Timothy (song)
Encyclopedia
"Timothy" is a song written by Rupert Holmes
and recorded by the Buoys
in 1971, presenting the unnerving story of three men trapped in a collapsed mine, two of whom apparently resort to cannibalism
against the third (the titular character Timothy). Despite being censored
or even banned outright by many U.S.
radio station
s due to its subject matter, the song managed to reach #17 on the Billboard Hot 100
, making the Buoys one of the most unlikely one-hit wonders in American music history.
and a colleague had discovered the Buoys
and convinced Scepter Records
to sign them to a one-single
contract. Since the deal did not call for the label to promote the single, the band would have to find some other way to get themselves and their song noticed. Holmes suggested a novel solution to this problem: to purposefully record a song likely to be banned, thus generating publicity for the Buoys under the time-honored axiom that "there's no such thing as bad publicity".
" (a song about the hard life of a coal miner
) and the 1959 film adaptation of the Tennessee Williams
play Suddenly, Last Summer
(which also contains allusions to cannibalism
) as inspirations for "Timothy". He decided to combine the themes of those two works into a ballad of three miners trapped by a cave-in, sung in the first person
from the perspective of one of the miners. By the time they're rescued, only two of them remain. Although the fate of the missing man, Timothy, is never explicitly revealed, it is strongly implied by the fact that the two survivors, once hungry and with no access to food, show no sign of hunger when they're rescued. Indeed, the singer's "stomach was full as it could be". To make the song appealing to listeners, Holmes disguised the borderline-gruesome lyrics to a degree by juxtaposing them against a light, bouncy melody
with heavy emphasis on brass and string accompaniment.
Although not an official member of the band, Holmes did play piano on this song in addition to writing it.
did not promote the record. Soon, however, it became popular among young listeners who were able to deduce
Timothy's fate from the lyrics. Only as the song became more frequently requested did radio stations begin to take note of the song and its unsettling subject matter. Then, just as Holmes
and the Buoys
had expected, the song started getting banned.
Under normal circumstances, a radio ban would be considered the "kiss of death" for a single's prospects on the Billboard music charts
, which at that time were based heavily on radio airplay. Yet "Timothy" had already attracted such a great following that as some radio stations banned the song, competing stations would pick it up to meet the demand. As a result, instead of dropping off as expected, the song continued slowly moving up the Billboard Hot 100
chart. Once they realized they had a hit record on their hands, Scepter Records executives tried to claim that Timothy was really a mule
, not a person, in order to get radio stations that had banned the song to reconsider. When asked about this claim, however, Holmes refused to play along with the Scepter executives. Even so, "Timothy" kept climbing the chart, finally peaking at #17. Holmes' entrepreneur
ial approach to songwriting had worked better than he, the Buoys, or Scepter Records had ever expected. To appease the stations that banned the song, Scepter created two promotional singles with the original version on the A-sides and one of two differently edited versions on the B-sides. One edit revises the lyric "My stomach was full as it could be" to "Both of us fine as we could be". The second version includes the "stomach" lyric but bleeps out the word "hell" in the second verse. The record labels (in black and white for promotional issues) indicate these versions under the song title as "REVISED LYRIC" (SDR-12275) and "EDITED, BLEEPED OUT" (SDJ-12275), respectively. There is no known version of the song with both edits in the same mix.
The success of "Timothy" and its writer's methods may have worked too well for the Buoys' sake. Although Scepter did re-sign the band to record an album, they were left with the problem of how to follow up on a hit song as unusual as "Timothy". Ultimately the Buoys proved unable to duplicate that feat, although they did manage one more minor hit with "Give Up Your Guns" (also co-written by Holmes) before disbanding. Meanwhile Holmes himself continued his career as a songwriter and, by the end of the decade, also as a successful recording artist in his own right, best known for the #1 single "Escape (The Piña Colada Song)" in late 1979.
