Album: Mermaid Avenue
Year: 1998.
I know that the album is credited to “Billy Bragg & Wilco,” but “Ingrid Bergman” is pure Billy Bragg. Well, musically & vocally. Lyrically, of course, it’s pure Woody Guthrie.
And out of all of the myth-deconstructing that came out of the Mermaid Avenue albums, the absolute best of all was that this remote and legendary figure – the guy who inspired Bob Dylan, inscribed “This machine kills fascists” on his guitar like a proto punk, and wrote the best of our alternate national anthems – once wrote lyrics about how much he wanted to fuck a popular film star.
Ingrid Bergman, you’re so perty
You’d make any mountain quiver
You’d make fire fly from the crater
Ingrid BergmanThis old mountain it’s been waiting
All its life for you to work it
For your hand to touch its hard rock
Ingrid Bergman
Ingrid Bergman
The inspiration for this song (and the source of the double-entendres that fuel it) was the affair that Ingrid Bergman and Roberto Rosselini had while making the film Stromboli on the island of Stromboli. And I guess when they got together, it was a scandal, but with the perspective of hindsight, how could anything that produced Isabella Rosselini possibly be bad?
Fan-made video for “Ingrid Bergman”
My Certain Songs Spotify Playlist: