Neil Sedaka: King of Song

Now, the mere name of my next star guest from the States conjures up

a whole era of pop, rock and beat music,

over which he has reigned king for so long.

The name, ladies and gentlemen, is Neil Sedaka!

# Is this the way to Amarillo

# Every night I've been hugging my pillow

# Dreaming dreams of Amarillo

# And sweet Marie who waits for me...#

# And solitaire's the only game in town

# Every road that takes him takes him down...#

Between 1958 and 1962, Howie Greenfield and I

sold 25 million records.

10 hits in a row.

# Yeah, yeah, my heart's in a whirl

# I love, I love, I love my little calendar girl... #

Howie and I sat down and we wrote Oh! Carol in 1959,

which sold 3.5 million copies.

# Oh! Carol

# I'm so in love with you... #

I've written about 800 songs in 61 years.

# And breaking up is hard to do...#

# Love

# Love will keep us together...#

# Happy birthday, Sweet Sixteen

# Ooh, I hear laughter in the rain

# Walking hand in hand with the one I love...#

I went from the beginning of rock'n'roll,

through the whole schmear, and was able to...sustain.

# I miss the hungry years

# I miss the hungry years. #

APPLAUSE

I was born with a musical gift, so music to me has been my whole life.

My parents tell me that when I was an infant I wouldn't eat

until the radio was playing music.

MUSIC: "Brighton" by Neil Sedaka

# Walking alone, along the boardwalk in Brighton

# The sun is high and so am I, I feel enlightened...#

The area was very peaceful after World War II.

You could leave your door open,

neighbours would drop in for coffee and cake.

There was hardly any crime, hardly any drugs and times were very,

very happy, very carefree and naive.

But very happy.

Carole King, Barbra Streisand, Barry Manilow, Neil Diamond,

they were all in the Brooklyn area.

These guys might as well have been growing up in Europe.

Their families, many of them came from Europe,

or certainly they were maybe just a step removed from it.

The communities were almost like little European villages.

We were poor. My father drove a taxi cab in New York for 30 years.

My mother had to take a job to buy the first piano

when I was nine years old.

Because a teacher in school noticed that I had musical ability.

It seemed like every Jewish home in Brooklyn had an upright piano because

getting their children trained in music was very important culturally.

I started with a private piano teacher for one year.

Then he came to my father and mother and said,

"I can't teach him anymore,

"let him audition for the Juilliard prep school."

So at nine I got a scholarship for the piano.

I practised for five, six hours a day.

I remember my father throwing a baseball mitt at me saying,

"Go out and play!" Because I would practise for hours and hours,

it was my great love.

In the same building as I lived Howie Greenfield,

and his mother heard me practising Chopin and Bach.

She was the one that got us together.

She thought that her 16-year-old son would be

a good lyricist for my 13-year-old tunes.

They started writing at least one song a day for 500 days,

for almost two years.

And most of it behind his mother's back,

because she didn't want him listening to rock'n'roll or writing

any kind of music other than doing his classical training.

The allure of popular culture for these kids was just overwhelming.

So that even someone like Neil Sedaka,

who's kind of good enough a piano player to eventually go to

Juilliard, is also hearing another kind of siren call in his ear.

I listened very, very attentively to the radio.

Nat King Cole, Patti Page, Rosemary Clooney,

Johnny Ray, Les Paul and Mary Ford.

It was something about what America was right then.

Not something somebody wrote 300 years ago,

but something somebody wrote yesterday, a subway ride away,

that was suddenly on the radio and was a gigantic hit.

When I was 15 or 16 I wrote a rock'n'roll song called Mr Moon.

And I played it in the school auditorium for an amateur show.

And the response from the kids was phenomenal.

I realised then I liked the attention that I would get,

rather than playing a Chopin etude.

They would snicker when I played a Chopin etude,

but when I wrote my first rock'n'roll song,

I was the school celebrity.

And immediately all the girls surrounded me.

I knew then I wanted to be famous.

Things were changing pretty fast in the US in the '50s.

There's post-war, the economy was good,

there were a lot of teenagers around, there was a baby boom.

The country felt young.

When Howie Greenfield and I started writing in 1952, I would write the

melody first, the complete melody, and he would then write the lyrics.

We wrote song after song after song

and then we rode the subway to New York City from Brooklyn,

and I auditioned and played songs for Atlantic Records.

It was in R&B, mostly Afro-American singers.

I had some R&B hits with Clyde McPhatter and LaVern Baker.

# I waited too long

# And now we're apart

# I never told you

# What I feel in my heart...#

It came from listening to Ray Charles.

PLAYS A SLOW BLUESY TUNE

That feel.

