Inspiration Case Study #5: The Case of Who Heard Whom in the Wild West End

[Published on the Facebook Thunkity Thunk: Open Ideas forum on February 26, 2020]

Tonight, in the car coming back from Home Depot with my daughter, since she’s suddenly into “Hamilton,” and has long been into RuPaul, I thought I’d introduce her to the musical with one of the original transvestites of big and little screen. I did my best to explain the plot of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” then called up “The Time Warp” on Spotify. It had been decades since I’d heard it (and I’d related to her being dragged to a “live” screening at the UC Theater in Berkeley in a car packed with a dozen friends in high school — some even in the trunk, I think!). With the marination of time strange things can happen, and in this case what it was was sudden unexpected associations with two other songs, songs I’d known back then, but which hadn’t connected like a triangle until now, much less rung like one as it felt like in my head as I drove home to that incantatory chorus. Later, though, when I looked into it, I was struck with wonder that maybe it wasn’t so random, my associating these songs together, considering when and where they were conceived.

“There’s a new sensation!” begins “Do the Strand,” the first song on Roxy Music’s second album “For Your Pleasure.” That was recorded in February 1973, then amazingly released in late March 1973 (according to Wikipedia). Those recording sessions happened at AIR Studios, a facility on Oxford Street in London that began as an arm of the company Sir George Martin co-founded when he left Parlophone. He didn’t produce “For Your Pleasure.” Two music industry stalwarts did — Chris Thomas and John Anthony — along with Roxy Music. I have to wonder if they and Bryan Ferry and Brian Eno and the rest of the band had more than a rushed, timeless, nouveau dance craze in mind when they recorded “Do the Strand.” Perhaps they were tapping into something not just in the zeitgeist, but also particular to that city and its musical milieu.

“You’re spaced out on sensation!” a character sings in the middle of “The Time Warp,” one of the most memorable songs in the now longtime cult film “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” It debuted in 1975. However, actually first it had toured many cities — in Europe and beyond — as a (truly) live show. It originated, though, in... 1973 ... in London’s West End. Oxford Street is a major road through the city of Westminster, in London’s West End.

Meanwhile, up to the north, in January 1973, the glam rock band Sweet was driven off stage by thrown bottles in Kilmarnock, Scotland. Soon, back in their home base of London, they wrote a song about this incident — or rather, they funneled it through their longtime, outside songwriters, Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman, who wrote what would become the band’s most memorable song: “Ballroom Blitz.” While never on one of their studio albums, this song was released as a single in September... 1973. It was recorded at Audio International Studio on Rodmarton Street, about a seven minute drive from Oxford Street, also in London’s West End.

“Oh reaching out for something
Touching nothing’s all I ever do
Oh I softly call you over
When you appear there’s nothing left of you”

Talk about a “Strange Sensation”! And it’s not just a similar vibe: Sweet’s song takes a violent dance floor incident and recasts it as a kind of fun new dance craze. Bryan Ferry described the made-up movements he sings about in “Do the Strand” as the “Dance of Life,” evoking not just dance crazes from earlier decades, but also — via his staccato name dropping — the crazes all kinds of arts take on in culture. And back to Wikipedia on “The Time Warp”: “The song is both an example and a parody of the dance song genre in which much of the content of the song is given over to dance step instructions.” And to think: when people think of dancing in the ‘70s, they mostly just think of funk and disco! It was on everyone’s minds, in both a meta and a truly genuine, lived way.

Five years later, in 1978, Dire Straits recorded and released its eponymous debut, which includes the song “Wild West End.” The album itself was recorded at SARM West Studios in Notting Hill, an affluent neighborhood of West London, a broad area that extends from Westminster and the West End. Mark Knopfler’s lyrics include the line “I’m getting a pickup for my steel guitar.” This region was a musical petrie dish, in an era when you couldn’t throw a stone without seeing the splash of influence. You can almost picture his lyrical reminiscences including bumping into Rocky Horror lyricist Richard O’Brien when stepping out to Angellucci’s for his coffee beans; or seeing Bryan Ferry scribbling notes at a table at the Barocco Bar; or noting greasy-haired members of Sweet nodding off on the number nineteen bus. C’mon... Let’s do the Time Warp again.