Additional information on the
Nick Cave song "Stagger Lee":
"'I'm a bad
motherfucker, don't you know
And I'll crawl over
fifty good
pussies just to get one fat boy's
asshole'
Said Stagger Lee'"
The "
fifty good pussies" line is evidently taken from a
1969 blues song "
Two Time Slim" by a rather unknown group called
Snatch and the Poontangs. It is available on a german label now, on a compilation called "
If It Ain't a Hit I'll Eat My.... Baby". No, I'm not kidding.
Another verse for this song exists as well, performed only during live renditions. It details the
devil appearing to Stagger Lee after Billy gets eh, blown away. Stagger Lee kills the devil.
(If anyone has the lyrics, I would be appreciative if you'd send them to me or post them.)
I personally enjoyed this song and this album ("
Murder Ballads") a great deal, once I figured out it wasn't anything you could dismiss at face value. I read someone once (half-jokingly, perhaps--anyone who knows what Nick Cave sounds like will know why) guess that this was Nick Cave's take on
gangster rap. It wasn't until a few months ago that I myself decided to explore the genre (which I had been forced away from by annoyance at
MTV), to find that this is oddly a very accurate thing to say. It's a song about killing for the sake of killing--lashing out violently and senselessly. There's something beautiful about that, or at least something picturesque and emotional, you might admit. Not beautiful because one approves, but because it's something in its purest and most natural form, like the modern all-purpose example of the bag from
American Beauty. Maybe the
Three Six Mafia wouldn't know that what they're doing might have some artistic value, or at least interest, but I'm certainly inclined to believe it does. But I might not've seen it without songs like
Stagger Lee.