Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Love is Blue

 
There are several interesting stories that have to do with this song that might merit retelling, even if you may have heard them before.
Of course all the old stories are so old now, that they barely need repeating, but then again, why not?

There is one that has never been confirmed that the last words Spider Savitch ever heard on this planet were "Love, Love my love is ...BLEW"  but since I wasn't there at the time I can neither confirm nor deny the accuracy of the accusation.

One thing we do know for certain is the the Paul Muriat original of "Love is Blue" contained a lovely piano solo which was replaced by the harpsichord in this version.

There are some reasons for this change.

This version actually was put on record in Paris. The piano player was from New York and he insisted they ship his piano to Paris.

In New York, at that time, there was one man and one man only who was allowed to tune the pianos of the stars. He was  originally from Hungary and his name was Oppor Knockity.

He was the best, and everyone knew it. It is said that once his work was done, it never had to be repeated, and he never serviced the same piano twice.

The piano player in anticipation of recording this piece, called upon him to get his piano in perfect tune, which he did.

When they began rehearsing in Paris, they discovered that somehow the shipping process had actually knocked the piano slightly out of tune.

The sound engineers told the pianist, "Don't worry about it, we can fix it in the mix."  The pianist was livid. There was no way that he was ever gong to put a piece of music on tape with his piano not being perfectly tuned.

In desperation they called the tuner in New York to fly to Paris to fix the instrument.

He refused to come, despite all their pleadings and offers of considerable cash.

He said, "I cannot be bought and I will not stray from my ethics. I tuned this piano just recently in New York and I will not do it again. When you hired me you knew that Oppor Knockity only tunes once."

Now you know why this version uses a harpsichord.

(C) Tim D. Culey -2012-
Please feel free to sing along ....

Doux, doux, l'amour est doux
Douce, est ma vie,ma vie dans tes bras
Doux,doux,l'amour est doux
Douce est ma vie, ma vie pres de toi
Bleu,bleu l'amour est bleu
Berce mon coeur, mon coeur amoureux
Bleu, bleu, l'amour est bleu
Bleu comme le ciel, qui joue dans tes yeux....etc