About This Time 30 Years Ago…

It’s The Hits Of June-ish 1995!

The Hottest Hit On The Planet:

Question: could The Rembrandts BE any more there for you?

Netflix took Friends off its catalogue a few months ago. This annoyed me.

I’d only just started watching it. I’d resisted it during the actual 90s (I also resisted Seinfeld for a little while… I was busy, okay? I had shit to do!).

I guess that was when I, almost by osmosis, managed to learn the basics. I knew, for example, that Ross liked to shout “WE WERE ON A BREAK!” a lot. I knew that Joey picked girls up by saying “How you doin’?” I knew that Phoebe sang a song called “Smelly Cat.”

So I figured that it was probably time to sit down and watch it properly.
I managed to get through a couple of seasons before it was taken away from me. Enough to see Ross crying “WE WERE ON A BREAK!”, but not enough to see Joey say “how you doin’?”

Oh, and of course I knew the theme song. It was, unlike most well-known theme songs, an honest-to-God proper hit. It had gotten on the radio. It had made the charts. This was something that rarely happened in the world of television theme songs, even those television theme songs that everybody knew the words too. Like an underground cult act, they never crossed over and went pop.

The Theme From FRIENDS” went pop. It wasn’t totally unprecedented of course.

• “Suicide Is Painless” from MASH* had been a UK Number One in 1980.
• “Theme From The Greatest American Hero” went to Number One on Cashbox in 1981.

But as best as I can tell, the Brady Bunch theme, was never released as a single. “I Dream Of Jeanie” or “The Addams Family”? Never a single (I am, of course, not counting MC Hammer’s “Addam’s Groove,”)

“Can You Tell Me How to Get to Sesame Street?”? Never a single.

Despite Will Smith being the King Of Novelty Rap at the time!

Now, admittedly, “The Ballad of Jed Clampett” aka The Beverly Hillbillies song, was released as a single, went to Number One on the Country Charts… Happy Days made the Top Ten… Tom Briehan has covered “The Miami Vice Theme”, “The Theme From S.W.A.T.” and “Welcome Back”…

But “I’ll Be There For You” wasn’t available as a single either; not at least until October: by which time the moment had passed.

This was during the period – which chart analyst Chris Molanphy has described as “The War Against The Single” – in which hit songs were often not released as singles, in order to force fans to buy the entire album instead; a dick move for sure, but a profitable strategy.

It didn’t really work this time though. The Rembrandts album only reached No.23.

This was probably because everybody just knew it as “Theme From FRIENDS. Nobody cared much who The Rembrandts were. Also, whilst “I’ll Be There For You” did feature on the album, it was a hidden track!

Hidden tracks have got to be one of the most annoying trends of 90s music.

But putting your big hit, the only song people want to hear from you, as a hidden track… could they BE anymore annoying?

Oh, by the way… look at the title of the album: L.P. What a half-assed name! But I guess it’s better than their previous album, which was just called “Untitled.”

“I’ll Be There For You” was also on the Music From Friends compilation, and wow, these characters have very limited musical taste:

The Rembrandts, Hootie & The Blowfish (Monica gets a hickey from a Blowfish in one episode), Toad the Wet Sprocket, Barenaked Ladies…

R.E.M. are on that compilation as well, which is nice of them, particularly since the theme song to Friends was initially supposed to be “Shiny Happy People.” Imagine that?

Well you don’t have to, because obviously somebody’s made it happen on the Internet.

Having failed to convince the members of R.E.M. that it might be a good career move to remind the public that “Shiny Happy People” had ever existed, the writers and producers of Friends – David Krane and Marta Kauffman – decided to try and write the theme song themselves. Which they then proceeded to do.

They did have some help though, from someone who knew what they were doing. They had help from Allee Willis.

Then she wrote some Black music herself.

She wrote “September” for Earth, Wind & Fire.
Also, “Boogie Wonderland.”
Also, “Neutron Dance” for the Pointer Sisters.

Allee had described “I’ll Be There For You” as the whitest song she has ever written.

