Music has it’s roots
That’s a major coincidence that these things also happened to you, but Brad Roberts (the songwriter / lead singer for the Crash Test Dummies) has said in interviews that the lyrics in this song are drawn from personal events, family stories and childhood friends. I’m not entirely sure that the guy you talked to online was actually Mr. Roberts. Who knows? Maybe it was, but following is his “official” account of how those lyrics came to be:
(On the first verse - heavily edited for space cause jeez that dude can talk but I kept the meaning intact.)
Brad Roberts : The … first verse, that story came from a combination of events. I was in a couple of bad car accidents when I was a little kid, so I was fascinated by them in kind of a distanced way. They made an impression on me. I had heard a story about a guy who was also in an accident, only in this case, on a boat that was in Niagara Falls. The boat was going towards the Falls, so the people could see it as closely as they could, and then it turns away. This guy (driving the boat) made a miscalculation, and it looked like they were going to not make it back, and he realized, “…I’m going to die!” It turned out that the boat did not go over the edge, but his (whole head of) hair turned from black into bright white. Since then … I’ve heard other cases of that happening, including my great uncle, who was dug in on an island near Japan during World War II and spent a night entrenched, listening to the Japanese crying out in their broken English what they would do to him when they caught him. And he was terrified. In his case, just a portion of his hair turned white. So anyway, that’s where that came from, in the first verse.
(On the third verse:)
Brad Roberts : The idea I had (for the third verse) was based on a friend of mine who rather than having a physical characteristic that marked her out to be different, she had an environmental characteristic, for lack of a better term. This girl that I knew, her parents were Pentecostal Christians, and they used to take her to church every week and do what they call “speaking in tongues.”
Anyway…yeah. And, of course, we all agree that someone’s hair turning instantly from one color to another is simply the stuff of legend. Your scalp and hair follicles would literally need to extrude some sort of dye or bleach instantaneously for this to happen, which we cannot do as humans. This fallacy has propagated down through the ages because hair actually can fall out due to prolonged stress or fright, and the dark or thicker hairs are lost first. So, someone with “salt and pepper hair” might quickly appear to have all white hair. And by quickly, I mean days or weeks instead of years. The process still isn’t instant.
“Songs I’ve Rated 5/5 In My Personal Collection, And Not The Obvious Stuff.”
Arty feat. Ray Dalton - Stronger (Mat Zo Remix)
I love CCR too =) I also love how John Fogerty tried to basically sue himself for plagiarism, claiming that The Old Man Down the Road stole directly from Run Through The Jungle.
I know, I know, the details are far more complicated than that, but it sounds funny when you say it that way. And for those that have no idea what I am talking about, John Fogerty wrote both these tunes - Run when he was with CCR, and Old Man when he was solo.
I always do this in my head: “Better run through the jungle… better run through the jungle… better run through the jungle… the old maaaaan is down the road.”
Saul Zaentz, who owned CCR’s old label Fantasy Records, also owned the copyright to “Run Through the Jungle.” Zaentz felt that “The Old Man Down the Road” was simply “Run Through the Jungle” with different words. In other words, John Fogerty had plagiarized a John Fogerty song to which he didn’t own the copyright.
Zaentz felt he had a case, so he sued Forgerty in federal court in 1988 for copyright infringement but Fogerty with his guitar in his hands while on the witness stand explained that while the 2 songs were similar they were in fact just his “Swamp Style” of playing; It only took the jury 2 hours of deliberation to find in favor of John Fogerty.
Fogerty countersuied for his 1.09 million in attorney fees he lost but appealed it and lost that appeal so he appealed it to the supreme court and they found in favor of John Fogerty with a vote decision of 9 - 0 and so Fogerty won his appeal for the attorney fees.
Also on another note: (This was copied from an article online)
(It’s worth noting that Zaentz and Fogerty weren’t on the best of terms in the first place. The same 1985 album that featured “The Old Man Down the Road,” Centerfield , also included the tracks “Mr. Greed” and “Zanz Kant Danz.” Critics and fans saw these songs as pointed attacks on Zaentz, and the label head initiated a separate $144 million defamation lawsuit that claimed Fogerty portrayed him as “a thief, robber, adulterer, and murderer.” The two sides settled that suit out of court.)
What I got out of all of this was two guys that despised each other and Fogerty rubbed Zaentz’s nose in it a little, LOL.
He was in a bad car accident and he did ask and he did use and it was just a coincident that my story would so inspire him.
But let say you are correct and I just met a song writer online would be a bit like how that cartoonist has his spore drive tech stolen by the writers of star trek discovery.
Some people have to much pride to admit they got help in getting inspired. Again Hollywood is deep deep deep in all kinds of innocent and not so innocent IP thefts and lack of recognition who those who have inspired them or directly helped.
In a certain way I wish I was wrong.
golden sun always had real cool music, and the smash remixes are EVEN BETTER
Marilyn Manson’s “mechanical animals” album describes my mood a bit, but I had another song in my head, but now I can’t remember what it was. ![:frowning:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/frowning.png?v=6" ":frowning:")
OMG I even found our brand!
“Songs I’ve Rated 5/5 In My Personal Collection, And Not The Obvious Stuff.”