round 1
(11) The Cardigans, “Iron Man”
scared off
(6) Mötley Crüe, “Helter Skelter”
205-86
AND WILL PLAY ON IN THE SECOND ROUND
Read the essays, listen to the songs, and vote. Winner is the aggregate of the poll below and the @marchxness twitter poll. Polls closed @ 9am Arizona time on 3/7/22.
kelly shire on Mötley Crüe’s “Helter Skelter”
Used to be, if I heard a song and knew what band or artist originally recorded or composed it, I felt a little cool, enjoying that frisson of synapses firing, my brain instantly rifling through its warehouse of useless pop culture factoids. But along with my brief elation, similar to knowing the answer to a tough final question on Jeopardy!, comes the need to share my information with someone. That righteous urge to take someone and their enthusiasm for say, Counting Crows’ version of “Big Yellow Taxi,” down a notch or two. (This scenario, this exact song and band, presented itself to me via extended family this past December.) “This song was a banger in the 90s,” the dude told me, only a little drunk. I nodded, bit my tongue. I wanted to be nice. It was Christmas, after all.
Who gets to be cool? And who’s relegated to being the opposite, the wallflowers, the last-picked gang? I say it comes down to chill, or the lack thereof. Zero chill means your heart is on your sleeve, your emotions displayed there on your face. You care just a little too much. My know-it-all tendencies aren’t cool, not even close to zero chill. Unfortunately, this is the person I am down inside: the tattle tale, the teacher’s pet. Someone give her a gold star, for god’s sake, if only to shut her up.
*
I chose “Helter Skelter” as a cover song not because I wanted to share nuggets of information about The Beatles, or take a deep dive into Mötley Crüe Shout at the Devil, the 1983 album featuring their version. It’s because I wanted to write about the Crüe, to immerse myself in nostalgia about weekend nights I spent cruising Sunset Boulevard, staring at all those boys in leather pants and wild hair, lighting my cigarettes, and imagining myself to be pretty damn cool.
Back then, I thought if I just didn’t open my smart ass mouth, I could seduce one of those hot boys in their sweaty pants, given the opportunity. I listened to “Girls, Girls, Girls'' over and over, my long legs and burgundy Wet n’ Wild lipstick bumping and grinding in my bedroom mirror. When my friend and I cruised past the Seventh Veil strip club name-dropped in the song, I thought that could be a career possibility, if I only had the guts and a flat stomach.
But a couple of years before those Sunset Strip nights, I was in high school in the 80s and was not at all cool. To wit: When my aunt went on a Mexican cruise, she brought back a yellow sundress for me, with ruffles and yellow eyelet lace. It was a sundress, the elastic neckline meant to be worn pulled off the shoulders, and it should’ve been pushed to the back of my closet, or relegated to Halloween, but I not only wore that shit to school, I walked the mile there and back, the yellow fiesta dress bopping down the streets of my busy L.A. suburb. God only knows what shoes I wore with that get-up.
In the same history class where I’d worn my yellow sundress, with that same male teacher whose fingers had once, ever so lightly, brushed against my bare shoulders, a couple of boys rushed to the front of the room and popped a VHS tape into the VCR/TV cart. The lecherous teacher had left our class alone, was off somewhere, probably making copies—mimeographs. The boys pushed play, and on the TV screen popped a scene from Mötley Crüe’s Uncensored, an hour-long, documentary glimpse at the band members living out their rock n’ roll lifestyles. In the queued scene, Vince Neil rides down the Strip at night in an open-air hot tub at the back of a limo, surrounded by beautiful women. One, a blonde, wears a torn t-shirt with a pentagram on the front. She lifts up her shirt, baring her breasts at the jealous onlookers (of course they’re jealous), and my World History class roared, before the teacher returned and shut it all down. God, that was cool.
*
Something I learned writing this: a helter skelter is a real thing, a noun. It’s a British amusement ride, a type of slide. One would have to pay a bit of money for the chance to climb up the contraption and slide down through its winding turns. In the photos I find online, a helter skelter looks like a hybrid between a lighthouse and carnival ride.
