As suggested by one of my show’s followers/listeners, a set list of songs to do with drinking. My track-by-track tales follow this bare-bones list.
- The Who, However Much I Booze
- Paice Ashton Lord, I’m Gonna Stop Drinking Again
- Joe Jackson, What’s The Use Of Getting Sober (When You’re Gonna Get Drunk Again)
- The Rolling Stones, Might As Well Get Juiced
- The Butterfield Blues Band, Drunk Again
- Jeff Beck Group, I’ve Been Drinking
- The Kinks, Alcohol
- Nazareth, Let The Whiskey Flow
- Budgie, Whiskey River
- Junkhouse, Down In The Liver
- Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, I Found My Way To Wine
- Family, Drowned In Wine
- AC/DC, Have A Drink On Me
- Black Sabbath, Trashed
- Powder Blues Band, What’ve I Been Drinkin’
- Jerry Lee Lewis, Drinking Wine Spo-Dee O’Dee
- Ramones, Somebody Put Something In My Drink
- David Wilcox, Cheap Beer Joint
- Roy Buchanan, Beer Drinking Woman
- Toby Keith with Willie Nelson, Beer For My Horses
- Canned Heat and John Lee Hooker, Whiskey And Wimmen
- Molly Hatchet, Whiskey Man
- Mott The Hoople, Whiskey Women
- Tommy James and The Shondells, Sweet Cherry Wine
- The Ozark Mountain Daredevils, Homemade Wine
- Derek and The Dominos, Bottle Of Red Wine (from Live at The Fillmore)
- Oasis, Cigarettes & Alcohol
- Sammy Hagar, Mas Tequila
- Van Halen, Take Your Whiskey Home
- Kris Kristofferson, Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down
My track-by-track tales:
- The Who, However Much I Booze . . . I’ve often tried to find a good way to describe Keith Moon’s drumming. I finally found it, via someone who I think nailed it perfectly, in a YouTube comment field about this song. “It always makes me smile when Moonie comes tumbling in to a song.” Perfectly stated by the commenter. That ‘tumble’ happens six seconds into this confessional Pete Townshend tune from The Who By Numbers album, but it’s evident on so many Who songs. Moon, like all greats in any field, truly was distinct.
- Paice Ashton Lord, I’m Gonna Stop Drinking Again . . . I suppose all songs about drinking have lyrical similarities, but this one from the one-album-and-done Deep Purple offshoot band reminds me of Kris Kristofferson’s Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down, which I’m closing the set with, and also a passage in Gregg Allman’s autobiography, My Cross To Bear where he’s talking to a girlfriend about how he has to keep drinking to feel good, before he finally kicked the habit. As for Paice Ashton Lord, the album is Malice In Wonderland, a collaboration between Deep Purple drummer Ian Paice, keyboardist Jon Lord and English musician Tony Ashton, released in 1977, three years before Nazareth used the same title for an album that featured their hit Holiday. The lyrics, to start: “I came ’round this morning and I was feeling like hell; telephone exploded, I went, ‘oh, that bell’ . . . going on to describe someone experiencing withdrawal effects: “I’m gonna lay down and cry, I get this feelin’ every time that I’m dry.” As The Kinks will sing later in the set, oh demon alcohol.
- Joe Jackson, What’s The Use Of Getting Sober (When You’re Gonna Get Drunk Again) . . . From JJ’s Jumpin’ Jive, a 1981 album of covers highlighting 1940s swing and jump blues classics. It’s the album that served notice that Jackson was not merely the new wave artist who burst upon the scene two years earlier via his first two albums Look Sharp and I’m The Man and then the reggae and ska-tinged Beat Crazy in 1980, but one who would continually follow his muse in whatever directions it took him. As often mentioned, I’ve stayed on board his entire journey, never been disappointed.
