Run Joey Run

"Run Joey Run"
Cover with lyrics
Single by David Geddes
Released	July 1975
Recorded	1975
Genre	Pop rock
Length	2:55
Writer(s)	Paul Vance & Jack Perricone (aka Perry Cone)
Producer(s)	Paul Vance

"Run Joey Run" is a teenage tragedy song performed by soft rock singer David Geddes. It was a US Top 40 hit which peaked at number 4 in the fall of 1975.

Story

The song opens with a brief snippet of wordless choral a capella singing, then abruptly cuts to the voice of a female pleading with her father:
"Daddy, please don't! It wasn't his fault; he means so much to me.
Daddy, please don't! We're gonna get married; just you wait and see."

Geddes sings from first person narrative in the character of the titular young man. Joey recalls the events leading up to a recent tragedy involving his girlfriend Julie, which he relives in his mind every time he tries to sleep.

Late one night, Julie calls Joey warning him not to come to her house; she and her dad have had a fight about their relationship, and it turned violent. It is not explicitly stated, but her father's desire for Joey to "pay for what we've done" and her promise of marriage clearly implies that the young couple have had sex, and perhaps that Julie is pregnant because of it (and thus would be marrying to legitimize the child). Julie warns Joey that her father is armed and urges him to run away to safety. Instead, he rushes to her house and finds her with multiple bruises. She tearfully rushes to his arms.

Julie's father sneaks up behind Joey with his gun, intending to shoot him. Julie sees him and, just a split second before he pulls the trigger, steps into his line of fire. A wounded and bleeding Julie falls and Joey takes her into his arms; she quietly begins to repeat her pleas to her father as her last words but loses consciousness in the middle of the word "married." The accompaniment suddenly stops, the choral section is reprised, and the song closes with the refrain "run, Joey, run" repeated as the song fades out.

Reception

"Run Joey Run" was released in the late summer of 1975, by October the song had peaked at #4 on the Billboard Hot 100. It would be Geddes' only Top 10 hit; his only other hit would barely pierce the Top 20 two months later.

According to Casey Kasem's "American Top 40", David Geddes had recorded several singles for major record labels; none of them were successful. He decided to leave the music business and return to school. Geddes was attending law school at Wayne State University in Detroit when he was called by producer Paul Vance to record a song that Vance and Jack Perricone had written. Perricone, who had previously arranged a couple of recordings that David Geddes had made with a group called the Rock Garden, remembered Geddes's voice from his earlier records and played the recordings for Vance, who thought that Geddes would be perfect for their new song. Geddes flew to New York City to record the vocals for the song (with Julie's lines sung by Vance's daughter Paula) and then returned to Detroit to begin his third year of law school. Several months later, the song, "Run Joey Run", began to race up the Billboard Hot 100. Geddes dropped out of law school with only one semester to go and re-entered the music business.^[1]

Chart performance

Glee cover

"Run Joey Run"
Single by Lea Michele, Mark Salling, Jonathan Groff, Cory Monteith, Heather Morris and Naya Rivera
Released	2010
Format	Digital download
Recorded	2010
Genre	Pop rock
Length	2:51
Label	Columbia
Writer(s)	Paul Vance
Glee Cast singles chronology
"Physical" (2010) "Run Joey Run" (2010) "Total Eclipse of the Heart" (2010)

The song was covered in the Glee episode "Bad Reputation".

References

External links

• Lyrics of this song at MetroLyrics