November 13, 2024 • 13 mins
In this episode of Behind The Vinyl: The Podcast, host Stu Jeffries takes you on a nostalgic journey with iconic artists. Featuring Ra McGuire of Trooper "We're Here For A Good Time" and Jim Cuddy of Blue Rodeo, and their song "Try". The spotlight then turns to Tiffany, who shares the story of her rise to fame at age 14 with the hit remake of "I Think We’re Alone Now."See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Careful clock clocker. So cool to be playing vun.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
On to wreck it off the tire table.
Speaker 3 (00:07):
Are you ready for this?
Speaker 4 (00:11):
Welcome to Behind the Vinyl. Here's your host, Stu Jeffries.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
Welcome to BTV the podcast. Are to sit down beside
a turntable where they play the song and tell us
the stories behind him. I'm Stu Jeffries, and in this
episode we have a true glass from the past, think
early eighties video, small concert at a shopping mall and
a redheaded lead singer. If you guess Tiffany, you have
chosen wissen.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
I knew it was good, but I was almost intimidated
that it was good because it was not again what
I envisioned for myself. I kind of was doing more
probably a modern day Cheryl Crow really was my sound.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
More with Tiffany in a few minutes, let's get rolling,
because we're here for a good time, not a long
time now. That, my friends, is what we call a
segway or sigu, if you will. This episode begins with
a very good friend of mine, literally Ray MacGuire. Well, So.
Speaker 5 (01:06):
I was sitting on a log and on Kittslana Beach.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
We had a little part.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
Of the beach.
Speaker 5 (01:11):
I'm just right in front of our house that people
didn't go to. Its median And I had come up
with this song the night before, just the chords and
some blah blah blah lyrics that weren't real lyrics. And then.
Speaker 6 (01:27):
The night before the guy who like drove trucks for us,
part of our crew, was at our.
Speaker 5 (01:35):
At our rehearsal, and he said, and I'm freaking out
that we don't have enough songs for finished the album.
And he puts his arm around me says, don't worry.
We're here for a good time, not a long time.
Speaker 6 (01:46):
So back to the log on the beach, I just
start writing I'm on my way to rehearsal in two hours.
A very good friend of mine told me something the
other day, so I just completely stole his shit.
Speaker 5 (02:02):
There she listened really closely to this, silently this.
Speaker 6 (02:14):
She'd almost got that in key. It is in key
on the record, and it's our drummer and he's doing
this that was almost in key, dude. We had to
do it quite a few times to get it on key.
Speaker 5 (02:30):
This harp soul, that's me. I did not play this
harp soul all in one piece.
Speaker 6 (02:36):
I played probably five harp solos, and then Randy Backman,
who was producing the record, and the engineer we all
sat there and cut together the best pieces of the
five solos, and then I had to learn it to
play it live. And i'd never actually never actually played
(02:57):
the solo.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
Last year.
Speaker 5 (03:08):
Beginning of last year, I think.
Speaker 6 (03:11):
Bob Rock called me up and said, I'm here with
Michael Bublet and we want to record here for a
good time.
Speaker 5 (03:16):
And I'm like, oh, I don't know.
Speaker 6 (03:19):
Of course I shipped myself right, but we want an
extra verse for the song, so.
Speaker 5 (03:28):
Anything you want.
Speaker 6 (03:29):
So I wrote an extra verse and sent it to them.
Bob called me one time. I could hear the track
in the background. It was Paul McCartney's drummer you that
big sum or Rustler guy.
Speaker 5 (03:43):
And then the album came out songs not on it.
Speaker 4 (03:50):
I could have been a millionaires. I could have been wealthy.
Speaker 5 (03:56):
You play some MAUI A couple of acres on MAUI
each help Butler.
Speaker 3 (04:06):
It's been good, a stellar human being and a pleasure
to call that man a friend. I've known Ray McGuire
Trooper for many years. It is so cool to have
him on the podcast. Thanks for listening, everybody. I'm Stu Jeffries,
hosted Behind the Vinyl of the podcast. We are moments
away from hearing how the remake of I Think We're
Alone now worked on making a star out of a
fourteen year old Tiffany tells her story shortly but right now.
(04:26):
Jim Cuddy of Blue Rodeo goes back to nineteen eighty
seven when they released their first single, try.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
All right, So this comes from our very first record.
Now this is the remix, So this is actually a
bit of a fake. This is a remastered copy. But
we had been a bar band for about three years
by the time we finally made a record, and we
were pretty poppylar bar band, and we're quite happy with that.
