Entertainment For Lively Minds
Whatever happened to the couple from The Piña Colada Song?
Valentines Day will soon be upon us and I would like to remind everyone that there are no happy endings in love. Only the grim certainty that you will be falsely accused of murdering your life partner and will be forced to go on the lam while you hunt down the real killers. Steve Harris from Iron Maiden knew this and penned The Fugitive - a song so heart-achingly romantic that, should I ever get married, I plan to recite the lyrics in their entirety as part of my wedding vows.
This leads me to a traumatic event that occurred a couple of weeks ago when I found myself the captive audience of a bafflingly complex stereo system that was in the process of playing Escape (The Piña Colada Song) by Rupert Holmes.
Escape is a story song in the tradition of Tell Laura I love Her and Hello, This Is Joanie (The Telephone Answering Machine Song), whose key characteristics are narratives so hackneyed and implausible that even the writers of Hollyoaks and Skins would think twice about using them.
In this tale of thwarted adultery Holmes describes how, having grown tired of his lady he responds to an anonymous advertisement in the dating pages of a newspaper and suggests a rendezvous at a bar called O’Malley’s. At the bar he is both surprised and relieved to discover that the advert was written by his wife and that they have more in common than they thought (not least the fact that they are both philandering swines). Instead of escaping from each other, the song ends with them escaping together, no doubt heading for a midnight, Piña Colada -fuelled romp on the moonlit dunes of Cape Cod.
The Piña Colada Song ’s nauseatingly cyclical ending was gloriously demolished years later by a Nick Cave composition titled O’Malleys Bar. I am assuming that this is the same O’ Malleys where the cocktail-swilling couple’s reconciliation took place. Into this establishment steps Cave’s nameless, pistol-waving lunatic. Over the next 14 minutes and 36 verses he theatrically guns down the clientele, while pondering free will and whether he can be held culpable for his actions.
Among the casualties of the O’Malley’s Bar massacre I note one married couple - a Mr and Mrs Richard Holmes, apparently killed one after the other. It is my belief that Richard Holmes survived being shot in the stomach and that, after making a full recovery, he changed his name to Rupert Holmes and launched a career as a singer-songwriter, awaiting the day when his wife’s assassin was released from prison, so that he could wreak his bloody revenge.
O'Malley's Bar is, in my opinion, a rare instance of a story song by one artist being continued by another artist. I eagerly await the next instalment of the Piña Colada saga, whoever writes it.
Are there other instances of a story song being sequelised? What other songs deserve sequels?
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O'Malley's Bar
Your sir, are a splendid example of humanity and quite mad.
Here's to you.
The crazed cardiologist's beverage of choice
Sangre de Toro, Carta Nevada
Piña Colada, Tequila Boom Boom
Aquí se baila, aquí se dan las fiestas
La bebida aconsejada del cardiólogo loco
For those not familiar with the Sevillian vernacular, I offer this translation:
Sangre de Toro,[1] Carta Nevada [2]
Pina Colada, Tequila Boom Boom
There's dancing here, parties here
The crazed cardiologist's beverage of choice
1. A brand of full-bodied Rioja
2. A brand of faux champagne.
Now it all suddenly leaps into focus. Cave's initially arcane reference to "the golden hairless chest" in the lyrics of "O'Malley's Bar" (see below) can only be prefiguring a dusky Andalusian hospital patient being shaved, many years later, in preparation for bypass surgery.
The conclusion is inescapable: Cave's stone killer and Los Del Río's demented medic are one and the same person.
Study materials:
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - "O'Malley's Bar": listen here (Spotify). The lyrics are here.
Los Del Rio - "Tequila Boom Boom", w/ full lyrics:
Rupert The Spared
It's quite obvious that Rupert Holmes is the son of Mr and Mrs Richard Holmes. He was too young to be allowed in to the establishment and thus saved from murder. Rupert frequents O'Malleys as an act of remembrance to his slain parents.
However, the logic that links "the golden hairless chest" of O'Malleys Bar and "The crazed cardiologist's" of Tequila Boom Boom is quite beyond reproach.
Your explanation...
...is more plausible than mine. Although written after Escape, O’Malley’s Bar is clearly a prequel.
In this revised timeline, Richard Holmes and his wife are shot dead. Years later, their son Rupert Holmes chooses O’Malley’s (the place where his parents died) as a venue for the adulterous act that will lead to the death of his marriage.
Suddenly Escape is the saddest song ever written. I feel bad for belittling it.
Song Sequels
In a moment of synchronicity I was thinking about sequels when listening for the first time in several decades to Rush's A Farewell to Kings (I know - a big leap from Mr Holmes and don't laugh, I'd defend 'golden age' Rush to anyone, well apart from the loony right wing lyrics). The album ends with a jolly ditty about a man flying his starship into a black hole and after the lyrics on the liner notes we have the words 'To Be Continued'. Yikes. Possibly the most pretentious liner note ever..iron-willed Canucks that they are, they did actually devote half of the next album to a sequel: the catchy 'Cygus X-I Book II'. So why not put all of this magnificent guff on one album? Or were they testing the market for sci-fi related concept songs (one market segment you thought Rush might have already cornered). Any Rush fans care to explain the mighty three's thinking?
Spinning Whirling Still descending
... like a spiral sea unENDING!!!
Actually I've never understood the link between the two, lyrically speaking. The first "book" is, as you say, about a bloke flying into the heart of a black hole (for a laugh, presumably) whereas the sequel seems to be a bizarre parable about gods and stuff, having a bit of a barny.
I think the link is the black hole
and our hero re-emerges not in normal space but in some 2001-time and space jump above Olympus where he sees the gods having a right old barny. He throws a wobbly and re-unites the race of man (perhaps the quintessential Rush phrase).