- The Rolling Stones, Might As Well Get Juiced . . . From the Stones’ 1997 album Bridges To Babylon which became a ‘Mick Jagger working with his people and producers and Keith Richards working with his’ sort of album although, depending upon what one reads, it was a deliberate decision made in order to explore new sounds, ideas and approaches. The journalistic narrative is that Richards has always been the one wanting to keep the Stones at least somewhat on their original bluesy path while Jagger is the supposed experimental artist although that’s to me an easy oversimplification as they both obviously are blues-influenced. On this one, apparently Richards did the song, originally as a blues cut, then gave it to Jagger who had the Dust Brothers, the producers he was working with at the time, add their synthesized techniques to it. It works, if you ask me. The slow burner of a tune might be, as some have suggested, the most ‘un-Stones’ like song on the album, but what is a ‘Stones-sounding song’ really, given their vast catalog? It can depend on what album/time period you’re listening to, when you grew up, when you came to a particular song or album, as is the case with any longlasting band. Case in point: I remember when the Emotional Rescue album came out in 1980 and She’s So Cold was one of the singles. A rock critic dismissed it as lightweight and opined “this is the same band that gave us Gimme Shelter?!” I’m a big Stones fan, and while She’s So Cold is catchy, I agreed with the critic. Yet, in 2005 I saw the band in Toronto on the Bigger Bang tour, they played She’s So Cold and the place went positively nuts. So, go figure. Might As Well Get Juiced is different, but it’s unmistakably the Stones, once again illustrating their musical diversity.
- The Butterfield Blues Band, Drunk Again . . . Guitarist Elvin Bishop, who went on to a solo career after the Butterfield Band’s 1968 album In My Own Dream, exited in style by humorously handling lead vocal duties on this one. “My woman says it’s a dog gone shame the way some men bring their wives money and furs and jewelry and I come home, ain’t got a dime and smelling like a brewery. I’m drunk again . . . ”
- Jeff Beck Group, I’ve Been Drinking . . . Originally a B-side, it was released on the 2006 expanded CD reissue of 1968’s seminal Truth album. The song was reconfigured by Rod Stewart and Jeff Beck from the Johnny Mercer-penned song Drinking Again, a 1962 torch tune done by Frank Sinatra, Aretha Franklin and others including, much later, Bette Midler.
- The Kinks, Alcohol . . . From, as often stated, likely my favorite Kinks album, Muswell Hillbillies, released in 1971. It didn’t chart, but so what? It’s great, and to my knowledge has never gone out of print, it’s been re-released a few times, remastered and in expanded form, which says a lot about its quality and staying power.
- Nazareth, Let The Whiskey Flow . . . From Surviving The Law, the second Nazareth album done – with the late original lead singer Dan McCafferty’s blessing once his health started failing and he retired in 2014 – with new singer Carl Sentance. Tattooed On My Brain, released in 2018, was the first album with Sentance, with Surviving The Law coming out last year. So-called legacy bands continuing on without key original members is often cause for controversy although my view has always been that, if the music remains good/if I like it, there’s no issue. As with Nazareth, latter-day Lynyrd Skynyrd, etc. Just how I look at things, I suppose, and I take it on an as-case basis. While I’ve hung in with Nazareth and Skynyrd, I’ve no time for post-Terry Kath Chicago, for instance.
- Budgie, Whiskey River . . . Lead track from the Welsh hard rocking band’s second album, 1972’s Squawk. It’s an aviation term to do with air traffic control, hence the album cover art of an aircraft with a bird beak nose, diving, possibly out of control, done by Roger Dean, best known for his Yes album covers.
- Junkhouse, Down In The Liver . . . As far as I know, Junkhouse leader Tom Wilson long ago quit drinking and remains clean and sober. But he got some great tunes out of the habit.
- Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, I Found My Way To Wine . . . Hawkins is rightly remembered for his I Put A Spell On You, but he released lots of worthwhile material including this song, released as a single in 1954, two years before the breakthrough success of his big hit which in addition to Hawkins’ stage performances also helped lay the foundation for so-called shock rock.
- Family, Drowned In Wine . . . Lead track from the British progressive band’s 1970 album A Song For Me, by which time bassist Ric Grech had long since left the group – after the prior album Family Entertainment in fact – to join the short-lived supergroup Blind Faith along with Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker and Steve Winwood.
- AC/DC, Have A Drink On Me . . . One of the few I’ll say sort of deep cuts on the Back In Black album, because it’s arguable that Back In Black has no deep cuts, since the record is so well-known, front to back. And, obviously, deservedly so.
