Australian actor Craig McLachlan, famed for roles in the Australian soaps Neighbours and Home and Away, but also renowned for his portrayal of a mid-1990s Doctor Frank-N-Furter, probably put it best.
Talking with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in 2015, he enthused, “Some of the songs in Rocky Horror are the best songs that Buddy Holly tragically never got to write. They are great rock and roll songs.”
It’s true. Buddy Holly, Eddie Cochran and Gene Vincent as well. Carole King and Shadow Morton. David Bowie and Freddie Mercury. Jim Steinman. And if, as Michael White once said, The Rocky Horror Show is critic-proof, its words and music are bulletproof.
At the last count, and it might well be an underestimate, there have been no fewer than forty different albums released, each preserving the original cast of one particular Rocky Horror Show. Some are in English, some are insane. The songs have been translated and reworded, rewritten and remixed. They have been parodied, pop-ified, and, it’s true, some of the performances are so poisonous that you wonder how any song could survive the mistreatment.
The Rocky songs do. They survive, and they even bounce back for more. “Are you sure that was your best shot? Come on, you can sing far worse than that.”
Of course, by many conventional critical standards, there were moments in the very first production, that were echoed in the movie, when one could be forgiven for flinching a little. We all love Little Nell’s pipsqueak keening, but one can also understand why some people might not.
But we want to hear her sing, regardless.
And we want to hear the rest of the numbers, too.
“Dammit Janet” (aka “The Wedding Song”)
But talking of smart, tasteful people, the newly affianced Brad Majors and Janet Weiss certainly fit that bill. Why, they even met in science class, and now, as they depart a friend’s wedding (Janet caught the bouquet, of course), it is so they can visit with their old tutor, Doctor Everett Scott.
Behind them, the wedding party fades from view, although if you’re watching The Rocky Horror Picture Show closely, you might well spot among the bridesmaids actress Koo Stark, later to grasp British tabloid immortality as the (in some quarters) controversial girlfriend of Prince Andrew.
The duet with which Brad and Janet stake their claim on all-round peachy-keen-ness is “Dammit Janet,” written by O’Brien after the decision was made to run the original play without an intermission.
Apparently penned overnight, the song would soon emerge as crucial to the production, as it is here that Brad first proposes to Janet, and then suggests they go tell their news to Dr. Scott.
Patricia Quinn (Magenta), Barry Bostwick (Brad), Susan Sarandon (Janet) and Richard O’Brien (Riff Raff) in The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation/Photofest
“Over at the Frankenstein Place”
Chatting as young lovers do, and moralizing on the stupid behavior of the phalanx of bikers that passes them on the winding, rainswept road, Brad and Janet do not have a care in the world. But on this archetypally dark and stormy night, a sudden flat tire catches them off guard.
Abandoning the car while they go in search of a phone, the pair spot and follow a light burning on the top floor of a nearby castle.
They enter the grounds to find that it was also the destination for the constant stream of motorcycles that they’d noticed earlier. But they do not see the strange, crooked figure who watches their arrival; nor do they expect the humpbacked vision of Riff-Raff who opens the front door to deliver one of the most monumental greetings in cinematic history.
“You’re wet.”
The song they are singing as they approach the castle is magnificent, soaring, and almost anthemic, and it is surely coincidence that, around the same time The Rocky Horror Show made its way to Los Angeles, songwriter Jim Steinman was composing “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” for that same production’s latest star-in-waiting, Meat Loaf.
Utterly dissimilar though the two songs are, still there is a familial resemblance; a sense that, in another universe entirely, an alien Phil Spector might have slaved, beetle-browed, to create a similar wall of sound around one of his own girl group creations.
And the linkage grows tighter still. Long before what would become Meat Loaf’s Bat out of Hell debut album was released, or even complete, Epic Records was enthusiastic enough to finance shooting videos for four of the songs, “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” included. And when Lou Adler, the movie’s producer, caught sight of it, he immediately arranged for it to go out to the cinemas with The Rocky Horror Picture Show, as an opening minifeature.
