“Even after 30 years, it’s still brand new and alive for me,” guitarist Eric Bazilian says speaking of “One of Us,” the hypnotic and provocative 1995 alt-rock gem he penned for singer Joan Osborne. The tune launched her career and stormed the Billboard charts as her debut single before going on to earn multiple Grammy nominations.
It was a welcome victory for Bazilian. Along with songwriting partner Rob Hyman, the guitarist had cofounded the American rock act the Hooters in 1980. The group had mainstream success in the mid to late 1980s, but their U.S. fame began to wane with the rise of grunge.
Then, in 1994, Bazilian and Hyman were recruited by their friend and producer Rick Chertoff to write the bulk of the songs for Osborne’s debut album, Relish. During a break in the writing sessions at Hyman’s house in Philadelphia, Bazilian picked up his bandmate’s Gibson ES-330 and started playing around with a mysterious-sounding arpeggiated guitar figure.
“It just came to me,” he says. “Rob came in and said, ‘Wow, that’s a cool riff. Let me get my Walkman and record that.’ ”
The next day, Bazilian couldn’t remember how to play the riff, and it took several hours for Hyman to locate the tape, which he’d mislabeled. Late in the day, the two, along with Osborne, listened to the recording.
“Joan liked it and started to play around with the riff,” Bazilian says. “But there was no real push to do anything with it, and by now it was time to leave.”
That night at home, Bazilian and his girlfriend (now wife), Sarah, watched a Beatles documentary about the making of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. “She was curious about four-track recording, so I figured, I’ve got a Tascam Portastudio and a keyboard sampler, and this riff sounds pretty good. I’ll give her a personal demonstration,” he says.
Bazilian grabbed his ’59 Les Paul Special and started playing the riff he’d come up with a day earlier. Before long, he had a sketch of a song recorded. “I looked at Sarah like, ‘Hey, who’s the man?’ And she said, ‘Okay, sing it.’ ”
Responding to what amounted to a challenge, Bazilian freestyled the lyrics, only he didn’t sing in his own voice. “I sang really low, like Brad Roberts from the Crash Test Dummies," he says, referring to the bass-baritone singer who fronts the Canadian rock band.
"It just came to me like that,” he says. “One might call it spiritual, but I’ll call it otherworldly. I was there, but I wasn’t there.”
"It just came to me like that. One might call it spiritual, but I’ll call it otherworldly. I was there, but I wasn’t there.”
— Eric Bazilian
He stresses that religion — or to be specific, God — was the furthest thing from his mind. “It’s not about the G-word or wherever he lives. It’s more about the stranger on the bus trying to make his way home. Sarah came up with the last part of that line,” he quickly adds.
Bazilian considered sending the song to the Crash Test Dummies, but the next day, while working with Osborne, Hyman and Chertoff, he played them his demo. “Rob leaned back and folded his arms like, 'Another weird Eric song. Let’s get back to work,' ” he says.
“But Rick could tell I had something. He looked at Joan and said, ‘Do you think you can sing that?' It was almost like a dare."
Osborne responded, "I can sing the phone book" and took a pass at singing over the demo. Eyebrows were raised.
“I immediately started writing my Grammy speech,” Bazilian jokes.
The song lay dormant until recording shifted to Big Blue Studios in Katonah, New York. Several attempts were made to cut the song with drummer Andy Kravitz (who played on the bulk of the album), but as Bazilian notes, “It just wasn’t gelling.”
The track was almost sidelined entirely, but on a whim Hyman gave it a go on the drums. “And that was that,” Bazilian says. “He did an amazing take, and he’s not a drummer.”
The guitarist then cut a wildcat shred guitar solo using his 1954 Les Paul goldtop through engineer William Whitman’s Vox AC30 combo. “It was totally spontaneous,” Bazilian says. “Usually, I work things out, but that solo was very much in the moment.”
Relish was released in the spring of 1995 to slow sales, all of which changed once “One of Us” hit the airwaves and MTV that fall. The single rose to number four on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, topped the charts in numerous countries and drove sales of the album past the three million mark.
Bazilian never did get to recite his Grammy speech — “One of Us” lost both Record of the Year and Song of the Year to Seal’s “Kiss From a Rose” — but he says the song’s success was sweet validation after a decade of career highs and lows.
"It was one of those rare moments when I captured what I didn’t know I wanted to say."
— Eric Bazilian
“I was on a rocket ship with the Hooters that came down just as fast as it went up,” he says. “That happens in the business if you’re around for a while. I think it was really good for my dynamic with Rob.
"He had a hit with ‘Time After Time’ [which he co-wrote with Cyndi Lauper], and now I had my own thing. We each had hit songs that were very much us. The redemption felt really good.”
The good vibes continue years after he wrote "One of Us" spontaneously, one night in 1995.
“Sometimes I’ll stumble on a song on the radio, and it’ll bring me back to the moment of creation," Bazilian says. " ‘One of Us’ still feels vital to me. It’s a timeless message that just came to me one night. It was one of those rare moments when I captured what I didn’t know I wanted to say.”
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