By Don K

Adam West "God's Gift to Women": A Behind the Music Look at the Silly Lyrics of Jake Starr

"Devilishly Handsome"
Like most of my lyrics, I take real-life experiences and turn them into songs. At lunch one day, a colleague of mine turned to me, looked me up and down, and said, "Jake, you're devilishly handsome!" Then she said that can be a good and bad thing. I always loved the line "Christ, I'm a good-looking man" from the Monster Magnet song "Nod Scene," so I kinda wrote my own take on it. Steve came up with the riff and the song was born. It was actually one of the last songs we worked on before recording the album, so it's ironic that it's the album opener.

"Trying to Be a Man in a Woman's World"
My favorite James Brown song is "This is a Man's World," so I always wanted to write my own take about that. When you get right down to it, women have the power in this world since all of us heterosexual men are slaves to their feminine charms. And I've got such a, albeit tongue-in-cheek, testerone-injected macho image in this band, so I wanted to write about how hard it is for me to be Jake Starr in a world run by women. Then the whole science fiction "Planet of the Apes" idea came into my mind that women had seriously taken over the planet and men were just playthings and workers for the amazon women... you know, the whole Morg and Eymorg thing from "Star Trek!" Steve came up with the riff and I wrote my crazy story. My favorite line is: "I do the best I can each and every day, but it feels like I'm living in a YWCA!" Ha ha! This song was written soon after we recorded the last album "Right On!" and we had been playing it live for a while before we recorded it.

"Gets Me Off"
Here's a very simple song. Steve wrote the riff, Ben played a great solo, and I wrote about ejaculation. Case closed.

"Wishbone" This is another song that was almost a year old when we recorded it. Steve wrote the great bouncy riff and I just started writing about a party I threw. There's always at least one person at a party at your house that you wanna kill. Well, this was a very talkative, annoying girl. It got to the point where I wanted to take her out back and put a bullet in her. Yes, it was that bad. We played this live quite a bit before it was recorded for the album. Ben laid down a great solo on this one, too.

"Second Sight"
Alright, this is the song that you either love or hate. Right before we went on our 3rd European tour in June 2002, Kevin Hoffman (our old guitarist), Steve and I were working on new songs. Kevin had this riff but it was much faster and really didn't have any structure at all to it. We recorded all of our ideas on cassette in our rehearsal space and went on tour. Well, Kevin quit at the end of the tour so when I went through the cassette to continue working on songs, I had an epiphany with Kevin's riff. I just started singing a melody and took it from there. Later, I went over to Steve's to work on it so while he played the riff, I arranged the song with my melodies and lyrical ideas. I don't think Steve really dug the idea cuz it's so different to the usual Adam West songs, but he indulged me. Then when Ben and Dan-o got involved, the song really took shape so we decided to record it for the album. I think that every recording session has a real bitch of a song that everybody has to fight to make it work. This was our song. Steve had trouble playing the riff on guitar. I couldn't fucking sing the damn song until the very end of the recording session and I was about to have a fucking nervous breakdown about it! I mean, I WROTE the goddamn melody and I couldn't sing it without choking. Ugh! Then our engineer Bruce was not digging the song at all while we were working on it, so that didn't help either. Ben had the idea to add some keyboards on it so I asked my buddy Mark Jefferson to bring in his vintage Vox Continental organ and play. He needed to learn the song and blah blah blah. So it's an honest miracle that this song came together at all. Actually, Dan-o's acoustic guitar and his subtle-yet-genius solo really make this song as well. I happen to love it even though I'm not really singing about anything particular. It's more like sounds and syllables than actual meaningful words and I think that adds to the mystique of the song. Now, do ya love it or hate it?

"Eye to Eye"
Another Steve riff from the rehearsal cassette. I was having a hard time coming up with a good melody for months until I remembered an old melody I had written back in 1993 that was rejected by the band at the time. It somehow fit into this song so I kept at it. After Steve, Ben and I had worked the whole song out, Steve decided to add a bridge and a key change at the end which would force me to sing the last chorus in a higher key. I panicked at first but pulled it off in the first take in the studio. One-take Jake I am. Lyrically, it's more like the Adam West songs I used to write in the early 90s which were more about heartache. Our engineer Bruce really dug this song and came up with the echo "cough" in the bridge. He also said he thought this song was "the hit" of the album. Ben played some killer leads throughout this song.

