Now, before I get to my lists of good and great walkout songs, I feel I need to get slightly more specific, just in case you have been brainwashed by popular culture into believing a bad song or bad band is actually a good song or good band simply because you have been told it is good a thousand times. For example, groups like Buckcherry, Wolfmother, and The Darkness will always suck, no matter how hard they are pushed by an A&R imbecile. I would go deeper into why and how they suck, but there are two other terrible bands that need much more attention.
Stay Away from These Two Bands
Aerosmith and Metallica—the two biggest frauds in popular rock music. Let me start with Aerosmith, one of the great puzzles of modern culture. They were dreadful in the 1970s—their main claim to fame was a singer who put scarves on his mike stand. He just couldn’t, well, sing. The guitarist is equally atrocious. He has spent forty years making a living from the first thirty seconds of “Walk This Way,” which is, when you actually listen to it, just really, really mediocre. No innovation, no artistry, nothing.
Thankfully, Aerosmith disappeared in the ‘80s, but for some unfathomable reason someone at MTV decided they were “cool.” (I still wonder if it was just a programmer’s sick, twisted prank that got out of control.) They flung Aerosmith at the MTV generation like a rabid zoo chimp flinging a handful of excrement through the bars of its cage at an unsuspecting eight-year-old child; sadly, most of it stuck. Then, the band decided to do a duet with Run-DMC, to show how rock and rap had come together—a cynical, obvious, boring exercise in cross-marketing shenanigans. Rock and rap were already together, decades before this; go find, and listen to, “Hot Rod Lincoln” by Johnny Bond.
Aerosmith was awful, is awful, and always will be awful. They just relentlessly tell the world how good they are. No Aerosmith, ever.
Now let me dissect Metallica. They were an awful thrash-band from San Francisco or thereabouts going nowhere until someone at a record company began paying “special attention” to them for reasons that are best left ... undiscussed. They have metastasized over the years into a bloated, stupid, annoying bunch of balding, bloated boobs. But every metal magazine puts them on every cover for some unknown (or should I say “undiscussed”?) reason. And on every cover they’re wearing their stupid rock-and-roll sunglasses on their “heavy-metal mean-mug” faces. They are rewarded each time they churn out a crappy, derivative record—which thankfully happens only every few years. Their singer spent a fortune on singing lessons that obviously didn’t take, but that doesn’t stop him from trying to “scoop” notes on every phrase, causing him to sound like a drunken businessman doing karaoke to Christina Aguilera at her worst. Metallica can be summed up like this: self-mythologizing, self-impressed, relentless, awful, with the most annoying, mullet-sporting “fans” of any band.
God, I wish Aerosmith and Metallica would do a tour together and end up with a suicidal airplane pilot. So no Aerosmith or Metallica, ever. No exceptions.
“What then, Chael?” you may very well be asking. How canst thou lead us out of our creative musical wilderness and into the sonic Promised Land, like a latter-day Moses? I can, my children; and will. Read on.
What Is the Role of Good Walkout Music?
At this point, I feel I have done a decent job describing a bad walkout song. The deeper message I wanted to convey to fighters with my tirade is this: The music you pick is not for you. When choosing music, do not select what you would like to hear or what you think will make you cool or special. I know you don’t have the mental chops to come up with a list of priorities yourself, so Uncle Chael will provide it. When deciding on your walkout music, you need to consider, in this exact order:
1. The fans.
2. The event.
3. The quality and relevance of the music.
4. Your personal taste.
So now that I have gotten my point across—in the understated, respectful, sensitive style you have quickly become accustomed to—and we can agree unanimously that I am correct, perhaps we can spend a little time on the subject of good walkout music: what it is, what it means, and how to identify and access it yourselves.
