Songwriter Holly Knight on hits for Tina Turner, Pat Benatar, Heart, more

1980s vinyl and more at the Goldmine store

Songwriter Holly Knight has hits recorded by Scandal featuring Patty Smyth, Pat Benatar, Heart, Aerosmith, Chaka Khan and more that are featured in her autobiography I Am the Warrior: My Crazy Life Writing the Hits and Rocking the MTV Eighties. We talk about her hits and more from KISS, Meat Loaf, Fefe Dobson and Ozzy Osbourne, but begin African American Music Appreciation Month with the performer who recorded nine of her compositions and wrote the foreword to Knight’s book, Tina Turner.

GOLDMINE: Welcome to Goldmine. Congratulations on the new book and condolences on the loss of Tina Turner. In 1981, the second album by your quartet Spider was released with a seven-minute version of “Better Be Good to Me” opening the second side, a track you co-wrote with fellow songwriter and producer Mike Chapman. Three years later it became a Top 5 four-minute hit for Tina, the first of nine songs of yours that she recorded and listed in your book’s foreword.

HOLLY KNIGHT: Yes, I am honored that she wrote the book’s foreword. During an A&R meeting there were a lot of songs that the team wanted to play for Tina for consideration. Someone from my publishing company had submitted “Better Be Good to Me” that I co-wrote with Mike Chapman. What I have heard is that once she heard it, she began strutting around the room, singing along with the song, and saying, “This is the song for me. This is exactly what I am feeling and what I want to say.”

GM: It is a wonderful rocker for her. I just love it.

HK: Thank you. I was her rock writer. She used to say that to me.

GM: In your book, you share an amazing story of flying to Europe for the song you wrote specifically for Tina, “One of the Living,” spending time with her, ensuring the key was right and the female bonding time you had, including her teasing your hair.

HK: That memory was certainly going through my mind when I learned of her passing. That was one of my favorite songs that she cut. It is one of the most edgy rock tunes that she recorded. As you know, in the book I tell the story of singing background vocals on “One of the Living” and standing right next to Tina. I certainly didn’t expect to do that. She asked me, “Did you do the background vocals as well on the demo?” I told her yes and then she said, “Well, get in here.” She told the sound engineer to set up another microphone. Then she pulled me next to her and moved me back and forth until I was where she wanted me to be. It was nerve-racking but rewarding because she is the most amazing singer and I got to sing all the high parts. I am so pleased that it came out great. It was an experience of a lifetime.”

GM: With “The Best” you added a bridge specifically for Tina.

HK: That was the only way that she was going to cut it. As it turned out, she was right, and it made the song much meatier. I think that addition and the fact that it was Tina doing it, made it a hit but it didn’t become a hit in the U.S. right away.

GM: It peaked at No. 15 and then it was given somewhat of a second chance, at least for jukeboxes, when it also became the vinyl flip side of her next Top 40 single “Steamy Windows,” written by Tony Joe White, which only spent one week in the Top 40, peaking at No. 39.

HK: The success of “The Best” has been a slow burn that has been going on since the 1980s. The song is bigger now than it ever was. Slow and steady wins the race.

Tina Turner

Fabulous Flip Side: The Best

A side: Steamy Windows

Billboard Hot 100 debut: November 25, 1989

Peak position: No. 39

Capitol 44473

GM: I have heard more of your Tina songs on the radio recently. SIRIUSXM turned Soul Town Channel 49 into The Tina Turner Channel and I heard “You Can’t Stop Me Loving You.”

HK: After Tina passed away, I spent the weekend editing together a five-minute video of all the songs that I had written or co-written that she recorded and put it into one place. It was a trip down memory lane with so many things I had forgotten about. If you go to the link, below, you can watch all the songs stream together. She was my muse.

Tribute of Holly Knight compositions recorded by Tina Turner

GM: The book’s title is I Am the Warrior and I understand the theme of the struggles you went through to become a successful songwriter for the 1980s MTV generation and beyond. Before you wrote for Scandal, I enjoyed hearing their songs “Goodbye to You” and “Love’s Got a Line on You” on the radio from their EP, but I didn’t purchase it. Then I heard “The Warrior.” It was so catchy. I bought the picture sleeve single with Patty Smyth on the cover and saw on the label that it was written by H. Knight and M. Gilder (not N. Gilder). Until I read your book, I didn’t know that you wrote it with Nick Gilder who I knew from the Canadian band Sweeney Todd with “Roxy Roller” and his solo hit “Hot Child in the City” plus an exciting solo single that I heard on Canadian radio between those two called “Runaways in the Night.”

