Will Beatle Paul Twist & Shout For Broadway-Bound Musical About Unknown Legend Bert Berns, Tunesmith?
Mention “Twist And Shout” to a Boomer and you’ll get a shake of the thinning hair or shaved scalp along with recollections of the Fab Four on The Ed Sullivan Show. The more knowing response may even be the Isley Brothers, who recorded it first, in 1962. Ask who wrote the iconic rock number, however, and you’re more than likely to draw a blank look. Answer: Bert Berns. Ask who pulled Van Morrison out of the Belfast band Them and produced “Brown-Eyed Girl,” or who wrote “Piece Of My Heart” — first recorded by Erma Franklin and then made timeless by Janis Joplin — and the answer is the same: Bert Berns. A hit-churning songwriter-turned-producer in the Phil Spector vein, Berns died of a heart attack in 1967. He was just 38 and unlike his contemporaries Spector or Gerry Goffin and Carole King, or Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, Berns was all but unknown beyond the Brill Building cognoscenti.
That’s about to change, at least if siblings Brett and Cassie Berns have any say in the matter. With a little help from their friend and patron Paul McCartney, Bert Berns’ children are on a mission to vest their father’s name in the pop music pantheon, having him inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. San Francisco rock critic Joel Selvin’s comprehensive warts-and-all biography,Here Comes The Night, got this send-off from the New York Times Book Review: The splendid page-turner, subtitled The Dark Soul of Bert Berns And The Dirty Business Of Rhythm & Blues, “rights a historical injustice,” wrote fellow rock historian Robert Gordon, “shining a light on an overshadowed great man and deepening our understanding of a history we continue to dance to.”
Source: Deadline
