Book Review: Anthems We Love by Steve Baltin

“All songs are easy and hard to make, but once they are released they become part of whoever hears them or whoever loves them.”

--Tom Waits, from Anthems We Love

Like others before me, I questioned the choice of the word “anthem” in the title of Steve Baltin’s new book; it simply doesn't fit the topic. But that is by far and away the only quibble I have with this engrossing work filled with “you were there” moments in pop music history. As someone who is fascinated by the creative process, I hoped to discover some details along those lines, but Anthems We Love is hardly a blueprint for aspiring songwriters. Neil Diamond simply tells Balin that “Sweet Caroline” was given to him “personally by God.” Doors guitarist Robbie Krieger claims the idea for “Light my Fire” came when Jim Morrison told him to write something “universal” and the three most universal substances Krieger could think of were air, water, and fire. So, he chose fire, of course, and then skips to the song's debut.

Carly Simon gives a bit more detail as she describes the scenario that produced her hit, “Anticipation." While anxiously waiting for a delayed Cat Stevens to show up to her apartment for a dinner date, she took out her guitar:

Sometimes I just play the guitar loud if I’m nervous. Some people hit pillows, I play the guitar, exaggerate the emphasis of my playing the strings. So I was doing that and going, ‘Anticipation,’ because I was waiting for him to show up. I was anticipating his arrival. So I just started the song and I wrote the whole song, words and music, before he got there that night. So in about fifteen minutes I wrote the whole song…”

Grace Slick took a bit longer to create her “anthem”—an entire 30 minutes—and provides more compositional detail than perhaps any of Balin's interviewees; apparently, she wrote “White Rabbit” on a $50.00 beat-up upright piano with enough working keys to play some basic chords:

I know how to play a C major, C minor, D major, D minor, all that. Those are block chords. So in order to write a song all you need to know is block chords. And a melody. You sing the melody, you play the block chords with your left hand, right hand. And you can write a song that way. “White Rabbit” was written that way.

Where the book really shines, in my opinion, is the way it fulfills the promise of its subtitle. Artist after artist relates how their songs—whether given to them intact by God or plunked out on a broken upright—grew so much bigger than their moments of creation to profoundly affect the lives of millions. Marilyn McCoo describes how grown-older audience members still storm the Fifth Dimension stage whenever the group performs “Aquarius”; strangers named Sara (without an H, of course) continually approach Daryl Hall to say they were named out of love for “Sara Smile”; and Janis Ian was shocked one day to meet a couple of good-looking “golden” people backstage who told her they were powerfully affected by “At Seventeen.” “I had never understood,” she tells Batlin, “the most popular kids were also terrified and worried about losing their popularity.”

Anthems We Love is clearly a labor of love and will be thoroughly enjoyed by anyone who has ever fallen in love with--or to--a song.