Songs Mentioning the Beatles: Shooting Star

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Here’s another one of those songs that I suspect people just “knew” would be on the list. Then again, I’m usually wrong when I think lots of people know a song. At least I know that nobody will know tomorrow’s song. But that’s tomorrow. Here’s today’s song. Shooting Star - Bad Company One of the great cautionary tale songs of the 70s. While everyone else was singing about using drugs in a casual, if not celebratory way (“I get high in the evening sniffing pots of glue,” Elton John boasted in one song), very few were keeping tally of the body count mounting in rock and roll. Bad Company’s lead singer, Paul Rodgers, was keeping count. After seeing the rapid-fire succession of rockers dying from excess (in addition to “the big three” [Hendrix, Joplin, Morrison] there were lesser-discussed overdose deaths of Canned Heat’s Alan Wilson, The Association’s Brian Cole, and the New York Dolls’ Billy Murica), Rodgers wrote this song. This follows the tale of a kid who goes from schoolboy fan of the Beatles to superstar to dead rocker in the space of ten years (the song was written in 1974, “Love Me Do” came out in 1964). People liked the song, but they kept dying: Tim Buckley, Uriah Heep’s Gary Thain, and guitarist Tommy Bolin perished soon after this song came out. It’s a sad song, and a sad reality of life…and not just the musician life, either. Shooting Star Written by Paul Rodgers Recorded by Bad Company From Straight Shooter, 1975 BEATLE REFERENCE LYRICS: Johnny was a school boy when he heard his first Beatles song