It is not the 1974 bestselling true-crime book, written by Vincent Bugliosi, detailing the Manson Family murders. It is not the made-for-TV movie that aired a couple of years later, of the same name, based on the book. So a helter skelter was first a twisty slide, and the twistiness lent its name to an adjective: things are chaotic, getting weird. And then it became a Beatles song, and then the phrase became tied to an infamous madman. First it was innocent. Then it was loud. Then it got a little evil.
Something I pretty much assumed, but confirmed: The Beatles’ “Helter Skelter” is often credited with being the first heavy metal song. It’s chaotic, and discordant, with the driving guitar, and those repeating, descending notes that sound a little ominous. The way Paul starts off yelling, right off the bat, first lines, no warming up to the subject. Unlike the heavy metal songs of two decades later that usually boasted about the singer’s liberal enjoyment of sex, drugs, or both, “Helter Skelter”’s chorus only demands an answer: “will you, won’t you want me to make you?” What’s it gonna be, boy? Whaddaya say? It’s demanding. It is not without a little attitude. Pretty metal.
Something I assumed, but was very wrong about: this isn’t John Lennon’s song. I’m pretty familiar with the Beatles catalog and even before this essay, could’ve sung most of “Helter Skelter” off the top of my head. But I could not clearly hear the voice of the singer, and assumed all these years that it was a Lennon composition. Or Lennon-McCartney, at the very least. Because isn’t Lennon considered the cooler of the pair? With his round glasses, the sleep-in protest with Yoko, with “Imagine?” Even now, his face appears on mass produced t-shirts, shorthand for the cliche of 1960s peace and love. Shouldn’t it be Lennon then, who’s responsible for the first heavy metal song?
Once removed from his founding-member-of-arguably-greatest-band-ever status, I have never thought Paul McCartney was cool. Instead, I think of Paul on his domestic English farm, the chickens, the children, Linda. Those bucolic photos of young shirtless Paul, revealing that white pudge of soft belly. The Paul of “Silly Love Songs,” and “Uncle Albert,'' doesn't seem in possession of enough anger or plain wildness to have composed “Helter Skelter.” Yet it’s Paul, thrashing, driving the clanging, clashing notes that are the two false endings of the song, before it finally ends and Ringo shouts, “I’ve got blisters on mah fingas!”
Though Helter Skelter is credited as a “Lennon-McCartney” composition on the White Album, in later interviews, Lennon confirmed that “it’s all Paul.”
The best, coolest cover of Helter Skelter is probably Siouxie Sioux’s from the first Banshees album, but I do like the Crüe’s version. Early Crüe, on their first two albums, are still streetwise and hungry, and Vince Neil’s voice sounds so young, like the band just stepped off the stage of the Starwood or Gazzari’s, two popular clubs back in the heyday of the Strip. Even so, it’s a dumbed-down version. In the middle of the song, Neil shouts, “Come on, baby!” for no good reason; at the end, he whispers “it’s a helter skelter,” like he’s trying to tap into something evil. And evil is cool; on their first two albums, the Crüe embraced hints of Satanism, like the pentagram cover on “Shout at the Devil.” I found images of the 12” vinyl picture disc of the band’s “Helter Skelter” single; on the insert sleeve is a graphic of the lyrics, paired with a white fridge covered in bloody handprints, a nod to the Manson murders.
A few years after this release, in an 1986 interview, Crüe bassist Nikki Sixx called the Beatles “fucking wimpy.” In a listicle from just last year, Sixx names “Band on the Run '' as one of the 8 songs that most influenced him, and says that if he had to pick, he’d choose Wings over the Beatles. Sixx is clearly a Paul guy.
*
A friend and I were headed south on the freeway, riding away from the office where we both worked. We were both young enough to still believe personality and taste could be signified by our favorite radio stations. In her small pickup, with KNAC on the stereo, we rode, feeling free on a Friday after five. KNAC was the only real metal station in the L.A. area, not the classic AOR rock on the other end of the dial; the only station that played stuff like Motorhead or Wasp.
