Friday Night Jukebox, Vol. CDL--L.A. Guns: The Ballad of Jayne

There aren't a lot of songs by glam metal bands that I like (I'd be hard pressed to name a second one), but for whatever reason this week's tune is one of them.  One supposes that just about any genre is capable of creating a song that's a cut (so to speak) above--and this week's band certainly did....

L.A. Guns formed in, of all places, Los Angeles in 1983, and their history is just slightly easier to follow than string theory.  A few of their original members would move on to form a little band called Guns n' Roses, but by the late eighties the band's line-up would morph into their original incarnation.  The band would have a modicum of success through the early nineties and have spent the last thirty years changing members like a new mother changes diapers.  There are currently two versions of the band (at one point there may have been a third): LA. Guns and Riley's L.A. Guns.  Both versions released a new studio album just this year.  For their career, L.A. Guns have released fourteen studio albums (not counting the two by the Riley incarnation), and twenty-nine singles.  Despite the myriad changes, the band has managed to have a forty-year career and is still making music--and you can't beat that.

"The Ballad of Jayne" was one of five singles to be released from the band's second studio album, the threateningly named Cocked and Loaded.  Both would become the highest charting of the band's career, with the single reaching #33 (with a bullet!) on the Billboard Hot 100, and the album peaking at #38 on the Billboard 200.

Fun Fact:  Some have surmised that the song was written about the late actress Jayne Mansfield but the band has denied this is so.  For those not familiar, Mansfield was a sex symbol of the fifties and sixties who tragically was killed at the age of thirty-four when her car slammed into, and eventually slid under, a tractor-trailer.  After the accident, the Highway Safety Administration recommended a bar be put on the back of semis to prevent cars from sliding under them.  This bar is sometimes called the "Mansfield bar."

Exactly what happened to Jayne?  Overdose?  Suicide?  Murdered by a jealous lover?  It's never explained, but the protagonist is going to regret not holding onto her for the rest of his life.  The song is sparse--there's a nice mix of acoustic and electric guitars, the drums are subtle yet driving, and the vocals are accentuated so as to highlight the story's tragic overtones.  A lot of the ballads from this era were overwrought twaddle, but L.A. Guns managed to put together enough magic--there's something to be said for their subtlety, too-in four minutes to take "The Ballad of Jayne" from the usual drivel to that  stratosphere reserved for special singles--and this one's special enough to put a glam metal tune into the pantheon that is Friday Night Jukebox.

Lyric Sheet:  "Now she's breaking hearts in heaven/Shining bright in the sky/I still hear her voice in the wind/I still think of her in the night..."

Enjoy:

Republicans = Nazis

Peace,

emaycee