The Hit
My guess is that, if someone told you “Ariel” was a Billy Joel song, you’d ask why his voice sounds off. It actually came from a guy named Dean Friedman, who, near as I can tell existed in his own orbit, but that loping bass/piano on the bottom and the structure/phrasing of the lyrics does sound very much of the times (1977).
It’s a cute little vignette, “Ariel.” A tale of a lazy day set in suburbia where boy-meets-girl, they do some random stuff and wind up doing it, it has a day in the life feel. It has surprisingly open references of drug use - which stand out, because I haven’t heard many in this series - plus highly-local shout-outs to the “deep in the bosom of suburbia” where Friedman grew up, Paramus, New Jersey - e.g., the waterfall at Paramus Park, the young girl in the song is collecting money for an area radio station and, at the song’s climax, when the new couple makes love “to the sound of bombs bursting in air” as “channel 2” (WCBS-TV) signs off for the night. Can’t think of the last time I heard someone talk about a channel signing for the night…
Asked about the inspiration for the song in an interview with the UK-based Songwriting Magazine - e.g., was there a real “Ariel” in his past? - Friedman gave an answer that gives a fair impression of everything else I heard by him:
“Actually it was sort of a composite story of teenage crushes mashed together. I was self-conscious at first, having written it, because, in terms of the plot, nothing much happens – boy meets girl, they go on a date and end up making out in front of the television. That’s such a typical suburban scene, I was worried there wasn’t enough drama going on. That was until I played it to some teenage girls on the block, and they accused me of going through their diaries! So it occurred to me that, even though it was a simple story, it was infused with detail so it was recognisable to a lot of people. I think that’s what helped it become the hit that it was.”
And, for people interested in the mechanics of a song:
“[‘Ariel’] was something I was writing when I had my first access to a TEAC four-track tape deck, and I took advantage of that by doing a lot of multi-tracking and stacking up my vocals. So it was the technology that inspired me to develop what became the chorus, with all the layered harmonies.”
For what it’s worth, I’d say that one-man chorus nods toward Frankie Valli. “Ariel” was a very popular song, one that never went all that high in the charts (No. 26), but it had unusual staying power (5 months in the Top 100). The song and the man aren’t dissimilar in that regard.
The Rest of the Story
As noted in the song, Dean Friedman was in fact born and raised in Paramus, NJ. By way of a mother who did a little musical work on Broadway, he also grew up around music and got an early start in the business. One anecdote that came up in everything I read: he bought his first guitar at Manny’s Music with a bag of quarters he earned with a paper route. At age 9, he signed a publishing contract for a song about a crush on his fourth grade teacher over milk and cookies and, by his teen years, he had the chops to work the local wedding and bar mitzvah circuit (the band name was cute: Marsha and the Self-Portraits). By age 15, he was mailing demos to “all the labels in the US” and hanging the rejection letters that came back on his wall:
“Somehow I had this calm determination that, somehow, I was going to be able to make records.”
And so he did. Friedman landed a recording contract before long and by the very conventional path of majoring in music (at City College of New York) and networking (he studied guitar with David Bromberg). He was just 21 years old when he recorded “Ariel,” which was the first single on his debut album.
And the story just sort of continues from there, the day-to-day of working as a musician with some highlights and oddities thrown in. The tone and style of storytelling you hear on “Ariel” amounts to Friedman’s brand; he approaches lyrics like a writer - i.e., he tells a story as often as not - and builds his vignettes with good phrasing, observation and sprinklings of humor. It is all, for lack of a better word, clever. Genre-wise, Wikipedia’s sidebar files Friedman under “soft rock, pop, folk,” which is accurate, but he borrows from all over. In a 2021 interview with Vinyl Writer Magazine, he ticked through his influences (which, notably, does not include one William Joel):
“…a typical Dean Friedman album will run the gamut of musical idioms, from Pop to Rock to Country to Folk to Jazz to Classical. George Gershwin, Leonard Bernstein, all the Broadway songwriters to start, then, once I got my first transistor radio, top-40 coursed through my veins – The Beatles, Dylan, Stevie Wonder. I always had a special affinity for those singer-songwriters who, somehow, managed to paint vivid pictures with their words and music – folks like Joni Mitchell, Randy Newman, Paul Simon, James Taylor, Elton John, and Bernie Taupin.”
Three of those names - Joni Mitchell, Bernie Taupin, Paul Simon - came up most often in the stuff I read, and that probably gives the clearest read on Friedman’s style. He’s plenty talented but the specificity to his tone and humor sort of fated him to a limited and, as it turns out, mostly British audience. While Friedman has some American(/Canadian) admirers - Barenaked Ladies, Ben Folds Five, and Ariel Pink to name a few - American audiences didn’t stick with him like the Brits, who made hits out of some other singles, e.g., “Woman of Mine” also from his debut, and “Lucky Stars” (a duet with Denise Marsa) and “Lydia,” which came from the follow-up, “Well, Well” Said the Rocking Chair. The relationship between man and Isles is nicely drawn out in his conversation with the (damned solid) WriteWyattUK, which goes heavily into the circles in which he continues to move and perform.
