by Kevin Burton
Did you know the 1975 smash “Love Will Keep Us Together” by Captain and Tennile is actually a breakup song?
Hey, I was there. Yes it is, a breakup song!
Well, sort of.
Fifty years ago today it was in the beginning of a four-week run at the top of the US Hot 100. The song was in the air, everywhere, like a soft summer breeze. It essentially lifted us, happily carried us, by pairs of course, from place to place.
Whoever you had as your main squeeze at the time, you pledged lifelong allegiance to that person, to the rhythm of “Love Will keep Us Together.”
You want to play name that tune? You heard that electric keyboard played by the Captain, Daryl Dragon, and you knew what song you had with just one note probably. Nobody old enough to hold a transistor radio in 1975 would need more than three notes max, to identify the song, whether they liked it or not. It was one of those songs you couldn’t escape if you tried (unless you were in the UK, where it only rose to number 32).
The song signaled good vibrations in Canada and Australia too, where it also topped the charts.
But “Love Will Keep Us Together” was also a breakup song, for its songwriters, the legendary team of Neil Sedaka and Howie Greenfield.
“Neil Sedaka and Howard Greenfield wrote the song in 1973 during their last songwriting session together,” explains SongFacts. “They had been working together since their high school days, and in the late ’50s and early ’60s were one of the most formidable songwriting teams in New York, with huge hits for Connie Francis and for Sedaka as a solo artist.”
“Greenfield was moving to California, so to them, the song was about their close personal and professional relationship.”
“We both cried after we wrote it,” Sedaka said.
I get that, as far as it goes. But I’m not sure why a little thing like geography should break up such a prolific songwriting team.
But hey, the best band in the long and storied history of bands, the Beatles, not only broke up, but did so with lawsuits rather than joyful tears.
So I guess anything is possible in rock and roll.
Anyway, for the rest of us, “Love Will Keep Us Together” was the truest of true love, romance and good times.
“Sedaka was the first to record the song, initially releasing it as a single in France in 1973,” Songfacts wrote. “In 1974, he included it on his popular comeback album, Sedaka’s Back.”
“Toni Tennille loved the song when she first heard it, and in 1975 Captain & Tennille released it as their first major-label single (they had just gotten a deal with A&M Records). It became the title track of their first album and their signature song.”
“They knew “Love Will Keep Us Together was the right song for them as soon as they heard it,” wrote Fred Bronson in the Billboard Book of Number One Hits.
“They spent two weeks coming up with a new arrangement, and when they played it for (A&M label bosses Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss), everyone agreed they had a hit.”
The song won the 1975 Grammy for Record of the Year and was also the song of the year on Billboard.
You can hear Tennille singing, “Sedaka is back” as a tribute to Neil the song is fading and boy was he ever.
“Sedaka was enjoying a startling comeback when Captain & Tennille turned this song into a mammoth hit,” SongFacts wrote. “When he wrote it in 1973, he hadn’t cracked the Top 40 in a decade and had moved his family to England, where he was having more success. He kept writing songs, and when he had enough for an album, Elton John agreed to release it on the new label he founded, Rocket Records.”
“That album was Sedaka’s Back, and the first single was “Laughter In The Rain,” which went to number 1 US in Feb. 1975. He didn’t release “Love Will Keep Us Together” as a single because he had already issued it in France, and he liked his song “The Immigrant,” which became the follow-up single, reaching number 22 in May.”
“Captain & Tennille’s version of “Love Will Keep Us Together” shot to number1 in June, where it stayed for four weeks. Sedaka followed with “Bad Blood,” which went to number 1 in October,” according to SongFacts.
“ So yeah, 1975 worked out pretty well for him.”
It was not a bad year for Captain and Tennille either, as their follow-up “The Way that I Want To Touch You,” written by Tennille, went to number 4.
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