I Fought The Law

One of my favourite songs of all time is 'I Fought the Law' by The Clash.

It is also one of The Clash's best know songs and everyone universally seems to either love it or at the very least enjoy hearing it from time to time.

But what most people don't know is that it is a cover version. It was not written by The Clash and furthermore, they decided to cover it themselves on hearing someone else's cover of the original song.

The song was actually written in 1959 by Sonny Curtis who after Buddy Holly's death in 1959, became the new frontman for Holly's backing band The Crickets.

The song was not a huge hit and lay relatively unknown until the Bobby Fuller Four recorded a version of it in 1965. It was their second single and flew up the billboard charts to number 4. Just as the single reached the Top Ten, Bobby Fuller was found dead in his car, covered in multiple wounds and drenched in gasoline. Although the police at the time considered the death a suicide, witness statements indicated that it may have been murder. Several key witnesses testified that they had seen a police officer throw away a can of gasoline found at the scene. The police were forced to change the official cause of death to accident but mystery still shrouds the affair to this day.

The song disappeared quickly from circulation after dropping out of the charts and once again, became a collectors item for people that were born in the era of it's release or were fans of the Bobby Fuller Four.

In 1978, Joe Strummer and Mick Jones of The Clash were working on a new album in a San Francisco recording studio when they heard the Bobby Fuller version on an old studio jukebox and decided to record their own version. It became an instant hit for them and helped propel them onto the US radio playlists that had previously eluded them. It also became a staple of their live set and one of the fans' favourite encores.

The song has been covered by several other artists both live and in the studio including; Bryan Adams, Bruce Springsteenm Green Day, The Ramones and Roy Orbison.

There have also been numerous cover versions where the lyrics have been altered for a particular cause or event. The Dead Kennedys wrote and recorded their own version of the song featuring the amended lyric 'I fought the law...and I won' in reference to a famous 1978 murder case in San Francisco where the murderer in question was set free based on a technicality.

In January 2008, an amended version of the song by Oystar reached number 25 in the UK charts featuring the line "I fought the Lloyds' in support of the campaign by Lloyds customers who were mounting a legal challenge to get their bank charges refunded.

Possibly, the most bizarre use of the song was in 1989 by the U.S. Marines. They had Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega trapped and surrounded in the Holy See's embassy in Panama. In an effort to flush him out, they repeatedly played the song through a set of giant speakers. The Vatican complained to President Bush about the use of audio torture and the Marines were forced to cease and desist. As a footnote to this episode, Noriega surrendered days later.

The Bobby Fuller version of the song is now ranked at number 175 on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Songs of all Time.

I still prefer The Clash's version though.

Born to Run

Lyrics are the poetry of music and without them, music just becomes two dimensional for me. True there are some very good instrumental pieces of music from the big classical pieces all the way through to some of the catchier TV themes but I like to hear the story of a song as told by the writer/ singer.

As a songwriter myself I really absorb lyrics and like nothing more than listening to a song with a lyrical theme which grabs my attention and then leads me on a journey throughout the song.

My favourite kind of lyrics fall into two categories. The anti-establishment lyrics of people like Billy Bragg and Joe Strummer whose words are rife with angry political and social commentary, and those of people like Paul Weller and Bruce Springsteen which usually tell a story that centres around characters that the listener can identify with on some level by the end of the song.

Some of my favourite lyrics include 'Down in the Tube Station at Midnight' by The Jam, 'White Man in Hammersmith Palais' by The Clash and 'Like a Rolling Stone' by Bob Dylan which was actually developed from a short story that Dylan wrote prior to converting it into a song.

My favourite set of lyrics though are 'Born to Run' by Bruce Springsteen. The song was written in 1974 and was Springsteen's self confessed 'last ditch attempt' to make it big. Although he had garnered critical praise and amassed a small fan base up to this point, he had not enjoyed a runaway commercial success and this song which deals with adolescence desperation was his last shot at cracking the charts.

It is written in the first person and is actually a love letter to a girl named Wendy. It charts the angst and desire of being in love pitted against the burning desire to break free from where the protagonist lives. The themes within the song, although very American in places, have a universal appeal which echo situations and emotions most people have felt at one time or another.

A lot of Springsteen's lyrics conjure up images of middle America, run down towns that time has forgot, industrialised wastelands full of factories spewing out smoke long into the night and blue collar workers, united in their quest for true love and friendship. For those of you who are unfamiliar with his lyrics think of films such as 'The Deer Hunter', 'An Officer and a Gentleman' and 'All The Right Moves' with their backdrop of small town politics, poverty stricken characters and the all important factory or mine where it seems the entire town is employed. For an example closer to home, 'The Full Monty' picks up on exactly the same themes and the story arc of it's characters could have come straight from the pen of Springsteen.

His lyrics set out the characters very quickly and then start to tell the tale of their lives, dragging you into the story and forcing you to care about these people. They give hope and despair in equal measures but there is nearly always a bittersweet tinge of optimism about his stories - that his characters might just make it and achieve their dreams.

The last verse to Born to Run is fantastic in my opinion.

The highways jammed with broken heroes on a last chance power drive
Everybodys out on the run tonight but theres no place left to hide
Together wendy well live with the sadness
Ill love you with all the madness in my soul
Someday girl I dont know when were gonna get to that place
Where we really want to go and well walk in the sun
But till then tramps like us baby we were born to run

There is a message of hope and the promise of better things to come which really touches a nerve with me. I want these guys to walk in the sun, to stop running and find the place they want to escape to.

And this to me, is the genius of these lyrics.

What's in a name?

I should start off this article by saying that this a totally personal viewpoint on band names and that everyone will have a different spin on what I am about to say.

I think that band names fall into 3 distinct categories for me.