The original song, too, lived on. With his wife Kimi, Richard O’Brien would record an alternate version of “There’s a Light” for release under their Kimi and Ritz pseudonym in 1974. Their projected third single for Epic Records (see under “Eddie’s Teddy,” below), it would not ultimately be released, although had it appeared, it would have been the B-side to a version of Franz Liszt’s “Liebesträume,” with new lyrics by O’Brien.
O’Brien returned again to “There’s a Light” in 1975, now operating under the name of the Richard O’Brien Crusade and reinterpreting the song in the hilarious guise of a wild southern preacher man.
It was an approach that, given the gospel possibilities (now dramatically fulfilled) of the original composition, was not such a stretch. Although his spiel, effectively offering dating and gender advice to every confused youngster of the age, is not necessarily in keeping with the genre.
The A-side of this particular single was Belinda Sinclair’s new disco take on “Touch-A, Touch-A, Touch-A, Touch Me.”
“The Time Warp”
No, you may never want to do the time warp again, and certainly not in the context within which so many people currently execute it.
Forget the office parties that Eccentronic Research Council loathe so much. It even turns up in the DJ’s set at high school dances, which must certainly raise eyebrows among those progressive parenting types who so pride themselves on their liberal tendencies, whilst shielding their precious darlings from anything that could possibly contradict that stance. Predatory transvestite aliens riding elevators presumably excepted
“No, darling, you cannot watch that movie. It’s unsuitable. But of course you can dance the time warp with your little friends. . . .”
“The Time Warp” is the prelude to Brad, Janet and the viewer’s own introduction to life inside the mansion.
“The master,” explains the peculiar doorman, “is having one of his affairs”—an Annual Transylvanian Convention, into which the wet and trembling Brad and Janet are ushered.
There is a wonderful, and oft overlooked, echo here from Nicolas Roeg’s Performance, starring the Frank-that-never-was, Mick Jagger. Likewise charting the progress (and decline) of an “innocent abroad’ in a sea of countercultural chaos, Performance concerns an on-the-run gangster who rents a room in the sinisterly appareled home of a reclusive junkie pop star.
The scene where gangster Chas is reduced to all but pleading for the use of Jagger’s phone is deliciously reflected in Brad and Janet’s own, constantly rebuffed, attempts to use the castle’s.
But while Chas is drawn into an increasingly claustrophobic world of drugs and sex, with the undercurrent of violence eddying around every nuance, Brad and Janet find there is no claustrophobia, no undercurrents and, for the moment, not yet any Eddy.
Instead, they are invited to meet the Transylvanians, party guests who are the movie’s greatest departure from the stage show—outlandishly clad, ostentatiously mannered, and clearly designed to provide the still unseen Master with the sycophantic audience that he demands. Included among their cinematic ranks, incidentally, were O’Brien’s wife Kimi Wong and a young Christopher Biggins—later to establish himself as one of Britain’s best-loved character actors.
Who, however, has the time to notice that, when instead we can dance “The Time Warp.” And marvel at the fact that the best-known song in the movie came close to not even being a part of it; “The Time Warp” was composed and included only after Little Nell was recruited to the show, and Jim Sharman requested a song that would allow her to demonstrate her tap-dancing chops.
“Sweet Transvestite”
Backed into a corner, Brad and Janet turn as an elevator begins its rattling approach, its descent only slowly revealing the outlandish appearance of its occupant. Garishly platform booted, the leonine Doctor Frank-N-Furter is also cloaked to disguise his choice of costuming for the evening—a tight black corset, which he reveals to the absolute horror and dismay of the earthlings. His minions, on the other hand, are overjoyed as he cavorts around their shivering forms—Riff-Raff, the handyman; Magenta, his sister; and Columbia, the groupie.
Following on from the novelty dance of “The Time Warp,” which could have been written (more or less) at any time in the entire rock ’n’ roll era—all seventeen years of it, at that time—“Sweet Transvestite” is contrarily straight out of 1973, an unabashed glam rocker in lyric, tune and temperament. And how shocking that must have been to audiences, so accustomed as they were to the mainstream arts (and theater was one, for all its recent attempts to outrage) always dancing at least one beat behind rock ’n’ roll.
Even Hair did not come along until the scene it depicted had already peaked, while other so-called rock musicals invariably suffered from the most homogenized vision of what “rock” was.
