« The Backstory: Something Else by The BB's »

Ron Cianciaruso and I go back many years to the creation of musician Pete Townshend’s novella, ‘The Boy Who Heard Music’. We met online through a common love of music and a particular devotion for The Who, and have maintained a close friendship since 2005. When I published my Behind Blue Eyes rock fiction series, Ron was an early supporter and fan of the novels, and we often talked about how cool it would be for someone to take Ian Harrington out of my novels and give him and his band a distinct sound. As a musician and songwriter himself, Ron decided to take up the challenge, and the result was an incredible song called ‘Something Else’. There are elements of magic in the backstory of how this song came to be, which I will let Ron describe in his own words.

Ron with Pete Townshend.

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The BB’s have a new song called ‘Something Else’.

How does a song like this get written? What drives the inspiration? How does it take form?

This song is interwoven by several backstories, but in order to maintain context, I will keep this fairly simple. I have always been a fan of Anne Marie’s book series and have enjoyed them since Book One was released. After reading the novels, I felt like it would be very creative to try and put a voice to Ian and I set off to do that in one form or another. I had never written a score to a story so I felt the need to challenge myself on this. In early December, I watched a documentary on how Freddie Mercury conceived, composed, and recorded ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’. I was incredibly moved by the process for reasons I cannot explain. Immediately after viewing this, I sat at my piano and out came three parts of a song, literally within 10 minutes.

The instant I played them, I knew it was special, so I set to work on arranging the parts into a final song arrangement. I also sent the music to Lou Luca, who is my good friend and band mate. We have written many songs together over the years and always had a certain Lennon/McCartney type of musical connection. Within hours, Lou had written lyrics as he had done hundreds of times before and sent me a draft of the song. Imagine my surprise when I heard the words ‘Something Else’! Unknown to Lou was the fact the Ian Harrington’s band was called Something Else, and his lyrics fulfilled my desire to be spiritually connected to Anne-Marie’s books. This was an eerie twist to the connection of Anne-Marie’s book and my music, which seemed to bond together like molecules.

Very early one morning after reading an article about the recent Who concerts, John Rabbit Bundrick, the keyboardist for the band, was mentioned and I had wondered how he was doing. I had a casual email relationship with Rabbit over the years, so I wrote him to ask if he would listen to the song and if he would be interested in playing on it as a compensated performer. He replied back almost instantly and we made the arrangements for him to record the piano and Hammond (at Rabbit’s suggestion). Three days later, Rabbit uploaded his parts, which sounded VERY different than the piano I had played in the original recording. After mixing, we quickly realized that Rab took the song to a NEW level. He didn’t just play the piano; he invented some of the magic in the song. This set the stage again for a true collaboration between Anne-Marie, The BB’s, and a member of The Who.

After final mixing and tweaking, the song was released on March 26th. The first time I heard the final mastered version, it gave me chills up my spine. I imagined Ian, standing in the rain, alone, confused, singing this to some of the loves of his life. This was the final piece of the magic that has been born for me. We are already working on several more songs based on the book series and will release them as soon as we can.

You can hear the song by visiting www.thebbsmusic.com or looking us up on Facebook under The BB’s. They are @TheBBSMusic if you want to follow them on Twitter.