I wasn’t sure what I was going to write about when I woke up this morning but then I heard the news that the singer/songwriter Neil Sedaka had passed away at the age of 86, so it became obvious. I thought I had written about him a fair few times around here but not as often as I’d thought once I looked back, so maybe it’s just that many of his songs were radio staples when I was growing up, both the ones from the early ’60s and then the ones during his successful second career in the ’70s. I didn’t know it back then but he had also written many hits for other artists, first of all with his childhood neighbour Howard Greenfield and then later on with Phil Cody.
Neil Sedaka and Howard Greenfield were one of the many successful songwriting partnerships who took up residence in the Brill Building on Manhattan’s 49th Street in the late ’50s (written about here). Along with Gerry Goffin / Carole King and many other pairs, they churned out hit after hit for people like Connie Francis, Jimmy Clanton and the big Girl Groups of the day. Neil’s first big international hit was in fact Oh! Carol, written about his old high school sweetheart Carole King (she added the ‘e’ later).
A little family anecdote now. We always used to find a song for DD’s birthday so that when she came into the living room to see the balloons, banners and pile of presents there was an appropriate track playing in the background. Obvious I know, but when she turned 16 we chose Neil’s 1959 song Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen. Now that I’ve listened to the lyrics properly it possibly wasn’t appropriate coming from a parent as it’s written from the perspective of a love interest, but hey, it did fit the birthday. I look back at those times and wish I could have bottled them, as time passes so quickly. In the blink of an eye they have grown up and flown the nest (but often come back again, as happened to us).
Neil had more hits as an artist in the early 60s, Stairway to Heaven, Calendar Girl and Breaking Up Is Hard to Do, but everything changed after the British Invasion and suddenly the Bobbys (Darin, Vee and Vinton), the Frankies (Avalon and Valli) and the songwriters of the Brill Building became unfashionable and were left out in the cold. Neil carried on songwriting but he didn’t have any more hits until he moved to the UK in the early ’70s and hooked up with the future 10cc at their Strawberry Studios in Stockport. He started writing with Phil Cody and made two albums there one of which featured the song Solitaire made successful by the Carpenters, and the other featured the song Love Will Keep Us Together made successful by Captain & Tennille. Neil’s partnership with Howard Greenfield was now over but his next purple patch was just round the corner.
If like me you were a teenager in the early 1970s, you would have been glued to the TV screen on a Thursday night to watch Top Of The Pops. In amongst all the glam rock artists with their outrageous outfits, we often used to have this middle-aged guy (he was only in his mid 30s at the time) sitting at a piano singing pleasing pop tunes. This song, Laughter in the Rain, reached the No. 15 spot on the UK Singles Chart in 1974 but reached the top spot on the US Billboard Chart. Neil was back.
And here is yet another little anecdote involving DD. A couple of years ago we gave her a turntable for her birthday as the young people seem to have fallen in love with vinyl, as we did back in the day. She has built up a collection of contemporary albums but in amongst these she has also acquired some classic albums by the likes of Sinatra and the Carpenters (we have obviously had an influence on her). I went round to visit recently and she showed me her new purchase, it was the Laughter in the Rain album. “Have you heard of Neil Sedaka?” she asked. I was taken aback but I think she has good taste in music so he has clearly stood the test of time.
Neil followed the success of Laughter in the Rain with a more politically motivated song, The Immigrant, which was inspired by his parents and by John Lennon, then facing immigration issues. The Immigrant reached No. 22 on the Billboard Chart.
All these years later, a very apt song for the times we live in. Think it would be banned by “the administration” today.
Neil continued to write songs and perform over the next few decades. He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1983 and has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In 2020, Neil launched a series of free mini-concerts, released through his social media channels, as a method of entertaining his fans during the pandemic. Despite having been nominated for five Grammy awards, he sadly never won the coveted trophy.
Until next time… RIP Neil Sedaka.
The Immigrant Lyrics
(Song by Neil Sedaka / Phil Cody)
Harbours open their arms to the young searching foreigner
Come to live in the light of the beacon of liberty
Plains and open skies billboards would advertise
Was it anything like that when you arrived
Dream boats carried the future to the heart of America
People were waiting in line for a place by the river
It was a time when strangers were welcome here
Music would play they tell me the days were sweet and clear
It was a sweeter tune and there was so much room
That people could come from everywhere
Now he arrives with his hopes and his heart set on miracles
Come to marry his fortune with a hand full of promises
To find they’ve closed the door they don’t want him anymore
There isn’t any more to go around
Turning away he remembers he once heard a legend
That spoke of a mystical magical land called America
There was a time when strangers were welcome here
Music would play they tell me the days were sweet and clear
It was a sweeter tune and there was so much room
That people could come from everywhere
There was a time when strangers were welcome here
Music would play they tell me the days were sweet and clear
It was a sweeter tune and there was so much room
That people could come from everywhere
What's It All About? 