“Sweet Transvestite,” on the other hand, could have fallen straight out of the latest pop chart, and if we peek at the UK Top 10 for the week in which The Rocky Horror Show opened, maybe it did.
Pre-YouTube, few of these names, much less the attendant imagery, would have meant much to the average American. Today we can share them in all of their nightmarishly garish glory.
At number one, Suzi Quatro, five foot-not much of leather-clad Detroit rock chick, pounding a bass that was way too big for her, while her bandmates leered like a motorcycle club, not at all phased by their singer’s demand that you put your man in a can.
At number three, Wizzard, a psilocybic rockabilly revival fronted by a freaky beardie with a multicolored shock wig, imploring “See My Baby Jive.” Older listeners would have recognized him as Roy Wood of sixties heroes the Move, but older listeners probably weren’t actually listening to Wizzard.
At number six, Marc Bolan and T. Rex, the band that started the whole glam circus in the first place, were fading from their initial brilliance and soon to fall from contention altogether. “The Groover” was certainly one of their drabbest records yet, but it had the stomp, it had the attitude, and Bolan certainly wouldn’t have been averse to a little time warping himself, if only to get back to a time when his records were still all-conquering monsters.
Finally, dropping out of the listing that week but still selling relatively strongly, “Hell Raiser” by the Sweet—whose bassist Steve Priest, by many people’s reckoning, was already rock’s own sweet transvestite.
“I hated buying clothes,” he explains, and when the Sweet’s spring 1972 hit “Poppa Joe” was released, “all I had was a pair of green satin pants, and red and yellow platform soles. So I cut the legs off the green pants, used carpet tape and turned them into shorts. Then I got a pair of red tights. . . . I can’t remember what I was wearing on top, but I was the first man to wear hot pants on Top of the Pops.” He would also become the first to appear dressed up as a gay stormtrooper, but that’s another story. . . .
That, then, was the company that “Sweet Transvestite” was keeping, but not everybody approved. British journalist Barney Hoskyns, documenting the history of glam rock in the book Glam! Bowie, Bolan and the Glitter Rock Revolution in 1998, spoke scathingly of “Tim Curry’s [Doctor Frank-N-Furter] pouting ‘Sweet Transvestite’ . . . dilut[ing] the original outrage” of the glam movement; and quoted fellow neophytes Phil Dellio and Scott Woods’s insistence that Rocky Horror dealt glam “a serious blow by trying to satirize something that was partly conceived as satire in the first place.”
Their argument does not stand up to scrutiny, however. As a genuine musical movement, glam did not seize more than the fringes of mainstream attention until late 1972 at the very earliest, by which time Richard O’Brien’s vision had already started to flower.
Rather than “satirizing” glam rock, The Rocky Horror Show actually developed alongside it, tapping into the same undercurrents of sexual discovery that were fascinating so many other of the genre’s musical heroes. And when BBC radio disc jockey Alan Freeman played “Sweet Transvestite” on his show one sunny Saturday afternoon, nobody batted an eyelid.
“The Sword of Damocles”/“I Can Make You a Man”
Resplendent in a backless green surgical gown, Frank explains that he has discovered the “secret to life itself” and proceeds to demonstrate his discovery by indeed bringing to life a ragtag bundle of bandages submerged in a tank.
Before the assembled gaze of his astonished party guests, he relives every great Frankenstein movie of the past by jolting life into . . . Rocky. Who promptly jolts his creator by fleeing from his none-too-subtle sexual advances.
“I Can Make You a Man,” and its reprise, was the first of two songs excluded from the original stage presentation; the rockabilly pulse of “Sword of Damocles,” meanwhile, was absent from original vinyl pressings of the soundtrack LP.
“Hot Patootie - Bless My Soul”
In classic Frankenstein style, Frank created Rocky from elements of a host of other bodies. Unlike his predecessor, he was not so careful about disposing of the cast-off bits.
Eddie, a rock ’n’ rolling delivery boy and a former lover of Columbia, was the unwilling donor of a part of Rocky’s brain, and has spent his postoperative period in a large freezer, from which he now emerges, only to be slaughtered again, in full view of the assembled hordes, by an ice pick–wielding Frank. In between times, he sings a classic fifties style rockin’ lament, demanding to know “whatever happened to Saturday night.”