# I waited too long

# And now we're apart

# I never told you

# What I feel in my heart... #

It's the feel of Ray Charles.

And I remember saying to Jerry Wexler and Ahmet Ertegun at Atlantic Records,

"I'm thrilled that you're giving these songs to your artists

"and they're making recordings,"

and some of them were big R&B records, "but what about my voice?"

They said, "No, it's too high, it's too unusual.

"We'll take the songs

"but we don't think you're going to be a recording artist as a singer."

I went into the Brill Building and we played songs and were rejected,

Howie and I were rejected, they didn't like any of the songs.

I met Mort Shuman there, who I went to school with, I went to

high school with Mort Shuman, who wrote for Elvis and The Drifters.

He said, "There's a new publishing firm across the street,

"why don't you try them?"

Aldon Music had just opened up in 1650 Broadway.

I played songs with Howie and one of them was Stupid Cupid.

Al Nevins and Don Kirshner were the presidents of Aldon Music.

They said, "Oh, that song sounds good for Connie Francis."

That was a typical 12 bar blues.

There were many rock'n'roll songs with that.

# Stupid Cupid, you're a real mean guy... #

I got a phone call from a struggling song publisher

friend of mine, Donny Kirshner.

He said, "I've got two kids that write, they are geniuses."

I said, "Well, who are these two geniuses?"

He said, "Well, one of them is Howie Greenfield, he's an errand boy

"or a gopher at a music publishing company, and the other one

"is Neil Sedaka, he's a Juilliard student with a scholarship."

I said, "OK, bring these two geniuses to my house."

And they drove me to Connie Francis' home.

I played my best ballads because she was a ballad singer.

She had Who's Sorry Now?, which was a number one ballad.

And she passed, passed, passed, didn't like it, was on the phone,

was bored, was writing in her diary.

I said, "Keep going, I can do two things at the same time,

"keep playing, fellas."

And they played and they played and they played

and I was really falling asleep.

I said, "Fellas, I don't know how to tell you this.

"I mean, your music is beautiful but it's too educated.

"The kids don't dig this kind of stuff any more."

I said, "You guys are putting me to sleep.

"Don't you have something a little more lively?"

Then I whispered to Howie, "We're losing her."

So I said, "I'm going to play Stupid Cupid,"

which was not her style at all.

So finally Neil played, "Da-da-da-da-da-dah!

"Stupid Cupid you're a real mean guy."

And I started jumping up and down in delight!

I said, "That's it, that's it! Howie said, "What's it?"

I said, "That's my next record, you guys have got my next record!"

And she recorded it in 1958.

There were no girls on the hit parade for many, many years, about five

or six years at the beginning of the '50s, no girls on the hit parade.

And this sounded like it would be the first female rock'n'roll hit,

which is what it became.

MUSIC: "Stupid Cupid" by Connie Francis

# You got me jumping like a crazy clown

# And I don't feature what you're putting down

# Since I kissed your loving lips of wine

# The thing that bothers me is that I like it fine

# Hey hey, set me free

# Stupid Cupid, stop picking on me

# Hey hey, set me free

# Stupid Cupid, stop picking on me. #

And that was on the radio all the time. I was thrilled.

When I met Leba, my wife-to-be, I wanted to show off.

I said, "I'm a songwriter." She said, "A songwriter?

"I've never heard of songwriters."

He said to me, "Hello, my name is Neil Sedaka.

"I wrote a song for Connie Francis called Stupid Cupid."

Now I really didn't like him!

Because why would I know someone that would even write songs?

She was 16, I was 19.

I said to the trumpet player, my friend Normie, I said,

"She is a beautiful girl, I'm going to marry this girl."

And then I heard it on the radio

and they announced that Neil Sedaka wrote that song.

We started to date and we were engaged for three years

and then got married.

In 1962.

So after Stupid Cupid, once again I asked about my voice.

And they said, "Well, we'll have you audition for RCA Victor Records."

Steve Sholes was the head of RCA Victor.

And I played a lot of songs,

including The Diary, for Steve Sholes.

He said, "Yes, I like it because it's very musical,

"I like the melodies and your voice is very unusual.

"It's very androgynous. It's...

"It could be a girl singing or a boy singing."

He saw the potential in that.

# When it's late at night

# What is the name you write?

# Oh, what I'd give if I could see

# Am I the boy that you care for?

# The boy who's in your diary. #

When I was writing in my diary,

Neil said, "Can I take a little peek?"

I said, nobody looks into my diary.

It's in shorthand, but names and places

and things like that are in long hand, so nobody peeks into my diary.

"Just a little peek?" I said, "No, I'm sorry."

Neil had been trying for a long, long time to come up with a hit record.

