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Little Known Fun Facts About Some of Our Favorite Pop/Rock Tunes
#1
I know a lot of our favorite pop/rock tunes from the past probably have some interesting , little known fun facts or back stories.  Feel free to share any interesting tidbits  about some of your favorites.


A song from 1978 that I have mentioned on other music threads is "Driver's Seat" by Sniff 'n' the Tears.  One of my all-time favorite cruising songs. If you're gonna have a one hit wonder, it might as well be one as good as this one.


A fun fact about this song :   The atomic clock at the National Institute of Standards & Technology in Boulder , Colorado(the clock that sets the official time of the United States),  is set to the beat of this song.   


    

This fun fact is well known by most who followed pop/rock music in the seventies but some still may not know.  "Fooled Around and Fell in Love" is a song that most of you will remember as a hit for Elvin Bishop back in 1975.  What some may not know is that the guy with the great pipes singing the song was not Elvin Bishop but Mickey Thomas(Jefferson Starship).  Here's a great old clip of the Elvin Bishop band performing their biggest hit ,"Fooled Around and Fell in Love," featuring Mickey Thomas on vocals :




We all know the terrific 1977 hit from Player entitled "Baby Come Back."  The song was written and sung by the outstanding Peter Beckett.  But one member of the band, bass player, Ronn Moss , is better known for something other than playing bass for Player.   Moss starred on the soap opera "The Bold and the Beautiful" for 25 years , playing a character by the name of Ridge Forrester.   More people know him as a soap star than a rock star.   Here is Ridge... I mean Ronn  with player in 1977.  He's wearing the red outfit.




A favorite tune from the seventies was this one by frankie Valli and the Four Seasons.  Most of us have heard this one hundreds of times, assuming that Frankie singing lead. But it's not.  Most of the singing is being done by drummer Gerry Polce. This is one of those rare songs that actual has three people singing a lead part(including Valli) but the vast majority of this song is being sung by drummer, Gerry Polce.



Second Fun Fact:   In addition to singing lead on this big hit, Polce was also a hit with Valli's daughter.   Polce was once married to her and is the father of Valli's granddaughter.   And now you know... the rest of the story.

#2
Back in the eighties, I used to practice my Taekwondo kicks to this well- known Van Halen song we've heard hundreds of times. But do you know what DLR's inspiration was for penning this tune?   Diamond Dave was watching a news story in which a man was threatening to leap off a 33-story building, as a group bystanders were trying to convince him not to do it.

Dave's account went something like this:

"There was a fellow standing on top of the Arco Towers in Los Angeles and he was about to check out early, he was going to do the 33 stories drop - and there was a whole crowd of people in the parking lot downstairs yelling, 'Don't jump, don't jump' and I thought to myself, 'Jump,' ."      Smile 



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