Didn't realize that we'd ever make a record because it
(04:57):
was if you hear this song, if you could imagine
what was on the radio at the time. Nothing was on.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
The radio like this.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
It was more Van Halen time and things like that.
So we believe it or not, this song try was written.
I know that the very first one of these was
done by Spandau Ballet and when we were in New York,
I was pretty smitten with that song True and this record,
this song was written as sort of an influenced or
(05:26):
copied from True, but it never really already worked in
that particular span ballet way because we were never that
kind of band. So when we finally became more of
ourselves Blue Rodeo, then it worked as a kind of
a routsy song. We knew that it was going to
be well. We didn't know it was going to be
(05:47):
a song on the radio, but we knew that it
was a popular song because we always had to play
it twice when we were in bars. We played at
the Horseshoe. We used to do three sets in those days.
People would always come up and say, play that song again.
So we knew that it had an effect on people
(06:08):
that liked music, liked our music.
Speaker 5 (06:10):
So we made the song.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
We started our illustrious record career not putting out Try
as the first single, but putting out Outskirts, which was
the title track of this record, Outskirts and that Fell Flat.
That wasn't played by a single radio station. I think
it might have been played on one radio station as
a feature. And then we put out Try and it
(06:32):
did nothing as well. But there was a postal strike
at the time, and that was a day when they
used to mail out or career out records to radio stations.
So our manager begged the record company to re send
it out, and they resent it out and it got
(06:53):
to RAO stations and it started to do something, and
it actually changed our lives in ways that we couldn't
even imagine, but that it was a it was a
big song on radio. And one more thing about it,
and that is that we all had jobs in those days,
and I used to do the props for television commercials
(07:14):
and they used to be this thing called the seven
at seven, the top seven songs on the AM radio station.
Was sure they hit radio station. And when we used
to stop at seven when we were working, and we'd
all bet on where try was, and you know, I
was bet it was high, and everybody was bet was low.
And it was in the top five for weeks weeks
(07:34):
on end. And it all seemed like a joke to
me at the time. I just thought that doesn't you know,
it's not doing anything, it's just fun. But little did
I know that it was actually creating a desire for
us to play all across the country. And when we
started to get offers from all across the country, and
people would I remember going to going into the airport
(07:59):
and some girls screaming when they saw Greg and I
and you have to appreciate we'd had, you know, many
years of failure, so this was a very unusual thing
for us to happen.
Speaker 5 (08:11):
Not very many people.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
Sending a false set along those days, so it was
I don't know, I just did it naturally. I thought
it was fun and interesting, and so I did it.
Speaker 5 (08:20):
So that'd be the story of Try.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
Such a quiet down to earth guy Jim Cutty a
Blue Rodeo talking about their first big hit Try. Thanks
for listening to Behind the Vinyl of the podcast on
Stu Jeffries with an artist you probably haven't heard from
in a long time. Unless you've seen the movie Mega
Python Versus Gatoroid. Come on, you haven't seen that weird.
Tiffany was only fourteen years old when she had her
first taste. To start, I'm doing a remake of an
(08:45):
old Tommy James song I Think We're Alone.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
Now.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
Here's Tiffany on how that all went down for her.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
I have to smile because every time I hear this song,
it makes me happy. I didn't think I would have
that attachment to the song. I didn't want to record
it to begin with. I was fourteen when I recorded
this song. Of course, I wanted a record deal and
didn't know really what that entailed. But I was so
happy to be in a studio in Burmak, California, recording
(09:14):
and my producer brought this song in and I was like,
what it was the Tommy James and the Sean Dale's version,
and that was, you.
Speaker 5 (09:22):
Know, children Behave.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
And I was like, oh no, no, this is not
what I had planned at all. And I didn't really
like the song, and I took He said, well, it's
not gonna be like this. Wait around a couple hours.
I'll do a track and then i'll send you home
with it and you'll come back tomorrow and record it.
And when I showed back up to get the track,
I went across the street at Los Burritos. That was
(09:47):
my favorite thing. Those were the days when you keep
burritos and tacos and not wear the burritos and tacos,
so it was amazing. I missed those days. I went
across the street from the studio in Burbon and had
my breuet oath and then came back and he had
the track pretty much done from rough roughly, but I
(10:08):
had a lot of the elements in there, not really
the solo part of course, that was kind of honed
in for that particular sound, and then of the white
noise that none of that was there, but the gist,
you know, dun't du dun't dn't. And I was really
again disappointed because it was a dance song, and I
didn't know if people would be able to tell if
(10:30):
I could sing, and I knew that I knew it
was good, but I was almost intimidated that it was
good because it was not again what I envisioned for myself.
