newepicauthor

Up Where We Belong – Challenge #174

This song came from the 1982 movie soundtrack An Officer and a Gentleman and it peaked at #3 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart on October 29, 1982, and it also won the Oscar for Best Original Song in 1983.  The music was written by Jack Nitzsche and Buffy Sainte-Marie, the piece of music that plays at the end of the film.  The director Taylor Hackford decided that the movie needed a big end-credits song, so Paramount head of music Joel Sill brought in the songwriter Will Jennings and he wrote the lyrics and this was recorded by Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes.  The film is known for its closing scene, where Richard Gere, dressed in his Navy uniform, comes into the factory where Debra Winger is working, gets hot and heavy with her, then carries her out as her co-worker’s cheer.  It’s perhaps the most famous “sweeps her off her feet” archetype in film.  The movie ends with a still frame of Winger in Gere’s arms as the credits roll and ‘Up Where We Belong’ plays.

Jennifer Warnes came from the California folk scene and she’d been around show business, in one way or another, since the late ‘60s.  Warnes was born on March 3, 1947 and she got her start on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour and soon after, she was touring Europe with Leonard Cohen.  Warnes won another Grammy for her duet with Bill Medley ‘The Time of My Life’ in 1988, which was featured in Dirty Dancing.  Joe Cocker is best known for his cover of The Beatles’ song ‘With A Little Help From My Friends’, which reached #1 in 1968.  Joe was touring successfully with his backup group the Grease Band for most of ’69, which included high-profile sets at the Woodstock and Isle of Wight festivals when he got together with Leon Russell to form Mad Dogs & Englishmen.  Leon Russell induced the Grease Band’s keyboardist-vocalist Chris Stainton to join, grabbed members of Delaney and Bonnie’s recently-split band (including drummer Jim Gordon, bassist Carl Radle, saxophonist Bobby Keys, trumpeter Jim Price and backing vocalist Rita “Delta Lady” Coolidge), snagged additional ace drummers Jim Keltner and Chuck Blackwell, and nearly a dozen more players and singers.  He died in 2014 at the age of 70 after battling lung cancer, but his musical career lasted more than 50 years. 

Will Jennings was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2006 and he wrote songs for Eric Clapton, Steve Windwood, Whitney Houston, B.B. King, Mariah Carey, Jimmy Buffett, Barry Manilow and Roy Orbison.  His Hollywood career with the 1976 movie The Commitment, and soon after he teamed up with composer Richard Kerr to write Barry Manilow’s 1977 hit ‘Looks Like We Made It’.  Jennings said that many people misinterpret his lyrics of “Where eagles cry, on a mountain high”, instead they think it is “Where eagles fly, on a mountain high”.  Will said that, “if you have ever heard an eagle cry, the power and beauty of it and all the wild freedom of it, you will get the distinction.”  The line, “All I know is the way I feel” is about having nothing else to tell you what to do in your life, you have to go with the way you feel and if you are lost, you have only your instinct and passion to guide you.”

Who knows what tomorrow brings
In a world few hearts survive
All I know is the way I feel
When it’s real, I keep it alive

The road is long
There are mountains in our way
But we climb a step every day

Love lift us up where we belong
Where the eagles cry
On a mountain high
Love lift us up where we belong
Far from the world below
Up where the clear winds blow

Some hang on to used to be
Live their lives looking behind
All we have is here and now
All our lives, out there to find

The road is long
There are mountains in our way
But we climb a step every day

Love lift us up where we belong
Where the eagles cry
On a mountain high
Love lift us up where we belong
Far from the world we know
Where the clear winds blow

Time goes by
No time to cry
Life’s you and I
Alive today

Love lift us up where we belong
Where the eagles cry
On a mountain high
Love lift us up where we belong
Far from the world we know
Where the clear winds blow

Love lift us up where we belong
Where the eagles cry
On a mountain high
Love lift us up where we belong