He was signed to RCA Victor. They kept coming up dry.

When they went home that night they wrote,

"Oh, how I'd like to look into that little book,

"the one that has the lock and key."

That's how Neil got his first gold record.

Every rock'n'roll song had the same four cords.

PLAYS SIMPLE MELODY

In 1, 6, 2, 5.

So I'm in the key of G, E minor, A minor, D.

# How I'd like to look

# Into that little book

# The one that has the lock and key

# And all the boys... # Then you vary it

# That you care for

# The boy who's in your diary... #

And you go back to 1, 6, 2, 5.

My father was a record buyer

and he used to bring home 45s for me to go through.

One of them was a story song called The Diary.

I put it on and I thought to myself, here is a song by a young guy

who is in love with a girl and is afraid to tell her.

I thought it was a terrific song.

I told my father about it and he ordered it for his stores.

And sure enough, it went to almost the top 10. It went to number 14.

I sold 600,000 records with The Diary, me singing

and playing my own song, Howie Greenfield's lyric.

That's what pop music was like.

It was like a reflection of your inner life as, you know, 12-, 13-,

14-year-old kid, discovering girls and discovering the world, really.

Pop music was the rabbit hole down which you jumped.

I had a fear of being a one-shot wonder.

And the second and third records were flops.

The Diary was a ballad, a rock'n'roll ballad.

And I Go Ape was Jerry Lee Lewis pounding piano.

# I go ape every time I see you smile

# I'm a ding dong gorilla, carry on caveman-style...#

And the audience in America said, "What the hell is that?

"How could he go from... he was such a good ballad singer."

They didn't see that I wanted to be diversified.

RCA records wanted to dump him.

He was writing notes like,

"Oh, my goodness, I'm a 19-year-old has been."

So his manager said to Neil, "You've got one more chance, mate.

"You'd better make this work."

Billboard had a page called the Hits of the World.

I bought the number one record in almost every country

in the world and analysed it.

I took the beat from this one,

I took the drum from this one, I took the guitar licks from this one,

I took the harmonic rhythm from this one, like a designer would do.

Don Kirshner, who was his publisher, went to him

and said, "Write a song with a girl's name in the title."

I must do something to save this career.

I don't want to be a one-shot wonder.

And I listened to Little Darlin' by The Diamonds.

# Little darlin'

# Little darlin'

# Oh! Carol

# I am but a fool

# Darlin' I love you

# Though you treat me cruel... #

More melodic than Little Darlin', a bit different, but the same...

SINGS ALONG TO THE JAUNTY RHYTHM

# Oh! Carol

# I am but a fool

# Darling, I love you

# Though you treat me cruel... #

A friend called me from the studio to say, "Boy, this is the worst song.

"Wait until you hear this."

And she held the phone up and said,

"Is that the worst thing you ever heard?"

She was wrong!

# Darling, there will never be another

# Cos I love you so

# Don't ever leave me

# Say you'll never go

# I will always want you for my sweetheart

# No matter what you do

# Oh! Carol

# I'm so in love with you...#

Oh! Carol sold 3.5 million copies.

I went to the mailbox and took out a cheque,

my first check for Oh! Carol.

I read it quickly and I said, "Oh, 4,200!"

I ran up to my mother and father and showed it to them.

My mother said, "You misread it, you left out a zero. It's 42,000."

My father made 10,000 a year as a cab driver.

It changed my world, it changed my life.

My mother, who was a little leery of it,

because I was taking away time from classical piano to write popular

music, she said, "I think you should continue," after seeing the cheque!

"I think you should continue doing this."

My only indulgence was buying a new car every year.

That was my big indulgence.

I gave all the money to my mother and father.

He would change his car.

He didn't smoke, but the expression, he'd change the car

when the ashtray got dirty.

Between 1958 and 1962, Howie Greenfield

and I sold 25 million records.

He couldn't be stopped.

Elvis Presley was the only one in the country,

probably the world, that sold more records than Neil Sedaka.

# I'll build a stairway to heaven

# I'll climb to the highest star... #

# You're out to break-a my heart

# But just before you do

# Hey, little devil, I'm going to make an angel outta you... #

# You turned into the prettiest girl I've ever seen

# Happy birthday, Sweet Sixteen...#

# I'm living right next door to an angel

# And I'm going to make that angel mine...#

# I love, I love, I love my little calendar girl

# Each and every day of the year...#

Howie Greenfield and I

mastered the art of the two and a half minute single.

We could tell a whole story from beginning to end

in two and a half minutes.