Rupert Holmes
Rupert Holmes is an American-British composer, singer-songwriter, musician and author of plays, novels and stories. He is best known for his number one pop hit "Escape " and the song "Him", which reached the number 6 position on the Hot 100 U.S. pop chart in 1980...
and recorded by the Buoys
The Buoys
The Buoys was a progressive rock band from the early 1970s. Its membership included Bill Kelly, Fran Brozena, Jerry Hludzik, Carl Siracuse and Chris Hanlon, based in the Wilkes-Barre-Scranton, Pennsylvania area...
in 1971, presenting the unnerving story of three men trapped in a collapsed mine, two of whom apparently resort to cannibalism
Cannibalism
Cannibalism is the act or practice of humans eating the flesh of other human beings. It is also called anthropophagy...
against the third (the titular character Timothy). Despite being censored
Censorship
thumb|[[Book burning]] following the [[1973 Chilean coup d'état|1973 coup]] that installed the [[Military government of Chile |Pinochet regime]] in Chile...
or even banned outright by many U.S.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
radio station
Radio station
Radio broadcasting is a one-way wireless transmission over radio waves intended to reach a wide audience. Stations can be linked in radio networks to broadcast a common radio format, either in broadcast syndication or simulcast or both...
s due to its subject matter, the song managed to reach #17 on the Billboard Hot 100
Billboard Hot 100
The Billboard Hot 100 is the United States music industry standard singles popularity chart issued weekly by Billboard magazine. Chart rankings are based on radio play and sales; the tracking-week for sales begins on Monday and ends on Sunday, while the radio play tracking-week runs from Wednesday...
, making the Buoys one of the most unlikely one-hit wonders in American music history.
Origin
According to his own account http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=2005, HolmesRupert Holmes
Rupert Holmes is an American-British composer, singer-songwriter, musician and author of plays, novels and stories. He is best known for his number one pop hit "Escape " and the song "Him", which reached the number 6 position on the Hot 100 U.S. pop chart in 1980...
and a colleague had discovered the Buoys
The Buoys
The Buoys was a progressive rock band from the early 1970s. Its membership included Bill Kelly, Fran Brozena, Jerry Hludzik, Carl Siracuse and Chris Hanlon, based in the Wilkes-Barre-Scranton, Pennsylvania area...
and convinced Scepter Records
Scepter Records
Scepter Records is a record company founded in 1959 by Florence Greenberg. She had just sold Tiara Records with The Shirelles for $4000 to Decca Records. When The Shirelles didn't produce any hits for Decca, they were given back to Greenberg, who promptly signed them. By 1961 Greenberg launched a...
to sign them to a one-single
Single (music)
In music, a single or record single is a type of release, typically a recording of fewer tracks than an LP or a CD. This can be released for sale to the public in a variety of different formats. In most cases, the single is a song that is released separately from an album, but it can still appear...
contract. Since the deal did not call for the label to promote the single, the band would have to find some other way to get themselves and their song noticed. Holmes suggested a novel solution to this problem: to purposefully record a song likely to be banned, thus generating publicity for the Buoys under the time-honored axiom that "there's no such thing as bad publicity".
Inspiration
Holmes has cited the country song "Sixteen TonsSixteen Tons
"Sixteen Tons" is a song about the life of a coal miner, first recorded in 1946 by American country singer Merle Travis and released on his box set album Folk Songs of the Hills the following year...
" (a song about the hard life of a coal miner
Coal mining
The goal of coal mining is to obtain coal from the ground. Coal is valued for its energy content, and since the 1880s has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extraction of iron from iron ore and for cement production. In the United States,...
) and the 1959 film adaptation of the Tennessee Williams
Tennessee Williams
Thomas Lanier "Tennessee" Williams III was an American writer who worked principally as a playwright in the American theater. He also wrote short stories, novels, poetry, essays, screenplays and a volume of memoirs...
play Suddenly, Last Summer
Suddenly, Last Summer
Suddenly, Last Summer is a one-act play by Tennessee Williams. It opened off Broadway on January 7, 1958, as part of a double bill with another of Williams's one-acts, Something Unspoken. The presentation of the two plays was given the overall title Garden District, but Suddenly, Last Summer is...
(which also contains allusions to cannibalism
Cannibalism
Cannibalism is the act or practice of humans eating the flesh of other human beings. It is also called anthropophagy...
) as inspirations for "Timothy". He decided to combine the themes of those two works into a ballad of three miners trapped by a cave-in, sung in the first person
First-person narrative
First-person point of view is a narrative mode where a story is narrated by one character at a time, speaking for and about themselves. First-person narrative may be singular, plural or multiple as well as being an authoritative, reliable or deceptive "voice" and represents point of view in the...
from the perspective of one of the miners. By the time they're rescued, only two of them remain. Although the fate of the missing man, Timothy, is never explicitly revealed, it is strongly implied by the fact that the two survivors, once hungry and with no access to food, show no sign of hunger when they're rescued. Indeed, the singer's "stomach was full as it could be". To make the song appealing to listeners, Holmes disguised the borderline-gruesome lyrics to a degree by juxtaposing them against a light, bouncy melody
Melody
A melody , also tune, voice, or line, is a linear succession of musical tones which is perceived as a single entity...
with heavy emphasis on brass and string accompaniment.
