By Brad Gallagher:
The year was 1976. I was a freshman in high school and our varsity basketball team was playing in the league championship game. At that time, my sister was a senior and was on the cheerleading squad, so I attended all the games with her. I enjoyed going to all the games and cheering on the team, but this game was the most memorable. It was not just because it was the championship game, but it was also because we were winning. The game was close all the way through, but in the waning minutes, as the game clock ticked down, it became more and more evident that our team was going to walk away with the victory.
Suddenly, with only second remaining on the clock, I could here what sounded like someone singing at the far end of the bleachers on our side of the court. A couple seconds later I noticed that a few people had joined in with the singer, and then a few more, and few more until virtually every person on our side was singing. And Loudly. The song went like this:
“Na Na Na Na, Na Na Na Na, Hey Hey Hey, Goodbye”.
Oh yeah, you recognize it don’t you? We knew we had the game won and we just wanted to bid the other team “Farewell”. So we sang. The administrators of our school, however, thought that singing that particular song to the losing team was in poor taste and they were very embarrassed that their students would be so mean and callous. Of course they apologized to the administration of the opposing team’s school and went on to forbid us from ever singing that song again to an opposing team. This many years later, I can’t remember if we ever did sing the song again, but I vividly remember singing it at that championship game.
So what does this have to do with a band that never was?
As The Story Goes:
In the early 1960’s a man named Paul Leka and a man named Gary DeCarlo along with a man named Dale Frausher were members of a doo-wop group from Connecticut that went by the name “The Glenwoods”. Leka, however, had higher aspirations than just being a part of a singing group. He wanted to be a music producer and writer, and he was able to talk Frausher into moving to New York with him to chase that dream. It was then that the Glenwoods disbanded and went their separate ways.
Somewhere along the line in the years that followed, DeCarlo joined them and wrote four songs that he recorded under the Mercury record label with Leka as the producer. The executives at Mercury liked the songs so much that they wanted to make them all “A” side singles. In those days many singles were released on a 45 record which had only one song on each side. The song that was supposed to become a hit song was put on the “A” side and a song that was not quite so good was put on the “B” side of the record. Unfortunately DeCarlo had only written those four songs, so he had to go back to the drawing board and come up with some B-side songs.
They went back to the studio and started writing. Leka sat down at the piano and started playing but had no words, so instead of words, he just played and sang “na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na” to the music. Then, after a while, DeCarlo added “hey, hey”. And a song was born. The rest of the words were added later and the song was named, “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye”. They recorded the song in one session with Leka playing piano, and the studio engineer dubbing in some drum tracks from one of the other four songs that were slated for the A-side.
The only problem they had was that since they were just song writer and producer, they were not a band. They had never performed, never gone on tour, and they didn’t even have a name to call themselves. Legend has it though that one of them, either Leka or DeCarlo glanced out the window during the recording and saw a manhole cover from which steam was emitting, and suggested that they print the name “Steam” on the records even though there was no band named Steam, and see what happened. Well, the song became a hit, and a one hit wonder at that, and was credited to a band named Steam that didn’t even exist. And, the song on the B-side of the record became the hit over the song on the A-side.
“Na, Na, Hey, Hey, Goodbye” was the number 1 song on the Billboard charts for two weeks in December of 1969, and of course after it’s success at #1, Leka assembled a band and called them Steam. It was also covered by both “Bananarama” in 1983, and by “The Nylons” in 1987. And, the version by The Nylons peaked at number 12 on the Billboard Hot 100 list that year under the name “Kiss Him Goodbye”. Over the years this song has been used in many competitions to “kindly and gracefully” bid the losing competitor goodbye, such as in my high school story. The Chicago White Sox, for instance, played it at every home game that they won in the late 1970’s. But it was not just in sports. In 2017, the Democrat lead House of Representatives chanted it to the Republicans when they passed the “American Health Care Act” as a subtle prediction that many of the Republicans would not be reelected. And who can forget the January 2019 GMC truck tailgate commercial in which they played this song while showing people throwing away tailgates with competitor’s emblems on them? (I think that was a super bowl add)
So there you have it. A number 1 hit by a band that didn’t exist, at least not at that time. Not bad for a one hit wonder.
Come back and see me real soon right hear on As The Story Goes.
Click this link to hear “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye” performed by the the group “Steam” that was formed in the 1970’s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PxanXM48gI
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AS THE STORY GOES 