Fiona Apple Steals From Man's Mistaken Memory Of Lyrics From Ratt Song From 1984, Man's Sense Of...
Fiona Apple Steals From Man’s Mistaken Memory Of Lyrics From Ratt Song From 1984, Man’s Sense Of Self Collapses
I have been having a crisis this morning. I’d like to say that this had something to do with the Supreme Court’s ruling on the health care bill. But it does not. (I’d resigned myself to tragedy in that aspect a couple weeks ago. And so now I am happily surprised. And hoping that CNN will take this opportunity to shut down operations forever.) My crisis has to do with the new Fiona Apple album, and my favorite song by the ’80s hair-metal band Ratt. So, more important that the health care bill.
Here’s what happened. I’ve been listening to the new Fiona Apple album over the past couple days and enjoying it. My favorite song so far, by far, is the second-to-last song on the album, “Anything We Want,” which starts off with the absolutely sublime opening lyric: “My Cheeks were/Reflecting/The longest wavelength…” Jesus, that song is just seething. (And did you see the picture that the Times ran of Apple playing the piano at last weekend’s Governors Ball concert? Wow! There is so much going on there — in the twist of her neck, the swing of her hair, the snarl of her lip. That is a performer on top of her game. Photographer Chad Batka took that picture, I should point out, because it’s so excellent.)
But anyway, the next song, the last song on the album, which a lot of people have been talking very excitedly about (sometimes when no one else is in the room) is called “Hot Knife,” which is a terrific name for a song, harkening as it does to Isaac Hayes and Peter Tosh and Bobby Darin. “Hot Knife” is an odd, certainly captivating song that’s maybe a little bit too a-capella-group sounding for me? But its opening lyric — and the phrase that dominates the song is “If I’m butter/Then he’s a hot knife.” Later, it switches to, “I’m a hot knife/He’s a pat of butter.” It’s a masterful, impressive song. I just don’t love the melody or the in-the-round harmonizing. Not yet, at least.
But anyway again, those lyrics, the image of a knife cutting through butter, remind me of Ratt, the great ’80s hair-metal band from L.A. Their most famous song is “Round and Round,” which I’m sure you’ve heard on the radio, or remember from when Mickey Rourke and Marissa Tomei sang it together in The Wrestler. “Round and Round” is awesome. But “Round and Round” has never been my favorite Ratt song. My favorite Ratt song is the second single that was released off the album that “Round and Round” is on, the band’s 1984 debut album, Out of the Celler. It’s called “Wanted Man.” (That’s the video for it, at the top of this post. The Wild-West Cowboy motif such a perfect fit for Hollywood hair-metal.) And my favorite part of that song — a part that I loved so, so much when I was 13-years-old, a part that really sort of captured and symbolized everything I wanted a heavy metal song to be when I was that age — was when Stephen Pearcy says, “You’re hot butter/I’m cold steel/You make a move/I’ll make you feel/Like a human target/In my eyes…” I mean, could there be a better image, cooler tough-guy talk, to match a scrawny little 13-year-old’s revenge fantasies of vanquishing schoolyard bullies like Tommy Bruno and Nicki Galderiese? (In hindsight, yes, I can probably think of a few. But back then, no, there could not be. And since I was more of an authority on 13-year-old emotions when I was 13 than I am now, at 41, I think the assessment stands.) A cold knife slicing through a liquifying pat of butter! “I HAVE THE POWER!!!” (I realize that this is a very different reading of the image than what Fiona Apple has in mind. I mean, without getting all Freudian about the connection between sex and violence.)
Because it was so important to me at such a formative time in my childhood. I have been singing that line, “I’m hot butter/You’re cold steel…” in my head for the past 28 years. Like, to embarrassing degree. It’s sort of always there, just below the top layer of my consciousness.
So when I heard Fiona Apple singing such similar words, I thought, Oh, this is a chance for me to post this awesome, cheesy hair-metal song that I love so much from the ’80s on The Awl. To share my love, a piece of me. I will make the connection between the new song and the older one. (This is how I spend a lot of my time, doing important work like this.) I figured I would make a little joke about how Fiona Apple had plagiarized her lyrics from Ratt. (I don’t think that’s actually the case, but that’s just how hilarious I am.)
I typed in “Wanted Man” on Youtube and found the video and clicked play and started rocking and remembering, transported back to the couch in the family room where I watched what was almost certainly an unhealthy amount of MTV when I was growing up. And then it came to the part, in the very first verse, where the low-dealing town sheriff with snake eyes is about to cross our awesome rock superheroes and Pearcy’s gonna set him straight. And then…
What? Oh my god. Oh no. This can’t be. The room starts spinning. My whole world starts to crumble around me as Warren DeMartini’s guitar continue to rip and crunch. A large piece of my identity falls away and dissolves into nothingness, leaving a dark and disorienting void. The words coming through the speakers connected to my computer are different from the ones that I expected to hear, the ones that I was about to sing along with, the ones that I have been singing to myself for so long. Different than the words that I heard so many times back in 1984. I used to play that album over and over again. A million times! How can this be? My god, the human brain is flawed and mysterious.
What Pearcy actually says is, “You’re hot leather…” not “butter.” And, “You’re cold steel…” not “I am…” Which, that doesn’t even make sense! Why would the bad guy be cold steel? Why not the awesome rocker first-person superhero? What is happening? How could this be?
I’m all fucked up over this. What else have been remembering wrong? Everything, perhaps, my whole life history. Where do I come from? Who even am I? I don’t have the faintest clue, apparently.