Andy Sullivan: Against the Grain

Thu, 01/04/2024 - 9:49am — Diane Dyer

For my first column of the new year, I have more facts from one of my favorite AXS shows, Top Ten Revealed. From Guns N Roses’ 1988 debut album Appetite For Destruction, their hit “Sweet Child O’ Mine” was written by lead singer Axl Rose about his then-girlfriend Erin Everly, daughter of ½ of the Everly Brothers Don Everly.

Cher’s 1998 hit “Believe” was the first song to use autotune. Thanks a lot, Cher…. Speaking of Cher, she released a Christmas album last year. On the album, she sang “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” with the original singer of the song, Darlene Love. Little-known fact, Cher sang backup on Darlene’s original recording in December 1963.

“Eat It” is a 1984 song by American comedy music artist “Weird Al” Yankovic. It is a parody of the late Michael Jackson’s 1983 single “Beat It”. Eddie Van Halen’s guitar solo in the song was reproduced by Yankovic’s producer Rick Derringer, who himself was in the ‘60’s group the McCoy’s. Back to “Eat It”, Jackson was shown the lyrics and thought they were funny. “Eat It” reached #1 in Australia and was his highest-charted single at #12 until “White N Nerdy” peaked at #9 in October 2006.On October 19, 1989, the RIAA certified “Eat It” as a gold single.

This tidbit came straight from Keifer Southerland on the Tonight Show. He was asked about a movie he was in when he was a kid, Stand By Me. The classic movie Stand By Me was based on the Stephen King short story book called The Body, which King says is based on his own life. The movie wasn’t originally titled Stand By Me, however. The title was to be the same as the book until, well I’ll tell it as Keifer did. “River Pheonix was learning to play guitar and getting pretty good. I was playing “Stand By Me”. Rob Reiner walked by and said “I haven’t heard that song in years”. That was the end of the discussion. Rob Reiner ended up changing the title of the movie to “Stand By Me” because he liked the song so much”.

These final tidbits came from the AXS show Very Best of the ‘80’s. Once upon a time in the 1980’s, there was a cartoon called Inspector Gadget. The title role is voiced by Don Adams of Get Smart, which ran from 1965-70. In another cartoon voiceover news, Dave Coulier (Uncle Joey from Full House) voiced Baby Animal in seasons 3-8 of Muppet Babies. The show ran from 1984-1991.

That’s all for this week. Thanks for reading and I’ll be back in a week’s time. Below are links to my podcast, Blendertainment.

https://open.spotify.com/show/61yTPt9wXdz37DZTbPUs16?si=lw4gR-7xQ22E-zhy...

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/blendertainment/id1541097172

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