DEAD NED (Ned Kelly Soundtrack - Shel Silverstein)

Member Name: lynn_bex

Product:	Ned Kelly Soundtrack - Shel Silverstein
Date:	04/08/01 (467 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Better than the film, Taste of the 1970's Country Outlaws, Shel Silversten, 1932 - 1999

Disadvantages: Mick Jagger

From time to time this 1970 Mick Jagger film turns up on television, usually in a late night graveyard slot, and it is so comically bad that it’s almost good. In fact, my old Halliwell’s Film Guide says: “…Obstinately un-likeable action picture with some kind of message which never becomes clear amid all the cleverness”.

The soundtrack recording is something else again…

And don’t you just love it, when everything comes together?

The Music and Lyrics are by the wonderful Shel Silverstein.
The Vocals are by my all time favourite, Country Superstar Waylon Jennings.
Additional Vocals and Narration by another hero of mine, Kris Kristofferson.
The final track is by Tom Ghent (about whom I know nothing).

Mick Jagger has one song on the album and there’s a smidgen or two of his dialog, which I find more than enough, Jagger having been irritating me for best part of a quarter-of-a-century.

Perhaps I should add at this point that Mick Jagger’s then lady, the lovely Marianne Faithfull, had also been signed for this movie but she took an overdose in their hotel room shortly after she and Jagger arrived in Australia. Can’t say as I blame her. I too would probably feel like topping myself if I woke up next to Mick Jagger. (Marianne Faithful was unconscious for six days but survived, of course.)

My 1997 CD re-release of this soundtrack is marked “Deluxe Edition” and it comes with a poster, and a great deal of background information on both this film and the life of the real Ned Kelly (who was an Australian Outlaw), there are also stills from the film and photographs of the real nineteenth century Ned. As a matter of fact, this package is rather better than the film ever was!

1. NED KELLY (Waylon Jennings)
This opening song sets the scene, with `ol Waylon at his most world-weary as he sings Ned’s life story.
-In the movie Ned has been released from jail and is making his way home, across the Australian outback, looking more cocky with each passing mile:
“…he’d put in three long years/For the stealing of a horse he swore he’d never done…”
“Walk softly, cried the Magistrate who counted up the score/Walk softly cried the turn-key as he clanged the iron door…”
“They told him it was over…/Wild Australia had to change… /And he’d better watch his temper, and he’d better mind his tongue/For the next time he walked inside those gates, he’d surely hang…”

It does not bode well!

2. SUCH IS LIFE (Film Dialog: Mick Jagger)
This being a back-to-front movie, track 2 is but a few seconds long. “Such is life,” says Ned, before we hear the trap open as he is hanged.

3. THE WILD COLONIAL BOY (Mick Jagger)
Now we’re back to the beginning and Ned and his gang are celebrating their latest robbery. Jagger sings in a “traditional” manner (ie backed by a flute as if this were an Irish folk song) about an “honest thief” in the Robin Hood tradition.

If Mick Jagger had been practicing this back in the hotel room it’s little wonder Marianne Faithfull took those 150 pills.

4. WHAT DO YOU MEAN I DON’T LIKE (Film Dialog: Mick Jagger)
“What do you mean? I don’t like stealing other peoples’ cattle, or impounding as you call it in the name of the law.”

5. SON OF A SCOUNDREL (Kris Kristofferson)
I love this one… Which is not heard in the movie, for reasons that will become apparent… It’s TONGUE-IN-CHEEK, ok? (Shel Silverstein wrote ALL of the early Dr Hook songs, many of which were hysterically funny… He was a very, very funny man – who could, and did, also write honest thought-provoking songs – a
s we will see later in this opinion. Kris Kristofferson is also a goodie, and definitely somebody we want on our side.)

Right, do we understand that this is a joke?
If we are Australian, will we please re-read the above and take a deep breath before proceeding?

Ready? (The intro-music gets you going, there’s this compulsive beat…)
I have decided to give you these lyrics in full, because they make me laugh [even though I’m guessing odd word(s) that I can’t quite make out]. – We can’t ask Shel’s permission, as he died in 1999, but I’m sure he wouldn’t have minded…
Here we go then:

“Big Barney [I think] “Fitch”/He got suddenly rich/Bought a big fancy house in Melbourne/With buckets of loot and big black buckle boots/Acting so haughty and well-born./But we of Australia, we’re children of convicts/And some of us wear it quite proudly/So when he rides by, in his carriage so fine/I wave, and I shout to him loudly:

(Chorus)
“Was your Grandma a wh***[earliest profession]/Was your Grandpa a thief?/Were they [boarders?] and grafters who fell to their grief /If you’re born of Australia, I know who you be/You’re the son of a son of a scoundrel, like me.

Molly McCabe, she’s got sweet loving ways/And I know that she does adore me/But her parents, they feel, it would be a bad deal/And they say that she’s much too good for me/So as we said goodbye, with a tear in our eye/They were smiling and glad of the breaking/They didn’t look so proud, when I shouted out loud/Till that whole bloody town was awakening:

“Was your Grandma…. (repeat chorus)
(and repeat chorus again - trying not to tee hee.)

This will be going round in my head for weeks now. I must try not to sing it at work!

