Annotations
Bad-eyed And Loveless
"Weekend happiness
seekers pent-up saturation. Well, we don't mean
anyone any harm, we weren't on the Glasgow
train". Two points. The
Glasgow supporters WERE notorious (and usually
only at matches between the two main Glasgow
teams, I think), but not to the same extent as
English fans. More importantly for the song,
Glaswegians wouldn't be travelling to Blackpool
for the football, since English and Scottish
league teams don't play each other. I suspect a
specific event inspired this line, giving
Glaswegians a bad reputation at the time. "I'm the Big
Dipper": Its really important to
note that Ray WAS the champion in his youth, but
on this visit, he's just laughed-at. This is the
final straw motivating his fateful bike ride.
Like 'Up the 'Pool' this song too
is about Blackpool. In the album sleeve's
cartoon, the panel entitled 'Home' actually shows
the Tower. There is a Big Dipper on the Golden
Mile.
* Neil R. Thomason
Too Old To Rock'n' Roll: Too Young To
Die!
"So the old Rocker gets
out his bike to make a ton before he takes his
leave". 'A ton' is slang for
travelling at 100 miles per hour."Up on the A1 by Scotch
Corner": The A1 is
the main (hence trunk road) north-south route on
the eastern side of England. The Pennine mountain
range down the middle of northern England means
that there s the A1 to the east of the Pennines,
and north-south traffic on the western side of
the mountains follows the M6. The A1 is
effectively a motorway (nowadays the correct name
is in fact the A1(M) ), with multiple lanes in
each direction. Near the small town of Scotch
Corner, it narrows and becomes a more minor road.
This means a huge volume of traffic becomes
concentrated onto a smaller road, and
theoretically has to decelerate. However, if one
has been driving at 70mph (more likely to be
80-90mph...) for a couple of hundred miles, it s
difficult to readjust to the lower speed limit on
the smaller road. Unsurprisingly, Scotch Corner
is an accident black spot . There's something
about this song that puzzles me. According to the
album s story, Ray travels down to London, in
south-east England, then to Blackpool, in
north-west England, but his bike accident occurs
near Scotch Corner, in north-EAST England. So
where was he going? If he was heading from
Blackpool to London, he wouldn t go via
Newcastle! Similarly, the logical route to
Scotland stays on the west of the country; even
if he was going to eastern Scotland, he'd be
likely to stay on the west almost until Glasgow.
Something to consider: was Ray driving too fast
just to release his frustrations, or was it
suicide?
* Neil R. Thomason
The Chequered Flag (Dead Or Alive)
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