Friedman continues to release material - his last release came out just this year - and he just sort of keeps going. He has written soundtracks (but not the ads for regional electronic chain “Crazy Eddie’s”), worked with Nickelodeon to develop some shows (Nick Arcade, then Total Panic), and even designed a video game (Eat-a-Bug). Even his semi-low threshold of fame has given Friedman some moments the vast majority of people will never have - e.g., playing Top of the Pops with The Buzzcocks and The Boomtown Rats (there’s a cute story about the latter’s Johnnie Fingers asking Friedman for his autograph on behalf of his little sister). If I had to name the most interesting detail of his career, I’d go with the mutual admiration society between Friedman and the band, Half Man Half Biscuit, who wrote “The Bastard Son of Dean Friedman” in his honor. That song is both fictitious and literal - it is about the band’s singer, Nigel Blackwell, discovering he is the bastard son of Dean Friedman - which fits nicely with Friedman’s approach to music. And Friedman answered back with “A Baker’s Tale,” which offers a different theory on Blackwell’s parentage.
About the Sampler
Like a lot of people (including Nigel Blackwell), I’m bound to admit that his idiom works on me - at least his early material. Which is to say, I included some later material - e.g., “Sandy” and “Hob-Nobbin’” (a gimmicky montage about hanging out with superheroes) from Songs for Grownups, and “The Russians Are Coming” (about Trump and money-laundering) and the title track from 2021’s American Lullaby - which I can tolerate and respect, but I actually like his debut album. That meant damn near the whole thing went on the sampler, including (in addition to the songs already linked to) “Company,” the comparatively upbeat “I May Be Young,” “Solitaire,” and, a song that you have to hope isn’t autobiographical “Song for My Mother” (guttingly sad).
I think I filled out the rest with songs from “Well, Well,” Said the Rocking Chair - e.g., “The Deli Song (Corned Beef on Wry)” (the title that opens a wide window into his sense of humor), “S And M,” and (the sweet and sincere) “Shopping Bag Ladies” - and his third album, Rumpled Romeo (which I like better than “Well, Well” for what it’s worth) - e.g., “First Date,” “Hey Larry,” “Love Is Real,” and a song banned in the UK for 30 years (because it named the restaurant), the charminlgy literal song, “McDonald’s Girl.” That ban ended, by the way, when the McDonald’s corporation blessed its use in a commercial.
It’s all pretty much singer-songwriter stuff - i.e., a guy writing and playing more or less what he wants to and getting enough of a reaction to make a career out of it. And that’s generally the music I like.
Till the next one...
My guess is that, if someone told you “Ariel” was a Billy Joel song, you’d ask why his voice sounds off. It actually came from a guy named Dean Friedman, who, near as I can tell existed in his own orbit, but that loping bass/piano on the bottom and the structure/phrasing of the lyrics does sound very much of the times (1977).
It’s a cute little vignette, “Ariel.” A tale of a lazy day set in suburbia where boy-meets-girl, they do some random stuff and wind up doing it, it has a day in the life feel. It has surprisingly open references of drug use - which stand out, because I haven’t heard many in this series - plus highly-local shout-outs to the “deep in the bosom of suburbia” where Friedman grew up, Paramus, New Jersey - e.g., the waterfall at Paramus Park, the young girl in the song is collecting money for an area radio station and, at the song’s climax, when the new couple makes love “to the sound of bombs bursting in air” as “channel 2” (WCBS-TV) signs off for the night. Can’t think of the last time I heard someone talk about a channel signing for the night…
Asked about the inspiration for the song in an interview with the UK-based Songwriting Magazine - e.g., was there a real “Ariel” in his past? - Friedman gave an answer that gives a fair impression of everything else I heard by him:
“Actually it was sort of a composite story of teenage crushes mashed together. I was self-conscious at first, having written it, because, in terms of the plot, nothing much happens – boy meets girl, they go on a date and end up making out in front of the television. That’s such a typical suburban scene, I was worried there wasn’t enough drama going on. That was until I played it to some teenage girls on the block, and they accused me of going through their diaries! So it occurred to me that, even though it was a simple story, it was infused with detail so it was recognisable to a lot of people. I think that’s what helped it become the hit that it was.”
And, for people interested in the mechanics of a song:
“[‘Ariel’] was something I was writing when I had my first access to a TEAC four-track tape deck, and I took advantage of that by doing a lot of multi-tracking and stacking up my vocals. So it was the technology that inspired me to develop what became the chorus, with all the layered harmonies.”
For what it’s worth, I’d say that one-man chorus nods toward Frankie Valli. “Ariel” was a very popular song, one that never went all that high in the charts (No. 26), but it had unusual staying power (5 months in the Top 100). The song and the man aren’t dissimilar in that regard.
The Rest of the Story
As noted in the song, Dean Friedman was in fact born and raised in Paramus, NJ. By way of a mother who did a little musical work on Broadway, he also grew up around music and got an early start in the business. One anecdote that came up in everything I read: he bought his first guitar at Manny’s Music with a bag of quarters he earned with a paper route. At age 9, he signed a publishing contract for a song about a crush on his fourth grade teacher over milk and cookies and, by his teen years, he had the chops to work the local wedding and bar mitzvah circuit (the band name was cute: Marsha and the Self-Portraits). By age 15, he was mailing demos to “all the labels in the US” and hanging the rejection letters that came back on his wall:
“Somehow I had this calm determination that, somehow, I was going to be able to make records.”
