‘I Wanna Be Your Dog’ is a strange song lyrically. Someone who is so obsessed with their partner they’re willing to be utterly dominated by them. Each to his own, I guess.
Recently its lyrics caught the eye of emerging Canadian star Helena Deland. An interesting update in her song ‘Dog’. Who's the fairest one of all? / Who gets to be your mirror / If I'm the nail on the wall? / I hate to be your dog / But I could use the company / To go out with on walks.
And Sophia Regina Allison (aka Soccer Mommy) as well, who used it as a springboard to articulate her feelings about relationships. I don't wanna be your fucking dog / That you drag around / A collar on my neck tied to a pole / Leave me in the freezing cold.
Earlier, Jens Lekman had called his entire album “When I said I wanted to be your dog”, humorously indicating the absurdity of the proposition. It’s a lovely laid-back song as well, so far from the urgent propulsion of the original it’s hard to believe young Jens’ ears would have been able to cope.
It’s not the lyrics but that descending riff that’s truly endured. Sometimes it forms the basis of an entire song like Bela Lugosi’s Dead. Sometimes it just gets quoted obliquely, such as Mudhoney’s Halloween, two-thirds of the way through.
Brix of The Fall brought it over from the US with her and passed it off, rather incredibly. as her own. The group used it on Elves, perhaps forgetting that if there was one group her bandmates knew back-to-front already it was The Stooges. I haven’t included it on this episode as, even more incredibly, there may be SF listeners who are getting a little weary of the regularity of their appearances.
Peter Hook always wanted Joy Division to sound more like The Stooges. He was frustrated by Martin Hannett’s production which made the band sound anything but. They used the IWBYD riff not once, not twice, but three times, most obviously when they were still Warsaw - on the track Warsaw itself. Then on Insight, and finally on Twenty Four Hours. The last two tracks so distinctively their own, and so little to do with kinky masochism, that the connection only occurred to me years later.
Some great and varied covers here too – Emilie Simon, Uncle Tupelo, Matt Mays - to complement more straightahead versions such as Joan Jett (easily discovered elsewhere).
The most enduring riff of all? Well, Bo Diddley and others would have something to say about that. But, at the very least, it made for a surprisingly varied episode.
Tracklist:
I wanna be your dog, The Stooges
Two beads at the end, Minutemen
Dog, Helena Deland
Flying lesson (Hot Chicken #1), Yo La Tengo
I wanna be your dog, Emilie Simon
When I said I wanted to be your dog, Jans Lekman
Manipulator, Ty Segall
Your dog, Soccer Mommy
I wanna be your dog, Uncle Tupelo
Bela Lugosi is dead, Bauhaus
Twenty four hours, Joy Division
I wanna be your dog, Matt Mays