# January

# You start the year off fine

# February

# You're my little Valentine

# March

# I'm gonna march you down the aisle

# April

# You're the Easter bunny when you smile

# Yeah, yeah, my heart's in a whirl

# I love, I love, I love my little calendar girl

-# Every day

-Every day

-# Every day

-Every day

-# Of the year

-Every day of the year.

-#

When you hear Calendar Girl, they just sound like...

Exactly the way pop music is supposed to sound, which is that

it sounds like it was written in five minutes.

Because it just sounds like it could not be any other way.

But a lot of work goes into making it seem that...

That perfect a pop product.

-# May!

-# Maybe if I ask your dad and mom

# They'll let me take you to the Junior Prom

# June!

What is it? I forgot it!

# You steal the show

# Yeah, yeah, my heart's in a whirl

Come on!

# I love, I love, I love my little calendar girl

-# Every day

-Every day

-# Every day

-Every day

# Of the year. #

It's supposed to sound easy,

and you're not even supposed to notice it really.

But it's hard to do.

# I love, I love, I love my calendar girl... #

And we could never figure out endings to these songs

so the only thing was to fade it out, fade away, fade away...

They were songs that the first time you heard them,

the next time you heard them you were singing along.

There was an immediate kind of accessibility and appeal to them.

# I beg of you, don't say goodbye

# Can't we give our love another try?

# Come on, baby, let's start anew

# Cos breaking up is hard to do... #

The thing that caught my attention about that song was

the chorus is pretty simple.

PLAYS A SIMPLE MELODY

But when it goes to the bridge...

PLAYS MORE SOPHISTICATED MELODY

I mean, it just gets so musical.

I thought, "Wow!

"A pop song with all these chords and movements and all that."

It really grabbed my attention.

# They say that breaking up is hard to do

# Now I know, I know that it's true

# Don't say that this is the end

# Instead of breaking up

# I wish that we were making up again...#

That was one of the first pop songs that kind of drew me

into that world where I sort of thought, "Wow,

"I'm probably never going to be a great classical pianist,

"maybe this pop arena is a good place for me."

And that was one of the defining songs for me.

I was 23 years old by the time I sold 25 million records.

10 hits in a row.

With me singing our songs.

I was like the poster boy for the all-round, wholesome,

clean-cut American, wearing the preppy clothes.

Unfortunately, after five years, it changed.

And as Neil later sang, "The Tra-La Days" were over.

The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, who I adored,

killed the solo American singer.

It wasn't just Neil Sedaka who couldn't get his records played.

It was Bobby Rydell, Connie Francis, Bobby Darin,

just about every other American pop singer who got swept away.

So many people in America, pop stars,

just immediately overnight looked old-fashioned. They just...

I mean, the Beatles really changed everything.

To America, the idea of an English band playing rock'n'roll,

that was a tremendous novelty.

And one that really captured people's imaginations.

My mother, who I was very close to, I was a mama's boy,

was managing my career with...

her lover,

who was an air-conditioning salesman,

knew nothing about the music business.

His mother had hired an unscrupulous gentleman

that she was having a love affair with

to be his manager.

And between the two of them, they had misplaced

most of his royalties over the years.

My mother and Ben stole a lot of money.

So when times got tough for Neil Sedaka

in the '60s and he was married

with a couple of children, there was no money left

from all the records he sold.

His mother and her lover had spent it all.

We did what we had to do, by that point

we had two small children.

We were living in Brooklyn and Neil is

probably one of the strongest, if not the strongest person I know.

He does what he has to do.

He went from playing the Copacabana, which is maybe

the most popular and infamous club

in America, in New York City,

to playing before 12 people in Montreal.

Neil did studio sessions, he did demo sessions,

for 50.

He'd go into the studio

and people would walk in and they'd...

"Neil Sedaka, what are you doing here?"

He said, "I'm the piano player."

It was a terrible shock to the ego.

In America they sort of drop people so quick.

So people we think are legendary...

Johnny Cash, before he was reborn with some of those great albums

he made at the end of his career,

the likes of Johnny Cash couldn't get a record deal.

In America, those people we venerate and think are fantastic,

they're just..."Oh, well, they're yesterday's people."

I would walk somewhere in the street in New York

and people would say, "Didn't he used to be Neil Sedaka?

"Whatever happened to him?"

# Gone with the morning

# Where did the feeling go?

# What was here is here no more

# We are shadows of the night before...#

Now is the time of Cat Stevens,

Joni Mitchell, Gordon Lightfoot, Carole King's Tapestry...

The singer-songwriter was born.

It changed a lot of things, really.

And the concentration went from the hit single onto the album.

Neil had never really been thought of as an album artist.

He was a hit singles artist.

Emergence was the first.