Well, that may have been the evening when your skullcap was opened . . . .
“Stand by Me”/“Clap Your Hands”
“Stand by Me,” a classic Ben E. King R&B heartbreaker, was recorded by Meat Loaf/Eddie during the sessions for The Rocky Horror Picture Show soundtrack album. Unused at the time, the Richard Hartley production finally surfaced on the B-side of Meat Loaf’s 1984 single “Nowhere Fast,” alongside another outtake from the soundtrack, the Hartley/Brian Thomson rabble rouser “Clap Your Hands.”
“I Can Make You a Man—Reprise”
Furter and Rocky retire to the bridal suite, but Rocky flees again, returning to his birthing tank, where he is discovered by Riff-Raff and Magenta. They begin to torment him, while Frank goes in search of other conquests.
“Touch-A, Touch-A, Touch-A, Touch Me”
A partial parody of almost any weepy teen ballad by the immortal Shangri-Las (whose “Leader of the Pack” was a reissued hit in the UK the previous fall), “Touch-A, Touch-A, Touch-A, Touch Me” was the final song to be added to the script, just days before the first preview.
Written in response to Michael White’s insistence that the play was still a little too short, it follows the sequence in which Brad and Janet are shown to their separate bedrooms for the night, intending to sleep off the horrors of the evening. There, Janet’s rest is soon disturbed by the arrival of a shadowy figure whom she understandably believes to be Brad—only to discover, once they are in bed together, that it is Doctor Frank-N-Furter in disguise.
Confused by the sudden, unexpected loss of her treasured virginity, Janet is further shattered when, upon fleeing her besmirched boudoir to find Brad, she instead discovers a video monitor playing the scene now taking place in her fiancé’s bedroom, as he too is seduced by their heinous host.
A sound disturbs her; it is Rocky, so sweet and innocent, cowering in his tank. All manner of impure thoughts flood Janet’s mind, all kind of chemical imbalances consume her body. No matter that, prior to this remarkable evening, she had “only ever kissed before”; she has tasted blood now, and she wants more.
In their own room, watching on the video link, Magenta and Columbia cavort and cackle.
In 1975, London’s second Janet Weiss, Belinda Sinclair, recorded a truly dynamite disco version of “Touch-A, Touch-A, Touch-A, Touch Me,” which would then be reissued four years later with its sax-and-sighing led instrumental B-side retitled as the “orgasm” mix.
“Once in a While”
While Janet squirms in the arms of lust, a repentant Brad gazes into the mirror and bemoans the fickleness of love, a maudlin ballad contemplating how cruel the fates can be. “Once in your life she won’t want to know you. . . .”
Richard O’Brien’s statue in his New Zealand hometown, Hamilton. No need for a Medusa Transducer, either.
© Shay Yacobinski/Shutterstock.com
“Eddie’s Teddy”
The second of two songs excluded from the original theatrical presentation of The Rocky Horror Show, “Eddie’s Teddy” introduces us to Doctor Everett Scott as he enters the building and is discovered by Frank, Brad and Riff-Raff, while they are searching for Janet and Rocky.
We already know that the wheelchair-bound Doctor is Brad and Janet’s old high school science teacher; now, it transpires, he is also the late Eddie’s uncle.
But Doctor Frank-N-Furter, too, knows Scott, believing him to be a government agent charged with investigating UFOs. Learning now that Brad and Janet are friends of the old man’s, Frank begins to suspect a plot.
First, however, it is time for a meal. A sumptuous spread is served, and only once it is under way, and Scott is recalling his missing nephew in song, does Frank reveal the true nature of the food.
It is Eddie. Or, as viewers of the movie now declare as the scene commences, “not meatloaf again?”
Like “Science Fiction Double Feature,” “Eddie’s Teddy” was originally composed to stand in its own right, as opposed to becoming an element within an overall concept.
Through the auspices of Rich Teaboy Productions, the production company that he launched with John Sinclair and Andy Leighton the previous year, Richard O’Brien and wife Kimi had secured a recording contract with Epic Records.
With guitarist Robin Sylvester as arranger, a single was cut for release in December 1973, coupling the festively themed “Merry Christmas Baby” with a Kimi-led “Eddie,” sweetly rearranged to resemble an early sixties girl group classic. The Shangri-Las, again, would have loved “Eddie’s Teddy”; the Crystals or the Shirelles as well.
