Confunkshun's 'Loves Train' is interesting because the song was based on a real life love triangle between two band members and a lady they both wanted.
Police investigate Vallejo’s latest homicide
Back in the Day: Con Funk Shun’s Michael Cooper (Part 2): The funk goes on
By
Tony Wade
Con Funk Shun, which started out as Project Soul in Vallejo, released its fourth album in 1979, “Candy,” on the Mercury Records label. The band’s two previous albums, “Secrets” and “Loveshine,” had gone gold (500,000 units sold) and featured the hits “Ffun” and “Shake and Dance With Me.”
“Candy” included the muscular funk work-out “Chase Me” that was a No. 4 hit and established the band as headliners. Con Funk Shun moved back to California from Memphis, Tennessee.
“We bought the Melody Lounge in Vallejo and turned it into our rehearsal space/recording studio so we could really start churning out the hits,” co-founder/singer/songwriter/guitarist Michael Cooper said.
And churn out the hits they did. “Got To Be Enough” (1980), “Lady’s Wild” (1981) and “Too Tight” (1981), among others, charted. 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.
“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.”
