Sunshine
1971
Jonathan
Edwards
Everyone who was a teen in early '72 remembers this one!
And everyone sang right along with it when it came up on the Top 40
stations of America (All of 'em still AM in '72...it was WLEE in
Richmond, and WGH in Hampton Roads).
Jonathan Edwards cranked 'Sunshine' out while living in
a Musicians commune in Boston. There were several artists living in
the complex (Several bedrooms with a big common kitchen/living/eating
and apparently music playin' area in th middle). They'd write tunes,
then play them for the other artists, with constructive criticism and
commentary following.
The
song's distinctive and well loved chorus was written on the go, so to
speak, when Jonathan played 'Sunshine' for the other members of the
group and hadn't come up with a chorus for it. The now classic 'How
Much Does It Cost? I'LL BUY IT! The Time is all we've lost! I”LL
TRY IT!!...' literally came to
him as he played. One of his fellow musicians..Joe Dolce, who'd have
a minor hit called 'Shaddup Yo Face' in 1983, told him that the
chorus made absolutely no sense, and that he needed to go back and
rewrite it. Thankfully, Edwards ignored his advice.
Then, if it hadn't been for an engineer accidentally
erasing one of the tracks he was putting down for his album 'Please
Find Me', Sunshine may never have been heard. Rather than redoing the
song that had been erased, they did 'Sunshine, liked the way it
sounded, and overdubbed bass and drums the next day.
Then
it was released as a single by Atco Records...and flopped. Yeah, you
read right. One of the premiere anti-authority anthems of The
Seventies crashed so hard it dug a hole when it first hit the record
stores. Some DJ's in Boston, however, liked it and played it off of
the album, and it gained traction, and DJs in other
parts of the country started playing it, and us Seventies Kids
suddenly realized we wanted it. Six months later Jonathan Edwards had
switched to Capricorn Records, and when Capricorn released it as a
single, all that traction that all those DJs gave it let it climb the
charts, peaking at #4 on The Hot 100 on January 15th,
1972.
So
what exactly does the song mean?
Jonathan Edwards is mum on the subject...he says he's gotten thousands
of letters analyzing the tune, and that all of them are far more
creative than what his inspiration for the lyrics actually was...so
he's going to let everyone haven their own take on what this
classic's true meaning is. The one thing he does
admit, though, is that his dislike of authority weighed in heavily on
the lyrics. And that was pretty much everyone's take on it with
numerous variations on the theme, and it became an anthem against
everyone and thing from the dad or assistant principal who had ticked
you off to Big Government...be it local, state, or Federal.
Lots of people also think it was an Antiwar song...Anti-Vietnam War protests were reaching a fever pitch at about the time
'Sunshine' was released, and if you really listen to the lyrics, you
can definitely hear that. Others think that the turbulence and stress
over what was going on in our own government might have motivated Edwards as he penned it. But, as he noted, everyone had their own idea
of what it meant, and he thought it'd be a lot more fun to let
everyone do their own analysis of the song rather than imposing his
thoughts on the millions of people who made the song a hit.
And
it was a huge hit...I
can definitely remember it being on the radio pretty constantly
during a good bit of '72 (My Freshman year in high school...man time
flies!). BTW, a little bit of history-type trivia, with 'Sunshine'
right smack in the middle of it...Jonathan Edwards played it over and
over again at the infamous 'Mayday' rally in Washington DC on May
2nd,
1972.
It's never left play lists since it was released and you
can still hear it on Oldies stations pretty regularly. Heck, it was
even used to sell Jeeps!! (Personally I think any advertising exec
who encourages, allows, or even suggests the use of a classic song
for a commercial should be sentenced to 100 years of listening to the
worse American Idol auditions 24-7, but that's just me)
'Sunshine's one of those songs that...happily...will
always be around, me thinks...our kids and grand kids'll be hearing
that classic guitar intro, and Jonathan Edwards opening up with
'Sunshine Go Away Today...' long after we're gone. And this is a good
thing!
So enjoy! Sunshine, by Jonathan Edwards.
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