November 1st and 2nd is a holiday period particularly important in Mexico - known in Spanish as el Dia de Muertos or el Dias de los Muertos.
It is a time for families and friends to come to reflect and remember their departed loved ones - welcoming back their souls. Altars are built in homes and the favourite foods and drinks of the departed are brought in (and sometimes left as gifts at their graves). It can also have a light-hearted side, with gifts being given, like sugar candy skulls, and irreverent epitaphs being composed for living friends.
It seems to be a festival that now weaves together elements of Spanish culture, Mesoamerican ritual and European Catholic tradition (reflecting All Saints Day and All Souls Day).
We are celebrating by bringing you ten songs that loosely reference death in some way - but don't worry, it's (mostly) not as dark as all that.
1. Blue Öyster Cult: Don't Fear The Reaper
Lead singer and guitarist, Donald 'Buck Dharma' Roeser wrote this classic rock tune about eternal love and the inevitability of death, and despite what many have claimed since, he maintains that it is most definitely not about suicide. Interestingly, three different people claim to have played the classic cowbell part that was overdubbed at the end (and which ties the record together) - drummer Albert Bouchard, producer David Lucas, singer-guitarist Eric Bloom. It was their breakthrough hit, reaching #12 in the US, and features on their fourth album Agents Of Fortune (1976).
(Official music video - shorter version than on the album)
2. Crowded House: Tombstone
This bright, acoustic driven track from debut Crowded House is not actually about grave markers (or wild west locations), but breaking free from the disappointments of the past and embracing change. The chorus appears to be a call to arms - "Roll back the tombstone, let the saints appear."
(Audio only)
3. Simple Minds: Today I Died Again
Simple Minds third album, Empires And Dance, was written on the back of extensive touring around Europe in a small van, and in the wake of political turmoil and upheaval (communist terrorists like the Baader Meinhof group) and the claustrophobic atmosphere created by the Cold War. The whole album created a weird electro-pop / disco mosaic of all these themes, and Today I Died Again seems to cover many of these narratives - "Paint me a picture, bodies in sand, Presidents can fall."
(On Scottish TV 1980 - the grainy video only adds to the desolate mystery of the song)
4. Dead Kennedy's: Forward To Death
The Dead Kennedy's debut album, Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables, perhaps provides the definitive US answer to all of the early UK punk records, with Jon Young writing in Trouser Press at the time, that it "may be the only legitimate companion to the Pistols' Never Mind The Bollocks." He called lead singer Jello Biafra "a distinctive and remarkable singer" who "thrives on extreme attitudes." Forward To Death was actually written by 6025 (Chris Cadona) who was the bands second guitarist in their early years. If thrashy fatalistic punk songs aren't your thing, then probably best to skip this one (although it is barely one and a half minutes long).
(Music video - uses live footage of the band from 1979)
5. Rage Against The Machine: Killing In The Name
Here's another one to skip if you are not in the mood for brutal confrontation (sonically and lyrically) and a truck load of bad language. The song, featuring on their eponymously titled 1992 debut, was protesting the police brutality in the wake of the riots in LA that had followed the police beating of Rodney King, earlier that year. The song makes very clear and obvious connections between police and racism - "some of those that work forces are the same that burn crosses."
(Official music video)
6. Queen: Killer Queen
Okay, for those of you who have skipped the last two tracks, we are back on safer ground now, at least sonically. It is one of their early classics, from 1974s Sheer Heart Attack. It has all of the great harmonies you would expect from a Queen song, wrapped up in an almost cabaret style. Freddie Mercury later said that it is a song about a high class call girl (so we perhaps haven't raised the tone all that much).
(Live in Montreal, 1981)
7. Guided By Voices: Captain's Dead
We are going way back into GBV history here, with this, the final track on their 1987 debut album, Devil Between My Toes. It has all of the typical lo-fi production values you have come to love (or hate) in a GBV record, and is a classic early example of how they have often very clearly worn the influence of the British invasion bands of the late 60s (especially The Who) on their sleeves.
(Audio only)
8. Drive By Truckers: The Day John Henry Died
This Jason Isbell penned song from the DBTs fifth album, The Dirty South, is a re-working of a classic American folk myth. John Henry is an American folk legend, whose story has been turned into many ballads, was supposedly a freed African-American slave, who worked as a steel driving man. The myth says he tested his prowess by competing against a steam powered rock drill - which he wins, only to die afterwards when his heart gives out. Isbell and co turn this into an absolute classic southern rock track.
(Audio only)
9. The Beatles: Eleanor Rigby
This song from 1966s Revolver album was also a double A-Side single with Yellow Submarine. One of The Beatles more beautiful moments, it explores the theme of loneliness and ultimately ends with Rigby's funeral. All of this is backed by the haunting double string quartet arranged by George Martin. Apparently, the protagonist may originally have been called Miss Daisy Hawkins. But in the end, McCartney changed the name - and it seems that the Eleanor part might have come from Eleanor Bron, who had just appeared with the band in the movie Help! - while the Rigby part came from a store name (Rigby & Evans Ltd) in Bristol, which McCartney would have seen when visiting his then girlfriend, Jane Asher (who was appearing in a play at the Old Vic theatre in Bristol at that time).
(Paul McCartney live in London, 2007 - a fantastic version!)
10. Warren Zevon: I'll Sleep When I'm Dead
Warren Zevon's second album (Warren Zevon) includes a veritable who's who of guest musicians - including Jackson Browne (also producer), Lindsey Buckingham, Phil Everly, Glen Frey, Don Henley, Stevie Nicks, Bonnie Raitt and Carl Wilson. The song has much of Zevon's usual wry wit and is saying that life is too short and there are only so many Saturday nights for "drinking heartbreak motor oil and Bombay gin" - so, the protagonist will wait to sleep until he's dead instead.
(Live in NJ, 1982)
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