Good Morning POU! Today’s entry in Music and Mess is credited to The Shy Lurker and Sagittarius for telling us this story in a thread one day with the song in a Rank’em!
What a backstory regarding the classic Con Funk Shun song “Love Train”.
Ironically, the song Con Funk Shun calls their “National Anthem” was never released as a single – the slow jam “Love’s Train” from their 1982 album “To the Max.” An audience favorite, it has a compelling backstory as told by Michael Cooper.
“A tall pretty young lady came to the studio in San Francisco and (singer/multi-instrumentalist) Felton Pilate moved on her quickly. About a month into their relationship, she slides up to me and says she really wanted me,” Cooper said. “One thing led to another and soon she was juggling me and Felton, but I don’t know that – I thought she’d dumped him. She stayed in an apartment that had to buzz you in. One night I went there and she was with Felton. I said the corniest thing a brother could say: ‘If by chance you let me come up, we can talk about this.’ I don’t know where those words came from.”
Those words – or similar ones – became the bridge in “Love’s Train.” Cooper, extremely hurt, went home and poured out his pain into a song that began with the lyrics “warm night, can’t sleep, too hurt, too weak, gotta call her up.”
Ironically, the music track he wrote the song to was one Pilate had created, but with different lyrics. This process had worked before and birthed hits like “Chase Me” and “Ms. Got the Body.”
Soon afterward, the band, per their custom, listened to completed tracks together and voted on which songs to submit to Mercury. They’d heard Pilate’s original track and others and then Cooper’s reworked song came on.
“Everyone said we’d already heard it, but I said no, this is my version. Halfway through the song they realized it was about what had happened between Felton and I and everybody started staring at the floor,” Cooper said. “They tallied the votes and ‘Love’s Train’ was the No. 1 vote-getter and Felton’s got one vote. He then said he wanted to withdraw his music, which would’ve killed the song.”
According to Cooper, keyboard player Danny Thomas then stood up and informed Pilate in an expletive-laden rant that he had to be crazy because that song was a hit. Pilate started bowing and saying he was sorry and they all began laughing. They laughed all the way to the bank because the “non-single” single helped sell the album as it was the only way fans could get their hands on it.