And so he did. Friedman landed a recording contract before long and by the very conventional path of majoring in music (at City College of New York) and networking (he studied guitar with David Bromberg). He was just 21 years old when he recorded “Ariel,” which was the first single on his debut album.
And the story just sort of continues from there, the day-to-day of working as a musician with some highlights and oddities thrown in. The tone and style of storytelling you hear on “Ariel” amounts to Friedman’s brand; he approaches lyrics like a writer - i.e., he tells a story as often as not - and builds his vignettes with good phrasing, observation and sprinklings of humor. It is all, for lack of a better word, clever. Genre-wise, Wikipedia’s sidebar files Friedman under “soft rock, pop, folk,” which is accurate, but he borrows from all over. In a 2021 interview with Vinyl Writer Magazine, he ticked through his influences (which, notably, does not include one William Joel):
“…a typical Dean Friedman album will run the gamut of musical idioms, from Pop to Rock to Country to Folk to Jazz to Classical. George Gershwin, Leonard Bernstein, all the Broadway songwriters to start, then, once I got my first transistor radio, top-40 coursed through my veins – The Beatles, Dylan, Stevie Wonder. I always had a special affinity for those singer-songwriters who, somehow, managed to paint vivid pictures with their words and music – folks like Joni Mitchell, Randy Newman, Paul Simon, James Taylor, Elton John, and Bernie Taupin.”
Three of those names - Joni Mitchell, Bernie Taupin, Paul Simon - came up most often in the stuff I read, and that probably gives the clearest read on Friedman’s style. He’s plenty talented but the specificity to his tone and humor sort of fated him to a limited and, as it turns out, mostly British audience. While Friedman has some American(/Canadian) admirers - Barenaked Ladies, Ben Folds Five, and Ariel Pink to name a few - American audiences didn’t stick with him like the Brits, who made hits out of some other singles, e.g., “Woman of Mine” also from his debut, and “Lucky Stars” (a duet with Denise Marsa) and “Lydia,” which came from the follow-up, “Well, Well” Said the Rocking Chair. The relationship between man and Isles is nicely drawn out in his conversation with the (damned solid) WriteWyattUK, which goes heavily into the circles in which he continues to move and perform.
Friedman continues to release material - his last release came out just this year - and he just sort of keeps going. He has written soundtracks (but not the ads for regional electronic chain “Crazy Eddie’s”), worked with Nickelodeon to develop some shows (Nick Arcade, then Total Panic), and even designed a video game (Eat-a-Bug). Even his semi-low threshold of fame has given Friedman some moments the vast majority of people will never have - e.g., playing Top of the Pops with The Buzzcocks and The Boomtown Rats (there’s a cute story about the latter’s Johnnie Fingers asking Friedman for his autograph on behalf of his little sister). If I had to name the most interesting detail of his career, I’d go with the mutual admiration society between Friedman and the band, Half Man Half Biscuit, who wrote “The Bastard Son of Dean Friedman” in his honor. That song is both fictitious and literal - it is about the band’s singer, Nigel Blackwell, discovering he is the bastard son of Dean Friedman - which fits nicely with Friedman’s approach to music. And Friedman answered back with “A Baker’s Tale,” which offers a different theory on Blackwell’s parentage.
About the Sampler
Like a lot of people (including Nigel Blackwell), I’m bound to admit that his idiom works on me - at least his early material. Which is to say, I included some later material - e.g., “Sandy” and “Hob-Nobbin’” (a gimmicky montage about hanging out with superheroes) from Songs for Grownups, and “The Russians Are Coming” (about Trump and money-laundering) and the title track from 2021’s American Lullaby - which I can tolerate and respect, but I actually like his debut album. That meant damn near the whole thing went on the sampler, including (in addition to the songs already linked to) “Company,” the comparatively upbeat “I May Be Young,” “Solitaire,” and, a song that you have to hope isn’t autobiographical “Song for My Mother” (guttingly sad).
I think I filled out the rest with songs from “Well, Well,” Said the Rocking Chair - e.g., “The Deli Song (Corned Beef on Wry)” (the title that opens a wide window into his sense of humor), “S And M,” and (the sweet and sincere) “Shopping Bag Ladies” - and his third album, Rumpled Romeo (which I like better than “Well, Well” for what it’s worth) - e.g., “First Date,” “Hey Larry,” “Love Is Real,” and a song banned in the UK for 30 years (because it named the restaurant), the charminlgy literal song, “McDonald’s Girl.” That ban ended, by the way, when the McDonald’s corporation blessed its use in a commercial.
It’s all pretty much singer-songwriter stuff - i.e., a guy writing and playing more or less what he wants to and getting enough of a reaction to make a career out of it. And that’s generally the music I like.
Till the next one...
No comments:
Post a Comment