Far away from this masquerade.

During its early 1970s heyday, the band Three Dog Night featured three (!) singers, a rotating cast of competent backing musicians, and an uncanny ability to pick and arrange just the right songs as covers. The result was a hit machine, with a gazillion singles and albums sold, and key placements on the soundtrack of my elementary school world.

The roster of songwriters selling tunes to Three Dog Night includes Randy Newman, Hoyt Axton, Laura Nyro, Harry Nilsson, Paul Williams, John Hiatt … and Leo Sayer.

Sayer wrote “The Show Must Go On,” and his recording was a hit in Britain, but the best known version is Three Dog Night’s. In 1974, it was the group’s last big chart presence. Having forgiven Sayer his later disco era excesses, I’m quite prepared to concede that his original “The Show Must Go On” probably is to be preferred in the sense of unquestionable authenticity and rugged charm -- and who doesn’t adore a few bars of scat singing?



However, Three Dog Night’s take, while glossy and madly over-produced, is more compelling than it might seem at first glance, primarily owing to Chuck Negron’s handling of the vocal chores. Negron, whose drug-addled private life eventually became so wretched that his autobiography was titled “Three Dog Nightmare,” absolutely inhabits these lyrics. One gets the very strong impression that for Negron, life was imitating art.



Just about all of us can relate to these emotions. We feel vulnerability and bravado, desperation and self-pity, and yet we’re still able to shake a fist in defiance, plodding ahead, although there are times when the pivotal role of simple fatigue cannot be discounted.

One of my favorite anecdotes from Jim Bouton’s Ball Four baseball confidential is the tale (paraphrased) of an extremely hung over Mickey Mantle given the day game off, but being asked to pinch-hit in the late innings. Dragging himself slowly to the plate, he abruptly launches a game-winning home run, and upon returning to the bench, says to no one in particular, “You have no idea how hard that was.” The older I get, the more it feels the same.

For most of us, the fame and fortune are absent, but we must let the show go on. There’s no real choice, is there?

For the entirely different tune with the same name and similar but more operatic sentiments, here’s the last song on the last album (Innuendo) that Freddie Mercury recorded with Queen, released in 1991.