![]() | This article is rated Stub-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||
|
I'd heard this song was written about the Pueblo incident. Anyone else? AMCKen ( talk) 04:15, 23 January 2009 (UTC)AMCKen
Here is a quote from Mike Pinera who wrote the song. Taken from jeffkramer.blogspot.com/2014/11/a-very-candid-conversation-with-mike.html Unless the quote is fake, Pinera specifically says that someone from the Pentagon called him about the song's lyrics:
" The producer heard the song and said, “This is the hit. Let’s work on this. Drop everything else.” So, we worked all day on “Ride Captain Ride.” At the end of the day, everybody listened to it and said, “This is the most commercial thing we have. This could be a hit.” The record label heard it and said, “Okay, we’re back on track. We’ll give this serious promotion.” They did. We went out on tour. Now, we were playing with the Who at eighty-thousand-seat stadiums. We had gone up quite a bit from halls and theaters to stadiums. We were doing quite well.
Then, as fate would have it, I got a call from the Pentagon. They wanted to know how I knew about a secret spy ship called the USS Pueblo. I said, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” They said, “Don’t give us that. There were seventy-three men. They sailed out of San Francisco. They got captured by a Korean destroyer out in international waters and were taken to Korea. It almost started an incident. The Koreans are saying that it was a spy ship, so we’re having some serious problems. Meanwhile, your song is out telling the whole story. It was exactly seventy-three men and exactly San Francisco.” I said, “It’s just a coincidence.” They didn't believe it. I assured them that the song was written about two months before it was recorded. I said, “How could I know about it four months before it happened, because that’s when I wrote the song.” They agreed with me. As it turns out, when I was on tour, sometimes people would come up to me who were on the crew of the Pueblo and say, “Thanks for writing that song for us. That’s really great.” I said, “I wrote it for you, but I wrote it for everybody else, too.”
I heard it was just coincidence that the USS Pueblo had a crew of 73 men, and
sailed from San Francisco. Government investigators questioned the songwriters
about this.
Yumagah (
talk)
00:57, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
"Government investigators questioned the songwriters about this." That's the kind of thing that civilians and conspiracy theorists always claim, but on what grounds would they need to be questioned by "Government investigators"? "Hey, we need to look into why you wrote a song about something that happened in the public eye 2 years ago"? Seriously? John Simpson54 ( talk) 17:30, 28 December 2018 (UTC)
We seem to have a problem in this section. I know the song is popular, but there are better ways to document that than to simply keep adding random mentions of its use in the media. Most of these are unreferenced and do not add to the understanding of the song's popularity. Please help me re-shape that section and write it out in such a way that helps to illustrate the song's pupularity through the decades. Citations are always helpful. Google Books is a good place to begin. Remember, there are editors who find these lists unencyclopedic and who might just delete it all and be justified under Wikipedia Guidelines. LiPollis ( talk) 12:00, 28 September 2015 (UTC)
Can anyone verify who the lead singer is/was on this song. While all the singers in the group seem to blend harmony in the chorus parts, are the stanzas being sung by Mike Pinera? If it can be verified, place it in the article please. Thanks 2602:306:320A:AF0:3D94:95B9:B4D1:4841 ( talk) 04:46, 15 November 2015 (UTC)
Yes it's Mike Pinera Farwest110 ( talk) 21:31, 14 September 2016 (UTC)
![]() | This article is rated Stub-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||
|
I'd heard this song was written about the Pueblo incident. Anyone else? AMCKen ( talk) 04:15, 23 January 2009 (UTC)AMCKen
Here is a quote from Mike Pinera who wrote the song. Taken from jeffkramer.blogspot.com/2014/11/a-very-candid-conversation-with-mike.html Unless the quote is fake, Pinera specifically says that someone from the Pentagon called him about the song's lyrics:
" The producer heard the song and said, “This is the hit. Let’s work on this. Drop everything else.” So, we worked all day on “Ride Captain Ride.” At the end of the day, everybody listened to it and said, “This is the most commercial thing we have. This could be a hit.” The record label heard it and said, “Okay, we’re back on track. We’ll give this serious promotion.” They did. We went out on tour. Now, we were playing with the Who at eighty-thousand-seat stadiums. We had gone up quite a bit from halls and theaters to stadiums. We were doing quite well.
Then, as fate would have it, I got a call from the Pentagon. They wanted to know how I knew about a secret spy ship called the USS Pueblo. I said, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” They said, “Don’t give us that. There were seventy-three men. They sailed out of San Francisco. They got captured by a Korean destroyer out in international waters and were taken to Korea. It almost started an incident. The Koreans are saying that it was a spy ship, so we’re having some serious problems. Meanwhile, your song is out telling the whole story. It was exactly seventy-three men and exactly San Francisco.” I said, “It’s just a coincidence.” They didn't believe it. I assured them that the song was written about two months before it was recorded. I said, “How could I know about it four months before it happened, because that’s when I wrote the song.” They agreed with me. As it turns out, when I was on tour, sometimes people would come up to me who were on the crew of the Pueblo and say, “Thanks for writing that song for us. That’s really great.” I said, “I wrote it for you, but I wrote it for everybody else, too.”
I heard it was just coincidence that the USS Pueblo had a crew of 73 men, and
sailed from San Francisco. Government investigators questioned the songwriters
about this.
Yumagah (
talk)
00:57, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
"Government investigators questioned the songwriters about this." That's the kind of thing that civilians and conspiracy theorists always claim, but on what grounds would they need to be questioned by "Government investigators"? "Hey, we need to look into why you wrote a song about something that happened in the public eye 2 years ago"? Seriously? John Simpson54 ( talk) 17:30, 28 December 2018 (UTC)
We seem to have a problem in this section. I know the song is popular, but there are better ways to document that than to simply keep adding random mentions of its use in the media. Most of these are unreferenced and do not add to the understanding of the song's popularity. Please help me re-shape that section and write it out in such a way that helps to illustrate the song's pupularity through the decades. Citations are always helpful. Google Books is a good place to begin. Remember, there are editors who find these lists unencyclopedic and who might just delete it all and be justified under Wikipedia Guidelines. LiPollis ( talk) 12:00, 28 September 2015 (UTC)
Can anyone verify who the lead singer is/was on this song. While all the singers in the group seem to blend harmony in the chorus parts, are the stanzas being sung by Mike Pinera? If it can be verified, place it in the article please. Thanks 2602:306:320A:AF0:3D94:95B9:B4D1:4841 ( talk) 04:46, 15 November 2015 (UTC)
Yes it's Mike Pinera Farwest110 ( talk) 21:31, 14 September 2016 (UTC)