Before we moved into tech, we worked in the music business, for one of the major labels. One year, we were invited to attend the Music Hall of Fame Awards.

Once there, we were escorted to the wrong table. We made it clear to the usher that we worked at BMG, not BMI, but what do we know? So, we were seated among total strangers, all of whom ignored us. We introduced ourself to the little old man and his wife seated next to us, who were also being ignored.

His name was Hy Zaret, one of the evening’s inductees, who was being honored for a song he’d written. One single song. Must have been some song, we figured, so we asked him what the title was.

“Unchained Melody,” he answered.

Shivers went down our spine. As they always did whenever we hear that song itself, which was featured in the film Ghost.

We asked him what had inspired him to write it, and he told us the story:

He had been a soldier during WWII. One night, he was in a foxhole in Germany with the rest of his battalion, surrounded by enemy soldiers, badly outnumbered and in need of supplies. Reinforcements wouldn’t arrive until morning, and it was a very cold winter night. The only thing they could do was to try to make it through the night. Cigarettes always helped to curb the stress, but lighting a cigarette was death: the enemy would spot the flame or embers and shoot. Which is precisely what happened to his friend who was positioned next to him. He was terrified, sitting there, freezing and engulfed in the smell of fear and death. The only thing he could think of to do to take his mind off the carnage around him was to instead keep his mind on his girlfriend back home – and distracted himself by penning a missive to her:

Oh, my love
My darling
I’ve hungered for your touch
A long, lonely time

And time goes by so slowly
And time can do so much
Are you still mine?

I need your love
I need your love
God speed your love to me

Lonely rivers flow to the sea, to the sea
To the open arms of the sea
Yes, lonely rivers sigh, “Wait for me, wait for me
I’ll be coming home, wait for me”

Oh, my love
My darling
I’ve hungered, hungered for your touch
A long, lonely time

And time goes by so slowly
And time can do so much
Are you still mine?

I need your love
I, I need your love
God speed your love to me

He married her when her returned home – it was the woman sitting next to him who had inspired the song (music by Alex North; lyrics by Hy Zaret), had gotten him through that night. And whose lyrics took on a whole new meaning for us, having heard his story.

Unchained Melody is perhaps one of the greatest songs ever written – and one of the most recorded songs of the 20th century.

We were then informed by the usher that we were in the wrong seat and needed to ‘return’ to our rightful table (well, duh!).

The story behind the song, the way Hy told it to us, has never been published anywhere and happy to share.

For the record, the title of the song never made any sense to us, until we discovered that it was originally the theme song for a film called Unchained. Evidently a bad product-market fit. The film went nowhere, but the song survived and thanks to it, so did Hy.

Founders are very much in the trenches of a different stripe: the stress can be overwhelming – or at least whelming at times – and depression is something else founders’ battle. There are methods to deal with it, according to Harvard Business Review. The tech moguls seem to have their own way of dealing (Men of substance (abuse): how tech moguls drug their way through the day) and it’s not one either we or HBR recommend.

But tech – especially in cases where there are large sums of money involved, does tend to make some people go a bit over the top. Case in point, the Lawyers who voided Elon Musk’s pay as excessive want $6 billion fee. They felt a $56 billion bonus to Musk was excessive, yet their fees work out to an hourly rate of $288,888.

While it was fighting the urge to light up a cigarette that night behind enemy lines and write those lyrics instead that no doubt saved Zaret’s life, while others who gave in to that urge paid with theirs. Still, considering those legal fees, does make you stop and wonder what those guys are smoking.

But, hey, whatever gets you through the night.

Onward and forward.