HOWEVER, it's THE FIFTH OF NOVEMBER. So...
I mention a curious bit of trivia. A John Lennon sound effect appears on one of my album tracks.
I CREMATED MABEL The song "I Cremated Mabel" was a salute to Zacherley. Actually, I was hoping he'd record it, but I was too late. He'd signed with somebody who had an album of new horror-novelty songs for him, and it was already in the can.
When I was working on that song, I had various verses and the chorus, and I was mindful of songwriting technique: what about the bridge? Shouldn't there be a bridge?
NO, I didn't feel like going off with a new melody and a new direction for a damn "bridge." Instead I mocked the whole idea, with the jolly and macabre narrator saying things like "Now it's time for the bridge..." and a bunch of ghouls shouting "bridge! bridge! bridge!" It was a running gag in the song, and then, finally...the pay-off would be to do the bridge.
Right?
Suddenly there's a twang like something being detonated, and an explosion. Punchline: "They've blown up the bridge."
Searching around in my sound-effects library I somehow couldn't find a good explosion, but then I remembered that John Lennon had one at the end of "Remember." He said that he simply had no ending for the song, so he threw in a reference to Guy Fawkes Day and an explosion. "Fifth of November" rhymed with "Remember." That was basically it, and it seemed to work. And it did.
And so, years and years before rappers were "sampling," I borrowed the explosion. The legal basis would be "what are your damages?" None. Nobody ever came up to me and said, "Hey, I recognized that explosion on "I Cremated Mabel." How many people come up to me at all?
I have a Lennon "guest explosion" on my album. Attention Beatle fans who have to own EVERYTHING....
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