It is what it says it is: The Insulting Song

"You hockey puck!" Packin' 'em in on the Vegas strip.

This little ditty, less than a minute long, is the album's hidden track and is not listed on the sleeve. Musically it's like Paul's white album gem,  "Wild Honey Pie", an aural joke that is essentially a bunch of organized noise. (You notice I didn't capitalize "white album". That's because it's a description, not the title, which is actually The Beatles. It's called the white album to differentiate from the band's name in conversation. Get that straight. Get it! Got it? Good!) "The Insulting Song" doesn't appear on the first pressings of Won Out. It was added during the Big Change, when the album was recalled and practically remade. I inserted it at the end of the first side to lighten the mood after the lyrically downbeat songs that precede. On closer inspection. however, the track isn't all that funny - in fact it's rather pointed and lives up to its title

The actual "The Insulting Song" is part of the "No Magic" track so if you continue listening when the song ends you'll hear it. Otherwise it wouldn't be hidden! So I've replaced it here with a few minutes of birds sounds because, after all, what's more "Insulting" than giving someone the bird! Oh, gracious!

I know this song is short

Words of no import

The meaning sparse

You stupid arse

What did you expect?

Yeah, we're talkin' Beatles again. Here's a battered copy of the album in question. I have a few battered copies of my own

It's mean. Kind of a musical "fuck you', perhaps directed at those who caused the heartaches in those first four songs. It was a last-second idea and the very last thing recorded for the album before it was mastered and sent off to the plant. Recorded at the family compound one sunny afternoon in the summer of 1979, the basic track features Arlene playing the repetitive riff on the Rhodes with me on drums. I then overdubbed the sliding guitar chord (the only appearance of the beautiful red Gibson semi-hollow picture on the album cover) along with a vocal and finally another vocal was added. A lot of work for a few seconds of music, but I think "Wild Honey Pie' took even longer because Paul kept repositioning the drums to get the sound he was looking for.

                                              

Another inspiration from the 60's: The Four Horses Harmony Quartet

                       Time for me to pack up and igloo on outta here, kids! Say hi to yer Mom!

Extra (read all about it!): More about that guitar: Won Out, at least the first version, was complete before we started work on the cover. As I've mentioned before, the iconic "Sparky Jumps" picture was serendipitous, as many good things are. We had gone to the football field with a photographer and no clear idea of what we wanted, bringing along a hat rack, a baseball glove, one of Arlene's sun hats and the guitar. It was the first in a long line of red semi-hollow electric guitars of various brands: Gibson, Epiphone, Fender and others. My favorite was an Epiphone Casino like the ones The Beatles played in 1966 only red. John later stripped the paint from his and played it that way until he retired from music in 1975. I sold my Epi but acquired a new one years later from a student in Berkeley. I remember when I went to pick it up there was a power failure and I couldn't try the guitar out. But before I get carried away with Sparky and Fab trivia - I've never been certain of the model number of that guitar - I've always thought the sticker inside the sound hole read EA-325 but there is and was no such model manufactured by Gibson. So I thought that I'd misremembered and it was actually a ES-325 but upon checking out pictures and specs it couldn't have been - the ES is fully hollow with a different pick guard and control setup. Looking carefully through the Gibson catalog and comparing pictures I've come to the conclusion that it must have been an ES-335. I have no idea how I got EA-325 out of that. (I like to think it's the "Mandela's Guitar" effect but it's more likely because I was usually out of it on various substances and couldn't remember my own name half the time.

But who's the old guy? That's the late, great Don Rickles, "Mr. Warmth", who was popular for several decades - part of the Bob Hope, George Burns fraternity of tuxedo-wearing nightclub comics. His schtick insulting his audience and fellow celebrities. A popular TV show back then was a "celebrity roast" where the chosen victim - say, Dean Martin or Joan Rivers (herself a kind of female Rickles) - would be comically insulted by their peers. Don was at his best in these types of situations. His favorite insult was to call someone a "hockey puck", which I don't find funny at all.

A replica of John's Epiphone. He was known to hurl the odd insult every now and then.