Songs of true stories that happened to the songwriter(s)

A Christmas classic with a surprising story.

"Do You Hear What I Hear?" - written by Noel Regney and Gloria Shayne

    Performed and recorded by many genres and people since 1962. 

In 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis and Cold War, they were in a recording studio listening to the radio. They were afraid they would be obliterated by nuclear missiles. So they wrote the song about the nativity scene as a cry for peace.

Piano Man - Billy Joel

Based on his experiences while playing at a piano bar in Los Angeles.

The Pusher - Steppenwolf

This song is about a drug dealer. It is one of the first songs to deal with harsh realities of drug use, and condemns "the pusher" as a heartless criminal who is only after your money.
Hoyt Axton wrote this song after one of his friends died of a drug overdose. Axton struggled with addiction for much of his life and was keen on exposing the dangers, which he did on "The Pusher" and on another song recorded by Steppenwolf, "Snowblind Friend."

Nick Cave had already mostly written this song and his 15 year old son died by falling after experimenting with LSD. He changed some word before recording. He has written a lot about loss and love over the years.

"Girl in Amber" - Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYZIdtmdNm4 

Who’ll Stop The Rain - CCR

Fogerty said that he wrote it the day he got home from Woodstock after seeing the kids out in the rain, all muddy, cold, and “huddled together trying to keep warm.” 

Jump they say, Bowie

 It deals with Bowies feelings for his

schizophrenic half brother, who died 

by suicide. He has also stated his own

feelings about jumping into the unknown

metaphysically

" Ain't Got Nothin' " -  Oasis

Written by Liam Gallagher after the hotel bar brawl in Munich in 2002, in which he lost two front teeth.

"No Sugar Tonight" - The Guess Who

--- came to Randy Bachman from an experience he had walking in downtown Berkeley, California. He was walking and talking with a band mate when he saw four big biker guys walking on the same sidewalk coming towards them. He decided to cross the street instead of confronting the bikers, then he heard the skidding of car tires. The car came to a skidding stop and a biker lady got out of the car, walked over to one of the bikers and engaged in a heated conversation with him. When the argument was over the she walked back to the car, turned around, then shouted to the biker, 'One more thing honey, you're not getting any sugar tonight. The car took off, Randy crossed the street went back to his hotel and started writing the song.

Dude (Looks Like a Lady) - Aerosmith

The song is about Mötley Crüe frontman Vince Neil's long blonde hair which caused the band (Aerosmith) to mistake him for a woman one evening in a bar.

"Don't Call Us, We'll Call You" - Sugarloaf

After their hit "Green Eyed Lady", they lost their label. This song tells how they had a lot of rejection, using the industry cliches they heard. Claridge took them and this song became a hit, in 1975.
CBS Records was one of the labels that turned them down. Sugarloaf got retribution by revealing an unlisted phone number of CBS Records near the beginning of the song with the sound of the touch-tones that would be dialed. If you figured it out, you could dial those number that matched the tones. When the song became a hit, CBS Record had that number changed. The end of the song has another set of tones to the White House. The band got a visit from the State Department asking why so many callers mentioned Sugarloaf.