For this month’s post on The Original Vs. The Cover, we are going to cover the song “I Want Candy” originally done by The Strangeloves and later covered by Bow Wow Wow. The song was written by Bert Berns, Bob Feldman, Jerry Goldstein and Richard Gottehrer in 1965 and three of the writers decided to release the song themselves and became known as The Strangeloves.
The Strangeloves were really Bob Feldman, Jerry Goldstein and Richard Gottehrer. However, as The Strangeloves, they said they were sheep farmers from Australia named Giles, Miles and Niles Strange who became filthy rich by cross-breeding sheep. They even wore wigs and unusual clothing when being these three outrageous personalities. At least they never took themselves too seriously…I mean how could you.
The song is believed to be about a dancer named Candy Johnson who the guys saw dancing at the 1964 World’s Fair in New York City, but I don’t know if that has ever been confirmed. The band was originally going to record the song “Bo Didley” but wanted to make the song their own so they re-worked the lyrics and changed things up enough, but you can still hear the main beat to that song in the final product. Lyrically, the song is supposedly based of the 1958 book Candy by Terry Southern and Mason Hoffenberg which is about naive young girl who has a many encounters with much older men.
THE STRANGELOVES
2 Loud 2 Old Music 