Everybody Loves A Clown - Remastered

The fourth of seven Top 10 hits for Gary Lewis & the Playboys, this was the first song recorded song that Lewis also wrote; he composed it with his arranger Leon Russell along with Thomas Leslie. Lewis said in a Songfacts interview: "I always used to hang out at Leon Russell's house with him, because it was very conducive over there to creation. Musical creation. I mean, everybody that lived over there with Leon were musicians from Tulsa, Oklahoma. I liked all those guys a lot and everybody was always working on songs and beats and words. So hanging out with them, I started getting some ideas of my own. And for 'Everybody Loves a Clown,' I suggested to Leon, 'Why don't we write a song along the lines of a circus calliope.' I just thought of that. And he liked the idea and he worked on it for a little bit. He says, 'Well, I don't want to actually play a calliope, let's just put that feel to a normal piano and harpsichord sound.' And we bounced back and forth. So when we finally figured out what we were going to do, we came up with the line, [singing], 'da da da da da da day, du du du, du du du,' and it wasn't really a calliope thing, but it was circus-y. I liked it and we wrote the words together."

Gary Lewis is the son of the comedian/actor Jerry Lewis, but Gary was careful not to rely on his father's influence - Jerry didn't even know his son had a band until "This Diamond Ring" was recorded. Gary tells us that the song in no way deals with his relationship with his father. He told us: "A lot of it was inspired by the clowns always being sad. There were some happy clowns, too. But famous clowns like Emmett Kelly, always sad, very, very sad. They portray like they don't fit in with anything. So that was the inspiration for the lyrics. Everybody loves a clown, so why can't you? Everybody laughs at the things that I say and do."

This was used as the title of a 2006 episode of Supernatural where Sam and Dean Winchester hunt a demonic clown. The actual song, however, wasn't used in the episode.