Background singers are important.

Saw a documentary today on Netflix called 20 Feet from Stardom. It’s uplifting and it’s about background singers who never got rich but were on stage with some of the biggest stars.

If I’m clever enough, I can use this as an excuse to answer Tim’s newest questions about my Top 100 list, even though they have nothing to do with background singers, except maybe a little. Here’s his comment.

Few more comments & questions on your list, RL:

– Songs I like which I hadn’t heard before: the Ronettes, I’m No Angel, Good As I Was to You, If You Go Away,

– What is up with Chimes of Freedom?

– What’s the story with Come Dancing? Before my time. Usually the only place I hear that is as one of those music clips the networks play leading into a commercial break during football games.

– Also curious about Dreaming by Blondie. The Smashing Pumpkins did a cover of that song in the ’90s, which is the first place I heard it. The original version is much better.

– Finally, what’s the story with the Sex Pistols? I only know of them in passing. Also before my time. One of my friend’s older brothers liked them.

Still making my way through the rest.

Generation gap. An observation not an accusation. One more reason why this exercise is so productive. Wish we could all dig into it as assiduously as you have done. Here are some answers.

The Ronettes. They were the creation of Phil Spector, recently convicted of murder. Ronnie became his wife and long-suffering victim, but not before she became an international star. Spector had a tiny production studio which inadvertently created what came to be called the “wall of sound.” It was. An oddly two-dimensional rendering of voices and instruments that burst into car radios and made AM stations into concert halls. Ronnie had talent, and the backup singers were the Ronettes. Look up videos from the time. She was so small and frail you can’t believe she could ever have endured the concert schedule she did carry out. Music as punishment and servitude. That’s what remains moving about it. The brave wistfulness in her voice.

I’m No Angel. Can’t believe you don’t know the Allman Brothers. In the old days, bikers had three bands. The Stones, the Grateful Dead, and the Allman Brothers. And maybe they loved theirself some Janis Joplin too. They prized people who lived as hard and close to the edge as they did. I’m No Angel could be considered the biker national anthem. If they had one.

Good As I Was to You. This is an honest to God country tragedy. Lorrie Morgan, country star, was married to Keith Whitley, country superstar. He was a singer of extraordinary talent. He was also, like George Jones before him, a raging alcoholic, and he destroyed the marriage with infidelities and benders galore. She told him it was over, he believed her, and recorded a final hit song on a tape recorder (“Tell Lorrie I Love Her”) before he killed himself. He has been mourned ever since. Lorrie’s side is captured in this song.

If You Go Away. Can’t remember which version I put on my list. Hopefully one that retains the French roots. The original title was “Ne Me Quitte Pas,” meaning do not leave me. In my mind it is associated with the American actress Jean Seberg, who found no home in the U.S., emigrated to Europe, made tragic movies in French about being an American expatriate in France in love with ugly Frenchmen, and was gorgeously androgynous with her blonde crewcut and boyish body. She was hot. And she died in 1979, just past the age of 40.

Jean Seberg. She went away.

Come Dancing. In my generation, the Kinks are everybody’s dirty secret, a second favorite even if your first love is Stones or Beatles. Everybody knows Lola. Everybody also knows Celluloid Heroes. But Lola is too obviously famous and Celluloid Heroes is too obviously sentimental. Come Dancing makes us respectable.

Blondie. Dreaming. Again. Amazed that you don’t know Debby Harry was Madonna before Madonna was. But better and cooler. New Wave and also a precursor of disco. She was blonde, sexual, tough, feminine, and talented. Not quite lewd but artfully seductive. She made her stage persona a kind of blank, which is to say she seemed to be detachedly watching you watching her. Irresistible.

About the Sex Pistols. Stunned you don’t know about these guys. In a very real sense, they are the very definition of punk. They had a career that lasted about two and a half years. They burst onto the music scene with a song called “Anarchy in the U.K.,” had one Number One hit, and then self destructed with failed concert dates, drug arrests, and a few fatal overdoses. They hated everyone who came before them, notably the Rolling Stones, whom they decried as a business corporation, and announced their intention to bury them. We can see how that turned out. But Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious left us with this one song, God Save the Queen, which we should all remember. Everything we think of as punk flowed from that one furious eruption of rage.

What’s up with Chimes of Freedom? Hmmm. Where the subject of background singers starts to swim into the picture. Youssouf N’Dour began to become an American star when he sang behind Peter Gabriel in the hit song “In Your Eyes.” Truth is, he’s one of the ultimate megastars of music ever. He is the voice of Africa, a native of Senegal who is possibly the most famous man in the world since Muhammed Ali.

Peter Gabriel reached out to him as a musician, and Youssouf responded.

Full circle. The movie I cited is also about musicians. By definition, they are not stars, but there is one name that is the centerpiece of the film. Merry Clayton. She sang on the Rolling Stones song from the Let It Bleed album called “Gimme Shelter.”

I remember when that album came out. I remember Merry Clayton. I knew her name at once. We all wondered why she wasn’t the new superstar. She was so obviously great, with a range even Mariah Carey would envy. But it never happened.

What did happen? She went on with her life. She didn’t need to be a star. She needed music, and she found it in church, in ways that did not involve rock bands, drugs, and the deals that go with big-time show business.

Most of the backup singers featured in the film are, frankly, the lucky ones. They weren’t seeking celebrity. Most were pastor’s daughters. Singing gospel was their background, and they were used to being backups for preachers. One who wanted more was Lisa Fischer, who turned out to be the first worthy successor to Merry Clayton, on stage with Mick Jagger, singing Gimme Shelter in the 1990s.

It’s all in the film. Music always seems like a right now thing. It’s anything but that. It’s history. Of life. And ourselves.

Merry Clayton. She’s a happy grandmother now. So is Lisa Fischer.

Well? Have I been clever?

ABSOLUTE SHOCK. I recall Peter Gabriel as a young man. He looked like this.

Honestly. It wasn’t that many years ago. Or are you all hiding something from me?

Researching this post, I found an absolutely stupendous performance of “In Your Eyes.” But I’m reeling because he’s sooooo old and sooooo fat I don’t know what to do with myself. The hard thing about these lists. In the movie cited above, there was Sting. About my age. He looks like Lyndon Johnson. I asked Lady Laird, “Good God. Do I look like that?” She said, “No. Do you ever look in the mirror?” But the truth is, I don’t. Look in the mirror. Not anymore.