Walkout music should be enjoyable to the ears, be appropriate for the setting, and convey a sense of the fighter’s mission. It should have a good opening and then a buildup. It can’t blast off at a hundred miles per hour like most bad metal because then it has nowhere to go. It just drones along, boring everyone to tears. Tempo wise, both too fast and too slow are equally lethal. Time changes are good (which kills all of reggae, thank God), but too many time changes become annoying. Remember how long you’ve got to walk, and find music that entertains and, seriously, do try to tell a story in that time frame and make a conscious effort to represent something real. Look for music that is original but not obscure, engaging but not oppressive, energetic but not hyperactive.
It should also be a big-room song, if you know what I mean. It should sound good in an arena, not just in your headphones. I love songs like “Operator” by Jim Croce or “If You Could Read My Mind” by Gordon Lightfoot, but they’re not big-room songs. Two examples of big-room songs are “More Than a Feeling” by Boston and “Don’t Stop Believin’” by Journey.
Just remember the vibe, the event, the nature of the spectacle, and the context. I will grace you with some suggestions, starting with a handful of good songs, and then concluding with Uncle Chael’s Top Ten Hall of Fame Walkout Songs. Enjoy.
Good Walkout Songs (Honorable Mention)
“Use Somebody” by the Kings of Leon.
Great opening. Great buildup. Great song.
“Girlfriend” by Matthew Sweet.
The late, great NY guitarist Robert Quine goes into hyperspace.
“Best of You” by the Foo Fighters.
Dave Grohl. Genius.
“Tired of Being Alive” by Danzig.
See, heavy is OK, kids, if you have an opening, a melody, and a singer. The first line—”Don’t care if ‘n’ you die”—says it all.
“The Fuse” by Jackson Browne.
Just such a great opening—ominous and interesting. Just great.
“Ghost Symbol” by Zero 7.
Weird. Unique. Amazing.
“Lady Picture Show” by Stone Temple Pilots.
Great opening. FYI: STP saved rock and roll in the ‘90s.
“The Song Remains the Same” by Led Zeppelin.
Jimmy Page. Best ever. Bonham. Best ever. Song. Amazing.
“The Changeling” by the Doors.
The opening song on the ‘70s masterpiece L.A. Woman. Not an obvious choice from Jungle Jim & the Boys, but just a great opening—hoarse, bellowing: bombed Lizard King at his best.
“What Is Life” by George Harrison.
Again, great guitar opening, buildup, everything.
“Soul Makossa” by Manu Dibango.
This is a 1972 saxophone song from Manu Dibango, a guy from Cameroon. It starts off dark and mysterious, with atmospheric conga drums pounding out a rhythm only the Dark Continent could produce. Next: whispers, mutters, chants, and ominous words. And finally the blast of a saxophone solo. The song is engaging, unique, enigmatic, and great. Older fans will recall it immediately; younger fans who have never heard it will be blown away.
“Hero Worship” by the B-52’s.
Wow. Just WOW. Ricky Wilson, dear, departed guitar genius, played with only four strings and invented his own tunings. This song is on the B-52’s first record, a masterpiece of brilliant, raucous, musical subversiveness, equal to “Never Mind the Bollocks” by the Sex Pistols and the Ramones’ first record—all landmarks in the reinvention of popular music in the mid-1970s. This song got kind of lost in the sauce, with hits like “Rock Lobster” and “Planet Claire” dominating the airwaves and dance floors, but dang, it is an amazing song. Ricky’s astonishing guitar duels with his sister Cindy’s bizarre, amazing voice, until she simply shrieks the song, causing it to pull free of the earth’s gravity and float around the cosmos. You
wouldn’t hurt yourself walking out to “Lava” off that first album, either.
“(It’s a) Family Affair” by Sly & the Family Stone.
Great intro, and then Sly comes in, obviously zonked out of his mind on only God knows what. He totally blows the timing when he comes in on the second verse, which is hysterical and makes the song even better.
“Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me” by U2.
