NCBS Murder Ballads Project. 2. Stagger Lee pt 2

If you're not a fan of "foul" language you might want to skip today's post.

Sing a Song of Murder, has talked about the lore surrounding "Stagger Lee" before, but Nick Cave's version takes it to a different place entirely.  A forced homosexual act was probably not what the original writer of "Stagger Lee" probably had in mind.  I'm sure these lyrics never popped into his head either:

I'm a bad motherfucker don't ya know
And I'll craw over fifty good pussies 
Just to get to one fat boy's asshole

Love the Take That shirt.

From what I've read Cave took lyrical inspiration from The Life: The Lore and Folk Poetry of the Black Hustler.  I'm currently trying to search out a copy that won't cost me 59.99 (used).

I think that "Stagger Lee", like "Delia's Gone" might have taken some inspiration from gangster rap, which was huge at the time of Murder Ballads.  If you don't remember the glory days of Snoop Dogg, Tupac, and uh . . .others* it involved a little of this . . .

Some of this . . .

 

And a lot of this

A lot of violence,  a lot of "motherfucker/motherfucking/motherfuckers" and the phrase "suck my dick".


Of course Eazy-E wasn't really suggesting that Dr. Dre get down on his knees and unbutton his fly.*1 It was more of an expression of dominance; "I'm the alpha male. You're a woman compared to me."*2


Lyrically, and through Cave's spoken word performance, "Stagger Lee" seems to be poking fun at rap's hyper-masculinity.  When Cave's Stagger Lee says "suck my dick" he really means "suck my dick."  


I stated in the previous post that Stagger Lee is the quintessential American song.  So does a "foreigner" have any right to sing it?  There's something to be said for being outside looking in.  Conservatives ranted and raved about gangster rap, and yet violence is so much at the heart of America, and American music.   It seems that only Americans have yet to accept that.

* Sorry, I'm hopelessly white.

*1 I'm really white.

*2 Lilly White

Used to Love Her

Random Guns N' Roses Talk 

I used to love GNR a lot.  I was thirteen, so think about your basic Justin Bieber fangirl and replace it with Axl Rose.  Then I discovered Bikini Kill and feminism.  I started wearing  combat boots, writing bad poetry and moved on.

Too bad.  Appitie for Destruction was a great album.  That being said, Axl Rose is an ass.  They could have made a lot of great albums, instead they made one great album, two sort of good albums, one dull covers album, and one bargin bin laughing stock.  

Talk Over

I hesitated before deciding to discuss the Guns' N Roses song, Used to Love Her.  Listening to it makes me feel guilty, the same way that liking the work that Tina Turner did with Ike more than her solo output makes me feel guilty.  While Axl Rose has never killed anyone, there's more than enough evidence out there that he has physically abused his partners.   

What makes this song any different than the other killing women type songs?  Besides the fact it's sung by a man who is an abuser?    The woman in Used to Love Her is disposable.

The women in Deila's Gone and 99 to Life are killed for withholding their very powerful affection.  The poor Knoxvile Girl is possibly killed for an unplanned pregnancy.  The woman in "Used to Love Her"? "She bitched so much, she drove [him] nuts." She became an annoyance, so the man simply killed her and buried her in his backyard.   And he's "happier this way".

The killers in Deila, Knoxvile and 99 pay for their crimes.  All suffer from remorse.  Haunted by ghosts and devils around their beds.   They all go to prison.  Axl Rose's killer is untouched by the law.

Yet the song, in my opinion is pretty damn funny.

I'd knew I'd miss her
so I had to keep her
she's buried right in my backyard

I still can't help but feel conflicted.  I give a lot of other songs a pass.  But not this one.  Is it fair?  Maybe not, but I'm sure that's human nature.

Delia's Gone

In high school my friend and I developed this theory: if you sing it slowly and with an acoustic guitar, you can pretty much get away with anything. One example we always provided, was Johnny Cash's Delia's Gone. It's your age old tale of a cheatin' lying woman getting her comeuppance from a vengeful lover. But it's how he does it that makes it so unerrving: he ties her to a chair, and shoots her. With a submachine gun.

I don't think it's a conicidence, that this song came out during the height of gangster rap. But unlike Snoop Dogg, Dr Dre and other of their ilk, their were no hysterical polticians and no complaints from NOW.

Like so many of my generation, this was the song that taught me that country could be cool. This dark, violent, "love song" with the coolest dude on the planet. I still get chills.

Here's an earlier version of the song, with slightly different lyrics. I think it proves that Cash was well aware of popular culture when he updated it for American Recordings: