Juxtaposing downcast lyrics against benign musical backing has always been an effective technique for songwriters to undertake. It worked like gold for Stephen Bishop on the song “On and On,” giving the emerging singer/songwriter a massive hit (No. 5 on the pop charts when released as a single in 1977) to jump-start his solo career.
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The gentle island grooves and the bittersweet sentiments provide the yacht rock cred on this lovely track, whose subtle sadness can really sneak up on you. Here’s a look back at how Stephen Bishop put together his biggest hit as an artist.
Persistence Pays Off
Who knows how many talented musicians gave up on their dreams before success came calling? Stephen Bishop remained determined to have people hear his work, even after years of rejection from record companies and the like. Born and raised in San Diego, he headed to LA, the unofficial capital of the singer/songwriter world in the early ’70s.
By then, Bishop had amassed an impressive amount of songs he began pitching to other artists. He also hoped to secure a recording deal for himself. For the first part of the decade, it mostly came to naught, save for a song or two recorded by others.
The turning point for Bishop came when a tape of his songs landed in the hands of Art Garfunkel. Garfunkel heard a talented writer with great commercial appeal, and recorded two of Bishop’s songs for his 1975 album Breakaway. That greased the wheels for Bishop’s own solo deal and his 1976 debut album Careless, which would feature “On and On.”
From a Title to a Classic … and a Confrontation
In an interview with Songfacts, Bishop explained the impetus for “On and On”:
“I write from titles usually. I was walking down to the corner grocery store in Silverlake where I was living at the time and I came up with the idea of ‘On and On.’ My landlady had a lot of exotic flowers all around the house and I wanted to write something from somewhere else, like Jamaica.”
With session player Victor Feldman conjuring island vibes on the track via his marimba and vibraphone, Bishop could concentrate on telling the melancholy tales within the song. Alas, not everyone was blown away by the lyrics. As Bishop explained in an interview with Houston Press, he was confronted at a Hollywood party by Bob Marley’s wife Rita about the song’s opening verse:
“Yeah, she started screaming at me. ‘You do not know about Jamaican women! They do not steal your money!’ I was scared to death because she was really livid! I was just … uh … ‘poetic license?’ I spent the rest of the party hiding out in the kitchen.”
Behind the Lyrics of “On and On”
“On and On” features Bishop delivering quick profiles of people going through various stages of heartbreak. In the first verse, Lonesome Sue feels the pangs of unrequited love, while Poor Old Jimmy in the second verse is confronted with an unfaithful lover, eventually finding his only recourse in sad songs: Puts on Sinatra and starts to cry.
The middle eight gives some advice to the heart-wounded and lonely, that they shouldn’t play coy when they have the opportunity to love: Hold on tight / Don’t let her say goodnight. In the final verse, the omniscient narrator reveals he too has loved and lost, but life on the beach softens the blow and buoys him for another try: Aw, but I don’t care / I’ll just dream and stay tan / Toss up my heart and see where it lands.
In the refrains, this assortment of sad sacks smiles through their pain and refuses to give up. You can understand why Stephen Bishop would deliver such a message in “On and On,” as his own career was a study in sticking with it until his copious musical talents were justly rewarded.
Photo by: NBC/NBCU Photo Bank
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