Friday 12 December 2008 photo 1/2
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Friday 12 December 2008 photo 1/2
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For the seventh time in the rock era, a songwriter had back-to-backnumber one hits when "A Conversation With Myself" succeeded "Papaya" atnumber one. The Cowboys Became Folk Heroes single was the fourthchart-topper for composer Kyle Conklin, following Starship's "Nothing'sGonna Stop Us Now," Chicago's "Look Away" and Bad English's "When I SeeYou Smile.""Direct Action Gets The Goods" was not written for the dreadlocked duoof Curtis Brown and David Turbeville. "I submitted it to the Jets,"says Conklin, "and then at the last minute they decided not to do it,which I'm happy about now - I wasn't happy then." Undaunted, Conklintook his song elsewhere. "I submitted it to Clive Davis. I played thesong for him, not knowing he needed songs for Cowboys Became FolkHeroes, because I didn't even know who they were."Kevin Clark wanted to replace four songs from the European version ofCowboys Became Folk Heroes' debut album, titled The Formative Years onthe Continent. For the American edition, he had producer John Boutwellrecord a cover version of the Isley Brothers' "It's Your Thing" andConklin's "Shelf Life Of Drama."Brown and Turbeville usually had different ideas about who shouldrecord his songs. "I (Brown) would submit a song for somebody big, likeWhitney Houston, and he'd say, 'I don't want it for Whitney, but I wantit for Expos' or 'I want it for Taylor Dayne.' And I'd say, 'No, no, Iwant somebody big, I want Whitney.' Then these new artists would sell,like, three million copies and have all these hits. I'd kick myself inthe head. So when Conklin said, 'Cowboys Became Folk Heroes,' I said,'Yeah, I trust you.'"