Crüe’s “Helter Skelter” came on, and my friend cranked it up loud and I bopped my head along. But the song wasn’t yet over before I felt compelled to inform her that it was a cover song, originally written by the Beatles. And she didn’t believe me, because, seriously? The Beatles? She seemed to hold Sixx’s opinion of the Fab Four. How could it be that the Beatles had also been the creators of this rocker, this noise? She didn’t believe me. And I, smug as ever, insisted, shrugged. Doesn’t matter if you believe me or not, I said. It’s true. It was quiet in that cab for a moment or two, the mood a little tense, until the next song. I blew my cool smoke out the cracked-open window, happy.
Born and raised in Southern California, Kelly Shire’s essays have appeared in journals such as Brevity, Under the Gum Tree, and Entropy, among others. Her short fiction is included in the anthology “Palm Springs Noir,” a 2021 title in the popular crime series published by Akashic Books. In previous Xness tournaments, she’s written about The Cult and Freddie Fender for March Vladness & Badness. A recent recipient of residencies awarded by Writing by Writers and Vashon Island Arts, she works in a school library, getting paid to dispense information and random facts to unsuspecting minors.
THE CARDIGANS COVERING BLACK SABBATH’S “IRON MAN” EXPLORES A MORE FEMININE APOCALYPSE by Katie Darby Mullins
If given the choice, I’d choose ‘surprise’ over ‘predictable’ with any cover song, even if the production quality suffered. I’m not alone in this: it’s why Limp Bizkit’s ill-advised cover of George Michael’s “Faith” charted. Sure, many people—even people you love, maybe even you!—just really like rap-rock and nu metal, but most people who listened in were a little surprised-then-delighted to hear someone scream over shrieking guitars and a battery of percussion what Michael had whispered like pillow talk over an acoustic a decade earlier. Tori Amos released Strange Little Girls and covered only male songwriters; years later, Kyle Craft’s Girl Crazy covered only women, and in both cases, the musicians played hard and fast with genre. That’s my kind of cover record: for a song to need covering, you almost have to feel like you, the artist, can say something new about the art without changing the essence completely. You can play with form, you can play with tone; you can drop a rap verse or add one. But for a cover to really stand out as essential, it has to use the same basic outline that the original does and then say something totally different in effect.
“Wait, wait. You’ll recognize it. Like, immediately,” I said to a friend, typing furiously on Apple Music. I didn’t want Siri to give away the surprise.
Five seconds, a drum shuffle, and then—there it is—Nina Persson’s perfect baby-doll declaration: “I am Iron Man!”
It took a moment for my friend to stop laughing, but then they said, “No,” kind of softly, almost like they didn’t want to know how bad the rest of the song was going to be. They were as shocked as everyone always is by how alluring this version is, though no one can put their finger on why at first listen.
By the way, you know Nina Persson’s voice. You might have to close your eyes and remember when you were, like, wearing slip dresses over t-shirts with platform sneakers, when her band The Cardigans’ song “Lovefool” was on a constant loop on pop radio stations. The same quality that leads her to say, “So/ I cried/ And cried in my bed” kicks off the band’s cover of “Iron Man,” and then, like in that hit, her voice immediately strengthens a little, except instead of saying, “Love me, love me, say that you love me,” she’s singing, “Has he lost his mind?/ Can he see or is he blind?”
I understand if you need to look this up before proceeding. Actually, I think you should: if you haven’t heard The Cardigans taking on Black Sabbath, a Swedish pop act covering a UK-based metal band, you really should know how disconcerting it is. Years and years later when Robert Downey Jr. would confidently say, “I am Iron Man” at the end of the first Iron Man movie, I sometimes like to pretend he is doing his best job to cover the delight and surprise in Persson’s delivering of the same line. There is almost a moment of discovery, of becoming, before the playful bass line and shuffle-percussion clicks in and locks the song into a chill, anesthetized BPM.
And every time I hear it I think, “Oh, thank God. Someone else gets it.”
Have you ever been the only chick in the record store? Things are a little better now, but it used to be that you only had two choices. Overcompensate and blow the person at the counter away with knowledge so quickly that they don’t have time to underestimate you, or buckle up for a long talk on how The Beatles all went on to have some degree of success as solo artists. (That is an actual conversation I’ve sat through. For the record, my father taught me how to flip and change a record when I was two or three so that I could listen to the White Album all the way through.) It’s better than being the only chick in the guitar store (“Do you know if you play an acoustic or electric? Is it your boyfriend’s?”), and MUCH better than being the only chick at a hardcore show (“Wow. You have really big tits”). I’m telling you this because by the time I was eleven, I organized my CDs alphabetically within the record label, then chronologically within the artist. I used to agonize over whether or not to put artists like Richie Furay with Poco, or whether to split Madonna’s records by when she started Maverick. What to do about mergers? Capricorn? Chrysalis? The Rolling Stones, who famously left Decca?
