Midnite,

Thom Shepard AND Wood Newton did write Private Malone. Wood was a lifelong friend and golfing buddy with David Ball and David had not had a hit in a while. So they cut it on him and went looking for a deal.Right after 9-11 there were a lot of demand for the "Military themed songs." What they did on that one is not so much make it about a war or military event, but about a soldier who died and his ghost looked after his prized car. Very cool way of saying the same thing differently.

The idea came from a newspaper story Thom read on the day of the writing session. It was his first cut and was number one for 6 weeks. The same situation used to happen to my Father and myself. We bought, sold and restored, old classic cars. Every once and a while we would buy a car from an older couple, who's son had gone to Nam and died. They get too old to deal with the car and need to sell it. We would do that. Found some pretty cool cars, a couple of 60's Mustangs and Chevy Bel Aires and such. Muscle cars got very big in the late 80's and 90's. That is part of what paid for me to move to Nashville.

The neat thing about that particular song was going to the Viet Nam memorial in DC with Wood and Thom. We were expecting some big story about the song and were all walking along. (We were in DC with an NSAI delegation lobbying Congress for copyright protection) So we get to this one panel and there are like Three Malones on the wall.

Wood tells us the story. He actually had a cousin who went to Nam' in 68'. Did two tours of duty and didn't get a scratch. On the night he got home, he went out drinking with some friends and was driving his most prized possesion, a 65 Corvette Roadster.

Sometime around Midnight, they found the car flipped in a ditch and his cousin dead. They didn't think he was drunk, think he fell asleep at the wheel. They didn't use his name because they wanted a little distance from the character. So they just made up the name Malone." Why? Because it rhymed with "HOME."

Big inner story.

MAB