Fact #186668
When:
Short story:
The Drifters enter the Billboard Singles Chart in the USA with On Broadway, co-written by Barry Mann, Cynthia Weil, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller.
Full article:
Barry Mann (co-writer) : Leiber and Stoller were our idols, the greatest songwriting and production team of the generation before us.
Cynthia Weil (co-writer) : They were kind of like big brothers. We wanted to please them and, you know, they were really smart. They were one of the first ever teams who wrote and produced and published themselves. Barry and I had written this song, On Broadway, from a female point of view, because Carole and Gerry were cutting a song with a girl group called The Cookies and they needed another song and they called us and we wrote this song, about a girl coming to Broadway, trying to escape the small town, and wanting to be a star.
We played it to Jerry and Mike and they said, 'Yeah, we love this idea, but we would want to do it with The Drifters so we need to re-do the lyric.' And then Mike had a couple of music things he wanted to introduce, one particular musical change he wanted to make. So they said, 'Look, you can go home and re-write it yourselves, or we can do it together.'
And for us, that was the opportunity of a lifetime, to write with these legends. I learned so much from watching Jerry and Mike work. We wrote two songs together, and each time watching him work as a lyricist was inspirational. I tended to write a song sequentially from start to finish, but Jerry would jump around all over the song and collect ideas and then try to sort them out. It freed me up a lot, made me realise I didn't have to go line by line.
If we would get stuck on a particular line, I would sit there for three days until I beat that thing, but Jerry would just say, 'OK, let's go to the next verse.'. Then we could go back later to the problem line, and it was amazing how much that helped.
Barry Mann (co-writer) : The original concept had been to have a Gershwin-esque melody but in a rock'n'roll style. Mike Stoller made it a little bit more rock. He came up with the idea of modulating three times.
(Source : not known)
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Cynthia Weil (co-writer) : They were kind of like big brothers. We wanted to please them and, you know, they were really smart. They were one of the first ever teams who wrote and produced and published themselves. Barry and I had written this song, On Broadway, from a female point of view, because Carole and Gerry were cutting a song with a girl group called The Cookies and they needed another song and they called us and we wrote this song, about a girl coming to Broadway, trying to escape the small town, and wanting to be a star.
We played it to Jerry and Mike and they said, 'Yeah, we love this idea, but we would want to do it with The Drifters so we need to re-do the lyric.' And then Mike had a couple of music things he wanted to introduce, one particular musical change he wanted to make. So they said, 'Look, you can go home and re-write it yourselves, or we can do it together.'
And for us, that was the opportunity of a lifetime, to write with these legends. I learned so much from watching Jerry and Mike work. We wrote two songs together, and each time watching him work as a lyricist was inspirational. I tended to write a song sequentially from start to finish, but Jerry would jump around all over the song and collect ideas and then try to sort them out. It freed me up a lot, made me realise I didn't have to go line by line.
If we would get stuck on a particular line, I would sit there for three days until I beat that thing, but Jerry would just say, 'OK, let's go to the next verse.'. Then we could go back later to the problem line, and it was amazing how much that helped.
Barry Mann (co-writer) : The original concept had been to have a Gershwin-esque melody but in a rock'n'roll style. Mike Stoller made it a little bit more rock. He came up with the idea of modulating three times.
(Source : not known)