RCA Victor and I thought it would be the comeback, 1970,

but the audience did not go for it.

Up till that point, Howie did write on occasion with other people

because Neil was travelling so much.

Howie Greenfield was a genius

but I needed a new-sounding lyric.

I needed a lyric that painted pictures.

I had just recorded my own album

and it was a sensational flop.

I think my parents bought a couple of copies

and that was about it and I was really depressed.

Somehow Neil happened to get hold of a copy

and he thought I actually wrote good lyrics

and he was probably one of five people who did.

He came into my office and said, "Phil Cody, Phil Cody, I'd like to write with you."

Howie was devastated.

He came back

with a song called Our Last Song Together.

And if you listen to the lyric of that song,

it says it all.

# Days of devils, kings and clowns

# Angel's songs and birthday tunes

# Valentines and wishing wells

# Magic stairways, moons and Junes

# Silly rhymes, monkey shines

# Pictures on a stage

# Round and round the records go

# Time to turn a page

# This will be our last song together

# Words will only make us cry

# This will be our last song together

# There's no other way

# We can say goodbye... #

Cody couldn't have been more different from Neil Sedaka.

He was a hippy if there ever was one.

He describes Sedaka as "looking like somebody who just walked off

"the tennis court at Wimbledon".

The lyrics forced me to write different kinds of melodies.

We sat down on an afternoon and we wrote

three songs, one of which was Solitaire.

# And solitaire's the only game in town

# Every road that takes him takes him down... #

Kirshner, his publisher,

didn't like Solitaire when they played it for him.

They said, "Who'll do that song? Nobody will do that song."

"Why don't you write something that will sell?"

And the reaction to that song caused turmoil within his relationship

with Don Kirshner

and sort of propelled Neil to Great Britain.

He had to find a way to earn a living

and his manager, Dick Fox, said,

"I can get you work in England.

"I can get you work in the clubs in England.

"Why don't you move there for a few years?"

So I went to England in 1970,

I lived there for 3½ years,

with my wife and children.

He played in workingmen's clubs where they'd just as soon

throw a beer bottle at you

than give you a big hand.

It was a very sobering experience.

My wife, Leba, worked the lights

in these little, small clubs,

she did the announcement

backstage on a microphone,

they would talk during the performance.

He worked the Wooky Hollow, the Golden Garter,

Batley Variety Club,

all perfectly wonderful clubs

with lovely, lovely people - if they liked you.

So he goes to places like the Batley Variety Club,

a whole host of these workingmen's clubs up north,

which is kind of our equivalent, I suppose, of Las Vegas.

Not quite so many lights and stuff

but they would have huge names there.

They were big places,

massive numbers of people would go.

They could afford to put on the likes of Shirley Bassey

and Neil Sedaka.

And he did well doing that,

play his songs and be ignored

while everybody chats and drinks pints and eats their scampi

and chips. He went through all of that.

He was never somebody who was going to walk off the stage

into retirement or something.

He was going to find ways to still matter.

A million other people would have just said,

"I'm going to try to earn a living another way,"

but Sedaka wouldn't give up.

# Give me one more chance at the Midway

# Let me dance with my feet off the ground

# Give me back the world I remember

# One more ride on the merry-go-round... #

I was very driven, I was very ambitious.

Besides the gift, you need the drive.

There are very talented people

walking around. They don't have the confidence and the drive I did.

I wanted to develop and grow, change,

do something that I've never done before,

so I did like a calypso/reggae.

# Anyone who's played on a record date

# Will remember Stagedoor Jenny

# Well, I saw her last night

# Man, she looked like she wasn't getting any... #

And there's a line about Mick Jagger.

# When it came to a superstar

# Jenny was a bragger

# She spread it all around to everyone in town

# That she once had Mick Jagger

# But there's no doubt when the truth comes out

# True love will always conquer

# She didn't get Mick but she got a kick

# And a black eye from Bianca

# She was the queen of 1964

# What a pity she became a shadow of the girl she was before

# She passed her prime

# It seems a shame somehow

# But nobody wants an over-age groupie now... #

He wanted to record an album

that they could put out in the UK

because they were playing his old songs

and some of his new songs in the UK.

And he recorded an album with a group called 10cc

backing him up.

Their manager saw me at the Batley Variety Club and said,

"I think you should record with the 10ccs."

"Why don't you check out these guys at Strawberry Studios in Stockport?"

He's up north, playing these workingmen's clubs,

so he goes along there, meets the guys who would later become

10cc.

I thought I'd do a couple of songs with them...

And they helped give Neil a new sound,

a singer-songwriter sound, an album sound.

James Taylor writing Fire & Rain about a friend of his who committed suicide,

those kinds of themes became important.