A lovely tribute, Alyson. My brother’s called Neil but I’ve never been able to pin down whether my parents were inspired by Mr. Sedaka or Mr. Diamond! The music of both is inextricably linked with my earliest childhood memories.
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Don’t think there will be many tributes for him on the music blogs but he certainly had longevity and wrote an awful lot of songs that will stand the test of time.
Oh, depends on how old your brother is I suppose but there was also Neil Young and the astronaut Neil Armstrong. If your parents were listening to Neil Sedaka and Neil Diamond however he could well have been named after one of them.
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As Khayem says, a lovely tribute. Good to learn of DD’s refined musical taste, she was clearly well brought up.
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I am constantly amazed at what the younger generation cotton on to now that we can stream anything from any era. Connie Francis was mentioned above and her song from the 50s, Pretty Little Baby was a big hit again last year!
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“…“Have you heard of Neil Sedaka?” she asked….” That made me laugh!
I realised, though, that I know very little about him myself and you filled in some gaps here, so thank you as ever for the musical education on one of the artists who usually fall outside my radar. Lovely tribute.
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I really enjoyed taking the time to find out about the Brill Building and write about it here. Such talent and so many songs came from that place, Neil and Howard’s included. I also remember when we were trying to come up with puns relating to Butcher Shops after I visited the one run by Tom Kerridge in Marlow, my one was “Bacon Up Is Hard To Do”! So I’ve written about him twice before around here and now sadly a tribute.
I can well imagine him being outside your radar as a teen but I found out something interesting when researching him yesterday: Darby Crash (from The Germs) referred to Sedaka as “the real godfather of punk” due to his unaffected, simple chord progressions and unpretentious lyrics, saying that “Calendar Girl” “had all of punk right there-you just had to get high and play that pure rock and roll just like that.”
Well, well.
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Ah, that’s a great little tribute from Darby Crash, and what with the lyrics to The Immigrant, I can only hold Neil in high regard.
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Agreed
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I knew you’d beat me to a tribute, Alyson – and do it so much better too. I always loved Laughter In The Rain – even bought it on CD single back in the early 90s when it was featured in a movie soundtrack.
The lyrics to The Immigrant should be engraved into a plaque on the Statue of Liberty.
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Yes, it seems even DD loves Laughter In The Rain and she certainly had never heard of Neil Sedaka from us. Must be a timeless kind of song. Because the song is set in the countryside I always thought the line, “After a while, we run under a tree” should be “After a while we run under a stile” – it isn’t possible of course but I thought it sounded phonetically fantastic.
I’ve listened to The Immigrant a few times now and it really hits home doesn’t it. You are probably right.
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Neil Sedaka’s Laughter in the Rain is probably still hidden away in my attic somewhere – I sold a lot of my LPs around 15 years ago (never imagining that vinyl would make a comeback!), but I don’t think there was any demand for anything by Neil Sedaka, as he was out of fashion at the time. The Immigrant is definitely the stand-out track on the album.
My other favourite Sedaka songs include, from his early days, Calendar Girl – partly because the girl he’s singing about has a September birthday, like me! – and Our Last Song Together and The Hungry Years, both of which are about the end of his musical partnership with Howard Greenfield but work equally well as poignant songs of lost love.
Whenever I heard Neil being interviewed, he sounded like a lovely guy, and this comes over in his songs – which is why his 1975 single Queen of 1964 strikes such a jarring note. The jaunty tune could hardly be more inappropriate for this curiously heartless tale of Stage Door Jenny, who once had Mick Jagger, but has fallen on hard times (“nobody wants an over-age groupie now”) and ends up friendless and eventually dead (“they took her to the cemetery”). I didn’t like this song when I was 15, and it certainly hasn’t aged well! But it was a rare lapse in the career of a brilliant songwriter.
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Hi Lizza – I just never know when you’re going to pop up in the comments boxes but with a Neil Sedaka tribute it makes sense. Neil definitely had longevity but I didn’t even realise in the ’70s that he’d been a star of the early ’60s and a prolific songwriter as well. Yes, I agree about The Hungry Years – a great song that works on different levels. Solitaire was also a great song and sounded so good in the hands of Karen Carpenter.
He did always come across well in interviews and became an Anglophile for a time. He always made time for his fans thus the concerts during the pandemic when he must already have been in his 80s. I also like that he married his wife in 1962 and she became his manager – must have been a good partnership in every sense. Think he was a real family man.
No I don’t like the sound of that 1975 song at all so we’ll forget about it and just remember the really good ones. Not sure the Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen song’s lyrics stand the test of time, but I’m pretty sure that when they were written they were fairly innocent.
RIP Neil.
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