The first is band names that immediately sound quite cool and seem to roll off the tongue. The ones that seem both instantly familiar and seem to have an iconic sound to them from the word go. Examples of these would be:

* The Rolling Stones
* The Kinks
* The Strokes
* Massive Attack
* The Libertines
* Dirty Pretty Things
* Led Zeppelin
* Supergrass

The second category for me includes band names that don't seem quite as obvious at first but soon become second nature to reel off and in retrospect actually seem very clever names. These would include:

* The Arctic Monkeys
* Blur
* The Beatles
* The Beach Boys
* The Stone Roses
* Razorlight
* Basement Jaxx
* Wolfmother
* Babyshambles
* Nirvana

Then, there is the third category which comprises band names which I think are utterly ridiculous and memorable in their stupidity. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the wonderful niche world of heavy metal. Now before going on, I'll exclude some of the bigger acts of heavy metal as their names, like their music are a cut above the rest of this genre and deserve to be separated from the dross that makes up the mainstay of this bizarre niche. Acts such as Guns N Roses, Metallica and Aerosmith to name a few are exempt from the following comments.

Those who are not exempt include:

* Lawnmother Death
* The Motley Crue
* Slayer
* Megadeth
* Anthrax
* Poison
* W.A.S.P. (this stands for We Are Sexual Perverts)
* Def Leppard
* Limp Bizkit
* Slipknot
* Iron Maiden
* Black Sabbath
* Ratt
* Whitesnake

Is it just me or are these names horrendously childish, puerile and just down right inane? Who names their band after an acute infectious disease caused by a spore-forming bacterium (Anthrax), or a medieval torture instrument (Iron Maiden)? What kind of message do bands with names like Lawnmower Death and Slayer send out? Megadeth - I'm guessing that people in places such as Zimbabwe, Tibet and Burma do not see the supposed irony in this particular moniker.

It's not just the band names but the song titles themselves - there is a small pot of common themes they all draw on which include; blood, hell, the devil, whiskey, guns, jail, war, murder, halloween...you get the idea. For example Iron Maiden sang about the devil in 'The Number of the Beast' and in 'Bring Your Daughter to the Slaughter' they sang about...well, slaughtering your daughter! They believe the names of their bands and songs will strike fear in the hearts of disbelievers and that they are truly in touch with the devil and have already reserved some prime spots in Hell, ready for the day that they finally die from a whiskey and shotgun induced riot.

If you need any further proof that this entire spandex and leather wearing genre is taking itself way too seriously, then watch Spinal Tap. It sends the big bands of the day up in a glorious way, riffing on their influences, style of music and general attitude towards the cult of being in a heavy metal group.

So, how hard can it be to come up with a name for a heavy metal group? Here are my suggestions:

* Rattlesnake Death Virgin
* Ebola 55
* Guillotine Nightmare
* Roadkill Viper
* Hell Puppets
...

I could go on but what is the point. A small child could be given a scrabble bag full of heavy metal cliches and asked to pull them out in a random order to form band names - this would be no better and no worse than five long haired morons, sat in a squat, trying to decide what combination sounds the most fearsome and satanic.

While you listen to 'Time to Die' or 'Thermo-nuclear War is Good for You' by Lawnmower Deth, I'll be listening to 'Good Vibrations' by The Beach Boys.

Noel raps Glastonbury

So Noel Gallagher doesn't think that there should be a place for rap or hip hop music at Glastonbury - I thought he was right when I first heard his comments. I though he was bang on the money right up until Jay-Z stormed the main stage at Glastonbury and embarrassed Gallagher senior's comments for what they were - disgenuous, jealous and completely wide of the mark as it transpires.

Before examining the rights and wrongs of having a rap artist at Glastonbury, it's worth looking at why Noel said what he did.

The main problem is that Oasis still see themselves as a big stadium band and the voice of the common man - a fanfare for the working class legions desperate to escape the monotony of the inner city council estate that apparently all of their fans live on. When Noel, or Liam to a lesser degree, speak on any subject, they do so with an air of total arrogance - they truly believe they are speaking on all of our behalves as they have their finger unswervingly on the pulse of the nation. For years they have been full of self bloated opinions on who is hot and who is not in the music world as if artists worldwide are hanging on their every word, desperate for the artistic approval and subsequent fulfilment that praise from the Gallaghers brings. So when Noel, potentially upset that he was not headlining Glastonbury with his 'greatest hits' album, decided to voice on opinion on the line up, the dye was cast, the votes were in and it was going to turn into an unmitigated disaster.

Except it didn't.

Whereas Oasis, even in their heyday, stood stock still on stage looking cool in their Stone Roses hand me downs and let their music alone entertain the crowd, artists such as Jay-Z realise that the key word in the phrase 'live performance' is performance. Like him or loath him, understand his music or not, he is a born entertainer. A lot of rap artists are. I remember seeing Snoop Dogg at Live 8 and he took the entire crowd on an a frantic and breathless musical journey - everyone jumping and swaying together, waving their arms in the air in unison, shouting out chorus after chorus and loving every minute of his energetic performance. As an indie boy myself I have to say that he pleasantly surprised me and easily held his own with some of my favourite bands who were playing that day.

Jay-Z's slot arrived and he took to the stage to the soundbite of Noel Gallagher informing the world there was no place for rap at Glastonbury. He then launched into an ironic cover of Wonderwall which quickly turned into a massive sing-a-long and firmly put Gallagher and his fellow detractors, myself included, in our place.

His crowning glory had to be when he shouted at the crowd 'They told me you weren't into hip-hop' only to hear 100,000 people cheer back that they clearly were. Game, set and match.

So Oasis didn't want Jay-Z there but he came, he saw and he conquered. Maybe next year Status Quo will object to the Arctic Monkeys playing the festival only to be proved very publicly that they are out of touch and totally incorrect!