Dumb Songs of Classic Rock

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When I’m in the car, I like to listen to the “Classic Hits” radio station — basically, rock-and-roll from the 1970s, which was the pinnacle, as far as I’m concerned. Amid all the great music from that great era, however, there are some songs that make you scratch your head in mystification: “How did that lame crap ever become a hit?”

But hey, it was the ’70s and we were all high, y’know.

Nobody had more lame-crap hits than Steve Miller Band, and don’t get me wrong: I liked Steve Miller back in the day, and still enjoy listening to his hits, but from the standpoint of songcraft, the guy sucked. The closest he ever got to writing lyrics that made any sense at all was “Take the Money and Run,” but that song is a celebration of murder and robbery, so it kind of proves the point.

Here’s the way I figure Steve Miller operated as a songwriter: He would come up with a nifty little guitar riff, and then a catch-phrase to be repeated in the chorus. Once he had the guitar riff and the chorus, he would be like, “Yeah, OK, gotta write some verses now.”

This is where the whole thing always went to hell. You can go through the song catalog of the Steve Miller Band and good luck finding more than one or two songs where the lyrics of the verses have a damn thing to do with the chorus — or with anything else, really.

Even in his biggest hit, “The Joker,” the lyrics are total nonsense, and don’t even get me started on “Jungle Love.” The guy obviously wasn’t even trying to write lyrics. He just sang whatever the hell came into his head — any words that rhymed would do — and nobody seemed to care, because the albums kept selling.

While it’s hard to say that there was ever a worse song than “Jungle Love,” however, the prototypical stupid Steve Miller Band hit, which actually made it to No. 1 in 1976, was “Rock’n Me”:

Well I’ve been lookin’ real hard
And I’m tryin’ to find a job
But it just keeps gettin’ tougher every day
But I got to do my part cause I know in my heart
I got to please my sweet baby, yeah

Well, I ain’t superstitious
And I don’t get suspicious
But my woman is a friend of mine
And I know that it’s true that all the things that I do
Will come back to me in my sweet time

So keep on rockin’ me baby
Keep on a rockin’ me baby
Keep on a rockin’ me baby
Keep on a rockin’ me baby

I went from Phoenix, Arizona
All the way to Tacoma
Philadelphia, Atlanta, L.A.
Northern California where the girls are warm
So I could be with my sweet baby, yeah

Keep on a rockin’ me baby . . .

Et cetera. I mean, c’mon: “Northern California where the girls are warm”? What the hell does that even mean, Steve? But from such ridiculous nothingness, the man crafted a career!

And just in case you’re wondering, the B-side of the single of “Rock’n Me” was a song entitled, “Shu Ba Da Du Ma Ma Ma Ma.”

 

189 comments

  1. Heh. I blatantly stole from Roundabout for my teleport message on my mud:

    Finrod comes out of the sky and he Stands There.

  2. There’s a story about Syd bringing a song for the band to rehearse called “Have You Got It, Yet?” and he changed the song around every time they tried playing it until they figured out what he was doing and stopped.

  3. Gibberish. That takes me back. Imagine if you will college freshmen, piled into a dorm room at about 10:30am, middle of the week.

    We were there to hear the room occupant’s new stereo, which was right fine. He put on DSotM, and cranked it up. (The room was blue with smoke, so even those of us who weren’t imbibing were already put off from the next three hours of class.)

    We were listening to this album, and the TV was on. It was tuned to PBS. As every parent back then knew, Sesame Street was what was on at 10am.

    So here we were, watching muppets dancing to kiddie education bits, while Us and Them was blasting away.

    Surreal doesn’t quite express it.

  5. “I rode a tank in the Generals rank when the blitzkrieg raged and the bodies stank…” Now that is some good lyrical writing.

  8. One of my faves. Also, Street Fighting Man, Mother’s little helper, and Painted Black.

  10. Steve Tyler got away with one on Mama Kin. You got to say shit. Everyone thought he was saying sashay it.

  12. I mean, c’mon: “Northern California where the girls are warm”? What the hell does that even mean, Steve?

    My first guess was that he grew up in Northern California. Not quite. He was born in the mid-west, spent his youth there and in Texas. Upon graduation from UT Austin, he drove his VW to San Francisco, fell in love with the music scene, and made his home there.

    It’s a line for his (adopted) hometown girls. C’mon, a guy’s gotta do what a guy’s gotta do.

  16. We can make an exception for Pink Floyd, because it was obviously written for LSD users.

    “Just say no, kids!”

  18. Ach. A little professional jealousy from the garage band veteran.

    —

    Steve Miller, age 66, is still touring. Supposedly able to ask for $100,000 per performance.

  19. Stupidest and worst song of all time is “Philadelphia Freedom”.

    BTW, I always dug “Big Ol’ Jet Airliner”.

  20. Yeah, so did The Who on “Who Are You”: “Aw, who the fuck are you”

    Also, The Offspring managed to slip an obscenity by everyone (impressive since they swear more than George Carlin) in their song “I Choose”: “This is life, what a fucked up thing we do / What a nightmare come true / Or a playground if we choose / And I choose”

  21. Heh. I remember once making the statement that smoking marijuana would still be worth it even if all it did was make Pink Floyd sound better.

  22. Agreed. There’s the story of Syd showing up while the band was rehearsing the stuff for the Wish You Were Here album (it wasn’t uncommon for them to get people dropping by just to see what they were up to), and they didn’t even recognize him at first.

  23. I’ll admit that I still have a soft spot in my heart for the Syd-written song Bike, and I was quite pleased to see it make their double-best-of album Echoes.

  25. They had the same lead singer, but you’re confusing the Guess Who with Bachman-Turner Overdrive. Further blasphemy of this sort will be punished. 😉

  28. I always was vaguely embarrassed by the identical feeling! “Song logic? Pffft! Who needs it!”

  29. Yeah, “I wanna reach out and grab ya” really is awful.

    But Boz Scaggs rhymed “Buddha” and “compuddah”. And he wasn’t on drugs.

  31. Wasn’t that Bachman Turner Overdrive? Or did they just cover it? I never liked the Guess Who, so I don’t remember.

  34. To be fair, Bruce Springsteen’s original Blinded By The Light that Manfred Mann famously covered is much more clearly sung. Ironically, it’s the only song he ever wrote that went to #1 and it wasn’t his version of it that did.

  35. Personally I would argue that Afternoon Delight is worse. There’s a scene in the show Arrested Development where two different family members at different times try singing it in karaoke with a younger family member and realize what the song is about partway through.

  37. Revolution 9 was also the first song to have backward masking. “Number nine” backwards comes out as “Turn me on, dead man”

  42. We used to play war games to that song back in the 70s. Panzer Blitz was a favorite as it goes well with the song.

  43. The Moody Blues were a favorite on my first ship. When I got back to states I bought all their albums that were still available in early ’74. Still like them, but never with acid. Same with my shipmates.

  47. The way you describe the Steve Miller Band makes me think of Nirvana. I love Nirvana, but holy crap you can tell Kurt Cobain was high as a kite when he wrote the songs. “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” like all of Nirvana’s songs, make no sense whatsoever if you actually listen to the lyrics.

  48. I should probably point out for those who haven’t guessed already, yes, I’m younger than probably all of you (in my early 30s). While I do enjoy classic rock (Pink Floyd is my favorite classic rock band) I am a child of the 90s, hence my Nirvana reference.

    Should I also mention I think the Rolling Stones is the most overrated band ever? *duck and cover*

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