4 Singers Who Owe Their Fame to One Fateful Car Ride
Once upon a time, amateur musicians had a vehicle through which the outside world might hear their music and might even make them a star. It was called TikTok.
Before then, artists stumbled into various other routes that led them to studios and a record deal. In quite a few cases, the vehicle they used was a literal vehicle. Meaning, the kind with four wheels and an engine. Cars have been the setting for stories of musical destiny, such as...
The Right Passenger
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You might not recognize the name Q Lazzarus. But we think you’ll recognize exactly one of her songs, “Goodbye Horses,” and you’ll know it because it played during a scene in Silence of the Lambs. It’s one of the most famous scenes of this very famous film, and if you haven’t seen it, we’ll warn you that it features a serial killer getting naked and ogling himself while dancing for you:
If watching that doesn’t sound like a fun time, but you still want to get the general gist of it, here’s the song playing as Clerks 2 recreates the Lambs scene:
Q Lazzarus (real name: Diane Luckey) had had zero success as a singer right up until 1985. She drove a New York cab for a living, among other odd jobs. Then one day, during a blizzard, she picked up a passenger from a studio. “Are you in the music business?” she asked.
“Uh, not really,” said the man, who was instead a director, Jonathan Demme. But Q Lazzarus figured she should try shooting her shot, so she played her song for him. “Oh my God,” said Demme. “What is this, and who are you?”
“Well, thank you very much,” she replied. “It’s me.” He went on to put one of her songs, “The Candle Goes Away,” into his movie Something Wild, and he put the very song that played in the cab, “Goodbye Horses,” into his movie Married to the Mob:
After that, far more memorably, he put it in his next movie Silence of the Lambs, and he also pulled her in to sing and to appear onscreen in his next movie after that, Philadelphia. Then, for the next two decades, she disappeared.
She disappeared both from public view (fans searched in vain for news of her) and from any view at all (even her friends were unable to find her). Until 2019, that is, when a friend did stumble into her again — by hailing a ride and discovering that the driver just happened to be her.
The Lost Wallet
Our next artist rode in a cab instead of driving one. He’s Billy Davis from the 5th Dimension, and he accidentally left his wallet in a cab after a taxi ride in 1968. The passenger who found it tracked him down to return it, and rather than demanding a reward, this passenger offered an additional gift. He was the producer of a play and invited Davis to come see it.
That play was Hair, and it was extremely popular among a certain circle of New Yorkers at the time, while other people tried and failed to get tickets. Davis never would have seen it but for this invitation. The play’s opening number, “Aquarius,” struck him especially hard, and he asked permission for his band to cover it.
There was no point, said the producers — others had tried covering it, to no success. Ah, thought Davis. But the others were not the 5th Dimension. Plus, he had the idea of combining the song with the music that comes at the very end of the show. The result was the medley “Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In”:
It hit number one for six weeks, went platinum and is now more famous than the play Hair itself.
The Stuck Tape
Ace of Base tried to get their start in a more conventional manner. They mailed a producer a demo tape. This producer, Denniz PoP (real name: Dag Krister Volle), listened to it and figured he didn’t like it. And that was the end of Ace of Base.
Or it would have been, except that Denniz was in the car when he listened to it, and when he was done, the tape got stuck. It could rewind, but the cassette deck wouldn’t eject it. The opening song was titled “Mr. Ace,” and you’ll recognize in it the song that would later be known as “All That She Wants.”
The next day, he had to go pick up another producer to take him to the studio, and he played the tape. Neither liked it. The next day, he played it again, because repeating the stuck tape made for a fun joke. For the next two weeks, he played that tape for the two of them every single day.
This sounds absurd, unless you have any experience at all with how friends act and screw with each other, in which case it sounds most assuredly plausible. And then, after weeks of repeated listens, Denniz decided he was going to sign this “Ace of Base” group after all. Because really, when we say we like a pop song, most of the time, that’s just our brain lighting up with recognition at something familiar.
The Breakdown
Sharon Sheeley moved to Hollywood in 1958 at the age of 18, with the hopes of getting a famous singer to record one of the songs she’d written when she was 15. That was just a teen's crazy fantasy, of course, and this is a story where utterly failing and having to move back home is the best-case scenario. More likely would be the city chewing her up and ruining her in any of various horrible ways.
But Sheeley went and looked up the address of budding superstar Ricky Nelson, who had himself only just now graduated high school. She showed up at his house. Her car had broken down, she said, and could he help her out? This granted her entry into the home, where she got him to listen to that song of hers, “Poor Little Fool.”
He went on to record it, and it went to number one. In fact, it was the very first number one on the new chart that Billboard was calling the “Hot 100.”
Her car had never really broken down — she made that up. But that got her into the industry. It also led her to meet other stars, like Eddie Cochran, the singer behind “Summertime Blues.” The lyrics in that song escalate from a teen merely complaining about his summer job to taking his grievances to the United Nations, showing a level of teenage ambition previously only displayed by Sharon Sheeley.
The two of them dated. Then on April 17, 1960, they were driving to the airport after a concert when their car crashed into a lamppost. The crash fractured Sheeley’s pelvis and killed Cochran.
Never speak falsely about cars. Because cars control fate, and in the end, they will claim what is theirs.
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