HK: I didn’t know it was shown as M. Gilder on the label. Wow! I credited Nick for adding the metaphorical “bang bang” part of that lyric. He has a quirky sense about him which I love.

GM: A few months before “The Warrior,” I saw your name for the first time on another 45 of mine, Pat Benatar’s “Love is a Battlefield.” That video was so fun to watch on MTV.

HK: I was at the MTV Video Music Awards and the Grammys when she won a Grammy for it. Pat sent me a telegram which said, “Thank you for writing me a great song.” That was so nice because very rarely do you get acknowledgement from the artists. I saved it all these years. The Grammy Museum has a new exhibit for the inductees to the Songwriters Hall of Fame who have loaned special items from their lives which were significant, so that telegram is in the Grammy Museum right now. I also have all the original demos of my songs.

GM: On “Invincible,” there are high vocal notes at the end which really show off what Pat Benatar can do.

HK: I think that is one of my favorite songs of mine that has been recorded and she definitely nailed it.

GM: Meat Loaf is a big family favorite for me, my wife Donna and our daughter Brianna. He had been in our life for decades beginning with me reporting Bat Out of Hell sales weekly to Cleveland International Records President Steve Popovich in the late 1970s, to Brianna and I interviewing Meat Loaf in 2016 about his final album Braver Than We Are. A decade prior to that was his Top 10 album Bat Out of Hell III: The Monster is Loose with you co-writing the “Carmina Burana”-like “Monstro” followed by “Alive,” a great song about longevity.

HK: Thank you. “Alive” should have been a single. Andrea Remanda and I started it. Desmond Child, who was producing the album, asked us to write something for the album and he ended up joining us and finishing it. There is a fourth writer, James Michael, who I didn’t meet. When Meat Loaf was in the studio recording the song, there was a part that he didn’t like, so his friend James threw in another part for the song. Most of the time was spent with just the three of us, Andrea, Desmond and me writing “Alive.”

GM: A lesson in your book that I learned is how one experience can lead to another. I think about your work with Mike Chapman on a variety of songs. With Desmond Child, I see his name with yours writing “Hide Your Heart” for KISS with Paul Stanley, years before you and Desmond wrote for Meat Loaf. I first became aware of him in 1979, when I wrote a review of the Desmond Child and Rouge album which included the single “Our Love is Insane.”

HK: Desmond Child and Rouge used to open for my band Spider. Neither one of us knew back then that we were going to be songwriters instead being in bands. I always wanted to be a rock star. We followed a similar trajectory and have remained friends all these years.

GM: Another person you have written for is Canada’s Fefe Dobson who I learned of when we were living in Nevada. Donna heard Fefe’s music on an adult alternative radio station out of Reno called Alice 96.5. I bought her 2003 debut album in the U.S. and a 2004 Canadian CD single on a visit there. In 2006, we heard on that radio station that there would be an after work mini concert with Fefe that evening, so I went. She and an acoustic guitarist played six songs, half of which were from her new album. I asked her afterward if she had copies of the new album for sale and she said that it had been delayed and they were trying to work it out with the label. For years I looked for that album to come out. In 2010, her next album finally came out but didn’t include the new songs I heard at that 2006 show. Finally in 2012 the 2006 album Sunday Love was released digitally, and it includes your song “Get Over Me” which is such a great song and a shame that this has been overlooked.

HK: Thank you. It is a great song and I have rerecorded it with a singer who I have been working with who is an incredible rock vocalist named Lena Hall. I am still waiting for someone to make it a hit. I have so many killer songs sitting on ice, waiting for a chance. Some of the best stuff I have ever written has never been cut. 

GM: You mention that in the book with “Slow Burn,” a ballad recorded by Ozzy Osbourne but not released. I can only imagine how great that sounds. When he has recorded ballads like Black Sabbath’s “She’s Gone” from the often-overlooked 1976 album Technical Ecstasy, I love the emotion and clarity of his vocals.

HK: He cut it and played it for me. We had co-written it and it sounded wonderful. It was going to be a single, but they ended up not putting it on the record.

GM: Like your time with Tina Turner, you write about female bonding time with Heart’s Ann and Nancy Wilson. Ann sang “Never,” and Nancy sang “There’s the Girl,” which I didn’t realize until I read your book. I guess I never saw the video and their voices are more similar than I realized at the time.

HK: They are genetically connected like The Everly Brothers or Wendy and Carnie Wilson in Wilson Phillips, and their voices blend so beautifully. Matthew and Gunnar Nelson are another example, but there is no doubt that Ann is the powerhouse in Heart. Nancy has the same sound but without the angst and fierceness that Ann has.

