Alex P Keaton
Footballguy
I feel vindicated seeing this at 165. But will not mention it to Mrs APK.Rocky Raccoon
2022 Ranking: 165
2022 Lists: 2
2022 Points: 5
Ranked Highest by: @Just Win BabyKrista/TJ/Slug
2019 Ranking/Lists/Pts: 83T/2/24
Getz: Two had it at #14 in 2019.It was tied for last with one point until the 66th (of 71) list came in from Just Win Baby. I miss Nipsey.
Krista4
My 2019 ranking: 113
2019 write-up:
Rocky Raccoon (White Album, 1968)
I like that Paul tried to do a cowboy song. It's charming. Love the harmonica. Beautiful vocal. Sweet little encapsulated story, even though I find some of the lyrics grating and forced: Her name was Magill, and she called herself Lil, but everyone knew her as Nancy. But I dock this song a full 50 slots solely because I HATE the fake drawl at the beginning. Somewhere earlier in the thread @Uruk-Hai pointed out that Paul and John needed to edit themselves better sometimes. I think Paul just needed a best friend to tell him not to do this ####, and during the White Album years John was not that best friend, nor was anyone else. I can't fully express how much I love/hate this song, with probably more mixed feelings about it than any other in their repertoire.
Mr. krista does not have mixed feelings: "I hate that he can’t resist to throw in a jaunty piano part. The fake cowboy drawl is ludicrous. It’s as bad as an American singing in an affected British accent. I hate that it seems C/W/blues/folk – these are American forms, and it seems like he’s making fun of it. He’s not, but it seems smug. It really really bothers me. You don’t fully understand this #### so leave it the #### alone. It’s like Willie Nelson trying to play the Sex Pistols – Willie, leave it alone. It’s not your jam. Or Miles Davis playing…well, Miles Davis probably could."
Suggested covers: Eddie Vedder & Jack Johnson This version, lacking a fake cowboy accent, would be ranked much, much higher on my list. Lena Horne (thanks to @Eephus for this one). FFA's own Nipsey.
2022 Supplement: WTAF was I thinking with that ranking? I apologize to FBG, my family and RL friends, the Beatles, raccoons, Bullwinkle, and Magill who called herself Lil but everyone knew as Nancy. Sheesh.
I recently bought the massive two-volume set, “The Lyrics,” which was edited together based on hours of interviews by Paul Muldoon with Paul McCartney over a five-year period from 2015-2020. It’s a fascinating look at the creative process, and I can’t recommend it enough, but one disappointing aspect has been that some songs I’d very much like to know more about are omitted while some real head-scratchers were included. In the “R”s, there is only one listing: Rocky Raccoon. Here’s a bit of how Paul describes this abomination of a song:
“I was doing a bit of a spoof on records I’d heard, kind of talking blues songs. Bob Dylan was doing that kind of thing. … I just dreamt up a character called ‘Rocky Raccoon,’ because of Davy Crockett and his raccoon cap. … I saw the TV show, but my main thing was the song: ‘Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier.’ It was quite a cool song. …I just started imagining this little story, and for me it’s like going on a train ride of the mind. … I was doing it sort of tongue-in-cheek…black humour.” [By the way, Paul has for years said that the song was originally called “Rocky Sassoon,” which doesn’t comport with this particular Davy Crockett memory, but Paul’s smoked a lot of dope through the years.]
Paul also explains some specific bits of the song. The Gideon Bible had fascinated him because they saw them in the US hotels and had never seen anything like that in England. The doctor stinking of gin came from an actual experience of falling off a moped in Liverpool and needing stitches on his lip, and the doctor arrived indeed stinking of gin and had to give it two tries before he got the stitches down, which left Paul with a bump on his lip for quite a while. Paul grew a mustache to hide the bump, and then the other Beatles did, which I think is a funny little story about how they evolved into one of their signature looks.
Wait a second! Paul fell off a moped and hit his head before composing this song?? It all makes sense now!
Paul has never performed this song live but says he might sometime because so many people request it. WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE??
Guido Merkins
Paul loved to write stories about people (boring people doing boring things, I believe it what Lennon said.) John used to kind of belittle Paul for it, but it’s something that’s in his songwriting DNA, which leads me to believe Paul may have been a decent playwright.
Anyway, one of his character songs is on the White Album called Rocky Racoon. Paul was writing a little western story in a song, so he came up with names like Rocky Racoon and McGill and Lil and Nancy. The doctor “stinking of gin” was something that actually happened to Paul when he fell off his moped in 1966 a doctor who had been drinking stitched him up. The story of the gunfight was out of every western and the detail about “Gideon’s bible” is pure McCartney. A detail that means nothing, except it seems to hint at some hidden meaning.
The song ends rather abruptly almost like Paul had more, but wasn’t quite sure, so he just ended it. It’s not a major piece of work, or even a great piece of work, but in the patchwork that is the White Album, it somehow works.
