Tom made the reference to Del Shannon just as a quick one-off name check for his friend, who was a kind of old-time 50s crooner type who had written the #1 hit "Little Runaway" back in 1961 and was hanging around the studio a lot when Tom was recording Full Moon Fever in 1988. They got along really good, I think Tom admired him since he was much older than him and was kind of a fish out of water in the new music world.
The imagery makes this song really tremendously sad since Del killed himself just two years after this song was released.
Tom made the reference to Del Shannon just as a quick one-off name check for his friend, who was a kind of old-time 50s crooner type who had written the #1 hit "Little Runaway" back in 1961 and was hanging around the studio a lot when Tom was recording Full Moon Fever in 1988. They got along really good, I think Tom admired him since he was much older than him and was kind of a fish out of water in the new music world.
The imagery makes this song really tremendously sad since Del killed himself just two years after this song was released.