- Black Sabbath, Trashed . . . From 1983’s Born Again, the so-called Deep Sabbath album featuring Deep Purple singer Ian Gillan. Sabbath guitarist and lone forever member Tony Iommi, at the time, told a rock magazine that Gillan – because ‘his shriek is legendary’ – was the best candidate to replace Ronnie James Dio, who had left after two albums replacing original Sabbath singer Ozzy Osbourne. And that shriek, along with Iommi’s equally shrieking guitar sound, simply ‘makes’ this tale of drunken excess. “So we went back to the bar and hit the bottle again but there was no tequila. Then we started on the whiskey just to settle our brains ’cause there was no tequila.” Sounds like how Gillan, in a couple books, described joining Sabbath. He was out with Iommi and bass player Geezer Butler, throwing ’em back, crashed, got up in the morning to take a call from his agent who said something like ‘next time you decide to join a band, please let me know first.” I’m a fan of all eras of Black Sabbath but recommended reading, to bring a smile to your face, or make you shake your head, is everything about the Born Again album and subsequent tour, which provided some of the fodder for the rock and roll sendup movie This Is Spinal Tap.
- Powder Blues Band, What’ve I Been Drinkin’ . . . It’s interesting when you read histories of famous bands, like The Beatles, Rolling Stones, etc. The members often say they never expected to last more than a few weeks, months, maybe a year or two, given the nature of the business and public tastes. And yet so many of them keep on rolling, to this day with varying degrees of success and audience. It’s what they do. Powder Blues isn’t on the level of such famous groups but they’re actually still around playing live shows as are so many bands now in their 40th, 50th, 60th years, albeit in varying membership configurations as life and business takes its inevitable toll. Powder Blues broke fairly big, particularly in Canada, with their 1980 single Doin’ It Right. They’re now known as Tom Lavin and The Legendary Powder Blues. ‘Legendary’ seems to me a bit of a conceit, but whatever. Lavin is the Chicago-born founding member who has also produced albums by Long John Baldry and Canadian bands Prism and April Wine.
- Jerry Lee Lewis, Drinking Wine Spo-Dee O’Dee . . . I had to throw this in for the buddy of mine who suggested the drinking theme show. He’s a big Jerry Lee fan and has rekindled my own interest in The Killer. And what has occurred to me, sort of second time around for me with Lewis, and I realize it may sound obvious but it’s that beyond the piano playing and wild man act, the guy could really sing and command a recording studio session and a live audience. Such confidently terrific stuff.
- Ramones, Somebody Put Something In My Drink . . . From the band’s 1986 album Animal Boy. Written by latter-day Ramones drummer Richie Ramone (real name Richard Reinhardt but they were all Ramones, don’t ya know), it was apparently based on an actual incident where Ramone was given a drink spiked with LSD. It was later covered by an Australian band with the clever name Tequila Mockingbyrd. Theirs was a decent enough version but not as down and dirty, particularly the vocals, as the Ramones original.
- David Wilcox, Cheap Beer Joint . . . The song is perfect. Listen to it and you are in a smoky, cheap beer joint. I always kinda liked dives, if they’re still called that. They have character, and characters, from all walks of life.
- Roy Buchanan, Beer Drinking Woman . . . From the late great blues/rock artist’s 1986 album Dancing On The Edge. Delbert McClinton sang on a few songs on the record, although Buchanan handled this one.
- Toby Keith with Willie Nelson, Beer For My Horses . . . This is a first. I’ve never played Toby Keith or Willie Nelson on the show. I know Nelson’s music, who doesn’t know at least some of it, but I confess, not being much of a country fan, I’m not at all up on Keith although definitely heard of him. However, the song, which I’d never heard, came up in the station system while searching something else. I listened, it fits today’s theme, I like it, here you go. It led to a 2008 comedy film of the same name which I have not seen, co-writtten by and co-starring Keith.
- Canned Heat and John Lee Hooker, Whiskey And Wimmen . . . From the excellent 1971 collaboration Hooker ‘N’ Heat album, the vast majority of tunes, including this one, being Hooker compositions.
