Lou Christie - Rhapsody In The Rain [Censored] 1966 скачать видео бесплатно

Lost Jukebox Volume 9 A Hidden Track.

Back in 1966, there were TWO versions of "Rhapsody In The Rain" circulating on the radio.

On the ORIGINAL version, Lou Christie sang the line "We were makin' out in the rain"

HARDLY controversial by today's standards ...

but in 1966, it got him banned from radio stations all over the country.

In fact, the ENTIRE ABC / Radio Chain prohibited the playing of the tune!

In a censorship campaign led by Chicago's own Gene Taylor, then Program Director of AM radio giant WLS, ABC Radio went so far as to tell "Time Magazine" that the suggestive lyrics about "makin' out in the rain" and "our love went much too far" along with the obvious rhythmic beat of the windshield wipers could ONLY mean that the couple was having sex in the car in time with the wipers. When Christie re-recorded the lines as "we fell in love in the rain" and "our love came like a falling star," he ALSO slowed down the tempo a bit from the original pressing ... hopefully stopping once and for all the teen-lusting that was going on in the back seat while listening to the other version! (Yeah right ... I'm sure THAT tempo change fooled the teenagers during the charged-up sexual-revolution which was the '60's!)

Christie's next release ignited a firestorm of controversy and censorship. Released in the spring of 1966, "Rhapsody In The Rain" featured a haunting melody inspired by Tchaikovsky's "Romeo and Juliet", telling of a teenager's memory of his sexual experience in the back seat of a car during a rainstorm as the windshield wipers made a rhythmic sound of "together, together". Later after the romance ends, the wipers seem to say "never, never". Many radio stations banned the song after hearing the opening lyrics:

Baby, the raindrops play for me/

A lonely rhapsody 'cause on our first date/

We were makin' out in the rain/

And in this car our love went much too far/

It was exciting as thunder/

Tonight I wonder, where you are?

MGM insisted on a re-recorded version that toned down the lyrical content. The re-dubbed lyrics for the "clean" version of the song were changed to:

Baby, the raindrops play for me/

A lonely rhapsody 'cause on our first date/

We fell in love in the rain/

And in this car our love came like a falling star/

It was exciting as thunder/

Tonight I wonder, where you are?

Not wanting to lose any of the momentum that was building up (please!) for the song ... and in an effort to get it on (come on!!!) the radio again, Christie went back into the studio and recut the track with the substitute line "We fell in love in the rain" in time to still garner enough airplay to take this hit all the way to #16.

In hindsight, it's a pretty sloppy edit ... (no pun intended) ... it sounds very forced (there I go again) and just doesn't fit (enough already!!!) Truth be told, I wonder how much foreplay, I mean forethought Christie put into the tune ... after all, he was just coming (jeez!) off of a #1 Record with "Lightning Strikes" ... so creating another "rain" song was probably much more of his focus than any subliminal message to a bunch of horny teenagers ... the songs are strikingly (ok, that pun WAS intended) similar in overall topic, sound and tempo.

Anyway, today, we feature BOTH versions of the single.

For years, the "banned" version was quite a collectible 45 ... in fact, I remember the Price Guides even listing the number etched in the wax so that the buyer could determine which pressing he was purchasing without actually having to listen to the record!

(Amazingly, just one year later, Van Morrison was "making love in the green grass behind the stadium" with his Brown-Eyed Girl and ran into some similar problems ... according to MOST radio stations, he was "skippin' and a-jumpin'" instead!)