THE SCENE: HOW THE SONG CAME TO BE
Once Upon a Time: Mark Lindsay on the Raiders’ ‘Good Thing’
by Greg Brodsky
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Once upon a time, there was a rock band that charted a series of hit singles, one after the other, in the mid-’60s. The photogenic group parlayed its success into a regular gig on a popular afternoon TV series aimed at teenage audiences.
In this case, we’re talking about the Los Angeles-based Paul Revere and the Raiders, who were in the midst of three straight Top 10 albums. Starting with “Just Like Me” in 1965, they were en fuego at Top 40, with five Top 15 hits over the next two years.
Two of those hits are among the four Raiders songs that are featured in Quentin Tarantino’s film, Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood, which opened in theaters over the weekend. The comedy-drama, the director’s ninth feature, is set in Los Angeles in 1969 and stars Leonardo DiCaprio as a fictional one-time TV star who’s come onto tough times, and Brad Pitt as his stunt double. The plot weaves in several real characters, including actress Sharon Tate, actors Bruce Lee and Steve McQueen, as well as Charles Manson and several members of his notorious “family.”
Back to the Raiders. In the film’s trailer, released two months prior to the movie, one song in particular caught our attention.
1966’s “Good Thing” was the fourth of those hits from the red-hot Raiders.
How did the song come about? The Raiders’ lead singer, Mark Lindsay, and their producer, Terry Melcher, were sharing a house on Los Angeles’ Cielo Drive. “It was an incredible place, a very peaceful house,” recalls Lindsay.
“We had just recorded ‘Hungry’ and had gotten our first vinyl copy and we were listening to it over and over again as we were wont to do. (“Hungry” was written by the hugely successful husband-wife songwriting duo, Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil.) And after one play, Terry said’ ‘You know, Lindsay, I bet we could write a hit like that.’”
Ah, youth… Lindsay and Melcher were both just 24. “I had been writing a lot of the stuff for the albums and collaborating with Terry on most of it,” says Lindsay. “And we hadn’t really moved on a single yet. So, I said, ‘Yeah, I bet we could.’
“Terry said: ‘What’s a good title?’ The line in ‘Hungry’ is ‘I’m hungry for those good things, baby.’ So I said, ‘How about ‘Good Thing’?
“We sat down at the piano and kind of pounded it out. The verses were my idea and the breakdown and the middle, with an almost Beach Boys-type vocal… that was Terry’s idea. And a great one.”
No surprise: Melcher was intimately familiar with the Beach Boys, having performed on Pet Sounds. (Earlier, he was part of a duo with future Beach Boy Bruce Johnston. Years later, Melcher co-wrote “Kokomo.”)
“Terry and I had a formula,” says Lindsay. “I’d come up with a piece. He’d come up with a piece. And then in the studio, we kind of melded everything together. That’s basically how it happened.”
He’s asked about the song’s great, snarling vocal. “I always thought of myself as an instrument and I would kind of tailor my voice to the track I was singing. ‘Good Thing’ was hard-edged rock and roll except for the vocal breakdowns in the middle and I adopted my style for that.”
Listen to the studio recording of “Good Thing”