Whilst David and Marta were obviously still thinking about “Shiny Happy People” when they – and Allee – were putting “I’ll Be There For You” together, they doubtlessly also had another hit in mind:

That had been a big hit a year before. What was it about 90s television that screamed out jangly guitar bands?

Now that they had a song, David and Marta needed a band to play it.

And having failed to get R.E.M. they appear to have flicked straight to the next band in their alphabetically ordered record collection — The R.E.M.brandts, two guys with a shared love of sunglasses and Tom Petty’s nasal twang, as evidenced by their 1990 hit “That’s Just the Way It Is, Baby” (it’s an 8.)

So the Rembrandt guys came in and they knocked out an extremely fast 40-or-so second version of “I’ll Be There For You” on Monday, because the song was going to be aired on Thursday.

Prior to this, the Rembrandts claim that it was “It’s the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)” that was being used as a placeholder. It’s about the same speed, I guess. David and Marta were absolutely OBSESSED with R.E.M.!

Despite living in Greenwich Village, none of them – with the exception of Phoebe – are sufficiently boho; and Phoebe seems more like an Edie Brickell fan. A quick Google indicates:

• Chandler has two Annie CDs
• Ross listens to Kenny G in the bath
• Ross and Rachel made out to Chris Isaak’s “Wicked Game” – who hasn’t? – and they both like U2’s “With or Without You”…
• Rachel maybe not so much…

And apparently something happens in regards to “Baby Got Back” in one of the later seasons that I didn’t get round to before the show was cruelly snatched out of my arms.

So the song was written, it was recorded, it was broadcast across America on Thursday night… and that might have been, it probably should have been, the end of that.

“The Theme From FRIENDS” could have joined the ranks of other popular television theme songs across the ages:

Known by millions, ignored by radio.

The Rembrandt guys had asked not to be credited for the song and just went on with their lives; which in this case was preparing themselves for the inevitably disappointing sales of their upcoming L.P., an album the band has always gone to great lengths to insist was “dark.” Judging by the single – “This House Is Not a Home” – though, we’re not exactly talking Disintegration or The Downward Spiral here.

But then…

People started calling radio stations up, requesting the song, but the radio stations had nothing to play.

Not until one smart DJ in Nashville came up with a solution; he taped the theme song off the television, and looped it for three minutes.

A completely unauthorized bootleg version, taped off of the television, was being played on radio stations across the land.

So…
Obviously the Rembrandts had to write and record a proper version.

Something that could be played on the radio. Which means that the band finally got some input into writing their biggest hit, coming up with a second verse and the bridge. But since it was still going to be the “Theme From FRIENDS” David and Marta understandably wanted to keep control over their brand. They kept on sending ideas. Ideas that were very different from the Rembrandts’ ideas.

The Rembrandts wanted to take “I’ll Be There For You” into a darker, more depressing direction.

David and Marta kept dragging them back to bright and perky. I think it’s pretty obvious who won that argument!

But the problem, for the Rembrandts that is, is that they had just finished recording L.P.

They’d already pressed 100,000 copies. But now they needed to repress the whole thing so that it would include their surprise hit single. Which is why it ended up being a hidden track. They weren’t just trying to be annoying after all!

And of course they had to shoot a video. A video with all the Friends characters in it, taking over the shoot, in much the same way as they took over the couch at Central Perk.

But they did go out drinking with Matthew Perry afterwards… which probably shouldn’t be a surprise.

And that’s the story of how“The Theme From FRIENDS” crossed over from the television-theme-song-ghetto and became a proper certified pop megahit!

“I’ll Be There For You” is a 7.

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Meanwhile, in Brit-Pop Land…

Probably more than any genre of all time, Britpop was all about class warfare.

That’s pretty much what the whole Blur vs Oasis chart battle boiled down to:

So it was only appropriate that the band who appeared to resolve the conflict – in that, whenever somebody asked you “who do you prefer: Oasis or Blur?” you could always dodge the question by answering “I like Pulp” – were middle class tossers from the industrial wastelands of Sheffield.

Trying to get a handle on exactly where Jarvis fit into the British class system is tricky.

