Backdoor Man

Back on Sunday, January 11 we were driving home from church and listening to 100.3 FM The Sound.  It was the My Turn segment where a guest DJ, usually someone famous in music, plays what they want and talks about their choices.  My Turn airs between 6 pm and 7 pm every Sunday.  A previous week had Pau Gasol and Sasha Vujacic from the Lakers.  On January 11 the guest DJ was Noel Gallagher of the band Oasis.  He played some pretty good music, mostly older stuff.  As we were listening one particular lyric caught our ears:

“I eat more chicken (than) any man ever seen, yeah, yeah,”

Now there’s a song lyric you don’t hear very often.  The song was “Backdoor Man” performed by The Doors.  It’s a funny lyric similar to when Queen sing, “Gimme gimme gimme fried chicken,” and the end of the song “One Vision”.  I couldn’t think of the most chicken I’d seen a man eat other than when I had a half chicken meal at Juan Pollo in early November 2008.  That was a lot of food.

Further research revealed that the song “Backdoor Man” was actually written by Willie Dixon.  That makes sense that The Doors didn’t write it because it seemed a bit silly even for them.  Later artists influenced by Willie Dixon include Jesus and Mary Chain and PJ Harvey.  The entire stanza that contains the lyric is funny.  It goes:

You men eat your chicken
Eat your pork and beans
I eat more chicken any man ever seen, yeah, yeah
I’m a back door man
The men don’t know
But the little girl understand

It tells a funny story or at least conjures up some funny images.

Two weeks later on January 25, Brian Wilson of Beach Boys fame was on My Turn.  He also played a song that mentions food in the lyrics: “Apples, Peaches, Pumpkin Pie” by Jay and the Techniques.  Wilson described the record as his favorite.  It was another silly-sounding song from the 60’s.  Who knew there were all these old songs about food?