A twelvemonth after RCA signed him in 1985, his tune "The Way It Is" topped the Billboard chart, followed by five more Top 40 hits, including "Mandolin Rain" (#4) and "The Valley Road" (# 5). The 4 Seasons' Frankie Valli was arrested by Columbus, Ohio Police in September 1965, after his manager forgot to pay his hotel bill. Oops. Jay And The Americans first knowing the song "Cara Mia" in 1962 because it contained the only four chords they knew. When they finally recorded it in 1965, the air rose to #4 on the Billboard chart. After seeing Marvin Gaye's large accumulation of pornography, writer David Ritz suggested that Gaye needed some "sexual healing". The two later collaborated on some lyrics which went into the hit song, but Ritz was not granted any writing credit. After Gaye died, Ritz successfully sued. The Allman Brothers' only Billboard Top 10 hit, "Ramblin' Man" was the death song recorded by bassist Berry Oakley before his destruction in 1972. The soundtrack for the film Saturday Night Fever was composed and performed mainly by The Bee Gees and has gone platinum fifteen times over. Despite this success, The Bee Gees' Robin Gibb says he has never seen the picture all the way through. When "Monster Mash" first started to get air-play in 1962, Bobby "Boris" Pickett was working part time as a cab driver. The call has since become an annual favorite, reaching the Billboard Top 10 in '62 and '73, earning three gold records and selling an estimated 4 million copies. Bobby has said that royalties from the book have "paid the charter for 43 years". Not bad for a strain that took a half hour to save and another half hour to read and was intended to be a bit of fun to be shared only among folk and friends. The Who's album "Tommy" spent over two days on the US chart, but in their home country, the UK, it lasted just 9 weeks. After Elvis Presley began his meteoric rise to fame in 1956, his father Vernon said to him, "What happened El? The final thing I think is I was running in a can factory and you were driving a truck." Peter Cetera wrote "If You Give Me Now" nearly a faltering relationship. Although the song proved to be Chicago's biggest selling record, it didn't help keep the union, as the woman involved ended up leaving anyway. CCR's John Fogerty had a notebook in which he jotted down words and names that he thought would do good song titles. At the top of his name was "Proud Mary", a word that brought images of a domestic washerwoman to John's mind. When he got round to putting it to music, the first few chords he used reminded him of a paddle-wheel going around. Instead of Proud Mary being a clean-up lady, she became a boat and the call is a staple at any wedding reception. Lesley Gore's first album was called "I'll Cry If I Desire To" which consisted of songs completely devoted to crying. "Mack The Tongue" was written for the 1928 German play The Threepenny Opera, in which "Mack" is Mackie Messer (Macheath), an amoral, anti-heroic criminal. Although it suffered an initially poor reception, the record went on to run 400 times in the following two years. It was translated into English in 1933 and since that time, at least seven productions have been mounted in New York, on and off Broadway. It has frequently been rumored that Billy Joel played piano on The Shangri-Las' "Leader of the Pack", but this has been denied by one of the song's co-writers, Ellie Greenwich.
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