Musical artists have always been drawn to taboo subjects. You’ve got incest (Megadeath’s “Daddy’s Girl”), coprophagia (Mr. Bungle’s “Girls of Porn”), bestiality (Neneh Cherry’s “Bestiality”) and Adolf Hitler’s sexual equipment (the Angry Samoans’ “They Saved Hitler’s Cock”). But the Buoys’ entry into the taboo sweepstakes (1970’s “Timothy”) holds a unique distinction as the only song about cannibalism to ever crack Billboard’s Top Twenty.
Written—believe it or not—by Rupert Holmes, the guy responsible for 1979’s “Escape (The Piña Colada Song),” it took the song’s record label (Scepter Records) a while to figure out what the song was actually about. And when they did, they attempted damage control by putting it out that Timothy was a mule. Holmes, god bless his Yacht Rock soul, wasn’t having it. He meant for the song to be controversial. There’s nothing controversial about eating a mule in the face of starvation. Besides, who names a mule Timothy?
The Buoys hailed from Pennsylvania coal country—the perfect setting for a song about a mine cave-in. The storyline is as simple as it is horrific (or, if you’re like me, hilarious). Three guys are trapped when a mine collapses. They’re on the brink of starvation, and as time passes the buddy of the song’s narrator (his name is Joe) begins to look at Timothy funny. When they’re finally freed, only two miners walk out, both of them with full bellies. Timothy is nowhere to be found.
There are a couple of things I like best about the song. The first is the narrator’s novel use of what can only be called the “amnesia defense.” He swears he hasn’t the slight notion of what became of Timothy (“Timothy, Timothy/Where on earth did you go/Timothy, Timothy/God, why don’t I know?”). But he must have had one piss-poor defense attorney because shortly thereafter he sings, in a voice of anguish, “Timothy, Timothy/Joe was looking at you/Timothy, Timothy/God, what did we do?” It’s not a flat-out confession, mind you, but should the officials looking into the cause of the tragedy happen upon a gnawed-on femur bone, it may as well be. His legal strategy also includes passing the blame onto Joe. But I doubt it won him much sympathy from the jury by saying, “Hey, it wasn’t my idea.”
The other issue I would like addressed is at a more practical level. Presumably the two surviving miners roasted poor Timothy before they ate him, because there are few places better than a coal mine to find the makings of a good Saturday afternoon barbeque. And human sushi isn’t on anyone’s menu. But the singer doesn’t address this issue, if only because he claims he can’t remember the details. But—and I’m speaking just for myself here—I’d have kicked myself in the starving ass for not bringing a bottle of A.1. Sauce, or at the very least a shaker of season salts. You can go paleolithic on a buddy, but you’ll wish he had some flavor.
As for the song itself, it’s fantastic, the best single of 1970 this side of R. Dean Taylor’s “Indiana Wants Me.” (On a side note, The Buoys also wrote a song about running from the law, “Give Up Your Guns”). “Timothy” is a gem of pop songcraft; vocalist Bill Kelly owns the role of anguished miner the way Laurence Olivier did Shakespeare’s Richard III, and the guitarist and rhythm section keep an up-tempo and ironically cheerful garage punk beat—it’s so punk, in fact, that LA punkers the Wrong Dots didn’t feel the need to rev their cover up. And the prominent horns and strings are perfect—eating people may be wrong, but you’ll eat those trumpet blasts right up.
Kelly and fellow Buoy Jerry Hludzik went on to form Omaha, who made it so far as to open for Queen on the latter’s The Game Tour. But Omaha—who recorded six LPs in all—never came up with a fitting competitor to “Timothy,” possibly because there’s a limited demand for songs about eating coal miners. “Timothy” was truly a stealth hit that made its subversive way up the pop charts. Peter, Paul and Mary’s “Puff the Magic Dragon” was banned the same year “Timothy” came out because it was ostensibly about marijuana. Radio stations attempted to ban “Timothy” as well, but the song’s fan base of Cannibal Kidz weren’t having it. Legend has it they besieged their local radio stations, butcher’s cleavers in hand, chanting “Long pig! Long pig! Long pig!” “Timothy” was back on heavy rotation faster than you can say eat me.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A
