Leiber and Stoller: Second Generation Standards

Of all your songs, the one that is perhaps most anthemic is “Stand By Me,” which is often played at weddings-along with other standards. Ben E. King gets co-writing credit on it. Did he actually write it with you?

Leiber: Yes. We had a rehearsal with Ben E. He came in and said, “Hey man, guess what? I wrote a song.” Ben E. was not a songwriter-a very good performer, but not a songwriter. And he sang, “When the night has come/and the land is dark/and the moon is the only light we’ll see…I won’t cry, I won’t cry…” He said, “That’s all I wrote.” I said, “That’s pretty good. You want me to finish it for you? You want me and Mike to do it?”  He said, “Oh yeah, man, that would be great.” So Mike and I finished it. Mike put that incredible bass line on it. And when I heard that bass pattern I said, “That’s it. That’s a hit.”

Stoller: Ben E. sang it in A. I sat at the piano and I felt this bass pattern, and within five minutes I had it…which is kind of a signature of the song. But most of the melody of the tune is Ben E.’s.

Yet you brought that beautiful shift of chords from the I to the VI chord, the F# minor, which colors the melody so beautifully.

Stoller: It was kind of implied. I think the melody may have shifted a little with the chords I was using. But it’s basically his.

John Lennon made a famous record of it. Did you like his version?

Stoller: Yeah. It was a different kind, but it still had the bass pattern. And it wasn’t like the difference between Big Mama and Elvis [on “Hound Dog”]. It was the same song; it just had a very different feel. But it was legitimate. It felt right. It felt good, also.

Leiber: It was too fast.

Stoller: It was stiffer.

Leiber: Ben E.’s was more syncopated. Lennon’s felt white. That’s what we’re trying to say.

That’s certainly a standard now, as are so many of your songs. When you were writing them, did you ever consider they could become standards?

Stoller: No, we thought all the standards had already been written…Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, the Gershwins…and those are still great standards, but now they refer to them as the “Great American Songbook.” They’re putting them in a package as if they are old. Well, they are old, but it’s separate from any new works-just about.

Leiber: We didn’t think our songs were as good and specific as the old standards. A lot of our songs were comic, and not serious love songs. For a number of years we had trouble writing love songs. Then, we fell out of love and it was easy to write love songs.

We thought our songs would just disappear after they were on the charts. We didn’t think that they had any staying power like the old standards.  But we were wrong [laughter].