Empty Chairs
The first time I heard Don McLean sing Empty Chairs, it killed me. When it was over, I had to play the recording again and again.
I'm not the only person to have such a reaction.
There was Lori Lieberman, for instance.
In the early 70s, she went to hear Don McLean perform live. She didn't really want to go -- she didn't even know who he was -- but friends dragged her out.
McLean's songs touched her deeply. Especially, Empty Chairs.
She went home after the concert and wrote a long poem about McLean. In it, she expressed how his singing had killed her, how his lyrics had touched her heart, how she felt he was singing just to her, how it seemed like he knew her. When he sang, it was as if he were reading her personal letters out loud.
Lieberman was a folk-singer, a blond with a slim figure, long straight hair, and a strong, clear voice.
When Lieberman showed her poem -- entitled "Killing Me Softly With His Blues" -- to Norman Gimbel and Charles Fox, a couple of songwriters she knew, they reworked her words into a lyric and put music to it. In the process, they changed the title to "Killing Me Softly With His Song."
Her recording didn't make much of an impact on the musical world. It did, however, end up on Trans World Airline's in-flight entertainment set, something air travelers could tune into as they winged their way across the country.
In 1973, singer Roberta Flack was flying from Los Angeles to New York. As she flipped through TWA's in-flight magazine, she saw a picture of Lieberman and the name of her song. Intrigued by the title, Flack gave it a listen. She got off the plane in love with Killing Me Softly and determined to record it.
Quincy Jones, Flack's producer, contacted Gimbel and Fox and got permission to make some changes to the song, reworking the chord structure of the tune a bit.
Flack's version rocketed up the charts to number one.
It was then that a friend called Don McLean and asked if he knew that there was a song about him on the radio -- a song that was number one on the pop charts.
McLean thought he was kidding.
No, the friend insisted, some girl named Lieberman had gone on tv talking about how she'd written a poem after seeing McLean at the Troubadour in Los Angeles. She'd had the poem turned into a song, and it was now the top song in the nation.
This made McLean a little nervous. As a songwriter, he didn't want a song about him to be a lousy song. When he listened, his misgivings went away. It wasn't a lousy song at all, it was quite a good song.
In 1973, the Roberta Flack release earned Grammies as Record of the Year and Best Pop Vocal.
Twenty years later, in 1993, Killing Me Softly was still being played on the radio.
It was around then that a rap trio called the Fugees was coming into prominence.
They wanted to record the song for their second album and got hold of Gimbel and Fox, asking to change the title to Killing Him Softly and to change the lyric to give it an anti-drug, anti-poverty theme.
The songwriters said no way.
The Fugees recorded the song cheaply in a band members home studio, keeping the original words and music, but performing it in their own style.
When the Fugees' version came out in 1996, it exploded, becoming a smash hit.
Because the group didn't release the song as a single, fans had to buy the album to get it. The album went multi-platinum and won Grammies in 1997 for Best R&B Performance by a Group and for Rap Album of the Year.
Killing Me Softly was used in the 2002 Hugh Grant movie, About a Boy. I won't tell how the song is involved, in case you haven't seen the film.
As a songwriter, I have a simple method of judging how good a song is. If I find myself wishing I'd written it, it's good.
I wouldn't mind having written Killing Me Softly. It's ranked number 11 on BMI's list of greatest songs. That wouldn't be bad.
But I have to tell you, I'd give anything to have written Empty Chairs.