6. SHADOW OF THE GALLOWS (Waylon Jennings)

This is Waylon at his h
eart-felt best:
“ Don’t ask me where I’ve been/Don’t ask me what I’ve done/Don’t ask me why I’m pale and frail and sallow/For you never get no nourishment/Never see the sun/When you’re living in the shadows of the gallows…”
“Who will pray a prayer for me?/Who will stop to cry?/Who will shout that I’m a jolly fellow?/As the dingoes chew my feet away, and the crows pick out my eyes/Swinging in the shadows of the gallows…”
(These lyrics update us, and go into greater depth, broadening the canvas painted by the introductory “Ned Kelly” - Track 1)

7. IF I EVER KILL (Film Dialog: Mick Jagger)

A second or two of dialog set the next scene: “If I ever have to kill a man, Lonigan, you will be the first”.

8. LONIGAN’S WIDOW (Waylon Jennings)

There has been a shoot-out and, whatever his original “Robin Hood” intentions, Ned Kelly and his gang have killed three policemen. Constable Lonigan had a wife:

“Lonigan’s widow, she’s singing no songs/She walks these red hills and she cries all night long/They say that Ned Kelly, he never did wrong./Tell that to Lonigan’s widow”
This song tells the tale (maybe based on fact. I’d like to trust Shel Silverstein and `ol Wayon) of how four troopers set out to hunt the Kelly boys. Two of the policemen went ahead, scouting; the third was cooking; Lonigan was cleaning up the camp, when Ned and his gang sprang up… “And Lonigan’s gone…”

“They say that Ned Kelly has never done wrong/But tell that to Lonigan’s widow”.
“Sing of his bravery and God bless his head/And bury the truth as you bury the dead”
Quite.

But “Our Gang” is going to change the world. Aren’t we? (That’s – so far – me, some of
you fellow dooyoo-ers, Waylon Jennings, Kris Kristofferson, Nanci Griffith, and the other “good guys” I’ll be getting round to in future ops.)

9. STONEY COLD GROUND (Kris Kristofferson)

The trees are all bare/And the cold winds are blowing/And I’m thinking of selling and moving to town…
This tells us of the hardship of “working the land” and of the bitterness that caused the likes of Ned to go wrong…

10. LADIES AND GENTLEMEN (Film Dialog: Mick Jagger)

Mick Jagger’s cod Irish accent is really getting on my nerves now… (Poor Marianne, there in Australia with only the choice of Mick or the pills…)

“Ladies and Gentlemen, before you go there is something I would like to say. The newspapers have called me a murderer… …I killed a policeman in a fair stand-up fight…”

11. THE KELLY’S KEEP COMIN’ (Kris Kristofferson)

This is a narration of Ned Kelly’s last stand… The hostages are screaming, the Kellys are cursing… And then “this thing appeared, clanking…”

Ned Kelly has donned home-made armour, - buckets and pots and pans – and “keeps a’coming… Ten feet tall with a great iron head, lurching onward… Scaring the troopers, who keep on fearfully firing…

“Finally. Sergeant Steel went up behind him and fired a shotgun, blasting his legs… And Kelly reeled backwards, tottered and finally fell with a great crash…”

He had 28 wounds, but recovered to stand trial on October 28th, 1880… When Judge Barry sentenced him to die, Ned shouted “You can’t kill us all, I’ll return from the grave to fight...”

12. RANCHIN’ IN THE EVENING (Waylon Jennings)

This is another Shel Silverstein masterpiece, sung as a lullaby by good `ol Waylon&#
8230;
In the film we see Ned’s gang rustling horses…
“Mother, tell me mother, where has my Daddy gone, and why is my Daddy always leaving?/Hush my child and go to sleep, he’s working with the cows and sheep/Daddy does his ranching in the evening.”
“Mother, tell me Mother, why he took his gun along/For I know `tis not the gaming season/Hush, my child and go to sleep/`Tis bigger game your Daddy seeks/For Daddy does his hunting in the evening…”
(Daddy is seen coming home with a chain of thoroughbred horses…)

13. SAY (Film Dialog: Mick Jagger)

I’m bored with Ned/Mick now… Suffice to say that he’s decided to turn his plough shares into armour…

14 BLAME IT ON THE KELLYS (Waylon Jennings)

I do love Waylon, and the way he brings a song to life:

“Someone stole [somebody]’s pig/Blame it on the Kellys…
Had [somebody else’s] Horse and rig/Blame it on the Kellys…
Someone robbed the Sydney Mail…/…and if the potato crop should fail/They’ll blame it on the Kellys”
“Blame it on the Kellys, boys/Blame it on the Kellys/Shame, shame upon their name/Blame it on the Kellys”
“Anyone that’s just like you/And does what you would like to do/And if the Troopers don’t know who… they blame it on the Kellys.
…There’s no crime to great or small… Blame it on the Kellys…
…I think I’ll steal a horse myself, - and blame it on the Kellys”

15. PLEASURES OF A SUNDAY AFTERNOON (Waylon Jennings)

This is the romantic Waylon… Sigh… “Cathy, darling Cathy/Will you come and share with me/All the pleasures of a Sunday afternoon…”

“We’ll stroll beside the leafy banks, and lay us down to rest/And linger….”

Sigh, sigh…. (Me
lt…)

16. HEY NED (Tom Ghent)

We close with a soothing remembrance of Dead Ned… - Who, given his background, probably never stood much of a chance, but was a nasty piece of work all the same!

Great CD though, with Shel, Waylon and Kris all captured in time, so to speak!

Lynn

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