Introduction

After stepping into the 1970s with Helen Reddy’s “Angie Baby,” let’s stay there a while longer. We’re away from traditional territory for the moment, but we’ll get back soon enough. Alison did an excellent job in capturing the freaky mystery inside “Angie.” As it happens, I was introduced to Alison by my friend, Mike. Mike also introduced me to today’s song, so it seems fitting to go with it next.

I was telling Mike a few months ago that I was trying to decide how to present a truly bad song, because talking about how it is bad would be helpful for understanding how other songs are good. The song in question is fatally encumbered by plot exposition and belabored storytelling, not to mention a horribly tragic, if obscure, “there are no words” kind of story. Part of our goal at Murder Ballad Monday is to be a venue for good music about bad things. But primarily we hope to sustain an ongoing conversation about this music that is both entertaining and ultimately enlightening (we hope) in the aggregate. Every once in a while I suppose, a little contrast helps us toward this end.

For now, though, I’m not ready to discuss that particular truly bad song. I sent Pat a link to it, and his response was:

“OMG that’s an awful song!  How do you envision that working?  (I don’t want to just say ‘Don’t do it’… well, I do want to say that, but I figured I’d ask what you’re thinking before I freak out.)”

So fear not. (Or, sorry to disappoint you.) I’m not going with that one. With today’s song, you will be more entertained than appalled, I assure you. It’s part of the point.

Back to Mike…

Mike, with an uncanny savvy for the reading and listening market, suggested that I might pull off my “bad music” post by framing it around the question “What’s the worst murder ballad out there?”. He mentioned offhandedly columnist Dave Barry‘s “Worst Songs Survey” (later made into a book.) Then, an “aha!” moment descended when he realized that one of the songs on Barry’s survey involved cannibalism, although he had never listened to it. (I think he would want me to be clear about that point. As of our most recent conversation, less than 24 hours ago, he had not listened to it.)

That, ladies and gentlemen, is what brings us to “Timothy” and The Buoys.

What’s interesting about “Timothy,” though, is not that it is bad. I’ve heard lots worse. For the record, I am distrustful of any list of bad songs, like Barry’s, that fails to give at least an honorable mention to ”  The Young New Mexican Puppeteer.” (and on Spotify) What’s interesting about “Timothy” is that it was deliberately made to be bad, or rather, so taboo that it would be banned from radio airplay, and that it still reached #17 on the Billboard Pop Charts. I don’t believe that there has ever been so peppy and so successful a song about cannibalism in the entire history of popular music. Even with my affinity for murder ballads, I hope nobody really tries to outdo it. Really…. Let’s be reasonable.

In what’s ahead, we’ll take a look at how “Timothy” paradoxically manages to be both shocking and innocuous, and even hilarious, in its own way, at the same time. Also, of interest for our larger purposes in the blog, some of the songwriter’s statements about the song give an edifying and amusing glimpse into the pangs of an artist’s conscience. More on that after we listen to the song. In the end, “Timothy” gamed the system and won.

Trapped in a mine…

Here’s “Timothy,” written by Rupert Holmes and played by The Buoys.

Before I provide you with the lyrics, I should tell the story of when I described this week’s song to my spouse.

First, I told her about the song.

Its story is bizarre and grotesque enough, but she generally humors me on this, and is used to it by now, so “Huh…” was pretty much the response. Basically, she thought it was another weird song.

Then, I played it for her.

“Oh my gosh!” she said. “I know this song!” Then she starts singing along with the chorus as though Timothy is some long, lost teen heart-throb. “That’s what this song is about?!”

She probably hadn’t heard the song for decades, but remembered singing it when she was a kid. We had a similar discussion about “Angie Baby” last week. So, given that my wife was quite young when each of these songs came out, we have a couple more data points on the issue of exposing kids to murder ballads. Kids hear what they’re ready to hear.

Here are Holmes’s lyrics.

Rupert Holmes recording “Timothy” c. 1969

Escape, or “If you like mule enchiladas, and getting caught in a mine…”

The basic story behind “Timothy” is that The Buoys were having some challenges in breaking through. Scepter Records agreed to record them, but didn’t take the group very seriously and wouldn’t promote them. A junior recording engineer at Scepter liked the band, and approached Rupert Holmes. Holmes is perhaps most famous now for “Escape (the Piña Colada Song)” (and on Spotify). The engineer asked Holmes for a solution to give The Buoys a break, and boost their popularity despite the label’s lack of investment. Holmes came up with the idea of writing a song for them that would get banned. Sex and drugs were nowhere near controversial enough. At the time, Holmes happened to be working on an arrangement of Merle Travis’s coal mining song “Sixteen Tons” and watching The Galloping Gourmet TV program. Worlds collided in a creative and rather taboo way.