GM: When you wrote about 10% songwriting credit for Aerosmith, fixing their “Ragtime” song and turning it into the hit “Rag Doll,” that was a surprise for me because I assumed that songwriting payments were always evenly split.

HK: That is true unless you all agree otherwise. I wasn’t going to argue with Steven Tyler. I would have done it for free. I just wanted the writing credit because I wanted my name next to his. I was just a big fan of Aerosmith. I’ve never done that before or since. I have no regrets. The bulk of the song was written before I ever met them. I tightened the most important screws to take it to the next level. I don’t like to do that. I like to be there from the beginning because I am first and foremost a musician.

GM: Speaking about being a musician, on your 1988 self-titled album on Columbia, I enjoy “Howling at the Moon” which you recorded with Nancy Wilson joining you. It is such an enjoyable flip side of your Top 100 single “Heart Don’t Fail Me Now.”

HK: Oh, thank you. That is another song that I would like to recut with someone to give it another chance. 

GM: We have talked about the group Heart, just mentioned your solo single “Heart Don’t Fail Me Now” from 1988, well, there was also “Hide Your Heart” the following year in the Top 100 by KISS, which we briefly mentioned before. The video warns about gang violence at the very beginning which I would not have picked up on by listening to the song.

HK: You are just a plethora of information. Are you familiar with the work Paul Stanley is doing with Soul Station?

GM: Absolutely. Eric Singer and I go back to 6th grade in 1969, so we have known each other longer than Paul and Gene have known each other. Now and Then by Paul Stanley’s Soul Station was in my Top 10 albums of 2021. It is a wonderful collection of soul classics plus five songs that Paul wrote in the same style, which are great. Eric is on drums with the group, just like he is with KISS.

HK: I did not know that it included original tunes, too. I saw them perform early when it was just a tribute, with Paul singing with a falsetto vocal versus shouting with KISS, which doesn’t require the same vocal finesse.

GM: From your book, you taught me Sting’s “Fragile” that you used to sing to your son Dylan. It has a nice Latin flavor.

HK: Yes, and it has a great acoustic guitar. You are referring to the chapter “Songs I Wish I Had Written” near the end of the book. It was a fun challenge that my editor suggested. I enjoyed writing that because I was able to showcase a list across the music spectrum from the James Bond theme to “Hallelujah” by Leonard Cohen. 

GM: I will be mentioning you again in my annual Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Inductees article in November when Chaka Khan is inducted. She hit the R&B Top 20 in 1989 with “Baby Me.”

HK: I co-wrote that one with Billy Steinberg, who is still a very good friend of mine. He is like the male version of me as a songwriter. He co-wrote “Like a Virgin,” “True Colors,” “Eternal Flame” and more. I was put together with him by Mike Chapman, who was also my publisher at the time in addition to being my frequent co-writer and mentor. We wrote “Baby Me” with Madonna in mind and before we had a chance to send it to her, it was sent to Chaka Khan, and she decided to cut it. I was thrilled because I was a fan of Rufus and her solo work. 

GM: The book ends with your discography of compositions, and the artist, album and year of release, including Bonnie Tyler, Wynonna Judd, John Waite, Suzi Quatro, Cherie Currie, Ace Frehley, Molly Hatchett, Shawn Colvin, Animotion, Lou Gramm, Rachel Sweet, Smokie, Queen Latifah, Cee Lo Green, Rod Stewart, Less Than Jake, Divinyls, Hall & Oates, Cheap Trick, Bon Jovi, Lita Ford, Aaron Neville, Kim Wilde, Agnetha Faltskog, a personal favorite name The Donnas, the people we already mentioned, and more. This is such an impressive lifetime list of work. Congratulations on that success and the book.

HK: Thank you. The book is dedicated to anyone who ever had a dream and was told no. I hope that the book inspires the readers to not listen to naysayers and keep going if you believe in something. It takes a lot of strength to not listen to people. I have spent my whole life doing that in one form or another, even when wanting to do this book. I sent a few chapters out and was rejected for not being a household name so I stopped writing for a few years. Then people kept bugging me, saying that I had so many different stories to share, and I am glad that I did it. It is centered on the MTV years even though I never stopped writing after that. It was such a unique time, and I was very lucky to have songs that were very popular on that television station. It is a coming-of-age story with each chapter being like a television episode. I have also narrated the audio book version. Next, I will begin a second book which will be more like a songwriting master class. Thank you so much for inviting me to talk with you. I am looking forward to your Goldmine article. 

Related links:

Tribute of Holly Knight compositions recorded by Tina Turner

linktr.ee/hollyknightsongwriter

hollyknight.com

Fabulous Flip Sides is in its ninth year

goldminemag.com/columns/fabulous-flip-sides

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