Thursday, July 14, 2005

song origins-Battleship Chains

Between September of 1984 and July of 1985 two bands had given up. The Satellites had called it quits after years of playing gigs, sending out demos and trying in every way to make it. 400 miles to their north, The Fabulous Knobs called it quits. Still drawing big crowds Debra, the singer, goes solo with her band Demilo with Arms. There was so much baggage in that band though, everyone was ready for it to end. The rest of the guys in the Knobs, Jack, David and I, called Dan upon finding out about their break-up. Dan was interested so he came up and rehearsed a few times until we started booking gigs as The Woodpeckers. Dan would take the train up from Atlanta that arrived in Greensboro (an hour and a half from Raleigh at the time) at 2am, so we would always fight about who's turn it was to pick him up.
One of the weekends of May '85 we played at a place called Clawson's in Beaufort, NC. Well on the Friday night I had so much fun (code for: got drunk as HELL!) that I wanted to sleep in my new van instead of the rental house we were all staying at. So that drunken night that I spent in that van was the night that I had a dream about a band and they were playing this song... and it was rockin' as hell! 9am or so I staggered back up to the house. Dan fortunately was up and I started singing it to him. He grabbed a guitar and figgered out the parts I was singing. We played it that night and the crowd loved it. It ended up on some demos that The Woodpeckers did and eventually on the desk of the Elektra rep that gave the reformed "Georgia Satellites" a deal. Y'all know the rest. 'Course we wuz all mad and shit that they had stole our song but we really understood. We were just mad at the situation more than we were them. (shhhhh!...I still like The Woods version better!)













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