I include this song begrudgingly because Bono is such a self-righteous, pontificating wanker. But it just has such a great, great opening. The song is interesting and original—Big Room all the way. And to their credit, U2 had a big-room sound years before they were playing big rooms. So props. Now Bono, lose the welder’s goggles, grow your hair out, and shut up once in a while, ya big windbag. I’ll be back to torture you at some point.
“Your Day Will Come” by Cousteau.
This band from England had to change its name from Cousteau to Moreau after its first album, because of some legal issues with a bunch of French scuba divers nobody’d ever heard of that had rights to the name Cousteau. Whatever. This is just a great walkout song. The piano leads us into a doomed, bleak march, as Liam McKahey (what a voice!) solemnly intones “Your day will come/It’s catching up on you” in his rich, silky baritone. Give this one a listen, kids. And, it’s also a great song to leave to; as your opponent is laid out, a shambles of disappointment, regret, blood, misery, and despair, Liam croons “Hope rides another day. …” Wow.
“The One I Love” by R.E.M.
Now here’s an interesting choice. Great opening, great song—Peter Buck’s jangling Rickenbacker, Michael Stipe’s beautiful, uniquely American voice, and ... the subject matter, which is ... the exact opposite of what it is perceived to be. Think about it, kids. Especially you dopes who used this as a wedding song or a prom song or whatever. (Most of you are divorced and/or didn’t graduate anyway, so that should dull a bit of the pain of what I’m about to share with you.) Stipe appears before us as a singer, but also, and more important, from a standpoint of criticism and interpretation, as what we call in literature (and lyrics are, occasionally, literature; read the lyrics to “Jokerman” or “Tears of Rage” by Bob Dylan, or “Powderfinger” by Neil Young) the unreliable narrator. Think about what he says:
This one goes out to the one I love
This one goes out, to the one, I’ve left behind
A simple prop, to occupy my time. ...
Do you see the callous insult implied by these seemingly adoring words? “I’m only thinking of you because I’m on the road, and I’m bored!” And then, as if that’s not bad enough, he concludes by saying:
This one goes out to the one I love
This one goes out, to the one, I’ve left behind
Another prop, has occupied my time. ...
I just love, LOVE, the meaning of the song, and it can’t even be called a hidden meaning. It’s right out there; you can hear every word. It is a song of such scalding contempt and such cruel antipathy. But if you really give it some thought, it’s not either our narrator’s current or previous “prop” he feels that contempt and antipathy for—it’s himself. You fighters should think about that as you slink up to your rooms with your latest MMA groupie.
The Ten Great (in Ascending Order)
“You Only Tell Me You Love Me When You’re Drunk”
by the Pet Shop Boys.
What a song. Listen to the opening. Then listen to Neil sing “What a performance tonight/Should I react or turn out the light?/Looks like you’re picking a fight. …”
“Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting”
by Elton John and Bernie Taupin.
This would be especially entertaining if the fight is on a Friday.
“You Could Be Mine”
by Guns n’ Roses.
For all you fans of Gn’R who were ready to hang me from the yardarm a page or two ago, here’s a great song. It’s much better than “Jungle” in every way; not just as a walkout song, but as a song in general. Listen to them together. Compare and contrast. Acknowledge the obvious. This song just kicks ass. Try to time your entrance into the ring as Axl shrieks “Don’t forget to call my lawyers with ridiculous demands!”
“Heads Explode”
by Monster Magnet.
The heads of the people in the crowd will explode too.
“Go With the Flow”
by Queens of the Stone Age.
What a song, and the single-best rock video in the history of mankind. Talk Uncle Dana into showing the video as you walk out; it is a masterpiece of sex and death. When the chick squeezes the blood out of a human heart onto her chest right on the downbeat, you see a genius filmmaker at work.
“Work to Do”
by the Isley Brothers.
Incredible opening, fantastic song. Remember what I said about picking a song that tells a story? Well, listen to this song. Imagine what you’d be telling the crowd.
“Killed by Death”
by Motörhead.
