Home | Songs By Year | Songs from 1980


Shot Down in the Night

Buy Shot Down in the Night now from Amazon

First, read the Wikipedia article. Then, scroll down to see what other TopShelfReviews readers thought about the song. And once you've experienced the song, tell everyone what you thought about it.

Wikipedia article




'Shot Down in the Night' is a 1979 song written by Steve Swindells, who was at that time keyboardist with the UK rock group Hawkwind. Swindells and Hawkwind released different versions of the song as a single on 27 June 1980. Hawkwind's version reached #59 in the UK singles chart, being a slightly different version to the one on the album Live Seventy Nine.

The song was written by Steve Swindells while rehearsing with Hawkwind (then working under the name "Hawklords") at Rockfield Studios in 1979. He presented it to the band, and they agreed on its potential as a future single. However, Swindells was then offered a solo record deal by ATCO, and left Hawkwind to pursue a solo career. His studio version of 'Shot Down in the Night' was released as a single on the same day as Hawkwind's live version.

Swindells claims that his version was "waaay harder, more dramatic and simply better than Hawkwinds version. In both the battle of the butch and the artistic, the queer won."[http://www.dayum.co.uk/ daynum] Swindells blog site Despite that claim, Simon King (drums) and Huw Lloyd-Langton (guitars) played on both recordings, giving the two versions a musical closeness, although Swindells' gruff vocals perhaps make his version heavier than Dave Brock's folky vocal on Hawkwind's version.

References



Category:Songs about nights

Category:Hawkwind songs

Category:1980 songs

Buy Shot Down in the Night now from Amazon

<-- Return to songs from 1980



This work is released under CC-BY-SA. Some or all of this content attributed to http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=1068166829.