Solitaire is a song that seemed very suited to dealing with themes

like isolation and sadness.

All of that was very much on the front burner at that point.

The Solitaire album came out, did nothing in America,

but got a lot of recognition in the UK.

The Carpenters had one of their biggest hits with Solitaire.

As did Andy Williams.

And Neil didn't.

But I think, as a songwriter, Neil would be very happy

to have hits in the top ten,

whether it be by The Carpenters, Andy Williams...

I never really wrote for anyone, I always did the original.

But some covers were better than mine.

# And keeping to myself I play the game

# Without your love it always ends the same

# While life goes on around me everywhere

# I'm playing solitaire... #

Sadness wasn't Neil Sedaka's strong suit, necessarily, as a writer,

but yearning is.

It really cuts deep emotionally.

And I think you have to give a lot of credit to the lyrics on that song.

It just paints such a picture and it's a beautiful combination

of the right lamenting music

and the pierce-your-heart lyric.

It just works. Brings me to my knees.

I said, "Write a lyric that will make me cry."

And it made me weep...

because it was about this very lonely man who

lost his love and all he did was play solitaire.

I said, "You did it, you're making me cry!"

HE LAUGHS

I wasn't really trying to make a song that had a particular meaning

for anybody,

I was just trying to take what Neil was giving me melodically

and attaching it to my own emotions.

And my emotions at the time were really sad.

And partially, there was a time in my life just prior

where I had been through a divorce and I was living by myself in a hotel

in mid-town Manhattan

and what I would do in my afternoons is sit at a little table

in the hotel room

and play solitaire.

I remember thinking,

"This is the saddest-assed existence you could possibly ask for."

# And keeping to himself he plays the game

# Without her love it always ends the same

# While life goes on around him everywhere

# He's playing solitaire... #

It's not necessarily fashionable to say it,

but Karen Carpenter is an amazing singer.

And there is a 100% investment

by her in that performance.

Shirley Bassey's Solitaire...

is magnificent.

It's a blockbuster.

# Solitaire's the only game in town

# And every road that takes him takes him down

# While life goes on around him everywhere

# He's playing

# Solitaire. #

I've even done a web page where I've tried to collect

every version of Solitaire there is.

I'm right now bordering... I think I've got

close to 60.

The Tra-La Days Are Over was the second album

with the 10ccs.

It had Standing On The Inside,

Love Will Keep Us Together,

some wonderful songs,

and again it was a hit in the UK

and not in America.

In the UK, the albums became very popular

and before long Sedaka had four or five hits.

I got a gig at the Albert Hall

where I was able to sing my new songs

and who should take notice? Elton John,

who was starting Rocket Records,

who was a fan of Neil Sedaka.

Neil decided to throw a big party at his flat

and all the rock'n'roll royalty in England

came to this party - Paul McCartney,

Rod Stewart,

Elton John, Elton's partner, John Reid.

The Carpenters were in town, they came to the party,

and it was a huge success.

And Neil got Elton and John on the side,

and said, "You are starting a record company

"and I have this album.

"And I would love the opportunity to have

"a release in the United States."

And I don't remember if it was John or Elton that said,

"Oh, my. This is like giving us gold bricks."

Elton took some of The Tra-La Days Are Over songs

and some of LA sessions

with Laughter In The Rain, that I did in LA,

combined them

and put out an album in America

called Sedaka's Back.

When Neil teams up with Elton John,

there's a sense in which he's suddenly moving a bit more

in that world,

where the songwriting is a little bit more personal.

Phil Cody came up with a marvellous lyric

about a couple who were caught in the rain,

they had no umbrella, they were soaked to the skin.

I wanted one chord

specifically to give it a lift.

HE PLAYS PIANO

So I started writing the song from there.

So I started with the pentatonic.

And eventually I wanted to get...

MUSIC LIFTS

Ah! It's a beautiful chord,

a beautiful change, a lift of emotion.

He would play the melody

and I could actually see the words in the melody he was playing.

I think it was a good move for Neil to record his vocals live

and to get that energy.

He had just come from five years of probably not recording

and five years of just doing live shows,

so he really knew what live felt like.

And I think that was inspiring to all of us.

It was me at the piano, singing live,

no overdubs,

except for my second, harmony voice.

That was probably pretty painful

for the guy recording, Robert Appere,

and co-producing the record,

to have Neil have the microphone right here as he's playing,

the piano bleeding into the vocal mic,

the vocal mic bleeding into the piano.

And you have to get it right.

# After a while we run under a tree

# I turn to her and she kisses me

# There with the beat of the rain on the leaves

# Softly she breathes and I close my eyes

# Sharing our love under stormy skies... #

-Here it is...