Tennessee Ernie Ford on sheet music cover for “Sixteen Tons”

Some people say a man is made outta mud
A poor man’s made outta muscle and blood
Muscle and blood and skin and bones
A mind that’s a-weak and a back that’s strong

With these opening lyrics of “Sixteen Tons” and the inspiration of Graham Kerr, we have a…um…recipe for early 70s pop success.

So, the thought behind “Timothy” was that it was to be so controversial that it would get itself banned from radio play–thereby, perversely, enabling its success. The most thoroughly informative sources I’ve found for the song’s genesis are found here and here.

What do you know? It worked! It was the 87th most popular song on Billboard’s charts for the entire year of 1971, outperforming The Doors‘ “Riders on the Storm,” and narrowly edging out The Partridge Family’s “I Woke Up In Love This Morning.” I’m not sure what’s stranger, 1971 or the Billboard charts.

Apparently, music and radio executives are not entirely unlike six-year-olds, and it took a while for them to realize what the song was about. After the controversy erupted, and radio stations were refusing to play the song, Scepter Records executives claimed they had been assured Timothy was a mule.

Not the “Timothy” in question.

Timothy was not a mule.

Holmes weighs in on this mule business.

“The label copped out on the cannibalism,” said Holmes. “They started this rumor that Timothy was actually a mule, so it wasn’t so bad for these survivors to eat him. I was offended at the very idea of this poor defenseless mule being eaten.”

OK, then! We can rest assured that Holmes is not without standards.

Holmes’s senses of decorum and good taste also lead us to the second intriguing statement attributed to him about the song. Some listeners noted that the “three trapped miners to two survivors” ratio from a northeast Pennsylvania band bore unfortunate similarities to the Sheppton Mine Rescue. That rescue took place in 1963, and not far away at all from the hometown of the band. Although the third miner in that incident was killed by falling rock, Holmes was unsettled by the similarities. He told rock journalist Maxim Furek:

Sheppton Mine Rescue, 1963

“I learned about the Sheppton Mine Disaster after ‘Timothy’ was on the charts. If I had known about that at the time, I probably never would have written the song because I don’t want to make fun of something that’s tragic.”

Good point…a little late, maybe, but showing us, I think, that although the song succeeded in part because it was shocking, the other more essential part of its success came through it not being a true story and the lyrics’ tongue-in-cheek (no pun intended) approach to storytelling.

Gut check

Last fall, before discussing Michael Lewis’s gripping, musical retelling of the tragedy of the whaleship Essex, and the episodes of cannibalism it involves, I deliberated at some length about whether to take it up. As I acknowledged back then, for a number reasons I wanted to avoid the reality (or the impression) of casting about for novel bits of human extremity and/or depravity. There are taboos and then there are taboos. I decided to go with that song because its story is significant in American history, and the narrative is an important one for looking at how and why to tell difficult tales in music. While the cannibalism in that song is shocking and horrifying in its own right, I think the more compelling, more essential moment is the drawing of straws among the castaways to decide who dies so that others might live. But, you can go back to our discussion of that song here.

Comparing my experience of “Timothy” to my experience of “The Essex” raised in me a worry that I have lost a respectable level of civilized squeamishness. Mike, who introduced me to “Timothy,” was still too revolted by the very idea of it to listen to it. I listened to it and experienced less queasiness than when eating my delicious order of broiled octopus in Greektown last week. (I soldiered on, but I had a couple moments of doubt.)

What happened here? The answer, I think, is that I actually listened to the song.

It’s hard to take “Timothy” seriously. Holmes and The Buoys are indeed making fun. I’m not exactly sure that he gets off the hook by disclaiming any relation to real events. There are probably far more cases similar to the “Timothy” story than we would ever want to know about. But, I can’t fault them too much in the end. “Timothy” did what it set out to do. It provoked, but not too graphically. It presented the listeners with a mildly challenging puzzle, and complimented their “achievement” in solving it with an “inside scoop” and a peppy tune. It hit the mark in generating popularity among young listeners, mostly under the eyes, noses, or ears of an older generation. I suppose listeners can either feel manipulated or gently, if queasily, amused at their feat.

What makes “Timothy” less shocking and less problematic than “The Essex,” for example, or for that matter many other murder ballads we’ve listened to over the months, is that the entire arrangement of the song discourages empathy–even cross-cutting the lyrics. It’s a toe-tapper, a (pop) rocker, and spends most of its time winking at the audience.  It doesn’t take itself seriously, and we certainly don’t want to let it, so you may just want to turn up the music and dance, as these nostalgia buffs seem happy to do to the performance of “Timothy” by The Buoys’ successor incarnation, Dakota. It does look, however, like the band waited until after dinner was cleared before performing the song.

Next up

Barring something unforeseen, that’s it for us for the week. Pat will be back next week, with something a bit more sober and fitting to the occasion. After that, we return to Scotland. Thanks for reading and listening.