- Molly Hatchet, Whiskey Man . . . Hard rocker from the Flirtin’ With Disaster album whose title cut remains the band’s signature tune.
- Mott The Hoople, Whiskey Women . . . Early Mott, from the band’s third album, 1971’s Wildlife, before the success that came via Mott’s version of David Bowie’s All The Young Dudes. Whiskey Women was written by guitarist Mick Ralphs, who later left Mott The Hoople to form Bad Company.
- Tommy James and The Shondells, Sweet Cherry Wine . . . Psychedelia that was a top 10 hit in both Canada and the US in 1969.
- The Ozark Mountain Daredevils, Homemade Wine . . . Rockabilly country pickin’ from a band I seem to be playing a lot lately while rediscovering that they had lots of good songs besides the hits Jackie Blue and If You Wanna Get To Heaven. And, the song fits the theme. The kind of song I can see being played live, around a campfire.
- Derek and The Dominos, Bottle Of Red Wine (from Live At The Fillmore) . . . From the short-lived blues rock band fronted by Eric Clapton that also featured keyboardist/singer Bobby Whitlock, bassist Carl Radle and drummer Jim Gordon. The Dominos are one of those interesting family tree acts, the roots of the band going back to the various members playing on sessions for George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass album. The live version of Bottle Of Red Wine, recorded in New York in October 1970, originally appeared on the Dominos’ 1973 In Concert album. It was included on Live At The Fillmore, an expanded version of those 1970 shows, released in 1994.
- Oasis, Cigarettes & Alcohol . . . A hit single in the UK and Europe, albeit uncomfortably close to T. Rex’s Get It On (Bang A Gong). I like Oasis’s stuff well enough, but they were nearly as bad as Led Zeppelin in terms of ‘borrowing’ things, as any website search will reveal. But, as with Zep, I still enjoy the music.
- Sammy Hagar, Mas Tequila . . . Tequila has been very good for Hagar, an entrepreneur as well as a musician, who had big success with his Cabo Wabo brand, eventually selling it for $80 to $100M, according to various reports. He’s still in the booze biz wih a new tequila, Santos, as well as a chain of restaurants. Some people just have that money-making knack.
- Van Halen, Take Your Whiskey Home . . . Van Halen’s Women and Children First album has been great, of late, for themed shows I’ve done. I used Fools from the album for my April Fool show earlier this month, and Take Your Whiskey Home obviously fits a drinking-themed show. Same sorts of songs, too. At the beginning of Fools, singer David Lee Roth channels his inner Janis Joplin, akin to her Summertime vocals, before all hell breaks loose on the Van Halen track. All hell breaks loose on Take Your Whiskey Home, too, but only after an early, acoustic boogie start complete with Roth’s sort of talk singing, then into the heavy, infectious groove. “Well my baby don’t want me around; she said she’s tired of watching me fall down; she wants the good life, only the best; but I like the bottle better than the rest.”
- Kris Kristofferson, Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down . . . Amazing songwriter yet it was other artists who had the big hits with his songs – Janis Joplin with Me and Bobby McGee and Johnny Cash with this one. I’m a big Johnny Cash fan but I prefer Kristofferson’s more raw treatment of Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down. Both songs appeared on Kristofferson’s self-titled debut album, which was a commercial failure when released in June 1970. But, in a demonstration of the power and name recognition of a hit single, once Joplin’s version of Bobby McGee became a No. 1 hit in 1971, Kristofferson’s record company reissued his debut album under the title Me and Bobby McGee and it went gold, hitting No. 10 on the country charts and No. 43 on Billboard’s pop list.
- The Who, However Much I Booze . . . I’ve often tried to find a good way to describe Keith Moon’s drumming. I finally found it, via someone who I think nailed it perfectly, in a YouTube comment field about this song. “It always makes me smile when Moonie comes tumbling in to a song.” Perfectly stated by the commenter. That ‘tumble’ happens six seconds into this confessional Pete Townshend tune from The Who By Numbers album, but it’s evident on so many Who songs. Moon, like all greats in any field, truly was distinct.