In a newly revamped format of the Certain Songs Project, Craig Wright examines a standout single song (or songs) in depth. With stunning irregularity, our editor will add to an ongoing playlist of songs that lack any overlying theme. Some are brand new discoveries, others are long-ingrained favorites; some will be completely unfamiliar, others completely inescapable. No matter what, each song is worth praising and one that merits further discussion.
“Hit Somebody! (The Hockey Song)” — Warren Zevon My Ride’s Here (2002)
Warren Zevon and his songs are often lauded for their twisted sense of humor. Give “Excitable Boy” or “Poor Poor Pitiful Me” a few listens to hear how far he could take his dark, macabre jokes. So many songs that attempt comedy are forgettable for the simple reason that they wither under the weight required to establish a punchline. Even rarer is a funny song that holds up musically, yet Zevon made it happen often, even on his albums recorded after being diagnosed with the mesothelioma that would take his life in 2003. One of the standout tracks of his final years was “Hit Somebody! (The Hockey Song),” the tale of Buddy, a Canadian farm boy who finds his destiny as a hockey goon. Buddy’s two main minor-league statistics are self-explanatory: more than 300 fights; zero goals. His abilities with his fists are enough for a visiting scout to offer him a roster spot on a professional team. And though he’s employed as the team’s designated fist fighter, he dreams of one day scoring that elusive goal. Multiply those statistics by a 20-year career, and we find Buddy in his final season, still hoping to prove he’s been capable of scoring all these years. It’s a fascinating portrait of a one-dimensional role player who wants to be taken seriously for something more than his trademark brawls.
Author and sports writer Mitch Albom was good friends with Zevon. “Hit Somebody” came about when Zevon approached Albom with the idea of writing a song about a sport that isn’t always glamorized. Albom decided hockey was lacking a proper ode and penned the lyrics. The song, which landed on Zevon’s 2002 record My Ride’s Here, packs in a full career arc that begins on a small farm in Big Beaver and ends in the big time. Zevon tells of how Buddy fell in love with hockey as a kid. He learned early that although he couldn’t handle a puck or skate very well, he was big and could throw a punch. As Zevon sings, “Buddy’s real talent was beating people up / His heart wasn’t in it but the crowd ate it up.” The coaches don’t sugar coat his role and say the reason he’s on the ice is to protect the real skaters. He sits at the end of the bench with other nameless enforcers known only by their nationalities.
“Hit Somebody” is a song with visible stitches and unhealed wounds. You can feel Buddy’s yearning for an identity beyond the blood as he grows frustrated with his one-trick role. How can he be a hockey player when he isn’t allowed to play hockey and likely has more minutes logged in the penalty box than on the ice? He’s more of a spectacle than a skater, and the crowd goes wild every time he drops his gloves. “‘Hit somebody!’ It rang in his ears / Blood on the ice ran down through the years.” We get the sense that in the twilight years of his career, the crowd’s chants for blood have followed him like a bad tattoo. He’s still never lost a fight, but the pain and anguish of mastering a craft doesn’t always amount to a proud portfolio.
In Buddy’s final game something goes wrong on a transition and he’s put in position to take a shot on goal. The other team’s goon spies him lining up to shoot and decks Buddy on his follow through. It’s his first lost fight, but the sucker punch is worth it for his last chance to register a meaningful statistic on the box score. He’s waited his whole life to see the heavenly light of the goal, even if he’ll have an eye swollen shut when it finally happens.
Warren Zevon is one of David Letterman’s favorite musicians. When Paul Shaffer was unavailable, Zevon would sometimes fill in as the Late Show bandleader. When he received his cancer diagnosis in 2002, Zevon was given the star treatment on The Late Show. Even while approaching death, he kept the interview funny and displayed his ability to find humor in even the most dire circumstances. (“It means you better get your dry cleaning done on special,” he jokes when asked what his diagnosis has taught him, earning a full-body eye roll from Letterman.) His performances from that night have stood the test of time and leave no room to doubt why Zevon was among Letterman’s favorite guests.
Zevon recruited Paul Shaffer and members of his World’s Most Dangerous Band for the studio recording of “The Hockey Song.” With them came the boss himself — that’s Letterman yelling “Hit somebody!” in the chorus. The recording is a solid track, but its greatest version came about when Zevon brought “The Hockey Song” to late night TV.
On the My Ride’s Here take, the song is slow, methodical, and has a bouncing rhythm that doesn’t quite fit with Buddy’s plight. This is a song that should smell like spilled beer and crushed peanuts; it should feel like an outdated arena that needs to be retrofitted for earthquake safety. Most importantly, it’s a song that needs to pack a punch. When Zevon performed it on The Late Show, all of those elements aligned perfectly. It’s a rare instance where shortening a song for TV from five-and-a-half minutes to roughly four actually paid dividends and led to a stronger performance. The pace is picked up substantially from the recorded version — no one will confuse this for a ballad. Its energy matches that of classics like “Lawyers, Guns and Money,” with Zevon and the band starting to play before he’s even settled at the piano. Shaffer nails the rotary organ sound of a blood-stained ice hockey rink. Cutting the second verse about goons being protectors lets the song flow smoother, and nothing is lost in the omission. It’s all still implied, but it hones in on Buddy’s desire to be more than he’s allowed to be on a more personal level.
I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead: The Dirty Life and Times of Warren Zevon is Crystal Zevon’s oral history of her first husband’s life. The book does not shy away from the darker aspects of Warren’s life and analyzes his struggles with addiction, infidelity, and violent tendencies, as told by his closest friends. He was a true case of good days and bad nights, and you never knew which state you’d find him in. It’s a fascinating read, but along with the wild tales are revelatory passages where other musicians talk about Zevon’s abilities. On Zevon’s humor, and “The Hockey Song” in particular, Bruce Springsteen says, “He injected a true sense of humor in all his work. There have only been a few guys who have pulled that off well… He wasn’t a joke man; he would write something that had real meaning, and it was funny, too. That’s hard to do. I always envied that part of his ability and talent.”
Like Zevon’s best songs, “Hit Somebody” highlights how he could turn the smallest seed of an idea into a feature-length worthy character study. Kevin Smith even tried to make a film out of the song for years, but appears to have abandoned the project. At one point he envisioned Seann William Scott playing Buddy, but, as fate would have it, Scott went on to star in Goon (2011), a pretty hilarious comedy about a thick-skulled enforcer who can’t skate or shoot. In an age where fighting is being phased out of hockey, perhaps “Hit Somebody! (The Hockey Song)” will live on as an anthem in minor league hockey arenas and be best remembered as a relic of a time when dropped gloves were a crowd-pleasing commonality. But the nuances of Buddy’s story should elevate the song above the crushed peanut shells and spilled beer that litter the grandstands.
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