His father, Mac, abandoned his family when Jarvis was a little boy, migrated to Sydney, Australia, told everyone he was related to Joe Cocker (apparently they were friends, apparently Joe babysat Jarvis, on occasion), got a job as a DJ on Double J (the station that would later become Triple J), played a lot of punk, and ultimately got his own dedicated Wikipedia page.

Mac Cocker stayed with Double J all the way until 1985, so there’s a tiny chance that he may have – unbeknownst to him – played his son’s first record, which came out in 1983. Or not, because it probably didn’t get released in Australia.

Jarvis’ mother, Christine, would end up being a Tory councillor. She has argued, in a documentary, that Jarvis is not as working class as he’d like to make out: “he did have a vaguely privileged childhood, I would say, really… not really one of the common people, maybe a little set apart from the common people.”

Thanks Mum, for destroying my carefully curated public image, as, to quote Melody Maker:

It might seem a little odd for Jarvis to consider himself one of the working class, but, being a northerner in London, that’s sort of how people treated him:

“Because when I lived in Sheffield I was always getting flack off football fans. I was considered a bit effete.“

Earthiness isn’t the first word that comes to mind when considering Jarvis Cocker, but maybe things are different when your Dad is loaded, and you can afford to buy Jarvis a rum and Coca-Cola (not an expensive drink… Jarvis doesn’t want to push his luck.)

Jarvis’ experience with living like common people came more in the 80’s when, like every other up and coming British rock star that decade, he stayed in squats and lived off the dole.

He applied for a film course at Central Saint Martin’s College of Art and Design in London:

I’m sure you know what happened next… Jarvis met a girl from Greece, with a thirst for knowledge, studying sculpture at St Martin’s College. That’s where Jarvis caught her eye.

Or not. Apparently she wasn’t all that interested. The whole thing about wanting to sleep with Jarvis; “a bit of poetic license.” Or, to put it more bluntly, “absolutely, totally a lie.”

This, for reference, is what Jarvis looked like at the time:

Now, not wanting to be a pedant, but Greek girl doesn’t specifically say she wants to sleep with Jarvis. Greek girl wants to sleep with common people “like” him. Not necessarily Jarvis himself, but somebody like Jarvis. So I guess it wasn’t a lie, exactly.

[Quick detour:]

Thom Yorke was also pushed around in one on Radiohead’s “Fake Plastic Trees” (it’s a 10) – from the classic almost-a-normal-rock-album The Bends released a single week earlier! What was going on?!

“I want to sleep with common people like you” is also a bit of poetic licence. That’s not exactly what Greek girl said. What she really said, one night when they were out drinking, was: “I’m going to move to Hackney to be with the common people.” Not quite as catchy, but still: who talks like that?

Who indeed?

Decades have passed and still, no-one really knows who this Greek girl was. Jarvis has admitted in interviews that she may not even have studied sculpture, that she may have been studying something else… was she even Greek? Is Jarvis sure?

There is a theory that it might be Danae Stratou.

You may, if you are involved in the installation art world be familiar with Danae for her film The River Of Life:

Or, Cut – 7 dividing lines:

It has been demonstrated that Danae was the only Greek student studying sculpture at St. Martins College at the time, so I think we have a winner.

Or, if you are more into post-Global-Financial-Crisis leftist economics, you might be more familiar with her husband, former Greek finance minister, and committed communist, Yanis Varoufakis.

The radio version of “Common People”—the video version—is a lot.

And it ends with “laughing at you, and the stupid things that you do, because you think that poor is co-o-ol.” Now that’s pretty savage. It’s not easy to think of a comeback to that; but on the full-length version, it’s only the beginning. Jarvis goes further, ripping her class privilege to shreds.

“Like a dog lying in a corner
They will bite and never warn you
Look out
They’ll tear your insides out”

That’s a little harsh… why all the hatred?

“’Cos everybody hates a tourist
Especially one who thinks it’s
All such a laugh”

Ironically then, “Common People” served to make the lifestyle it described—renting a flat above a shop, cutting your hair and getting a job—sound almost glamorous.

Who amongst us hasn’t seen a flat advertised for rent above a shop and not fantasized about living in a Pulp song?

