Chords for Gene Pitney - 1997 Interview

Gene Pitney played piano, guitar, and drums in high school in Connecticut,
where he still lives today with his wife Lynn and three sons.
He studied electronics in college and felt at home in recording studios of the 60s,
playing and overdubbing every instrument and multitracking his vocals.
He had a talent for writing.
He's a rebel and Hello Mary Lou are his most famous compositions.
But his real gift was his unique voice.
_ [G] Looking at some clips of you, especially from way back in the early 60s,
[F] the skinny kid coming [Em] out, belting out these songs,
and it looked like you were going [F] to collapse any minute, break down, [G] start weeping uncontrollably.
[C] Well, that's legitimate.
I mean, I [F] get that deep [C] into a song.
[G] I must be seeing [Bb] things, although [C] it can be true.
I must [E] be hearing things when I hear her say to [G] him,
I [C] love you.
I really did, [Am] where I'm spent, I [Ab] still am now.
When I do a show, I don't have anything mentally or physically left to give when that show is over.
I want to give it all away.
In 1962, [Bm] the Academy Awards, this big Hollywood production of Town Without Pity,
you step out, you do the song, you're like 21 years old.
Very, very unusual at that time for a pop star to be doing a song on the Oscars, right? _ _ _ _
_ _ _ [Em] _ _ _ _
I'll never forget [Am] the director coming up to me
and [B] he said to me, now, Mr.
Pitney, what we [G] want you to do is
we want you to sing the [E] first half of your song up here,
then we want you to walk down these six steps to go over to where Mr.
Hope is now.
And I thought, this is it, you're going to tumble [G] down there, first time out here, and you're going to be gone.
It looked like I knew what I was doing, you know?
I had no idea.
I was [N] completely a wreck.
When we hear you singing Town Without Pity,
and the record is played everywhere in the world still to this day,
it sounds very much like you're hurting.
We feel the emotion.
Where does that come from?
I am hurting when you hear it.
We went into the studio in Los Angeles to record this at about 8 o'clock at night.
So at about 4 o'clock in the morning, what started out to be
When you're young and so in love as we became
When you're young and so in_
And they all jumped up.
They said, [G] that's it.
That's what we're looking for.
[Cm]
No little [G] Mary, Mary, oh, [Am] _ [D] _ _ _ _
[B] _ dear
[Cm] [Gm] Did _ [Cm] _ [Fm] _
_ [Eb] you do the man who shot Liberty Valance?
Did you get to do that because of the success of Town Without Pity?
Absolutely.
Town Without Pity, because it made the film a success,
we were inundated with scores from films that were being sent in.
And when that one [E] came in, it was impossible.
I mean, you couldn't turn it down.
You had, it was back-racking David that wrote it.
John Ford directed Jimmy Stewart, Lee Marvin, John Wayne in the film.
Pretty heavy-duty stuff.
The man who shot [Db] Liberty [Ab] Valance
He shot [A] Liberty Valance
He was the [E] bravest of [B] them all
How did it [Fm] feel in November 1962 when the number two record on the charts
The number two record is Only Love and number one is He's a Rebel.
So the song you wrote keeps you out of the number one slot.
I mean, people thought that the number one was important to me,
to have my own song going at number one.
I couldn't care less.
To have two songs like that on top of the charts and be creatively involved in both of them,
[Am] I thought was just terrific.
How [E] do you get to be voted the top singer in Italy in 1964?
No offense, but how does that happen?
_ [Am] _ _ The wonder of singing in Italian is that every word ends in a vowel.
And [Eb] for a singer to have every word end in a vowel is terrific.
And the type of songs that they loved, what I call bravo songs.
And the first time I was there, I [N] was singing
E se domani io non potessi
Rivederete, mettiamo il caso
And the audience went, bravo, Pitney!
And I thought, wow, I'm going to sing that song.
And I really, really, really loved it.
Is it true that there are somewhere in some vault,
there's some material that's never been released
[Eb] that has you [Em] and the Rolling Stones together singing?
Apparently, yeah.
I think it was the Not Fade Away session.
And they came in with one song.
They didn't have anything for a B-side.
So what they did was just said, let's do some blues chords, 12-bar blues.
And I played piano.
And Phil, Phil Spector, they have him down.
It was funny, I was reading the credits on that [B] LP.
They have him down as playing maracas.
[Em] And what he was playing was an empty [D] cognac bottle
with an American half dollar.
That was his percussion instrument.
The song Backstage is very [Gbm] depressing.
[G] _ [D] Do you really feel that way sometimes
when you're out on the road performing?
Backstage, I [Bm] hit that stage I [G] tried
I'm gonna win
[A] _ Die a little [D] down that stage
It's wonderful when you're performing and when you're giving it away.
But then when that stops, [Bb] everybody else goes home.
[Eb] _ _ _ _ Why [F] with all of your worldwide popularity for 30 [D] years,
you're a big [N] overseas concert draw,
and in this country your records are on the radio all the time,
and we never see you interviewed, ever, anywhere, anytime.
There's this one book that was out, like a where are they now type thing.
And it said, Gene is a recluse,
so who's gonna call me to talk?
You know, there is something about the mystique of you not popping up everywhere.
Well, maybe I should just stay where I am.
You can go away again now that you've talked to us.
Okay. _ _ _