-HE PLAYS PIANO TRILL

# Ooh, I hear laughter in the rain

# Walking hand-in-hand with the one I love

# Ooh, how I love the rainy day

# And the happy way... #

-SINGS:

-I'm back to the original key.

Laughter In The Rain came in at about 95 on the chart,

and he thinks, "Well, that's a start."

HE LAUGHS

And then gradually, over the weeks, it goes up a little bit,

another seven here, another eight this week.

He and his wife, Leba, who

are waiting to go out to a gig

that he's doing, it's kind of a comeback gig,

and he's probably a bit nervous and things,

and he's listening to the legendary Casey Kasem on

American radio,

and he hasn't heard his record

as the top ten is played.

And Kasem goes,

"Finally, we have a new number one...

"Neil Sedaka and Laughter In The Rain."

And he and Leba

looked each other in the eyes

and started dancing to it

and crying.

It took 16 weeks and it went to number one.

After 12 years of not being on the charts at all,

Neil Sedaka was back.

"Comeback? There's no comeback, I never left.

"I was still out there making records,

"I was still out there touring. You guys were the ones that left, not me."

I think that's the way most artists feel.

I went from making 30,000 a year

to 6 million a year

with one song,

Laughter In The Rain.

When a pianist writes a song,

it's so much different from when a guitarist writes a song.

The melodies are so much easier for other people

to record and make it their own.

# Love, love will keep us together

# Think of me, babe, whenever

# Some sweet-talking girl comes along

# Singing a song

# Don't mess around, you just gotta be strong

# Just stop, cos I really love you

# Stop, I'll be thinking of you

# Look in my heart and let love keep us together... #

That is a combination of three styles -

The Beach Boys had a song that went...

PLAYS "DO IT AGAIN"

I loved that kind of riff.

And then I listened to the voice of Diana Ross,

she had a certain timbre,

and that inspired...

HE SINGS

And then Al Green

used a lot of augmented chords.

HE PLAYS AL GREEN-STYLE CHORDS

Al Green...he's marvellous.

# You better stop

# Cos I really love ya

# Stop

# I'll be thinking of ya

# Look in my heart and let love

# Keep us together... #

Back to The Beach Boys.

HE LAUGHS

America was going through a severe recession.

Watergate had just been settled

and Jerry Ford had become president

and he had pardoned Nixon.

Nixon might have been the most-hated

person in the country, if not the world.

Especially for the Vietnam War.

It spoke to a lot of things.

It spoke to a lot of hope and it reminded people

that, "Hey, you know, we once had fun."

It was possible to enjoy yourself.

# Just stop, cos I really love you

# Stop

# I'll be thinking of you

# Look in my heart and let love

# Keep us together

# Whatever... #

It became not only number one,

but it won the Grammy for Record of the Year in 1975.

Within one year, Sedaka had three number ones,

he had Laughter In The Rain,

he had Bad Blood

and he had the song that he had written

that Captain & Tennille

sang, Love Will Keep Us Together.

Not bad, three number ones in one year,

for any songwriter.

I don't think any other artist

has cracked the top ten

with two different versions of the same song.

With Breaking Up Is hard To Do,

the pop version in the 1960s,

and then he thinks, "I could slow this down.

"I'm sort of changing from pop to adult,

"why don't I do a sort of adult version

"of Breaking Up Is Hard To Do,

"kind of jazzy, slowed-down version?"

And he has a hit again with that one.

Instead of...

# Remember when You held me tight... #

HE PERFORMS IN A SLOWER, JAZZIER FASHION

# Remember when... #

A blues ballad.

# You held me tight... #

# And you kissed me

# All through the night

# Think of all that we've been through

# And you know that breaking up is hard to do... #

If you look at the changes in that song, the thing I love is...

sure it starts out simple...

HE PLAYS PIANO

# Breaking up is... #

But then it gets into this totally musical space...

# They say that... #

And here's where it goes...

# Breaking up is hard to do... #

And he doesn't even quit there.

HE SINGS

Then he goes again...

# Some say that this is the end

# Instead of breaking up I wish that we were making up again.. #

I mean that is real, real.

# Don't say that this is the end

# Instead of breaking up

# I wish that we were making up again

# I beg of you

# Don't say goodbye

# Can we give our love just one more try?

# Come on, baby, let's start anew

# Cos breaking up is hard to do... #

A good song is a good song,

whether you change the tempo or not.

A jazz musician could probably take that

and you could make it like a...

like Diana Krall could sing it.

In fact, that's not a bad idea. She'd go...

HE PLAYS JAZZY CHORDS

I'm not a real jazz player but somebody could really take that song

and have a day with it.