"There's a Bimboo Under My Bed"
Ahhh, what a song! And oh, what a trip I had to get this song written! The Hellacopters invited my best friend Dave Champion and me to accompany them on their November 2002 tour of Finland. Dave and I had never been to Finland before but we were friends with the Flaming Sideburns and Thee Ultra Bimboos, so we jumped at the chance. The 'Copters played two nights at Tavastia in Helsinki and after each night, the after-show party was in Dave's and my hotel room. On the second night, Maria (lovely guitarist from Thee Ultra Bimboos) ended up crawling under Dave Champion's bed. It's a very long story but it's detailed quite well in the lyrics to this song! Every time I go to Scandinavia, I get a great song out of it. My past two trips to Stockholm are documented in "Piece of Ass" and "Gentlemen's Evening." So I wrote the riff and lyrics to this song, Ben stepped in and snazzed it up with some great ideas like the changes and the percussion, then Dan-o laid down the excellent solo and the rest is history. All in all, my favorite song on the album.

"God's Gift to Women"
Steve and I were in his basement when he played this riff for me. And sometimes I know that a song is gonna be amazing in that very moment. When the line "They call me god's gift to women and I think it's well-deserved" popped into my head immediately, I knew I was onto something special! Earlier that week, a girl had come up to me in a club and said, "You think you're god's gift to women, don't you?" She was not amused at all. I, of course, took that and stashed it away in my mental scrapbook for a later time. Anyway, Steve and I wrote this song out very quickly with Ben's help and it became the title track of the album. I was messing about with "Outtasight" or "Solid" as possible album titles but this one took the cake. It sums up the Jake Starr persona perfectly... even though some of my detractors will most certainly call it "God's Gift to Men!" My favorite line on the album is in this song: "They call me god's gift to women and I come from pedigree... you'll only find golden apples hanging on my family tree." Pure genius!

"Hotsy Totsy"
I wrote this riff and lyrics right after we recorded "Right On!" so it's the oldest song of the lot on the album. I always liked the character of Rosalyn Totsy from the TV show "Welcome Back, Kotter." They used to call her Hotsy Totsy so I decided to write a song about a beautiful girl. My original musical idea was a bit different but once Kevin and Steve worked on it, it was shaped into what it is today. We had been opening our shows with this song for a long time before we recorded it. And I really like the low vocal up against the high vocal in the chorus. I think it totally makes the song. Plus, Ben played some awesome guitar on this song, especially the outro lead.

"The Future's on My Side"
Steve wrote this riff only a couple weeks before we were to record the album, so I had to get cracking fast to come up with a good melody and lyrics. I believe Ben wrote the bridge and I just kinda thought about having a junkie as a girlfriend and how much that would suck. Originally, I was calling the song "I've Got Tomorrow and You Don't" but it turned into the actual title once I wrote the lyrics for the bridge. The song's cool cuz it's like a locomotive that chugs all the way through.

"Center Stage"
Ha ha, another song about being Jake Starr. I am an extrovert and when I walk into a room, I've gotta be center stage. I like the call and response vocals in the verses. Steve wrote the riff and the rest is masculine history.

"The Floozy"
Steve wrote this riff a few weeks before we recorded the album, so it was more pressure on me to come up with something quick. I think Steve and I were on the same page cuz when I started singing over his playing, he said that's what he had in mind. Now these lyrics are extremely silly and I'm not even gonna go over them here. But I did get to lyrically throw in my Morg and Eymorg obsession during the bridge. Dan-o played the awesome slide solo in this song.

"In the Back of My Hearse (lo-fi)"
I wrote this song along with "Hotsy Totsy" right after we recorded the last album "Right On!" We actually recorded this song already in May 2002 for a 7" single that was released by Bad Attitude Records in Finland to coincide with our June 2002 European tour. I liked the song so much that I wanted to mess around with it a bit and re-release it on "God's Gift to Women." We added organ from Mark Jefferson, maracas, new guitar parts, and mixed it very lo-fi to make it sound more 60s authentic. I guess I've always wanted a 60s hearse to drive around in. After reading about cool bands like the Count Five who used to drive around in a hearse and wear long black capes back in 1965, I wanted to write a tribute to those 60s punk bands. Of course, I had to toss my own Jake Starr macho bullshit into the mix. Since it had been (kinda) released before, I decided to make this the album closer.

Conclusion: Okay, there ya have it! Thirteen songs about how much I love women... but more so, how much I love myself. I'm Jake Starr and you're not. Respect the rock.

Lyrics can be found at fandangorecs.com/adamwest/lyrics.cfm

Contact:
Jake Starr (the man)
Adam West (the band)
Fandango Records (the label)
3403 Mt. Pleasant Street NW
Washington DC 20010 USA
phone: (202) 904-5822
e-mail: jake@fandangorecs.com

fandangorecs.com
fandangorecs.com/adamwest
www.mp3.com/adamwest