Breaking Point - a story in 6 parts
A tragic comedy about music, history, inspiration, love, lust and Eric Burdon
"..like to a song now that goes a little sumpin' like this..
ALONG THE HIGHWAY
1. When I Was Young
I've been "writing' songs since childhood. That is, coming up with words and melodies but, not knowing how to play an instrument, just keeping them in my head and singing the to myself. I first tried showing or even sometimes singing them to friends and family but was always met with ridicule that was sometimes good-natured (friends) and other times not so much (family - especially my father, whose approval I sought but never received) being a shy self-conscious kid I started keeping my creations to myself. My first song, which I made up at the age of 5, was called "Don't Get Mad" which, although a love song modelled after what I heard on the radio, sadly reflective of the often volatile atmosphere at home.
Don't get mad (mad, mad, mad)
When you're lonely, when you're blue
Just remember I love you
Don't get mad (mad, mad, mad)
Late, when I developed passable guitar skills, I tried playing my childhood songs and found that although simple they weren't that bad. "Don't Get Mad" even had a modulation! Many of those early compositions have been forgotten while others are only partially or vaguely recalled. "The Second Time', as far as I can remember, came next"
The first time I held you
I thought that nothing could go wrong
The first time I held you
I knew that my life was a happy song...
Not bad for 5-year-old considering it came with a melody of my own making probably inspired by something I'd heard but so what? There was always music in our home coming from somewhere - the radio, records or my mother singing old show tunes as she went about her daily business - which usually involved a lot of drinking which seemed normal to me. I was exposed to old blues, jazz, the anodyne pop of the day and classical.
My output increased when The Beatles came into my life and I started to imitate them. I even began turning my lyrics in as poems at school when a creative writing assignment was called for. My teachers were suspicious when they read my lyrics, convinced I had stolen them from more mature writers.
2. We Gotta Get Out Of This Place
When The Bonkeenies were hired for our first paying gig - a dance at Oakland's Mills College - we had only a few passable songs. Determined to present original compositions (foolishly thinking people would be listening more or less intently) I set about writing a couple of hours of music. I have alluded to this burst of creativity a few times. We still perform many of the songs from this collection of hastily written songs though only "Fall On Me" made it onto Won Out, Others were planned and even recorded but were superseded by newer material. In fact, my original intent was to make an album of Bonkeenie songs. Several will turn up as we travel down this road together as outtakes and live performances.
I rarely collaborate, preferring to write alone because I find I'm more focused that way. Sometimes I'm inspired by something someone says, the title of a book or movie. There's one we'll get to called "Grapes of Wrath". As far as writing with others, someone may suggest a title or contribute a line or two (like the aforementioned "still know my stuff" contributed to "Trucks in the Sky" by Greg Reznick but that's usually the extent of it. I'm very protective of my creative process. There are exceptions of course, and one of them is "Breaking Point".
Arlene wrote poetry when we were together (and probably when we weren't). She'd jot them down in her neat handwriting on scraps of paper and in the steno pads were always lying around. Her poems rarely rhymed and were never in regular meter, but some were quite good in a dreamy, fuzzily philosophical way. To my everlasting shame and regret I didn't encourage her creativity. In fact I scoffed at her work and, from my lofty perch as a celebrated writer of hit songs (not!) dismissed them as amateurish. One day shortly before we went to Xandor studio for the final Won Out sessions I came across something she had scribbled on the back of a takeout menu. It began: Breaking point along the highway / Comin' at you like wild weeds / On a cold grey open morning... Something about it struck me and when I asked her what it was about she replied that she was describing one of our drives down to L.A. With her permission I expanded that bit of verse into the present song about returning home to a loved one (I flipped the direction of the journey) while reflecting on the relationship. I'm very fond of the sly reference to Penny Lane in the first verse. Well, maybe it's not so sly. As I've made very clear throughout this little history, The Beatles loom large in my legend (even that is a sideways quote from their movie Help!) With a jaunty beat, a piano riff based (very loosely) on Frank Zappa's "Willie the Pimp" and a middle 8 inspired by a David Bowie instrumental from his album Low, it slotted in perfectly after "Everything They Say". Interestingly enough, almost no one noticed that the two songs were in a different order than listed on the cover. When the album was redone I changed the order on the record but it was too late and too expensive to change the jacket.
