Animal Wednesday

 

Our journey today through animal-inspired songs begins in 1969, when Fleetwood Mac’s guitarist at the time was something of an anomaly for a band that played blues rock. No blues and no vocals, but instead cymbal crashes that, like gentle waves, laid the foundation for several minutes of enchantingly beautiful guitar and slide solos.

In 1977, the American rock band Heart released Barracuda, one of their biggest commercial hits. The song begins with a riff that was iconic for its time, and which might well feature in Jez’s series Rifftastic, mate.

To this day, I still cannot fathom how a song about a skunk that had been run over could become such a hit in the United States. The fact is, however, that in 1972 Loudon Wainwright III released a folk-inspired song which he probably didn’t take seriously himself.

Animal Wednesday

 

The latest installment in this little animal-themed series takes us back to 1981, when the Texan blues-rockers released their last reasonably convincing album before watering down their earthy sound with synthesizers.

Of course, the song ‘Wild Horses’ simply has to be included here. Today, however, it’s not the version by the Rolling Stones or Gram Parsons from the early seventies, but the one by Gino Vannelli, a Canadian rock and jazz musician, who would go on to have his only chart hit with this song in 1987.

And to round off today’s programme, here’s a ska/pop hit by Madness from 1983.