Fleetwood Mac Friday #12: Somebody’s Gonna Get Their Head Kicked In Tonite
“Somebody’s Gonna Get Their Head Kicked In Tonite,” the original B-side to the Peter Green era single “Man of the World” is credited to “Earl Vince & the Valiants”– actually just Fleetwood Mac playing a kind of flamboyantly boneheaded rockabilly and letting writer and guitarist Jeremy Spencer sing.
The song has been covered a few times, most notably by the Rezillos. The cover appears on the Jackass movie soundtrack. You think of Fleetwood Mac, you pretty much think the opposite of punk– you think of glamor and luxury, of Baby Boomers and Ren Fair garb– but this, along with Tusk‘s “The Ledge,” is a moment much more punk at least than any of Billy Joel’s dumb attempts to seem streetwise and hard-edged, much more genuine, if only by virtue of the lyrics.
The significance of a song like this is it’s kind of like being on a high hill– or a ledge– overlooking past and future rock and roll. In the past, you see Chuck Berry and Ike Turner and maybe the Beatles in Hamburg, in the song’s present you see The Monks and The Who and The Stooges, and in the future The Clash and The Buzzcocks, a specific kind of hooligan rock emerging, and here with Jeremy Spencer probably having no idea he’s on such a hill, he’s having too good of a time, and the rest of the band not even wanting anyone to know they’re there with him.
The Tusk 
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