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| Let's go! |
3. The actual lyrics, actually in actuality (It's My Life)
Breaking point along the highway
Coming at you like wild weeds
On a cold grey open morning my machine
Machinin' clean like you ain't never seen
The first time that I met you
You didn't notice me
But I knew we could have something with style
And you could make me smile - well, it's just a few more miles
What am I doin' in L.A.
I ain't seen sun in fourteen days
But don't you worry none
Because I'm okay. I just had to get away
But I'm I'm coming home today
Breaking point along the highway
No time to stop and eat
I got the 8-track goin' and ah, look at me
I'm as high as I can be
I need you to talk to me
Ah, look at me
I'm as High as I can be
I need you to talk to me
4. Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood
We attempted to record the song in our apartment at The Compound but had trouble getting it down. Taking it to Xandor, where there were 8 tracks to play with, we laid down my lead and harmony vocals, Arlene's grand piano and my guitar. We were able to record the song and get a rough mix all in about an hour, working quickly and efficiently because the song was well-rehearsed (advice to you aspiring aspirers and aspirants - rehearse your songs before you step into the studio. It's expensive!). Listening to it later I realized that the harmony vocal needed to be redone, so we took the tape over to Bay Records to do a little more work. I had asked my sister, Olga, to do the new harmony vocal but when she couldn't make it, engineer (and studio owner) Mike Cogan devised a workaround. He slowed the tape down and I overdubbed the harmony vocal. When sped back up my voice was pitched a little higher, making me sound not unlike my sister. We added a little extra echo to the lead vocal mainly because Mike wanted to show off his new echo apparatus. Plus it sounded cool. "Breaking Point" is the last of the Xandor songs.
Dang me! It's Roger Miller!
There's a video of me, Olga and Mark Kapner singing "Breaking Point" that I'm gonna put here when I find it!
...and here it is!!
5. Boom Boom
Igloo.
6. Postscript (Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood)
There's a movie called Breaking Point that the song was decidedly not inspired by. It concerns a guy driving real fast, maybe across the country. Oh...it's called Vanishing Point. Sorry. SPOILER! I think in the end he vanishes, hence the title. There were lots of crazy movies in the 60's and 70's before the studios got scared of taking chances and started doing just sequels and prequels of past successes. It doesn't help that, just like everything else, film studios have been corporatized and there are no small mavericks anymore. It's all about profit and taking care of the shareholders. Remember Dennis Hopper's The Last Movie? I didn't think so. It was nuts and there's no way it would be made now. This country is now a corporatocracy with big business running everything, including our government. This is not a political blog so I'll stop here.
Roger Miller had hit songs in the 60's included "Dang Me" (#1 on the country charts, #7 on the hot 100), "King of the Road" (#1 on every chart) and "England Swings"(#3 Country and #14 singles), got away with a ridiculous ditty called "You Can't Roller Skate In a Buffalo Herd" that, despite the fact that it consisted of the title phrase repeated over and over managed to scrape into the top 40. His songs were usually simple little singalongs but this one was shameful. Anyway, Roger was hired to write songs for a lesser Disney cartoon about Robin Hood in which Robin was a fox and Little John was a bear who looked suspiciously like Baloo from The Jungle Book. Sadly he wasn't up to the task and his skimpy, strummy, goofy little country-folk tunes added very little to a movie that needed all the help it could get. It came at a time when the Disney formula was getting a little threadbare and it showed; if you looked carefully you can see that many of the set pieces had been recycled from other movies.
The Animals were quite popular in the early to mid-60's. The group survived through the latter part of the decade with a complete change in personnel and finally called it quits in 1969. There were sporadic reunions (of the original band) but, like The Beatles, they didn't really get along and the regroupings were short-lived. In this boy's opinion the first group was great and the second iteration not so much.
Elvis Costello recorded a magnificent reinterpretation of "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" for his album King Of America.
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| The Animals realize they've been misunderstood |
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