Wild Blue Yonder Gives Songwriter Lyric Inspiration

Twenty years ago, there was Brian Wilson. To find the inspiration to write further hits for the Beach Boys, he needed to wiggle his toes in a sandbox under his piano.

Last Thursday, there was Steve Vaus. To find the inspiration to write a theme song for the Blue Angels, which will be heard for the first time publicly today during the Miramar Air Show, he needed to jet through the sky at more than 700 m.p.h. aboard a blue and yellow FA-18 Hornet, one of seven in the Navy’s celebrated tactical-flying squadron.

Takeoff time was 10:46 a.m., from the Miramar Naval Air Station. Exactly 46 minutes later, Vaus and his pilot, Lt. Doug McClain, landed at the same spot--after having raced to the Salton Sea and back, a distance of more than 200 miles.

Along the way, Vaus said, they performed a madcap series of loops, dips, high banks and vertical climbs, at speeds approaching the sound barrier--enough to equal 6 G forces. Enough to make Disneyland’s Space Mountain roller coaster feel like a brisk ride in a rocking chair.

“Unbelievable, simply unbelievable,” Vaus said as he emerged from the cockpit. “One time we climbed from 2,000 feet to 16,000 feet in 10 seconds flat. Another time, we dipped so low we came within 100 feet of the Salton Sea.”

After a quick change out of his blue flight

suit and into a pair of jeans and a dress shirt, the 36-year-old San Diego singer-songwriter rushed over to his Kearny Mesa recording studio. He had an immediate deadline to make, but, although his feet were back on the ground, his head was still in the air.

“Right now, the problem is I’m speechless,” Vaus said on the trip back to his studio. “And how can you write a song if you’re speechless?”

Once in the familiar surroundings of his studio, however, Vaus quickly got down to work, and three hours later the song had not only been written, it had been recorded, mixed and transferred onto 10 cassettes and five reel-to-reel tapes.

The cassettes were for the Blue Angels, the reel-to-reels for three San Diego radio stations and two TV stations that previously had promised to play “Angels Above America” before the air show.

“Call me an old-fashioned flag-waver or whatever, but the Blue Angels are an exciting part of what America stands for,” Vaus said. “And for me, watching them is just like seeing fireworks on the Fourth of July over the Statue of Liberty--it’s a real goose-bump experience.”

For four years, Vaus has made a living writing commercial jingles for San Diego businesses, including Great American First Savings Bank and Jerome’s Furniture Warehouse. He is far better known, however, for the gratis booster songs he has composed for America’s Cup defenders Stars and Stripes, the San Diego Padres baseball team and Joan Kroc’s 1985 peace mission to Japan on the 40th anniversary of the Hiroshima atomic bombing.

In June, Vaus phoned Blue Angels headquarters in Pensacola, Fla., and offered to write the flying daredevils a theme song--free.

“I believe music is a wonderful tool,” Vaus said. “You can use it to make people laugh, to make them cry, to make them a little more introspective and to get them pumped up.

“And getting people pumped up about the Blue Angels was what I wanted to do. I think it’s virtually impossible to watch them without feeling a stirring sense of pride in this country, in the guys who put their lives on the line, both literally and figuratively, each time they go up in the air.”

Vaus’ offer was one that Lt. Rusty Holmes, the Blue Angels’ public-affairs officer, couldn’t refuse.

“We’ve never had (a theme song), but we sure could use one,” Holmes said. “We immediately made plans to put it in our promotional videos and in our public-service announcements about not using drugs, staying in school, things like that.”

Over the ensuing two months, the Blue Angels provided Vaus with enough background material--flight films, interviews with pilots, press kits--to complete the song’s instrumental tracks, pen words to the chorus and break, and even come up with a title.

The chorus, sung in three-part harmony by Vaus, local session musician Craig Bartock and Little River Band bassist Wayne Nelson, “was basically me saying, ‘Yeah, Blue Angels,’ ” Vaus said.

“‘Angels above America

“Angels on high

“Blue Angels above America

“Long may you fly.”’

He was still cheering when he wrote the break:

“‘America, America, God bless this land we love

“From the purple mountains’ majesty

“To the Angels up above.”’

But for the verses, Vaus needed a little something extra, something more personal. Something that might come from actually flying with the Blue Angels rather than merely watching them, reading about them or conversing with their pilots.

“I was coming up with all sorts of ideas for the song and the basic feel of it, but there was something missing,” Vaus said. “So in talking with one of the pilots, I made the offhand comment that I sure would love to go on a ride. A week later, I got a call from Lieutenant Holmes, telling me the whole thing had been arranged.”

The brief yet arduous process of coming up with lyrics for the two verses began while Vaus was still aboard the plane.

“As soon as we took off, I heard this loud thunder, and it came to me: ‘First you hear the thunder/Then you see the fire,’ ” Vaus said.

In the studio, Vaus grabbed a pen and a pad of yellow paper and, while playing the instrumental track over and over again, gradually came up with the rest of the first verse:

Headin’ for blue yonder

You know they’re gonna get you higher

Screamin’ down the center line

Feel the rumble as you start to climb . . .

“Oh, no, that’s not quite right,” Vaus mumbled to himself. “Those guitars, they sound like an afterburner. Afterburner . I’ve got to get that in there somewhere.”

A few more listens, and then he let out a whoop and hastily scribbled down a new closing line: “Feel the rumble afterburner climb.”

With a contented grin, Vaus went on to tackle the second verse.

“In the first verse I talk about the machines,” he said. “Now I’ve got to bring the men into it.”

Again, he played the instrumental track several times. Again, he made several changes in the lyrics until he was satisfied.

It’s a game of inches

At the speed of lightning

No one ever flinches

Not the Blue Angel man

They make us proud to live in the U.S.A.

As they form up the diamond and climb away.

A little more than an hour after his return to the studio, Vaus was done writing. Summoning his engineer, Mike Harris, into the control room, Vaus donned a pair of headphones and began singing his newly composed verses.

Another hour and a dozen or so takes later, Vaus was finished. And while Harris mixed the final version of “Angels Above America,” Vaus retired to the lounge for a round of video games with a reporter.

“It’s just another day at the office,” he said.