Fact #82639
When:
Short story:
Killing Me Softly With His Song by Roberta Flack reaches No1 in the Billboard Top 40 Singles Chart in the USA. Singer Lori Lieberman wrote the song in 1972 after being inspired by seeing Don McLean perform live at The Troubadour Club in Los Angeles, California, USA.
Full article:
Roberta Flack’s Killing Me Softly With His Song was inspired by singer Lori Lieberman seeing Don McLean perform live…
Don McLean : Lori Liebermann had come to see me one night at The Troubadour in Los Angeles, California, USA. I had no idea she was even there. I had this contract with The Troubadour. It was one of the biggest mistakes I've ever made in my life because the guy who owned the club would sign you for five years and pay you the same amount each week - a thousand dollars, which in 1970 was a lot of money. But then, no matter what happened, you would have to turn up once or twice a year to this nightclub, so when I became number one in the world with American Pie, I still had to keep going back to play this goddamn club. I should have been playing big theatres and big halls and I was still playing this lousy place because he had me under contract.
Lori Lieberman : I thought he was just incredible. He was singing songs that I felt pertained to my life at that time. I was going through some kind of difficult things, and what he was singing about made me think ‘Whoa!! This person knows me! I don’t understand.’ Never having met him, how could he know me so well? I went home and wrote a poem and showed it to the two men I was working with at the time (Norman Gimbel and Charles Fox).
Lori Leiberman : As I sat in the audience of The Troubadour those many years ago, it wasn't the brilliance of American Pie that inspired my poem on that napkin, but alas, Empty Chairs off an earlier album of McLean's....
Lori Liebermann : Never having written a song at that point, I didn’t really know how to put my poem into lyric form. Norman was really able to do that. The finished lyrics are Norman’s for sure. He was very careful to make sure that all of the feelings were honestly coming from me.
Roberta Flack : I was flying TWA from Los Angeles to New York, looking at the in-flight magazine when I saw the picture of this little girl, Lori Lieberman, and the title of the song. I’m more interested in seeing who’s the featured artist than hearing the music, just to see if I’m on there. But I’d never heard of Lori Lieberman, so I thought I’d see what she’d got going for her that I didn’t have. Before I heard the song, I thought it had an awfully good title, and when I heard it, I really loved it.
By the time I got to New York I knew I had to do that song, and I knew I’d be able to add something to it.
I went to the hotel and called Quincy Jones. I said ‘Tell me how to find the guys that wrote that song.’
I got it from Charles Fox that they wrote the song, in its final form, based on the feelings of Lori Lieberman. At first, the tune was called 'Killing Me Softly with His Blues.' Similar, but not really the same song. Then Lori went and had the experience of seeing Don McLean perform at the Troubadour.
My classical background made it possible for me to try a number of things with it. I changed parts of the chord structure and chose to end on a major chord. It wasn’t written that way.
Lori Lieberman : Roberta came out with the most wonderful version of it. That was a whole new sound at the time. It was a new, inventive thing.
Don McLean : When Roberta Flack’s version came out, somebody called me and said, "Do you know there's a song about you that's number one?" I said, " What? Are you kidding?" Eventually I heard it and they said, "The reason we know it's about you is because the girl who originally recorded it had it written for her after she saw you play. She told the people writing for her about it and went on TV and talked about it.
Norman Gimbel : I remember Johnny Mercer said, before he died, ‘How the hell can you write a song with the word killing in it?’ There was also a whole diatribe against me and the song in some magazine … about how dare I do this to the language and stuff like that. People can be so rigid sometimes.
(Sources : various, compiled by Johnny Black)
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Don McLean : Lori Liebermann had come to see me one night at The Troubadour in Los Angeles, California, USA. I had no idea she was even there. I had this contract with The Troubadour. It was one of the biggest mistakes I've ever made in my life because the guy who owned the club would sign you for five years and pay you the same amount each week - a thousand dollars, which in 1970 was a lot of money. But then, no matter what happened, you would have to turn up once or twice a year to this nightclub, so when I became number one in the world with American Pie, I still had to keep going back to play this goddamn club. I should have been playing big theatres and big halls and I was still playing this lousy place because he had me under contract.
Lori Lieberman : I thought he was just incredible. He was singing songs that I felt pertained to my life at that time. I was going through some kind of difficult things, and what he was singing about made me think ‘Whoa!! This person knows me! I don’t understand.’ Never having met him, how could he know me so well? I went home and wrote a poem and showed it to the two men I was working with at the time (Norman Gimbel and Charles Fox).
Lori Leiberman : As I sat in the audience of The Troubadour those many years ago, it wasn't the brilliance of American Pie that inspired my poem on that napkin, but alas, Empty Chairs off an earlier album of McLean's....
Lori Liebermann : Never having written a song at that point, I didn’t really know how to put my poem into lyric form. Norman was really able to do that. The finished lyrics are Norman’s for sure. He was very careful to make sure that all of the feelings were honestly coming from me.
Roberta Flack : I was flying TWA from Los Angeles to New York, looking at the in-flight magazine when I saw the picture of this little girl, Lori Lieberman, and the title of the song. I’m more interested in seeing who’s the featured artist than hearing the music, just to see if I’m on there. But I’d never heard of Lori Lieberman, so I thought I’d see what she’d got going for her that I didn’t have. Before I heard the song, I thought it had an awfully good title, and when I heard it, I really loved it.
By the time I got to New York I knew I had to do that song, and I knew I’d be able to add something to it.
I went to the hotel and called Quincy Jones. I said ‘Tell me how to find the guys that wrote that song.’
I got it from Charles Fox that they wrote the song, in its final form, based on the feelings of Lori Lieberman. At first, the tune was called 'Killing Me Softly with His Blues.' Similar, but not really the same song. Then Lori went and had the experience of seeing Don McLean perform at the Troubadour.
My classical background made it possible for me to try a number of things with it. I changed parts of the chord structure and chose to end on a major chord. It wasn’t written that way.
Lori Lieberman : Roberta came out with the most wonderful version of it. That was a whole new sound at the time. It was a new, inventive thing.
Don McLean : When Roberta Flack’s version came out, somebody called me and said, "Do you know there's a song about you that's number one?" I said, " What? Are you kidding?" Eventually I heard it and they said, "The reason we know it's about you is because the girl who originally recorded it had it written for her after she saw you play. She told the people writing for her about it and went on TV and talked about it.
Norman Gimbel : I remember Johnny Mercer said, before he died, ‘How the hell can you write a song with the word killing in it?’ There was also a whole diatribe against me and the song in some magazine … about how dare I do this to the language and stuff like that. People can be so rigid sometimes.
(Sources : various, compiled by Johnny Black)