|
Musical Memories Down
Page S
This page is part of a new unannounced
section of the website.
Steam
Steam was a pop-rock music group best
known for the 1969 number one hit song and perennial
favorite "Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye". The song was
written and recorded by studio musicians Garrett DeCarlo,
Dale Frashuer, and producer/writer Paul Leka at Mercury
Records studios in New York City. The single was attributed
to the band "Steam" although at the time there was actually
no band with that name. When "Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him
Goodbye" topped the pop charts, Paul Leka quickly assembled
a group to send out on tour as Steam. When the group broke
up before the tour began, a second group was signed and they
toured as Steam. Paul Leka and the studio group recorded the
first album. The touring band recorded Steam’s final
two-sided release and after a year-long national tour,
disbanded in fall of 1970.
A Little (Long) Background:
Go to Trivia for a short synopsis
DeCarlo, Frashuer and Leka were members of a band from Bridgeport,
Connecticut, the Chateaus. As the Chateaus, they recorded some failed 45's
in the early 1960s for Coral and Warner Brothers. The trio separated but
kept in touch. Leka became a songwriter with Circle Five Productions and in
1967, he wrote and produced the Lemon Pipers' "Green Tambourine" and other
Pipers' numbers with Shelley Pinz. In 1969, Leka was
working at Mercury Records and he convinced the label's A & R man, Bob Reno,
to sign on his old Chateaus' band mate and solo artist, Gary DeCarlo. With
Leka producing, DeCarlo recorded four singles, all of which Reno thought
would do well issued as an A-side. To fill up the B-side of the first
single, DeCarlo and Leka were asked to cut a throwaway flip side. Their
former band mate from the Chateaus, Dale Frashuer, stopped by the studio the
night of the recording and inspired Leka to dig up a song the three had
written in 1961 during their Chateau days but had never recorded. The song
was "Kiss Him Goodbye". With DeCarlo as lead vocalist, the trio recorded the
song in a single night without the back-up of studio musicians. Leka used
the drum track from one of DeCarlo's singles and played the keyboard
himself. The original length on the song was two minutes so to make the song less palatable to DJ's, they lengthened the song
with a repetitive chorus of "na na na na, na na na na, hey hey, goodbye".
Nobody believed that Na Na was worth anything and since neither Leka or
DeCarlo wanted to have their names on it, the song was attributed to a
non-existent band that they named Steam. "Na Na Hey
Hey Kiss Him Goodbye" a bona fide One Hit
Wonder
What happened next surprised everybody who
was involved in the project. A DJ in Georgia flipped
Mercury's promo copy over and played the B side "Na Na Hey
Hey Kiss Him Goodbye" on the radio. Requests to replay the
song began to pour in by phone. Then the radio station put
the song on its tight play list and other radio stations
picked it up. When Mercury Records' promotional department
heard that radio stations in the South were playing Na Na,
they authorized the purchase of 100,000 copies in order to
put it on the Billboard popular hit chart. When radio
stations in other states saw the record appear on the
Billboard popular hit chart, they picked it up and airplay
of the song snowballed. The investment of approximately
$50,000 in promotional funds to buy their own records worked
for Mercury and "Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye" reached
number one in the United States for two weeks in December
1969. By the beginning of the 21st century, sales of "Na Na
Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye" had exceeded 6.5 million records.
Other Trivia
Excerpt of article from
The Billboard Book Of No. 1 Hits: “Na Na Hey Hey”
“Na Na” was apparently recorded and mixed in a night,
according to The Billboard Book Of No. 1 Hits,
and intended to be a b-side for a single that friends
Paul Leka and Gary De Carlo were putting out on Mercury.
The song was originally only two minutes long, and the
two wanted to stretch out its length so as to discourage
radio programmers from playing it:
“I said we should put a chorus to it.” Paul
recalls. “I started writing while I was sitting at
the piano, going *na na na na, na na na na…’
Everything was ‘na na’ when you didn’t have a
lyric.” Someone else added, ‘hey hey hey.’”
By 1 a.m. the track was done, but the vocal track
included the dummy lyrics. “We agreed it was just a
B-side and said, ‘The hell with it, let’s leave
those lyrics in.’ We fattened it up by singing it a
couple more times.
“When we came out of the studio at five in the
morning, it looked like there was a big fire. There
was a manhole, and someone said, ‘Wow, look at all
the steam!’ I put that in the back of my head for a
group name,” says Paul.
A day later, an employee at the mastering lab
called Paul. The track was so long, he couldn’t make
a good pressing of it without the record skipping.
He asked Paul if he could shorten it, and Paul
suggested he fade it out earlier. Meanwhile, Reno
heard it and said it sounded too good for a B-side.
He told Leka that Mercury had to release so many
records per year on its Fontana subsidiary, and he
wanted “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye’* as a
separate single.
“It was an embarrassing record,” Paul confides.
“Not that Gary sang it badly. But compared to his
four songs, it was an insult.”
Of course, it became the hit, after Leka decided to
name the group that sang the song “Steam” (thanks,
manhole!). And the four “better” songs, you may not be
surprised to hear, didn’t fare as well in the public
eye, which made De Carlo kind of upset—well, actually,
so upset that he declared that there was no way he was
going to record music under the Steam name. So Leka
recruited a bunch of ringers and passed them off as
Steam and the rest is one-hit-history.
More Trivia
The song was sung to former President George W. Bush’s
departing helicopter by a Washington, D.C., crowd when he left Washington,
DC The repetitive chorus line, "na na na na, na na na na,
hey hey, goodbye" was a catcall at gymnasiums and arenas all over the world
in the years that followed, was both accidental and kind of resented by its
principal songwriters The band’s first concert was on
Memorial Day in 1970, at the Love Valley Peace Festival in South Carolina
for more than 25,000 people. In this and all their subsequent concerts, the
group performed the requisite Na Na Hey Hey, plus a repertoire of original
songs that earned critical acclaim and standing ovations from audiences all
over America.
Tor Pinney’s “Steam” recorded producer Paul Leka’s last two Steam songs at
Mercury studios in New York. Don Bosson sang the lead vocal on the “A” side
entitled “Don’t Stop Loving Me,” and Pinney sang the B side, “Do Unto
Others.” Both recordings showcased the groups' powerful trademark vocal
harmonies and instrumental skill.
Sources: www.discogs.com,
www.tor.cc
Hinckley, David, " 'Na Na Hey Hey' was an unexpected winner," Seattle Times,
4 April 2005, Northwest Life, p.E4
Fred Bronson, ed., The Billboard Book of Number One Hits, 5th ed. (New York:
Watson-Guptill), p.263
Some of these historical facts and trivia may seem "overextended" in some
areas but, hey, I tried to make a short synopsis and
sometimes that was hard to do. You will find that most of these artist(s),
bands, groups has a lot of history than you realize. You also keep finding
items to add or you had to leave data there because the next paragraph might
refer back to the previous, etc, etc...catch my drift?
This page is part of an ongoing project as part of our
improvements to the website and
we thank you for visiting! |
