Eternal Flame

Bangles lead singer Susanna Hoffs wrote this with songwriters Billy Steinberg and Tom Kelly. In our interview with Billy Steinberg, he explained: "Tom and I met Susanna Hoffs and we set out to write several songs for their next recording. When we got together with Susanna, she admired a song that Tom and I had written for Cyndi Lauper called 'Unconditional Love.' I think she liked the song because it was highly melodic and resembled a ballad that would not have been out of place on The Beatles' Revolver album. She was sort of envious of that song, she said she wished we could come up with something as good as that song. I told her, 'Susanna, we're going to write something better than that song.'"

Steinberg and Kelly have written many hit songs, including "Like A Virgin" for Madonna, "Alone" for Heart, and "I Touch Myself" for The Divinyls. They also wrote the Bangles' hit "In Your Room."

There is an Eternal Flame at the gravesite of Elvis Presley in Memphis that inspired this song. When we spoke with Susanna Hoffs, she said: " I told Billy the story about this official private tour of Graceland the Bangles had been given. The day we were there we were taken out to the Garden of Memories, and there was this little box which was supposed to have a lit flame in it, an eternal flame. Actually, that day it was raining so the flame was not on. That led to Billy saying, "Oh, eternal flame is a good title for a song." So we crafted the lyrics at Billy's house and then we took it over to Tom's studio. I was really thrilled when I had a demo of this somewhat simple, pure, melodic, almost like a lullaby that I came up with."

Said Steinberg: "Susanna was talking about the Bangles having visited Graceland, and she said there was some type of shrine to Elvis that included some kind of eternal flame. As soon as those words were mentioned, I immediately thought of the synagogue in the town of Palm Springs, California where I grew up. I remember during our Sunday school class they would walk us through the sanctuary. There was one little red light and they told us it was called the eternal flame. When I was a child I remembered thinking it never burned out, that it was something like the sun or something beyond our capacity to even contemplate. It seemed like a very profound thought when I was a child. I thought, 'Well that's a great title for a song,' so very quickly I wrote the rest of the lyrics for the song based on that title."

Regarding the composition of this song, Billy Steinberg told us: "Tom started to write the chords and the melodies on an acoustic guitar at my house. The bridge to the song, or the middle eight as the British would say, the part that starts, 'Say my name, sun shines through the rain,' that part in particular is very Beatlesque. Tom, who's a great lover of harmonies, worked with Susanna to create almost a tribute to The Beatles and Beach Boys background harmonies in our demo and the Bangles recreated them on their record. One of the unusual things about that song, which is also attributable to its Beatlesque roots, is the fact that it really doesn't have a chorus. The part that starts, 'Close your eyes, give me your hand, do you feel my heart beating, do you understand,' that part sets out to be the verse of the song and then the title is incorporated in the last line of the verse when it says, 'Am I only dreaming, or is this burning an eternal flame.' By the end of the song when all the Bangles chime in and re-sing the first verse at the end of the song, the whole verse feels like a chorus. The Beatles used to write in that way, for example, 'We Can Work It Out.' The line, 'We can work it out,' is sort of a tag in the verse. The verse ends with, 'We can work it out, we can work it out.' It isn't a chorus, it doesn't begin with the line, 'We can work it out,' which would be more traditional pop hit structure. The whole song 'Eternal Flame' is so melodic that it doesn't really miss a traditional chorus, it just works the way it is. In one more Beatle type arrangement decision we do the bridge after two verses and then there's a guitar solo and then we do the bridge again. Again, The Beatles would often do that. In the song 'We Can Work Out,' the bit that begins, 'Life is very short, and there's no time for fussing and fighting my friend' - I think that happens twice in the song. Sometimes if you have a bridge that's really good, it's nice to repeat it, and also if a song doesn't have a traditional Pop chorus you almost need to repeat the bridge so that the song is long enough and that's what we did in 'Eternal Flame'."

Billy Steinberg: "One of the main differences between our demo and what was to become the Bangles' record is that we based our demo on the acoustic guitar while the Bangles' record, which was produced by Davitt Sigerson, is based on a simple piano. I think we based our demo on the acoustic guitar because there was no keyboard player in the Bangles. When you're a songwriter and you're trying to write something for a particular project, you very self-consciously do whatever you can do to see that it gets on the record and to ensure getting it on the record you want to make it sound like something the band could play. For that reason we tried to leave keyboards off our demo, but then we were very pleased with Davitt Sigerson's production and the way it featured the piano. I know Tom and I both loved Davitt's production, we both loved Susanna's lead vocal and all the Bangles' harmonies and were very pleased with the way the song turned out."

When Susanna Hoffs played the demo of this song to their producer Davitt Sigerson, he came up with the idea of giving it a Patsy Cline sounds, which an arrangement that he called a "music box." Hoffs tells us that as the recording process for the album moved forward, this song was nearly forgotten. "because 'Eternal Flame' didn't really have drum kit on it, we were halfway through the making of the record and we hadn't worked on it," she said. "So I said, 'Hey, are we going to do 'Eternal Flame''? I was sort of afraid to mention it. And Davitt said, 'Oh, yeah, yeah. We're going to do it. I found a keyboard player and you and me will get together with him and we'll just work on the arrangement.' So I'm glad I brought it up. I'm not sure what would have happened if I hadn't."

That's John Philip Shenale playing those all-important keyboards on this track. He and Susanna Hoffs worked together to get that music box sound they were looking for. Shenale has an impressive discography; some of the albums he played on include Ritual de lo Habitual by Jane's Addiction, Boys For Pele by Tori Amos, and Charmed Life by Billy Idol.

Hoffs was the only Bangle to write this song, and while she handled the lead vocals, there were significant contributions from the other group members. Said Susanna: "We created a little track, brought it to the studio and then we laid down these incredible harmonies. It was so much fun putting the track together because it was different from everything else on the record. It was all kind of pieced together in the studio. Vicki played a really beautiful guitar solo on it. I remember our manager at the time, Miles Copeland, came in and said, 'Nice song, but this'll never get played on the radio. It doesn't have drums on it.'

Everything with the history of that song, I had to keep protecting it and fighting for it. It just seemed like at any moment it would disappear, like something would strike it down. So it was a very sweet success when the song finally came out in the form that it was when Miles heard it."

The Bangles broke up soon after this was recorded - Hoffs wanted to pursue a solo career and work on movies. The Bangles have had several reunions since.

The Bangles re-released this on the album Eternal Flame (release date June 30, 1998), and then in 2001 on Eternal Flame: The Best of the Bangles. The Bangles officially reformed in the summer of 2000, announcing tour dates and plans for a new studio album. (thanks, Dino - Bandung, Indonesia)

In 2001 Atomic Kitten covered this, taking the song back to top of the UK chart. It was the first time a song had reached #1 twice performed by 2 different female acts. The Kitten's version was featured in the 2001 film The Parole Officer.

Atomic Kitten Liz McClarnon explained why they recorded this song in a Sun newspaper web chat on November 22, 2001: "We thought it was such a brilliant song that we wanted to bring it to a younger generation."