The offices of Aldon Music weren't in the real Brill Building, but history has declared Aldon the epicenter of the Brill Building Sound, so let's go with that.

For one generation, Don Kirshner was the emperor of bubblegum, the man behind The Monkees and The Archies, the monotoned host of 'Don Kirshner's Rock Concert,' but his legacy rests in the hundreds of songs that his publishing company Aldon placed on the charts in the early '60s, crafted by the songwriting teams who banged out tunes-to-order in the cubicles at 1650 Broadway. Who put the bomp? Well, Kirshner did, as much as anyone else.

Of all the perfect songs generated in this music factory, maybe the most perfect is Gerry Goffin & Carole King's 'Up On The Roof.' King's melody climbs way up to the top of the stairs, shifting and spiraling as Goffin's lyric sketches the ideal of escape, the trouble-proof paradise that looks upon the urban landscape. The song is filled with effortless-seeming internal rhymes, clever touches (they wrote it for The Drifters, so there's an 'all my cares just drift right into space' line), and a romanticism straight out of 'West Side Story,' only more real and more of-the-moment than anything in the Bernstein-Sondheim score.

Yeah, I said it. Those kids at 1650 (and the other writers in that orbit) wrote songs that -- I'm sure I've mentioned this before -- capture more vividly the pulse and idiom of the streets than that much-honored musical. Barry Mann & Cynthia Weil's 'Uptown,' and 'We Gotta Get Out Of This Place,' Goffin & King's 'Chains,' and 'Halfway To Paradise,' and 'One Fine Day,' and 'Another Night With The Boys.' Pomus & Shuman's 'This Magic Moment' and 'Save The Last Dance For Me.' Here's an exercise for you: re-score 'West Side Story' with Brill Building songs. Try telling me that 'This Magic Moment' and 'I'm Into Something Good' aren't better in the 'Maria' and 'Tonight' slots. That you wouldn't want Anita and the other Sharks girls singing 'Uptown.'

But I digress. Kirshner gave these writer teams a place to craft the teenage dream, and sometimes the results were dazzlingly sophisticated. Sometimes people ask me what the best pop song is, and my answer, a lot of the time, is 'Up On The Roof.' It's got everything. The singer has this little oasis, this secret spot, and then it becomes more than a description; it's an invitation:

'On the roof's the only place I know/Where you just have to wish to make it so/Let's go...' and that leads back to the title, and I think Springsteen* is just one writer who learned all he needed about dramatic/romantic momentum from that section of music.

"At night the stars put on a show for free/And darling you can share it all with me,' like he's reaching out his hand as the song hits one of its many climaxes -- Carole is keeping up with, and driving, Gerry's narrative -- and then then there's that wonderful transition ("I keep-a-telling-you') that segues into the concluding verse, where he tells her that there's room enough for two up there, and together they climb the stairs ("Come on, baby!').

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpVUAYCBJR8

As I say, a perfect song. Kirshner told Carole and Gerry, we need a hit for The Drifters. A single that would stay on the charts for a few months, then become a golden oldie, replaced by other Drifters songs (the nearly-as-good 'Under The Boardwalk,' for example), and then forgotten.

Except not.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQKT-okc3G8

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