I kind of was doing more probably a modern day
Sheryl Crow really was my sound little Fleetwood Mac so
rock based, still pop, definitely, you know, influenced by a
(10:53):
little bit of country because I started country music when
I was nine and so that was my foundation. So
there's always going to be a little bit of that
in my roots.
Speaker 5 (11:03):
And pop music.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
I mean, I definitely was open to it, but I
wanted something that was going to show that I could sing,
that I was a rocker and that was a real musician.
Even though I was fourteen. I had this passion about
me that I knew that that was like my life's calling. So,
you know, I really didn't want to record this song,
and I took it home and I was just like,
(11:26):
I want to record this. My girlfriends came over and
we were doing homework, and of course I put my
tracks on just to kind of learn them a little bit,
and all the girls start moving around and dancing and
it made them happy. It was like, really this good
spirit that came into the room, like this happiness and
being goofy and dancing around and having a good time.
(11:51):
And there was something about that that it made an
impression on me. So even though as a vocalist, I
was like oh, and as a performer or as an artist,
I was like, well, it's not really what I thought
we would start out with, but there's a good vibe here.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
And I went in and recorded it and had.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
Fun recording it that day.
Speaker 5 (12:10):
Even though it.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
Was, you know, again not something that I would have picked,
I did have a good time and I think I
sang it probably four or five times.
Speaker 5 (12:20):
The whole album was never more than.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
Three or four vocals. Could have been was one take.
So with I Think We're Alone Now as a couple
of vocals, and then I did the backing vocals and
that was pretty much. I was out the door until
I got the phone call that it had WHIT number one,
and that's I Think We're Alone Now.
Speaker 3 (12:44):
That puts a wrap on this episode of BTV the Podcast,
Tiffany's I Think We're Alone Now. Thank you for listening.
We appreciate your time and telling all your music loving
friends about us. I'm Stu Jeffries. With a reminder, there's
still a pile more great episodes like this waiting for you.
If you got time to listen, we look forward to
you coming back for more see us soon.
Speaker 4 (13:02):
This has been Behind the Vinyl the Podcast hosted by
Stuve Jeffries. Audio production courtesy of Doug Morehouse, Derek Welsman
and Troy McCallum. Thanks for listening.
Careful clock clocker. So cool to be playing vun.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
On to wreck it off the tire table.
Speaker 3 (00:07):
Are you ready for this?
Speaker 4 (00:11):
Welcome to Behind the Vinyl. Here's your host, Stu Jeffries.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
Welcome to BTV the podcast. Are to sit down beside
a turntable where they play the song and tell us
the stories behind him. I'm Stu Jeffries, and in this
episode we have a true glass from the past, think
early eighties video, small concert at a shopping mall and
a redheaded lead singer. If you guess Tiffany, you have
chosen wissen.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
I knew it was good, but I was almost intimidated
that it was good because it was not again what
I envisioned for myself. I kind of was doing more
probably a modern day Cheryl Crow really was my sound.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
More with Tiffany in a few minutes, let's get rolling,
because we're here for a good time, not a long
time now. That, my friends, is what we call a
segway or sigu, if you will. This episode begins with
a very good friend of mine, literally Ray MacGuire. Well, So.
Speaker 5 (01:06):
I was sitting on a log and on Kittslana Beach.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
We had a little part.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
Of the beach.
Speaker 5 (01:11):
I'm just right in front of our house that people
didn't go to. Its median And I had come up
with this song the night before, just the chords and
some blah blah blah lyrics that weren't real lyrics. And then.
Speaker 6 (01:27):
The night before the guy who like drove trucks for us,
part of our crew, was at our.
Speaker 5 (01:35):
At our rehearsal, and he said, and I'm freaking out
that we don't have enough songs for finished the album.
And he puts his arm around me says, don't worry.
We're here for a good time, not a long time.
Speaker 6 (01:46):
So back to the log on the beach, I just
start writing I'm on my way to rehearsal in two hours.
A very good friend of mine told me something the
other day, so I just completely stole his shit.
Speaker 5 (02:02):
There she listened really closely to this, silently this.
Speaker 6 (02:14):
She'd almost got that in key. It is in key
on the record, and it's our drummer and he's doing
this that was almost in key, dude. We had to
do it quite a few times to get it on key.
