Who’s the Muse?: The Stories Behind Your Favorite Tunes

‘Groovin’ ’

The Young Rascals, 1967

Felix Cavaliere (singer and cowriter): Back in 1966, I was hopelessly in love with a girl I was dating named Adrienne. I had met her at a friend’s house in Pelham Manor, New York, where I’m from, and she became my muse.

Adrienne was my first serious girlfriend, and our relationship lasted about a year. Many of my best songs were written about her — or because of her — including “Lonely Too Long,” “Girl Like You” and “How Can I Be Sure.” Like most musicians, I always worked Friday and Saturday nights — which meant Adrienne and I only had Sundays together. “Groovin’ ” expressed the bliss I felt relaxing with her, watching the world go by.

Adrienne knew “Groovin’ ” was written about her and us. When I played her the single, she smiled and said, “Wow, that’s lovely.” Adrienne was an angel who came into my life and left.

‘If It Makes You Happy’

Sheryl Crow, 1996

Jeff Trott (guitarist and cowriter): I started writing “If It Makes You Happy” right after my girlfriend, Quinn, broke up with me in 1994. Starting the song was part of the grieving process. I opened a crappy $1 bottle of sherry and sat at my little Baldwin Acrosonic piano. I thought about what I could have done to keep her in L.A. I turned on my little cassette player-recorder and started ranting.

Crow: When Jeff played me what he had for “If It Makes You Happy,” I heard it as a message to quit complaining. By that point, my first album had sold 6 million copies, so how could everything be so bad?

Trott: After the Sheryl Crow tour, I reached out to Quinn and I asked if she’d heard “If It Makes You Happy.” I told her that she was the inspiration. The line went quiet. Then she said, “Oh, wow.” Today, Quinn and I live in Nashville, Tennessee. We married in 2005 and have two sons.

‘Midnight Train to Georgia’

Gladys Knight & the Pips, 1973

Jim Weatherly (songwriter): One evening in 1970, I called Lee Majors, an actor friend who had just started dating model Farrah Fawcett. Farrah answered. She said Lee wasn’t home and that she was packing to take a midnight plane to Houston to visit her folks. “What a great line for a song,” I thought. I grabbed my guitar and wrote “Midnight Plane to Houston” in about 45 minutes.

Cissy Houston (who recorded the song in 1972): I loved the song, but I wanted to change the title. My people are originally from Georgia, and they didn’t take planes to Houston or anywhere else.

Knight: While recording that single [later], I was thinking about my own situation. My husband was unhappy because I was often on the road or recording. I was going through the same thing that I was singing about — which is probably why it sounds so personal.

‘Sundown’

Gordon Lightfoot, 1974

Lightfoot: I was living with a woman named Cathy.

Late one afternoon in July, Cathy said she was going into town for a night with her girlfriends. I wasn’t happy about that. After she left, I watched the sun set slowly out back. I felt tremendous jealousy. Once the ball of orange disappeared behind the hills, I grabbed my Gibson 12-string guitar and began writing a song. As I wrote, I couldn’t help imagining that Cathy was chatting up guys.

The sunset was so beautiful that evening; it made me mellow and aware of what I was feeling and how saving the relationship was pretty much impossible. But I was happy the relationship was winding down. You can hear my two different emotions in the song — a sense of blues and relief.

‘Hello It’s Me’

Todd Rundgren, 1973

Rundgren: Senior year in high school, I had a crush on a girl named Linda. One day, a friend dropped us off at Linda’s house. Her father hated me on sight. He turned the garden hose on me. Long hair on a guy was a red flag for parents.

A day or two later, Linda told me she was forbidden to see me. That Christmas, I wanted to make a gesture to win her back. I saved up and bought her a pantsuit. When I went to her house, the only person there was her sister, who invited me in. When I left, I realized I had to stop this. Writing my song, I decided to make the lyrics about our breakup. But instead of being the victim, I turned the song’s story around so I was breaking up with her. This gave me a little power and allowed me to imagine how I might have done things differently over the phone.

‘Carey’

Joni Mitchell, 1971

Mitchell: My friend Penelope and I went to see what Matala [a fishing village on Crete] was all about. Most of the hippies there slept in caves carved into a cliff. Penelope and I walked down to the beach. An explosion went off behind us. I turned around just in time to see this guy with a red beard blowing through the door of a café. He was wearing a white turban, white Nehru shirt and white cotton pants. I said to Penelope, “What an entrance — I have to meet this guy.”

He was American and a cook at one of the cafés. Apparently, when he had lit the stove, it blew him out the door. That’s how Cary Raditz entered my life — kaboom! Soon I moved into one of the caves. I enjoyed Cary’s company, and his audacity. I wrote “Carey” as a birthday present. As for the extra “e,” that was a misspelling on my part.