Next came “Mis-Shapes.” It’s not often that you see a pop star crowned spokesperson of a generation, and then going out and actually being a spokesperson. “Mis-Shapes” is less of a song, and more one of the greatest pieces of political oratory in pop…

“We want your homes, we want your lives
We want the things you won’t allow us”

Jarvis Cocker for Prime Minister! (“Mis-Shapes” is an 8).

In case you somehow missed the call to class warfare of “Common People” and “Mis-Shapes,” the album soon came out: Different Class, presumably the answer to the question, just-what-class-did-Jarvis-belong-to-anyway.

Previously pretty much all Pulp songs had been about sex.

“Do You Remember The First Time?”, “Babies,” etc – so now that he was writing about politics, Pulp’s A&R guy felt he had to ask: “they’re still all about sex, aren’t they?” To which Jarvis replied:

Singing about sex, even when he wasn’t obviously singing about sex, was one way of Jarvis avoiding what appeared to be his greatest fear: writing about “issues” and accidentally finding himself writing “Another Day In Paradise,” or, even worse, Simple Minds’ “Belfast Child.”

You could never mistake “Common People” for “Belfast Child.”

And you certainly couldn’t make that mistake about “I Spy,” in which Jarvis follows his intense loathing of the moneyed classes to its ultimate conclusion—overthrowing the establishment in the most Jarvis manner imaginable…

“Common People” is a 10!

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Meanwhile, in Troubadour Land…

Poor Jeff Buckley.

Jeff Buckley was beautiful in a very specifically ’90s way.

Floppy fringe, likely thinker of deep thoughts. Deep thoughts such as, in a Melody Maker interview: “music is my mother… and my father… it is my work and my rest… my blood… my compass… my love.”
At the very least, music was Jeff’s father. Or at least Jeff’s father made music.

The ’90s were a big decade for nepo-babies.

It had started off strong with Wilson Phillips and Nelson.

But Jeff was the only one to become more famous than his famous father: Tim Buckley, who had been a bit of a cult singer-songwriter figure about the same time that Leonard Cohen was beginning to become the same.

When Jeff was just starting out, playing intimate gigs in Lower Manhattan coffee houses, people used to ask his mother, “Is he as good as Tim?” and she would tell them he was better. And—on a song-for-song basis—he probably was. But Jeff never wrote “Song to the Siren.”

Jeff never wrote “Hallelujah” either.

But he wrote a bunch of practically perfect songs, some of which we’ll get to, so I think we can give him a pass. “Hallelujah” was, of course, written by the aforementioned Leonard Cohen.

Leonard Cohen has described “Hallelujah” as “When one looks at the world, there’s only one thing to say, and it’s hallelujah.”

“Hallelujah” is Leonard Cohen’s reaction to the world being an amazing place.

But he was a 50-year-old Jewish poet, so he went with “Hallelujah.”

Jeff, meanwhile, described his version as “a hallelujah to the orgasm.”

Fortunately, once he got the synthesizers out and turned it into a synth-gospel song, it had been edited down considerably to a far more manageable size. Presumably, Leonard had also put some clothes on. Leonard “sings” it in his usual manner, as though he’s reciting a poem.

But Jeff sings it. Good Lord, how Jeff sings it!

Who knows how many Bible stories Leonard touched upon throughout those 150 verses… he already managed to combine both the David & Bathsheba story – that’s the “bathing on the roof” bit:

… And the Samson & Delilah—the “cut your hair” bit—in one single verse. Within a couple of lines. The common theme in these stories: both David and Samson are powerless in the presence of a beautiful woman.

As for the ‘secret chord’… there is no secret chord in the Bible; possibly because there is no such thing, or possibly because it’s a secret.

Now, King Saul is often portrayed as a bad king, because God told him to “attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.”

Saul, however, disobeyed him. Although Saul did kill the men and women, children and infants, he decided to spare their king and their animals. Why should the camels and donkeys be punished? God was angry about this.

God decided to fire Saul as King, but first he needed to find a replacement (spoiler alert: it would be David), and in the meantime sent him evil spirits in the form of nightmares. Saul’s servants heard that David was quite good at the lyre and so they hired him:

Then a giant called Goliath comes along… and I’m sure you know the rest… also, when he was writing the Psalms, David apparently coined the phrase “hallelujah.” He was a busy King, that David.