The single was not a chart hit, but copies were sold in the lobby of the King’s Road Theatre, and scored a few radio plays as well. It would also be rereleased the following Christmas, but again, to little action.
A follow-up Kimi and Ritz single was released in February 1975. O’Brien’s “I Was in Love with Danny (But the Crowd Was in Love with Dean)” took on the well-worn teen tragedy theme familiar from oldies such as “Terry,” “Tell Laura I Love Her” and the Shangri-Las’ (yet again) “Leader of the Pack,” then gave it a malevolent twist. The tale of a pair of hot-rod-racing hotheads fighting for supremacy, the song concludes with Dean being killed on the final straight and Danny, consumed by guilt, becoming an alcoholic. “Dean died a hero, Danny died a zero.”
On the B-side, another new rocker, “Pseud’s Corner,” was titled after a column in the biweekly satirical magazine Private Eye, in which the top-ranked journalists and authors of the day are taken to task for especially florid prose. Thematically, however, it feels more like a Vivian Stanshall-esque demolition of a certain kind of showbiz character, or perhaps even a specific one . . . O’Brien was certainly meeting a lot of them around about now.
“Wise Up Janet Weiss” (aka “Planet Schmanet Janet”)
Another song that was excised from the original soundtrack LP, “Wise Up Janet Weiss,” is one of those numbers that works better for moving the plot along (and getting in a little more cheeky innuendo) than as a song in its own right.
It accompanies Janet as she flees the dining room with Rocky, while Frank prepares his revenge on all of his guests, a Medusa Transducer that transforms them into living statues.
“Rose Tint My World”/“Fanfare/Don’t Dream It”/“Wild and Untamed Thing”
While the statues are arranged for a live cabaret floor show, orchestrated by Frank in full Judy Garland mode, Riff-Raff and Magenta emerge in full space-age regalia, demanding that they return to their home planet, Transsexual in the galaxy of Transylvania.
“Rose Tint My World” is a duet for swaggering guitar and brusque saxophone, into which the suddenly reanimated Little Nell and Rocky sashay with glorious vaudevillian élan, duetting the story-so-far.
Brad and Janet are next before the microphone, as they realize that they have been recostumed in readiness for the floor show. A fanfare then announces Doctor Frank-N-Furter’s return to stage center, for the Sally Bowles/Judi Dench moment that Tim Curry had been yearning for since 1968—and for one of the production’s most gorgeously, memorably and hauntingly heartbreaking songs.
Not even Doctor Scott’s interruption, as he realizes his own sudden plight, can disturb the tranquility of the moment . . . although Janet certainly keys up the next transition as she delivers the line that confirms the changes she has undergone: “God bless Lily St. Cyr”—the Queen of American burlesque and stripping.
That’s the clue for Frank to kick into the unabashed rock ’n’ roll of “Wild and Untamed Thing,” but Riff-Raff and Magenta are tiring of his hijinks.
“I’m Going Home”
Another of the songs that was originally composed with other purposes in mind, O’Brien wrote The Rocky Horror Show’s climactic ballad for his wife Kim to sing as part of their own Kimi and Ritz act. It arrives as Frank reluctantly agrees to his minions’ plan, believing that he, too, will soon be returning to sweet Transsexual.
Magenta and Riff-Raff have other intentions, however. They kill Columbia, Rocky and Frank; release Brad, Janet and Doctor Scott; and then the entire castle blasts off into space. By which time, “I’m Going Home” has effectively blueprinted the concept of the power ballad, years before anybody even cared to find out what such a thing was.
“Super Heroes”
Confused, bruised, battered and choking in the smoke and dust, Brad, Janet and Doctor Scott pick themselves up to the strains of a gentle ballad, which in turn leads into the Narrator’s thoughtful contemplation of the human condition.
“Science Fiction Double Feature (Reprise)”
We now know the reprise to be exactly that, a reprise of the song that we heard at the outset of the show. Prior to the reviews, however, a very different version was rehearsed, to be performed by an audience member clad in pajamas and dressing gown, about the sci-fi movie he’d just watched on TV. The circle was complete.