Lyric of the Week: CAN’T-GET-ENOUGH-OF-WHAT-EVERYBODY-NEEDS BLUES
Wake up in the morning, there’s someone at the door
Drag myself out of my bed onto the cold stone floor
Look in the mirror wash my face can’t take it anymore
No more ...
Another step, another step, I push myself ahead
Try to get myself together but my body’s almost dead
Thinking to myself I wish that I was back in bed
With you ...
Can’t get enough
Of what everybody needs
Without you baby
I got, I got the blues
Now it’s a well-known fact that everybody needs a love
This is a fact of life that was given from above
It all gets back to you no matter how you shove
Oh no ...
I wish that I could tell you just how I feel about it
You say you know I love you, that’s all that there is to it
But there’s more than that baby when we make love you feel it
You feel it ...
Can’t get enough
Of what everybody needs
Without you baby
I got, I got the blues
I love you I worship you I need you day and night
The love between us can be seen there ain’t no end in sight
There is no better feeling than the way you hold me tight
Hold me tight! ...
Can’t get enough
Of what everybody needs
Without you baby
I got, I got the blues
© 2016 The Hesh Inc.
This is one of the earliest songs in my canon. It came about when I was noodling on the piano when I was home from school, sometime in 10th grade. There were several influences at work here: The verse's chord progression was Wilson Pickett's "Everybody Needs Somebody to Love" as performed by the Blues Brothers, mashed up with Bad Company's "Can't Get Enough," pounded on the keys in classic ELO "Roll Over Beethoven" style. The combination of "Can't Get Enough" with "Everybody Needs" etc. led to the song's title. For months I pounded it on the piano, without any words. Then in 11th grade, I went away to school in Jerusalem, where I met my musical partner in crime, Izzy Kieffer, and we set about the business of putting a band together and compiling a repertoire. This was one of the first songs we jammed on, even before we brought other musicians into the mix, and even though it didn't have words yet.
The lyrics came about later on in my junior year, shortly after I commenced the first relationship I could realistically call "dating." I needed a way to articulate what I felt about this girl and my relationship with her. I think a did a pretty good job ... for a 16-year-old. By now Izzy and I had a proper band, and I brought the lyrics to rehearsal; it became the first original tune I contributed to a band, any band. In April 1982 we started playing live before a paying audience, in Jerusalem's legendary JBR Club—and this song was in the first gig's set list. Later on that year, just as school was letting out for the summer, the band went into the studio for the first time and recorded about seven songs—and this was among them. The recording still exists somewhere on cassette.
I have no idea whether the girl ever heard the song or read the lyrics.