The Black Album (1987/1994)
This house of ill-repute is dripping with sleaze and erection metaphors so in your face you wouldn’t dare linger if it wasn’t for the saxophone enticing you like a red-light beacon. Eric Leeds’ horn-line was taken from a song he wrote for his previous band and later used in live performances of I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man and It’s Gonna be a Beautiful Night, but it’s in Rockhard in a Funky Place where, along with Atlanta Bliss’s trumpet, it found its spiritual home as Ariadne’s red thread guiding you around the sticky walls and away from Camille’s randy, diseased Minotaur. The memorable line in this Black (and Camille) Album closer is the one about being “soaked in banana cologne”. Undoubtedly as much a double entendre as the song title but even taken literally it works as delightfully repugnant poetry. L’eau de dépravation. At the end of the track, you’re told to tune in next week like this is an X rated Batman serial – same bat-time, same bat-brothel – but no matter what time you switch on the telly it’s still the same programme. Camille’s going nowhere. It’s like the Hotel California. You can turn off but you can never leave.
With its idle, slightly menacing narrator, for me this is kind of a Prince “Smells Like Teen Spirit”. An excellent track that took me years to get.
One of his best guitar solos committed to tape, I think. Needed to be to stand alongside the horn arrangement.