Now, you may notice that Leonard’s version and Jeff’s version feature different lyrics, at least after the first two verses.

That’s because in between the two versions, ex–Velvet Underground member John Cale decided he wanted to make a Leonard Cohen tribute album and he asked Leonard for the lyrics.

I always liked the way Jeff goes “it goes like this, the fourth, the fifth…” and there’s the distinct impression that he’s showing you how to play the song on guitar.

Which feels like a good time to point out that although the main focus of Jeff will always be his voice—and his flowing locks—he was also really good at those haunting stop-what-you-are-doing-and-just-feel guitar licks, the kind that might draw a “Hallelujah.” Just listen to “Last Goodbye”…

With its creeping slide-guitar intro, its almost “Kashmir” guitar chimes, and that moment when the bassline burbles in (Jeff didn’t play the bassline, of course, but still, hats off…)

Doing things to vowel sounds—“shaping sounds in order to fit a feeling,” as he once put it—that can only be explained by rumours that he was dating Elizabeth Fraser of the Cocteau Twins at the time.

Now, Elizabeth Fraser was the Queen of the Mondegreens, largely because she mostly sang in her own made-up language. So this might just explain why I spent decades thinking that Jeff was singing about “cry(ing) to the chicken” on “Grace”’s title track. (“Grace” is a 9.)

“Grace” had been released in August 1994, but it only really began to find its audience in the middle of 1995, which is when “Last Goodbye” dropped. It would continue to find its audience, gradually, for years.

Really, this post should be titled “Last Goodbye”, but I thought “Hallelujah” would be better for SEO purposes, and so I could grapple with the question:

When did “Hallelujah” stop being cool? And was Jeff, at least partially, responsible?

Jeff would die, in 1997, drowning in the Mississippi, near Memphis. It was probably for the best. He died not knowing the power of what he had unleashed; a million covers of “Hallelujah” emerging.

Jeff never had to live with the shame of giving “Hallelujah” an afterlife as a talent show favourite and inappropriate Christmas carol.

When did things start to go wrong? Was it Bono’s fault, when he decided to turn “Hallelujah” into a trip-hop track for yet another Leonard Cohen tribute album in 1995?

Then the floodgates opened…

• Rufus Wainwright
• k.d. lang
• Willie Nelson
• Neil Diamond…

Al of which led up to the 2008 Grand Final of the UK version of The X-Factor in which the final two – Alexandra Burke, who clearly had no idea what she was singing about, and JLS, a f*cking boy band – performed competing versions of the song, instantly transforming “Hallelujah” from a song about the human condition, or whatever, into a song about your reality-show competing journey.

The winner, Alexandra, got a Christmas Number One as a prize.

Jeff Buckley fans refused to take this lying down, engaging in a hard-fought campaign to make his version Number One instead.

Meaning that “Hallelujah” was the Christmas Number One and the Christmas Number Two!

And thus, “Hallelujah” was embraced into the Christmas song cannon, despite zero lyrics about Baby Jesus or Santa Claus or snow, and quite a few lyrics about orgasms. Although Alexandra – and most of the versions that followed it – ixnayed the sexy verse.

You’d think that would be the end of it, but no, it didn’t stop. It will probably never stop.

I’ve just spent an hour wading through progressively worse versions of “Hallelujah” (although none quite as baffling as Bono’s version)…

• Susan Boyle did a version.
• Michael Bolton did a version… with a children’s choir.
• Marcy f*ckin’ Playground… that’s right, the “Sex & Candy” guys… they did a version.
• Adam Sandler.
• Johnny Mathis.
• Nana Mouskouri.
• Shawn Mendes. 
• Bon Jovi.
• Some sad clown called ‘Puddles Pity Party.’
• Justin Timberlake, for Haiti…

The list goes on and on…  until finally:

St. Vincent announced that “Hallelujah” covers are “the worst thing in the world!”

Not even in our nightmare timeline.

“Hallelujah” is a 9.

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