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“Love Will Keep Us Together”
By Randal C. Hill, Blast to the Past!
In early 1975, Toni Tennille and Darryl Dragon sat in the Los Angeles office of A & M Records. Company executive Kip Cohen played them a track from the latest Neil Sedaka album, “Sedaka’s Back,” which was a “best of” selection of cuts lifted from three albums he had released in the early 1970s in London. (He had moved to England after the Beatles had demolished his once-successful career.)
The tune Cohen spun on a turntable that day was a bouncy ditty called “Love Will Keep Us Together.” “The minute I heard it,” Toni remembered later, “I knew we would do a number on it.”
Love, love will keep us together
Think of me, babe, whenever
Some sweet-talking girl comes along, singing her song
Don’t mess around, you just gotta be strong
Just stop…’cause I really love you
Stop…I’ll be thinking of you
Look in my heart and let love keep us together
From 1958 to 1963, Neil Sedaka and his lyric-writing partner Howard Greenfield placed 13 RCA singles in the Top 40 charts. But in January 1964 the Fab Four exploded onto the American music scene and, overnight, swept away the careers of most rockers here.
As their final collaboration, Sedaka and Greenfield wrote “Love Will Keep Us Together.” Rock writer Tom Breihan later declared, “The song is about a couple fighting to keep their flame alive, but Sedaka says that he and Greenfield were really writing about each other. Sedaka also says that they were crying when they finished writing it.”
In San Francisco a few years earlier, Toni had co-written songs for an ecology-based rock musical called “Mother Earth.” (1970 had been the first year for Earth Day.) The show was about to move south to Los Angeles, and the troupe’s pianist couldn’t make the move. Tennille ran an ad seeking a replacement musician.
Enter Darryl Dragon, the son of orchestra leader Carmen Dragon. Darryl was known in the industry as “The Captain.” (Beach Boy Mike Love had often teased keyboardist Dragon about wearing a yachting cap onstage during tours.) Darryl was in between gigs, so he flew to the Bay Area, met with Tony and was hired.
Needless to say, neither musician realized that they would spend the rest of their careers together.
Toni and Darryl formed a duo—the Dragons—and spent two years performing at a Los Angeles-area restaurant. It was during that time that they changed their stage name to Captain and Tennille.
“Love Will Keep Us Together” hit the top of the Hot 100 chart, where it stayed for four weeks. It became Captain and Tennille’s signature song and was named Record of the Year at the 1976 Grammy Awards ceremony. The remaining days of the ‘70s brought the hitmaking pair half a dozen more hits.
In 2009, Neil recorded a children’s CD called “Waking Up Is Hard to Do.” Included among the tracks was “Lunch Will Keep Us Together.”
Don’t laugh; that disc earned a whopping 86% approval rating on Amazon! ISI