Speaker 5 (02:30):
This harp soul, that's me. I did not play this
harp soul all in one piece.
Speaker 6 (02:36):
I played probably five harp solos, and then Randy Backman,
who was producing the record, and the engineer we all
sat there and cut together the best pieces of the
five solos, and then I had to learn it to
play it live. And i'd never actually never actually played
(02:57):
the solo.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
Last year.
Speaker 5 (03:08):
Beginning of last year, I think.
Speaker 6 (03:11):
Bob Rock called me up and said, I'm here with
Michael Bublet and we want to record here for a
good time.
Speaker 5 (03:16):
And I'm like, oh, I don't know.
Speaker 6 (03:19):
Of course I shipped myself right, but we want an
extra verse for the song, so.
Speaker 5 (03:28):
Anything you want.
Speaker 6 (03:29):
So I wrote an extra verse and sent it to them.
Bob called me one time. I could hear the track
in the background. It was Paul McCartney's drummer you that
big sum or Rustler guy.
Speaker 5 (03:43):
And then the album came out songs not on it.
Speaker 4 (03:50):
I could have been a millionaires. I could have been wealthy.
Speaker 5 (03:56):
You play some MAUI A couple of acres on MAUI
each help Butler.
Speaker 3 (04:06):
It's been good, a stellar human being and a pleasure
to call that man a friend. I've known Ray McGuire
Trooper for many years. It is so cool to have
him on the podcast. Thanks for listening, everybody. I'm Stu Jeffries,
hosted Behind the Vinyl of the podcast. We are moments
away from hearing how the remake of I Think We're
Alone now worked on making a star out of a
fourteen year old Tiffany tells her story shortly but right now.
(04:26):
Jim Cuddy of Blue Rodeo goes back to nineteen eighty
seven when they released their first single, try.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
All right, So this comes from our very first record.
Now this is the remix, So this is actually a
bit of a fake. This is a remastered copy. But
we had been a bar band for about three years
by the time we finally made a record, and we
were pretty poppylar bar band, and we're quite happy with that.
Didn't realize that we'd ever make a record because it
(04:57):
was if you hear this song, if you could imagine
what was on the radio at the time. Nothing was on.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
The radio like this.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
It was more Van Halen time and things like that.
So we believe it or not, this song try was written.
I know that the very first one of these was
done by Spandau Ballet and when we were in New York,
I was pretty smitten with that song True and this record,
this song was written as sort of an influenced or
(05:26):
copied from True, but it never really already worked in
that particular span ballet way because we were never that
kind of band. So when we finally became more of
ourselves Blue Rodeo, then it worked as a kind of
a routsy song. We knew that it was going to
be well. We didn't know it was going to be
(05:47):
a song on the radio, but we knew that it
was a popular song because we always had to play
it twice when we were in bars. We played at
the Horseshoe. We used to do three sets in those days.
People would always come up and say, play that song again.
So we knew that it had an effect on people
(06:08):
that liked music, liked our music.
Speaker 5 (06:10):
So we made the song.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
We started our illustrious record career not putting out Try
as the first single, but putting out Outskirts, which was
the title track of this record, Outskirts and that Fell Flat.
That wasn't played by a single radio station. I think
it might have been played on one radio station as
a feature. And then we put out Try and it
(06:32):
did nothing as well. But there was a postal strike
at the time, and that was a day when they
used to mail out or career out records to radio stations.
So our manager begged the record company to re send
it out, and they resent it out and it got
(06:53):
to RAO stations and it started to do something, and
it actually changed our lives in ways that we couldn't
even imagine, but that it was a it was a
big song on radio. And one more thing about it,
and that is that we all had jobs in those days,
and I used to do the props for television commercials
(07:14):
and they used to be this thing called the seven
at seven, the top seven songs on the AM radio station.
Was sure they hit radio station. And when we used
to stop at seven when we were working, and we'd
all bet on where try was, and you know, I
was bet it was high, and everybody was bet was low.
And it was in the top five for weeks weeks
(07:34):
on end. And it all seemed like a joke to
me at the time. I just thought that doesn't you know,
it's not doing anything, it's just fun. But little did
I know that it was actually creating a desire for
us to play all across the country. And when we
started to get offers from all across the country, and
people would I remember going to going into the airport
(07:59):
and some girls screaming when they saw Greg and I
and you have to appreciate we'd had, you know, many
years of failure, so this was a very unusual thing
for us to happen.