Although not an official member of the band, Holmes did play piano on this song in addition to writing it.
Unexpected success
"Timothy" attracted little attention when it was first released, in large part because Scepter RecordsScepter Records
Scepter Records is a record company founded in 1959 by Florence Greenberg. She had just sold Tiara Records with The Shirelles for $4000 to Decca Records. When The Shirelles didn't produce any hits for Decca, they were given back to Greenberg, who promptly signed them. By 1961 Greenberg launched a...
did not promote the record. Soon, however, it became popular among young listeners who were able to deduce
Deductive reasoning
Deductive reasoning, also called deductive logic, is reasoning which constructs or evaluates deductive arguments. Deductive arguments are attempts to show that a conclusion necessarily follows from a set of premises or hypothesis...
Timothy's fate from the lyrics. Only as the song became more frequently requested did radio stations begin to take note of the song and its unsettling subject matter. Then, just as Holmes
Rupert Holmes
Rupert Holmes is an American-British composer, singer-songwriter, musician and author of plays, novels and stories. He is best known for his number one pop hit "Escape " and the song "Him", which reached the number 6 position on the Hot 100 U.S. pop chart in 1980...
and the Buoys
The Buoys
The Buoys was a progressive rock band from the early 1970s. Its membership included Bill Kelly, Fran Brozena, Jerry Hludzik, Carl Siracuse and Chris Hanlon, based in the Wilkes-Barre-Scranton, Pennsylvania area...
had expected, the song started getting banned.
Under normal circumstances, a radio ban would be considered the "kiss of death" for a single's prospects on the Billboard music charts
Billboard charts
The Billboard charts tabulate the relative weekly popularity of songs or albums in the United States. The results are published in Billboard magazine...
, which at that time were based heavily on radio airplay. Yet "Timothy" had already attracted such a great following that as some radio stations banned the song, competing stations would pick it up to meet the demand. As a result, instead of dropping off as expected, the song continued slowly moving up the Billboard Hot 100
Billboard Hot 100
The Billboard Hot 100 is the United States music industry standard singles popularity chart issued weekly by Billboard magazine. Chart rankings are based on radio play and sales; the tracking-week for sales begins on Monday and ends on Sunday, while the radio play tracking-week runs from Wednesday...
chart. Once they realized they had a hit record on their hands, Scepter Records executives tried to claim that Timothy was really a mule
Mule
A mule is the offspring of a male donkey and a female horse. Horses and donkeys are different species, with different numbers of chromosomes. Of the two F1 hybrids between these two species, a mule is easier to obtain than a hinny...
, not a person, in order to get radio stations that had banned the song to reconsider. When asked about this claim, however, Holmes refused to play along with the Scepter executives. Even so, "Timothy" kept climbing the chart, finally peaking at #17. Holmes' entrepreneur
Entrepreneur
An entrepreneur is an owner or manager of a business enterprise who makes money through risk and initiative.The term was originally a loanword from French and was first defined by the Irish-French economist Richard Cantillon. Entrepreneur in English is a term applied to a person who is willing to...
ial approach to songwriting had worked better than he, the Buoys, or Scepter Records had ever expected. To appease the stations that banned the song, Scepter created two promotional singles with the original version on the A-sides and one of two differently edited versions on the B-sides. One edit revises the lyric "My stomach was full as it could be" to "Both of us fine as we could be". The second version includes the "stomach" lyric but bleeps out the word "hell" in the second verse. The record labels (in black and white for promotional issues) indicate these versions under the song title as "REVISED LYRIC" (SDR-12275) and "EDITED, BLEEPED OUT" (SDJ-12275), respectively. There is no known version of the song with both edits in the same mix.
The success of "Timothy" and its writer's methods may have worked too well for the Buoys' sake. Although Scepter did re-sign the band to record an album, they were left with the problem of how to follow up on a hit song as unusual as "Timothy". Ultimately the Buoys proved unable to duplicate that feat, although they did manage one more minor hit with "Give Up Your Guns" (also co-written by Holmes) before disbanding. Meanwhile Holmes himself continued his career as a songwriter and, by the end of the decade, also as a successful recording artist in his own right, best known for the #1 single "Escape (The Piña Colada Song)" in late 1979.