. And making it harder was the mistake of the very first line. In his work, van Leeuwen's line was supposed to read, "The goddess on the mountain top." But it was a mistake on the writer's part when he re-wrote the lyric, "The god-ness on the mountain top." In future years, that line would be re-recorded by the band in that originally "goddess" line.

Inspired by Pete Townshend's opening guitar riff in "Pinball Wizard," van Leeuwen played the opening riff almost note for note, though he varied slightly off of it. And it didn't matter that Veres was singing a line that didn't translate or that she was doing the song phonetically or that van Leeuwen had ripped off a Townshend guitar solo, American audiences didn't care. "Venus" climbed all the way to No. 1 the week of February 7, 1970, spending one week at No. 1, making Shocking Blue the first Dutch act to ever score a No. 1 hit.

Nine years after "Venus" hit No. 1 in the U.S., a British trio formed. They were students at London's St. George School for Girls. Sara Dallin and Keren Woodward were friends since they were 4 years old. Joined by fashion journalism student Siobhan Fahey, the young ladies were instant rebels, dressing differently than the girls at the school in the post-punk music era in England.

When they began to start performing, "Venus" was a part of their act. But as they evolved and ultimately earned a record label deal, "Venus" and other remakes they were doing at the time got put to the side. The ladies wanted to be serious about a recording career and took their chances on newer material.

And it worked. "It Ain't What You Do (It's The Way That You Do It)" was a collaboration with another trio called Fun Boy Three and it went to No. 4 on the British chart. It was the first of five Top 5 releases for the trio, which did also include a pair of remakes -- "Really Saying Something," another collaboration with Fun Boy Three, and a remake of a Motown song from the 1960s, went to No. 5, and "Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye," a remake of the 1969 No. 1 American hit by Steam, also hit No. 5. In 1984, Bananarama scored a No. 3 hit with "Robert DeNiro's Waiting ... " a hit written by the ladies along with producers Tony Swain and Steve Jolley. A song title featuring the name of a well-known American actor certainly gained the ladies a lot of attention, but only got them to No. 95 in the United States.

The break, though, came with a song perfectly pegged for the right time of year. "Cruel Summer," also written by the young ladies with Jolley and Swain, hit No. 8 in their native country, but months later it hit the Top 40 in the Summer of 1984 here and would not only be Bananarama's first Top 40 success, but would be their first Top 10 hit, peaking at No. 9. Two things also helped out the success of the song in the States: The first being the music video shot in New York City featuring the fashionable ladies in a comedic-type shoot, the second was its small inclusion into the summer hit movie The Karate Kid.

And you'd think there'd be more success.

Nope. Not even a sniff. Bananarama had three British chart singles, and none of those got higher than No. 23. And one of those songs barely cracked the Hot 100 in the United States.

The ladies were in a rut and needing a change in career direction.

Enter three men that would change the face of British music the rest of the 1980s. Their names: Mike Stock, Matt Aitken and Pete Waterman. Where Jolley and Swain balked at the trio's insistence to remake the Shocking Blue hit "Venus," which they were still doing at their shows, Stock-Aitken-Waterman were open to the idea.

The trio -- collectively known as SAW for the first letters of their last names -- started having a following in the UK thanks for putting together slick-sounding dance songs, scoring a pair of Top 20 chart singles, Divine's "You Think You're A Man" and Hazell Dean's "Whatever I Do," both hits in 1984. But in 1985, SAW exploded in a major way when their production of Dead Or Alive's breakthrough hit, "You Spin Me Round (Like A Record)," hit No. 1 in the UK, then broke through on the other side of the Atlantic, hitting No. 11 in the U.S.

So as 1985 began to fade away, the trio went into their new production trio's studio to record "Venus," keeping it in the same style as the original, but this time adding elements to make it into a dance record, something SAW didn't see in this particular song originally. They wanted Bananarama to have success with a song they had done for years, but worked meticulously to make it work. After all, this was their deal as producers.

To "vamp" it up, SAW brought in a session musician to play a new technological toy, a Linn 9000 drum machine that served as the backdrop for "Venus." Stock and Gary Hughes played keyboards on the track and Aiken played guitar.

"Venus" and another track on Bananaram's album "True Confessions," "More Than Physical," were the Stock-Aitken-Waterman additions to an album that Jolley and Swain started. But there was no doubt to anyone's mind that "Venus" was a hot track that needed to be released  by London Records.

The second release in England (after Jolley-Swain's "Do Not Disturb" hit No. 31 there), "Venus" flew up the chart before peaking at No. 8, highlighted by a music video from the photogenic trio that saw their image go from dressing in jean jackets and jeans with the pointy-hair style of the early-to-mid 1980s to a sleeker look with fashionable clothes.

In the U.S., "Venus" was the first release from their new "True Confessions" album. "Venus" started innocently at a normal No. 89 on the Hot 100 the week ending June 28, 1986. The next week, it exploded up 32 places to No. 57, then got to No. 43 the following week. On July 19, 1986, "Venus" made its Top 40 debut at No. 34.

The movements were swift up the chart -- to No. 23, then to No. 15, then to No. 9 where it entered the Top 10 on August 9, 1986. From there, it climbed to No. 6, then No. 3, and then No. 2 on August 30 behind fellow Brit Steve Winwood's first No. 1 hit, "Higher Love." But one week later on September 6, 1986, "Venus" pushed "Higher Love" out of the top spot to become Bananarama's first No. 1 hit on either side of the Atlantic. It would also be Bananarama's first No. 1 hit in New Zealand, Australia and Switzerland as well.

And with it hitting No. 1, "Venus" became the fourth No. 1 hit in U.S. chart history to hit No. 1 after its original hit No. 1.

But even with the success of "Venus" hitting No. 1, Bananarama would have only one more Top 40 hit in the U.S. with "More Than A Rumour" hitting No. 4, a smash from the Fat Boys' movie Disorderlies.

That song was co-written and produced by Stock-Aitken-Waterman. And while Bananarama's chart career was waning in the U.S. (they'd continue to have Top 40 hits in their native UK, including three more Top 10 hits), the British production trio who gave the ladies their biggest hit in the U.S. became huge stars around the world, scoring major hits for newcomers Kylie Minogue, Mel and Kim, Jason Donovan and Rick Astley, who hit No. 1 on both sides of the Atlantic with "Never Gonna Give You Up" and the follow-up in the U.S., "Together Forever," as well as Donna Summer's last Top 40 hit, the Top 10 worldwide smash "This Time I Know It's For Real."

These days, Bananarama are a duo with Fahey leaving in the 1990s to start a family with husband Dave Stewart of the duo Eurythmics, while continuing musically in a duo called Shakespeare's Sister with American Marcella Detroit (better known as Marcy Levy of Eric Clapton's "Lay Down Sally" fame, a song she sang backing vocals and wrote for the British legend). The duo scored a monster international smash hit in 1992, "Stay."

Though Stock-Aitken-Waterman are no longer together on a regular basis, they do get together on occasion to make music for others, most recently the 2015 holiday song "Every Day's Like Christmas," recorded by Minogue and written by Coldplay leader Chris Martin.

But in 1986, the two trios made magic with a song that was first recorded 17 years earlier by a Dutch group that stumbled over the opening line of the English interpretation of its own song.

Overall, "Venus" did pretty well for itself.