Album: They Only Come Out at Night
Year: 1973
How weird was the early 1970s? That an instrumental that was nearly incomprehensible and full of weird twists and turns topped the Billboard charts.
And not as a novelty song either. Cos in the 1970s, that kind of shit happened all of the time!!!
I did my part: “Frankenstein” was one of the very first 45s I ever owned (and had a killer b-side, “Undercover Man”).
There’s no point in doing a dissection of it, as Chuck Klosterman already did that a couple of years ago in Grantland. (Bursts into tears).
But I can say that my favorite parts weren’t so much Edgar Winter’s sax or Ronnie Montrose’s wah-wah guitars, but rather the part in the middle where the drums battle each other for an uncomfortably long amount of time. Not quite a drum solo, though: more like the drum equivalent of “Dueling Banjos,” only not nearly as long.
Oh, and of course, the “chi-chi-chi-chi-chi-chi” synth at the end, which I always thought was the sound the ocean sings to itself while making a rip tide. And suddenly going into a full-blown gun battle. I mean. What even the fuck? And “Frankenstein” wasn’t even the weirdest instrumental to become a massive hit that year. Not when “Hocus Pocus” existed.
“Frankenstein” performed live in 1973