The Hungry Years really wasn't my song. I just heard it

and I go, "That sounds like a Howie song."

I said, "You should give that to Howie."

And he was right.

The lovely thing is that relationship between Neil and Howie,

it ended well.

They wrote This Will Be Our Last Song Together

and then later on they started writing songs together again

in America, right up till the time of Howie's death.

Howie married it beautifully

and it was about a couple who were getting

a divorce, who wanted to

attain fame and fortune

and they found they were drifting apart.

They missed those hungry years when they were struggling.

And it was...

HE SIGHS

..so touching that when Howie and I finished it

we brought Leiber in to hear it,

and Howie's companion, Tory, and we all wept.

We all wept.

# We spun so fast we couldn't tell

# A gold ring from a carousel

# How could we know the ride would turn out bad?

# Everything we wanted... #

Listen to this...

# Was everything we had... #

It seemed more like the old-style Neil and Howie.

# I miss the hungry years

# The once-upon-a-time

# The lovely long ago

# We didn't have a dime

# Those days of me and you

# We lost along the way... #

Patty Andrews of The Andrews Sisters,

who had a tremendous success,

but she never got along with her sisters

after the success, they fought terribly...

with all the number-one records,

and when she heard it, she wept.

She said, "I wish I could back to the hungry years

"when we were struggling, we were so happy."

# I miss the hungry years... #

I worked very hard for the longevity.

Topping, reinventing, raised the bar.

I just wrote my first piano concerto,

called Manhattan Intermezzo,

orchestrated by Lee Holdridge,

who's done several albums with me.

And it's about Manhattan.

The sounds of Manhattan, the ethnic groups of Manhattan,

the Latin, the Oriental,

the Russian, and musically, in a 20-minute

piano concerto, I've tried to express that.

HE PLAYS PIANO

FULL ORCHESTRATION

You have to go on.

Have to go on.

# When the day is dawning

# On a Texas Sunday morning

# How I long to be there

# With Marie who's waiting for me there

# Every lonely city

# Where I hang my hat

# Ain't as half as pretty

# As where my baby's at... #

I had written the tune

around 1968/'69.

I love this kind of suspension.

HE PLAYS PIANO

I was in New York, we had finished the song,

and Harvey Lisberg came in

to Donny Kirshner's office

and he said, "Oh, I have a new singer named Tony Christie.

"He sounds very much like Tom Jones."

And we had just finished it. I played it.

# Is this the way to Amarillo?

# Every night I've been hugging my pillow... #

He said, "I'll take it! Let's see what Tony Christie thinks."

So he recorded it and it was a pretty good-sized hit,

in many countries...

# Is this the way to Amarillo?

# Every night I've been hugging my pillow

# Dreaming dreams of Amarillo

# And sweet Marie who waits for me... #

And, lo and behold, 35 years later,

the same record was reissued...

I never thought I would say this,

but Tony Christie and Peter Kay are this week's number one.

Peter Kay did a video for charity.

It caught the imagination of the people.

But the same record, 35 years later,

sold almost two million copies.

It was number one for seven weeks.

# Is this the way to Amarillo?

# Every night I've been hugging my pillow

# Dreaming dreams of Amarillo

# And sweet Marie who waits for me

# Sha-la-la-la-la-la-la

# Sha-la-la-la-la-la-la

# Sha-la-la-la-la-la-la

# And Marie who waits for me

# Sha-la-la-la-la-la-la

# Sha-la-la-la-la-la-la... #

It's just a great song.

It's wonderful to sing along to, everybody knows the words...

And finally, Ministry of Defence computers

were out of action for several hours

after staff downloaded a spoof video from soldiers in Iraq...

# Is this the way to Amarillo...? #

Troops from the Royal Dragoon Guards recorded their version

of the number-one Comic Relief single

by Tony Christie and Peter Kay

to e-mail friends back home.

A guy like me writes songs that the whole world knows

and a guy like Neil writes songs that the whole world sings.

There's a big difference.

This is somebody who really wanted to play music and loves it

and loves his audience

and that has sustained him

through even very difficult periods.

His melodies, I think, will last not only through this generation

but generations to come.

At least another hundred years.

It was like flying.

Somebody threw me up in the air

and I just flapped my arms

and I managed to stay up in the air for ten years.

I've had a marvellous time singing my songs for you.

As always, thank you, the United Kingdom...

# You

# You belong to me now

# Ain't gonna set you free now

# When those guys start hanging around

# Talking me down

# Hear with your heart

# And you won't hear a sound

# You better stop

# Cos I really love ya

# Stop, I'll be thinking of ya

# Look in my heart and let love

# Keep us together... #