Speaker 5 (08:11):
Not very many people.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
Sending a false set along those days, so it was
I don't know, I just did it naturally. I thought
it was fun and interesting, and so I did it.
Speaker 5 (08:20):
So that'd be the story of Try.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
Such a quiet down to earth guy Jim Cutty a
Blue Rodeo talking about their first big hit Try. Thanks
for listening to Behind the Vinyl of the podcast on
Stu Jeffries with an artist you probably haven't heard from
in a long time. Unless you've seen the movie Mega
Python Versus Gatoroid. Come on, you haven't seen that weird.
Tiffany was only fourteen years old when she had her
first taste. To start, I'm doing a remake of an
(08:45):
old Tommy James song I Think We're Alone.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
Now.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
Here's Tiffany on how that all went down for her.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
I have to smile because every time I hear this song,
it makes me happy. I didn't think I would have
that attachment to the song. I didn't want to record
it to begin with. I was fourteen when I recorded
this song. Of course, I wanted a record deal and
didn't know really what that entailed. But I was so
happy to be in a studio in Burmak, California, recording
(09:14):
and my producer brought this song in and I was like,
what it was the Tommy James and the Sean Dale's version,
and that was, you.
Speaker 5 (09:22):
Know, children Behave.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
And I was like, oh no, no, this is not
what I had planned at all. And I didn't really
like the song, and I took He said, well, it's
not gonna be like this. Wait around a couple hours.
I'll do a track and then i'll send you home
with it and you'll come back tomorrow and record it.
And when I showed back up to get the track,
I went across the street at Los Burritos. That was
(09:47):
my favorite thing. Those were the days when you keep
burritos and tacos and not wear the burritos and tacos,
so it was amazing. I missed those days. I went
across the street from the studio in Burbon and had
my breuet oath and then came back and he had
the track pretty much done from rough roughly, but I
(10:08):
had a lot of the elements in there, not really
the solo part of course, that was kind of honed
in for that particular sound, and then of the white
noise that none of that was there, but the gist,
you know, dun't du dun't dn't. And I was really
again disappointed because it was a dance song, and I
didn't know if people would be able to tell if
(10:30):
I could sing, and I knew that I knew it
was good, but I was almost intimidated that it was
good because it was not again what I envisioned for myself.
I kind of was doing more probably a modern day
Sheryl Crow really was my sound little Fleetwood Mac so
rock based, still pop, definitely, you know, influenced by a
(10:53):
little bit of country because I started country music when
I was nine and so that was my foundation. So
there's always going to be a little bit of that
in my roots.
Speaker 5 (11:03):
And pop music.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
I mean, I definitely was open to it, but I
wanted something that was going to show that I could sing,
that I was a rocker and that was a real musician.
Even though I was fourteen. I had this passion about
me that I knew that that was like my life's calling. So,
you know, I really didn't want to record this song,
and I took it home and I was just like,
(11:26):
I want to record this. My girlfriends came over and
we were doing homework, and of course I put my
tracks on just to kind of learn them a little bit,
and all the girls start moving around and dancing and
it made them happy. It was like, really this good
spirit that came into the room, like this happiness and
being goofy and dancing around and having a good time.
(11:51):
And there was something about that that it made an
impression on me. So even though as a vocalist, I
was like oh, and as a performer or as an artist,
I was like, well, it's not really what I thought
we would start out with, but there's a good vibe here.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
And I went in and recorded it and had.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
Fun recording it that day.
Speaker 5 (12:10):
Even though it.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
Was, you know, again not something that I would have picked,
I did have a good time and I think I
sang it probably four or five times.
Speaker 5 (12:20):
The whole album was never more than.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
Three or four vocals. Could have been was one take.
So with I Think We're Alone Now as a couple
of vocals, and then I did the backing vocals and
that was pretty much. I was out the door until
I got the phone call that it had WHIT number one,
and that's I Think We're Alone Now.
Speaker 3 (12:44):
That puts a wrap on this episode of BTV the Podcast,
Tiffany's I Think We're Alone Now. Thank you for listening.
We appreciate your time and telling all your music loving
friends about us. I'm Stu Jeffries. With a reminder, there's
still a pile more great episodes like this waiting for you.
If you got time to listen, we look forward to
you coming back for more see us soon.
Speaker 4 (13:02):
This has been Behind the Vinyl the Podcast hosted by
Stuve Jeffries. Audio production courtesy of Doug Morehouse, Derek Welsman
and Troy McCallum. Thanks for listening.
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