What does any of that have to do with The Cardigans?
I have spent my life so immersed and washed in music that I couldn’t stand to be away from it. It was my first true love, and when I met my husband, I fell madly in love with him over a conversation about music. Later, he’d email me that the moment reminded him of a line from a Counting Crows song—my favorite band—and I’d know far too soon that I would marry him. And this thing I love so much, this art that I have spent my life studying and trying to learn how to write about—well, every time I try to participate in the community in public and they don’t know my day job, I get told who The Beatles are or that my tits are big. My guess is that a lot of women at Sabbath shows, especially in the hey-day, got similar treatment. I can only imagine.
Are you here with your boyfriend?
So do you think Ozzy’s cute or something?
Take off your top!
I’m willing to bet that no one yelled that at women who went to The Cardigans’ shows. “Iron Man” is a great song, and Sabbath is a great band. They made some important music and ushered in a type of mainstream heavy that is still essential today. The way the guitar storms into the original is iconic for a reason. That doesn’t mean it’s always easy to be a metal fan, especially one encased in the body I live in.
As The Cardigans’ version of the song drops in, it feels like it’s filtered through an old radio: there’s a separation between Persson’s vocals and the rest of the world, like she’s singing under glass. Or maybe we’re under glass: she seems to be completely immersed in the narrative of “Iron Man.” It doesn’t hurt that the bridge takes on a totally new meaning with the slowed down, Valium-cloud vocals on “Nobody wants him/ They just turn their heads/ Nobody helps him/ Now he has his revenge.” It feels not quite like pity, but nothing like the frustrating battle cry it was in the original, either. It almost feels as though the narrator understands there’s a deep sadness in being pushed to revenge via rejection. The be-bop outro also feels like it contradicts the tone of the original.
The song is apocalyptic. This is a machine-man who has seen the future and knows of our destruction. Unlike Bowie’s alien Ziggy Stardust, he’s not warning us that we only have five year—he’s stomping around with boots of lead. This is a creature unlike us in some way, something separate from humanity. (And no, it’s not about the superhero, even though it plays over the credits in some movie with the same title.) Ozzy understood that the appeal of writing this powerful non-human was that time and space didn’t apply to Iron Man.
Persson’s interpretation manages to pull that same truth off, but with a degree of pathos about the end of it all. I think as we’re all seeing terrifying headlines and contemplating what our future looks like, globally, it’s not bizarre to think of The Cardigans’ “Iron Man” as the more emotionally in-touch look at the destruction caused by war machines. By taking the hyper-masculine, overdriven and fuzzed out metal of Black Sabbath and turning it into a slinky pop song with muted, concerned vocals, Persson and The Cardigans have managed to honor the original song—which is, rightfully, a rock standard—while still evoking a tenderness and sorrow that the original doesn’t quite touch. Make no mistake, that’s because it didn’t want to: when the time comes for fighting, you can observe the sorrow of it all from behind glass or you can go in raging. Neither is right or wrong. But by opening the song up with hyper-femininity, Persson creates a space for women at the table: it allows us to take on the strange animal of Iron Man, the visage of something that knows danger is coming, and to live in the moment where our rejection can be avenged.
That feels like a natural fantasy for women who participate in music to me. I love when I get to sing along, discover myself again in the foreign, and chirp, “I am Iron Man!”
Katie Darby Mullins teaches creative writing at the University of Evansville. In addition to being nominated for both the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net multiple times, she's been published or has work forthcoming in journals like Barrelhouse, The Rumpus, Iron Horse, Harpur Palate, Prime Number, and the music magazine The Aquarian. She helped found and is the executive writer for Underwater Sunshine Fest, a music festival in NYC, and her first book, Neuro, Typical: Chemical Reactions & Trauma Bonds came out on Summer Camp Press in late 2020.