1968 Georgie Fame: The Ballad Of Bonnie And Clyde

It doesn't feature in the soundtrack, but 'The Ballad Of Bonnie And Clyde' was inspired not so much by actual events, but actual events as depicted in Arthur Penn's Warren Beatty/Faye Dunaway 1967 movie 'Bonnie And Clyde'. Peter Callander and Mich Murray had already written a sizeable number of early Merseysound hits, but where songs like 'How Do You Do It?' were direct and to the point, the psuedo tough guy lyrics to this meander on a lazy river of cliché, ("Reach for the sky" sweet-talking Clyde would holler"), forced rhyme ("Bonnie and Clyde began their evil doin', one lazy afternoon") and uneven metre ("Now one brave man-he tried to take 'em alone, they left him lyin' in a pool of blood, and laughed about it all the way home"). The non-ballad, faux speakeasy piano rolls paste on a thirties patina, but Fame's homeboy Yankee drawl makes for a trad in a basket result that's more Barron Knights than robber barons, particularly with a 'wah wah waaaaaaaah' ending more suited to soundtracking a slapstick pratfall than the violent deaths of two murderers. Humorous you say? Well I'd be more inclined to accept the tongue in cheek good humour of it all if there was in fact any humour there to be accepted. All very unappealing.