The tenor sax intro sets the stage for a retro sounding, romantic number that you might have listened to with your summer camp boyfriend/girlfriend. Built for Speed had that potential with both hits and at least one other very good song (“Rumble in Brighton”) on Side 1.īut buried on Side 2 was the terrific ballad “Lonely Summer Nights”, today’s SotW. Sometimes you would become so enamored with one side of an album that you might never get around to listening to the other side. The album may be too commercial for many of you – it had two big hits with “Rock This Town” and “Stray Cat Strut” – but I still think it holds up pretty well.īack in the days of vinyl, some albums were one sided and others were two. But I’m not losing any sleep over it.In 1982 the Stray Cats released their US neo-rockabilly debut, Built for Speed. My guitar’s in the Smithsonian, but I think Stray Cats should be in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, yeah. I honestly don’t know how those things work. Is that something you want to see happen?
The Stray Cats are not yet in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. … I remember cutting “Runaway Boys” and “Rock This Town,” and when we played them back, we had nailed it. Dave Edmunds wanted to get a clean sound, not too distorted, but not too clean. Lee was a fantastic bass player, but we wanted to get that slap and the volume. People played the standup bass in the Fifties, but it had been neglected for 40 years. And what I remember was really working on getting the bass sound because the bass was such an integral part to rockabilly. It was a studio that is not there anymore. I remember the session because it was in London. Speaking of the Stray Cats, the single release of “Rock This Town” turns 40 years old next year. Who could not be surprised about dragging 18 people around the stage? I love doing it. Every year it got bigger and bigger and it just kept snowballing. Believe me, there was no way I thought it would work but people wouldn’t let me put that big band away. I don’t have a couple of trumpets back there I’ve got 16 of them! But I started doing it because I loved it.
STRAY CATS SONGS FULL
When I started the big band, a lot of people just lumped it into swing: “Oh, it’s a swing revival.” But I got a full big band. The Brian Setzer Orchestra remains a perennial live draw, especially at the holidays. So I said, “Well, winter’s almost over, spring is almost here …What else goes drip drop? My tears.” And we’re not too far from Buddy Holly’s last gig and where Eddie Cochran is from, so I threw in that Buddy Holly hiccup and then I got my gal, my wife, and her friend to sing on it. But you can’t really write about icicles dripping. After you’ve written a couple of rockers, you kind of sit back and honestly … I live in the tundra, and I was watching the icicles drip. When you write a record, you go through the hills and valleys of it. “Drip Drop” is more Herb Alpert bossa nova than rockabilly. It’s taking something that’s not in the genre, you put it in, and it becomes something else. People ask me, “How do you make this stuff sound new?” That’s how. I thought, “If I could put that in a rockabilly song, that’s how you move the music forward.” You take some new ideas and you put them in that classification, and that’s what makes a new rockabilly record. With the Stray Cats, we’d do “Miserlou” just as a little break in the middle of the show, and I love that. Were you thinking of him when you wrote it? “Smash Up on Highway One” has a Dick Dale–type guitar line. You know, you have to write about “speeding on a winding road on a rainy night.” Then it becomes a poem. Here’s an idea of being too literal: “Well, I hopped in the car/Filled it with gas/Checked the oil.” Well, you can’t say it like that. But you can’t be too literal with things. So car imagery or motorcycle imagery is part of my life.
There has to be something that sparks me to do that. I never write a song standing in the shower. If I go for a nice fast motorcycle ride, it pumps me up.
If I’m writing the lyrics, it has to be something that sparks your emotion. You’ve written a ton of songs about hot rods. We talked to Setzer about what it takes to write a good car song, the enduring appeal of his Brian Setzer Orchestra, and the 40th anniversary of the Stray Cats’ breakout hit “Rock This Town.”
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