The challenge today is to focus on this song and use it for a short story, a piece of flash fiction, or a poem that you can share with the WordPress writing community.  There is no need to stick with this song, as if you like to write about another Will Jennings song, or a Jack Nitzsche song, or a Buffy Sainte-Marie song, or a Joe Cocker song, or a Jennifer Warnes song, then go with that.  You might also go with a song that has something to do with being unsure what tomorrow will bring, or climbing mountains, or eagles that cry.  Maybe you could write a post about lifting something up, or what it feels like when you belong, or staying in the here and now.  If you would like to write about time going by, or learning not to look behind at your life, that would also work.  The whole point of this MM Music challenge is to get you to think, to trigger something so that you can show how creative you are and everyone is welcome to participate.  This challenge is very loose, so pretty much whatever you come up with will be acceptable.  I try to throw some ideas out there for you and if they seem right, then go with it.  You could write about Richard Gere, Debra Winger or anything about the movie An Officer and a Gentleman, or maybe you could feature a duet.

Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie brings you a dose of fetish, good friends and an incomparable muse and Dylan Hughes will be here next Friday on February 5 with her First Line Friday and she will provide the first line for your post and then you get to write whatever comes afterward, with the length, genre, and structure being completely left up to you.  I will be back on Friday, February 12 with another MM Music Challenge where we will discuss the song ‘Kiss’.  When you are finished writing your post, create a ping back to this post, but you can also place your link in the comments section below if you desire.  This Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie Music challenge has a special feature called Mr. Linky, which will allow you to instantly link your post after you click the Mr. Linky Button, and permit everyone to read your post sooner that way, and then follow the directions that are given.

Published by newepicauthor

My About Me section is meant to provide my readers with an honest picture of myself that gives a little bit of background information on who I am and I will wrap this up with a catchy image. I am a story teller and I like to use my imagination. I am interested in many things, but a few of my favorites are watching the NFL and playing golf. I do not like onions and I always make sure that my food does not contain any. I had two wonderful parents, my dad Herb Adams was a television repairman and my mother Mary Adams was mostly a stay at home mom. They are both deceased now and I miss them. I am a retired Electrical Engineer specialized in control systems. I held many different positions because I worked mostly as a consultant. I did work as a Substitute Teacher, for a while, but the kids were awful. I am happiest when I am writing, as this gives my life has a purpose. Forming a sentence with meaningful words that articulate my inner feelings is an everyday quest for me. Every writer needs to tell their story, and all writers have their own style. All stories starts off with characters, who are able to entertain the reader. Creating realistic lovable characters is the best way to tell a story. If you are able to develop characters that become real to you, then you will know exactly what they will do say and do next and this lets your story progress to the completion. Writing changes everything and having the calling to create something new through the power of words is much more than just making marks on a page. Once written, a book can be used by many people to learn and be entertained. The act of writing can be compared to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle as it contains an inherent fuzziness, because various people may derive different meanings from reading the same words. You can never know the true nature of written words and the best I can do is hope is that people will understand the meanings that I am trying to convey. There are no clear-cut laws on how to write and it is impossible for me to determine how my readers react to my books.

14 comments

  1. Reblogged this on A Unique Title For Me and commented:

    Joe Cocker was born in 1944 as John Robert Cocker in Sheffield, in South Yorkshire, England. He enjoyed a career that spanned almost six decades and he skyrocketed to fame in the US at the 1969 Woodstock rock festival. He did a great cover of the Beatles’ song ‘With a Little Help from my Friends’ at Woodstock which was seen by almost a half-million people in person and by millions more after the documentary film came out the following year. Cocker became primarily known for covering the hit tunes which were written by other artists and making them very much his own. His renditions often became more popular than the originals, like ‘The Letter’, which was done by The Boxtops and ‘She Came in Through the Bathroom Window’, another tune from the Beatles. Joe Cocker’s voice and onstage presence were so distinct that they almost demanded either imitation or parody, or both. One of the most memorable imitations was done by the late comic John Belushi on Saturday Night Live performing ‘Feelin’ Alright’.

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  3. I know Jennifer Warnes for her work with Leonard Cohen. Her album, “Famous Blue Rain Coat” is her singing Cohen songs to perfection. Time to dive back into her music. Thanks for the reminder!

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    • Your pingback is located just above. I don’t have total control over this site, so I can’t make the pingbacks come through automatically and you have to wait for me to approve them manually.

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