Lemmy, with his best Motörhead lineup, just destroys.
“Chinese Democracy”
by Guns n’ Roses.
Yep. Another Gn’R song. About 100 musicians, three or four guitarists doing solos. The album this song is on became a much-delayed laughingstock, but this particular song is just amazing, with a brutal, killer opening. Listen before you give this choice a dismissive, smug little chortle. Then admit I’m right. This is one of the best Gn’R songs ever, and a great walkout song to boot.
“It Don’t Come Easy”
by Ringo Starr.
Holy Mother of God, if you could ask for a better song than this to walk out to, I don’t know what it is—except, perhaps, the next song on my list, of course. Great big-room opening. George Harrison, who wrote this song, playing a sublime guitar lead-in, and then, the words. When it comes to telling a story about fighters or fighting, well, what else could you say, in a few words, that could be clearer than “It don’t come easy”?
God, I love this song! If I wasn’t such a superstitious, patterned, inhibited, pathological wretch, I’d walk out to this myself. As it is, I tried desperately to have one of my idols, a fellow fighter, walk out to this. (I can’t tell you his name, but let’s just say it may, or may not, rhyme with “Candy Routure.”) He’s come out to different songs over the years because he isn’t psychologically trapped in a dysfunctional marriage to a song he despises and is embarrassed by—like someone I know, whom I see every morning as I brush my teeth. I truly believe that if he had come out to “It Don’t Come Easy” rather than whatever forgettable, puerile crap he walked out to when he fought that big ol’ slab o’ cowardice Brock Lesnar, he would have killed him. That lucky punch the bloated, brush-cutted Lesnar landed would have been deflected by the karmic energy of a song so closely aligned with Randy (ummm, I mean, that anonymous fighter, who changed the sport and is the most popular, inspirational fighter ever), his life, his work ethic, and his journey.
Which leads us to … drumroll, please … the grand champion of walkout songs.
“How Soon Is Now?”
by the Smiths.
The first time I heard this song I thought it must have come from another planet; yet at the same time I felt it had come from a portion of my soul I was afraid to access for fear that it would drive me mad. Easily the single-most original, astonishing, and brilliant song of the last quarter-century. It confronts and describes issues that fighters are the living, breathing incarnations and victims of. The song is a throbbing, relentless, inexhaustible welter of loneliness, insecurity, and morose self-pity, sonically crystallized and packaged, then disguised as a brilliant pop song. If fighters could be captured in a song, it would be this one.
Even the video is great. A cheesy attempt at art, it comes across as an insincere, self-conscious artifice. Shot in black-and-white, it shows the Smiths in concert at the height of their powers: Johnny Marr, the genius behind the music, playing the guitar, as a shirtless, sk
inny Morrissey pinwheels his buggy-whip-thin arms and howls in that bizarre, unique, minor-chord warble, “I am the son and the heir/of a shyness that is criminally vulgar/I am the son and heir of nothing in particular. ...” That’s fighters, ladies and gentlemen. Not heroes. Just a bunch of shy, lonely, insecure basket cases that destroy themselves and one another for the benefit of total strangers, for a little money, and for the feeling of acceptance and approval, from people they will never meet. (I call it the “good little dog syndrome”). The song “How Soon Is Now?” succinctly encapsulates exactly what it is that motivates fighters. It tells the story of our journey. It is a brilliant, unique, fantastic song, and hopefully, someday, some fighter with more guts than me will have the nerve to walk out to it.
Last-Minute Addition
“Sun King” by the Cult.
I don’t have any idea how this one got past me when I was making my Top Ten list; I just don’t. This song was one of the cornerstones of my argument, one of my Best o’ the Best, and in the hustle-and-bustle of writing, it somehow got “lost inna sauce,” so apologies to Ian, Billy, and whoever is playing bass and drums in the band these days.
The Voice of Reason: A V.I.P. Pass to Enlightenment Page 10
