RUNAWAY - The Del Shannon Story
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Runaway – The Making of the Hit One Friday night in October of 1960 (most likely the 7th), it was just another night at the Hi-Lo Club. The band came in to start setting up their gear, when Max sat down and began played some chords on the piano. Charles stopped what he was doing, looked up at Max and asked, “Max, what was that?” To which he replied, “An ‘A minor’ and a ‘G’.” “What a great change that was,” Westover said. “Follow me, everybody follow me!” There it was. Lightning had just struck but nobody knew it yet. Charles worked through that chord change, he must have had a melody in the back of his mind somewhere because a structure started to formulate within minutes. Max started playing a piano riff similar to what was found in “The Search” underlying the lyrics “I’ll climb the mountains high.” L.D. Dugger and Dick Parker fell in line with the bass and drums. “Forget everything you ever heard about ‘Runaway,’ said Parker in a 1992 interview. “It was this simple, Max sat down and began tinkling on the piano. When I saw that the two weren’t going to stop, I jumped in with the drums.” The band worked on the song for about the next 15-20 minutes on stage, as the crowd started to pour in, and probably looked on with curiosity. Finally, “Pa” Gilbert came over to the stage and told them to “Knock it off!” and “Play something else.” The club owner had paying customers and he didn’t want his hired band goofing off, or what he thought at the time was playing rubbish over and over. The next morning, Westover took his guitar with him to the carpet store. As he sat on a roll of carpets there, he began writing the words to his new song. “As I walk along…” Charles finished up the song by lunch time, and telephoned Crook. “Max, bring your tape recorder with you to the club tonight. I’ve finished the song, it called ‘Runaway’.” As he himself told the story in many interviews later in his career, he then began writing the B-side that afternoon. It was called “Jody,” named after a girl that frequented the Hi-Lo Club. The Charlie Johnson band performed “Runaway” that night for the first time in front of a live crowd. Before they began to play the song, Westover said, “Max when I point to you, play something.” What Crook played on his Musitron is now considered one of the most famous instrumental breaks in rock ‘n roll history. Parker threw his drumsticks in the air and exclaimed “Boy! I can’t believe what a great song you guys just wrote!” Dick turned to Max and said, “You have to get Ollie down here!” As Parker recited in a 1992 interview, “I was never more certain about anything in my life. I knew we had something there. Right away, I knew. I think we all knew. Because we got a reaction from the crowd. I mean, we didn’t bring down the house or anything, I’m not going to feed you a line of bull or anything, but we certainly got a reaction from the crowd like, ‘Man what was that? That was cool.’ So we kind of knew the song had something magical. We played it again a few more nights and got the same reaction. Then we started getting requests for it. Then Chuck knew. We couldn’t keep playing the song because it was an original that Chuck wrote with Max, and so we sleeved it until after it got recorded."
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About the Book
RUNAWAY is a fascinating account of the life and music of 60s rock star Del Shannon. From humble beginnings in the rural Midwest, this bar band guitarist rocketed to overnight superstar status when his first big hit clinched the #1 spot on the American Billboard charts, resulting in an international hit in over 20 other countries during the year 1961. Del Shannon soon followed up “Runaway” with more hits, including “Hats Off To Larry,” “So Long Baby,” “Hey! Little Girl,” “The Swiss Maid,” “Little Town Flirt,” “Two Kinds of Teardrops,” “Handy Man,” “Do You Wanna Dance,” “Keep Searchin’,” and “Stranger In Town.” Shannon was the first American artist to cover a Beatles song in “From Me To You.” In the late 60s and early 70s, he shifted his focus into production, launching the career of country artist Johnny Carver, discovering a group called Smith that saw a #3 hit with a Shannon-Smith arrangement of “Baby It’s You,” and produced fellow contemporary Brian Hyland’s Top 5 hit “Gypsy Woman.” Del worked with Jeff Lynne and Dave Edmunds in the 70s, with Tom Petty seeking him out to produce Shannon’s comeback album in 1981, resulting in a #33 hit “Sea of Love” in America.
About the Author
Brian Young is an expert in the career of Del Shannon, having previously authored Del Shannon – Home and Away in 2004 for a Bear Family Records 8-CD box set. He has contributed articles in DISCoveries and Mojo magazines, and has written dozens of CD liner notes.
He now resides in Tennessee and still runs delshannon.com.