You all may know that the song "Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye" by Steam was never intended to be a hit at all, much less a number one. Songwriter Gary DeCarlo, as Garrett Scott, had been signed to Mercury Records, and brought several quality upbeat pop songs and ballads to the label to be recorded.

According to music writer Fred Bronson, the Garrett Scott songs were to be released as singles, but Mercury needed one more track to fill a B-side. So DeCarlo and his producer, Paul Leka, pulled up a song he had written in the early '60s, "Kiss Him Goodbye," and re-recorded it with a skeleton crew of musicians. They needed some extra percussion, so Leka spliced in and beefed up a drum track from another Garrett Scott recording, added handclaps, then extended it with the "na nas" and "hey heys," no one bothering to revised with additional lyrics. They fattened it up and left it at that.

After hearing the song, Mercury's A&R guy Bob Reno said he thought the song was too good to be just a B-side, and he needed to release another record on the subsidiary Fontana label that year [[1969), so he got DeCarlo's permission to do that, although DeCarlo didn't want the Garrett Scott name to be associated with the record. So the song was released under the mythical group name of Steam.

The rest is history, as they say. NNHHKHB took off on radio and in clubs while Garrett Scott's [[DeCarlo's) records flopped [[which is a shame, some of them were pretty good - check out the Garrett Scott Mercury 45 version of "Workin' on a Groovy Thing" on YouTube). The story of what happened next is murky -- Bronson says that DeCarlo was so miffed at this turn of events that he refused to be involved with any Steam recordings/performances, leaving Leka and Reno to scrounge up a group of musicians to go do that. DeCarlo, however, says that he was willing go out with the Steam group [[presumably on a Garrett Scott & Steam tour), but Leka and Reno nixed that idea and left DeCarlo out in the cold. So who's to say what happened.

Why was it such a hit? I think DeCarlo and the others overlooked the fact that:

[[1) The song has a doggone funky beat, right up there with some Sly & the Family Stone or Dyke & the Blazers records from that period. They anticipated the up-and-coming funk style of the time -- it's very danceable.

[[2) The track was extended to discourage airplay by AM disc jockeys [[since it was an obvious B-side), but by extending the song, they accidentally anticipated the 12-inch dance versions of club tracks, which made it all the more popular in go-gos and early discos. [[Not to mention that break beat at the 1:45 mark)

[[3) Never underestimate the public's love for nonsense lyrics. "Nananana, nananana, hey hey hey, goodbye..." Who wouldn't love chanting that? It was one of the first mass chants for sports crowds, perfect for when the final seconds are ticking away and your team is winning. Even Snoop Dogg used it at the end of his concerts... "nananana, nananana, hey snoop dogg..."

One of the most fascinating unanticipated hits in pop music history.

[[Much of this info came from the "Billboard Book of Number One Hits" by Fred Bronson.)