The strange link between Vanilla Ice, Queen & David Bowie
Mick and the PhatMan Talking Music
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Show Notes
Vanilla Ice was the first artist to lose all his earnings from a hit through lawyers suing for copyright infringement. In a story with more twists than an Agatha Christie novel, all the profit from the first “rap” single to top the charts was gobbled up by lawyers, after Vanilla Ice sampled "Under Pressure" without clearance from Bowie or Queen.
This story's found in an excellent book - “The Number Ones – Twenty chart-topping hits that reveal the history of pop music” by Tom Breihan - on how songs get, or don’t get, to the top of the charts.
Other gems include:
- Chubby Checker's “The Twist” led to a wave of “Twist”-labelled hits, made “nicer” for white audiences, so that white DJs would play them.
- Human League’s “Don't You Want Me, Baby?” broke through simply because MTV needed video clips, and most existing bands didn't make them.
Our album you must hear before you die is The Pogues’ “Rum, Sodomy and the Lash” (1985). The title came from Winston Churchill’s quote that “English Naval tradition was nothing but rum, sodomy and the lash.” Elvis Costello, who produced the album, captured the Pogues’ “dilapidated glory”, with the band drunk much of the time. Their name means, in Gaelic, “Pogue mahone”, or “up your arse”!
Musical gems abound on the album, not least in Ewan MacColl’s “Dirty Old Town”, and Eric Bogle’s “The Band Played Waltzing Matilda” (listed as one of the 30 Greatest Australian songs of all time). We love The Pogues, and you should, too.
Another jam-packed episode!
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Books
“The Number Ones. Twenty chart-topping hits that reveal the history of pop music”, Tom Breihan, Hachette Books, New York