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:: In My Own Way ::

:: What Is Love? ::

:: I Love You, You Love Me ::

:: Love Is A Headache ::

:: Ask ::

Since Valentine’s Day approaches, let’s take a listen to some of the ruminations on love that Anthony Quinn bestowed on us back in 1969. The idea for the album was born of drunkenness at a New Year’s Eve party that Quinn threw, according to composer Harold Spina’s liner notes. After much drinking of sparkling burgundy, the party animals decided to greet the first sunrise of the new year with Quinn reading verses from The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, while his tanked guests hummed along. At some point during all this merry-making, Quinn remarked, “Why don’t we record this?” Spina, in a moment of clarity, responded, “Can the world stand it?”

That question went happily unanswered for a few years until, in 1967, Spina and Quinn teamed up to record a single for Capitol Records, “I Love You, You Love Me” (no relation to Barney, the purple dinosaur’s hit of the same name). It became a hit in France, leading Spina and Quinn to believe that the world could indeed stand it, so they recorded an album’s worth of Quinn’s love odes. As this idea seemed a good one while drunk, it might also be a bit easier for the world to stand it if it were equally as intoxicated while listening.


Phil

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