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Writer's pictureHeshy R

Daily Lyric: ROCK’N’ROLL BASTARD

Baby start rockin’, baby start rollin’

Fix your hair up right

Put on your best dress, look real nice

‘Cause I’m takin’ you out tonight

You’re lookin’ real good and it’s about time

That me’n’you go out on the town

Shut those others down


Watch out for me now, I’m gettin’ real hot

Baby gimme this one chance

We’re gonna go down to the rock’n’roll joint

And show the world how to dance

I’m workin’ all week, I’m up to my head in shice

Been waitin’ all week for you

I’ll show you what I’m gonna do


I’m what you call a rock’n’roll bastard

You either love me or you hate me

I’m the guy your mom warned you about

Oh yeah, a rock’n’roll bastard


Get into my car, girl, we’re goin’ for a ride

Tonight I’ll show you how to fly

We’re gonna have one hell of a time tonight

A guy like me, your money can’t buy

We’re gonna walk down the street and have the world by the tush

Don’t care what the people say

Baby you made my day


I’m what you call a rock’n’roll bastard ...

The rock’n’roll joint is full of smoke

Lovers in the corners makin’ out between tokes

The dance floor’s full of new-wave valentinos

None of those guys is as good as me, no!


You tell me you’re hot now, we’ll go back to the bar

You tell me that you love me and we’re gonna go far

Lemme take you home now, everything is all right

We’re gonna make it, baby, till the end of the night


I’m what you call a rock’n’roll bastard ...

The morning’s here, the sun’s shinin’ through

I look into the morning light

I tell you I love you, I know that’s what you want

That our love will last more than a night

‘Cause I been waitin’ for a girl like you

To come into my life

Don’t carve it all up with your knife


I should be sleepin’ but it’s too hard to try

When a night becomes a day

But if I don’t have you, I’ll have no need

To go to sleep anyway

I shouldn’t be bitchin’, I shouldn’t be cryin’

‘Cause life’s been good to me

But I ain’t livin’, and I ain’t dyin’

And that’s the way it’ll always be


I’m what you call a rock’n’roll bastard ...


©2023 The Hesh Inc.


Billy who?
Billy who?

This one goes all the way back to my junior year in high school. I had just transferred from the small-town hole in the ground where I had spent my freshman and sophomore years to a new school in the big city, Jerusalem, and I was setting my sights on bigger things. I was on my own, out of my parents' shadows, and I wanted to be a rock'n'roll star. I wanted to put a band together and perform the music that I loved. Only thing is, I had absolutely no idea how to go about this, and I also had no real idea of how things worked in the bigger world. I just had a head full of fantasies of how I imagined they were, or ought to have been.


The first weekend I stayed on campus was in October 1981. I had heard, not long before I switched schools, of a newly opened American-style rock club called JBR, and that Saturday night, I set out to find the place. Having no address or directions, I never found it, but I ended up at the corner of King George and Ben Hillel Streets in downtown Jerusalem, where the language heard on the streets was English because it was, at the time, the main hangout of English-speaking students who had come to spend their years-in-Israel. I hung out for several hours, even meeting some people I hadn't seen since I had moved to Israel from Long Island several years earlier. But I didn't find the elusive JBR that night.


I walked all the way back from downtown to my dorm in one of the outlying neighborhoods, and churning through my mind was a mishmosh of the 'album rock' that was heard at the time: Whitesnake's "Fool for Your Lovin," Rainbow's "I Surrender," Pink Floyd's "Young Lust," and a few more of that ilk. It wasn't quite what I would call "my music" but it was what was out there in the early 80s, if you were not interested in disco, punk, or new wave.


I made it back to my bed at around 1:00 am, and woke up at some indeterminate time the next morning with the groove from Billy Joel's "Stiletto" throbbing in my head ... a hangover without having gotten drunk the night before. The beat mixed in my mind with those other songs, and with some of my clueless rocker-wannabe lyrics, voilà ... "Rock'n'Roll Bastard" was born. And I still don't know whether the title refers more to the character singing the song, or the song itself, illegitimately conceived from its album-rock progenitors.

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