Rocky Raccoon – The Beatles

A couple weeks ago, I said I didn’t know if I could ever write about the Beatles. Well. Here we are. Whatever reservations I had about it were in my own head, with some encouragement and the realization that there is probably nothing that I can say that hasn’t already been said about the greatest of all time.

Happy Friday! This one might be a bit controversial, as I don’t think you could really call this one a murder ballad since no one gets murdered. However. There is an attempted murder.

Rocky Raccoon has long been one of my favorite Beatles songs, and it seems fitting to be the first Beatles track I talk about on here. I remember my dad singing this one to me when I was a kid to help me fall asleep. Originally titled “Rocky Sassoon,” Paul McCartney decided Raccoon “sounded more like a cowboy.” Dammit if Paul wasn’t right. But are the Beatles ever really wrong?

Once again, we look at a tale of a broken-hearted fella (or raccoon) named Rocky, and his woman, Magill aka Lil. (but everyone knows her as Nancy) Our story takes place somewhere in the Black Mining Hills of Dakota, where our hero, Rocky, is living with Lil. Seemingly out of nowhere, this guy, “Dan,” comes in and socks young Rocky right in the eye! And steals his girl too! Damn, Rock! You gotta get that boy! Rocky goes to the local saloon, armed with the clothes on his back and a pistol, and gets himself a room with pretty sparse accommodations, but it does have a Gideon’s Bible! A reckless and blinded-by-love Rocky bursts into the room next door in the hotel, where Dan and Lil are dancing. It seems that Rocky may not have wanted to kill Dan, but actually planned on crippling him by shooting both of his legs. So what happens next? Before we discuss, I wanted to mention briefly one of my favorite movies of all time and one of the most enduring and iconic lines/tropes in cowboy-centric media. Uttered by the late great Eli Wallach in a top five movie of all time for me, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. Playing one of the best scoundrels of all time, Tuco, he tells a dying man, ‘When you have to shoot, shoot, don’t talk.” Rocky evidently did not listen to Tuco. The young raccoon bursts in, smiling, and proclaims to Dan (and everyone else in the room), “This is a showdown!” I wish this had worked out for ol’ Rock, what a cool way to get your girl back, huh? But no, alas, Dan is a man of action and not words. He reacts quickly, and a shot rings out, and before you know it, Rocky is collapsed in a corner. The town doctor arrives, so drunk that he lays himself down rather than the wounded Rocky, telling him that he’s done for. Rocky, being the happy-go-lucky guy that he is, shrugs this off and somehow makes it back to his room. Once there, he finds the Gideon’s Bible and, assuming that Gideon left it for him, Rocky begins his spiritual and physical recovery. Hell of a story, no?

Until this the time of writing this post, I had never really noticed the humor in the last verse.

“Only to find Gideon’s Bible
Gideon checked out, and he left it, no doubt
To help with good Rocky’s revival“

Interestingly, this is the last Beatles song to feature John‘s harmonica playing, and legendary producer (the true 5th Beatle?) George Martin is the one playing the honky-tonk style piano.

I love when I come across The Beatles’ influence in media, and one of the more recently beloved Marvel superheroes is named after this song. Rocket Raccoon, a member of the Guardians of the Galaxy (voiced by Bradley Cooper in the movies) was first introduced in 1976, as a talking raccoon with a British accent who’s friends called him Rocky. We wouldn’t see Rocket for another 6 years, but in “Incredible Hulk 271”, Rocket is reintroduced with “Now Somewhere In the Black Holes of Sirius Major There Lived a Young Boy Named Rocket Raccoon”

He is also joined by good buddy “Wal Russ”. Goo goo ga joob?

What does Hulk help them to do? Protect the greatest treasure of his home world, Gideon’s Bible, of course.

It is really cool to know that one of the most popular Marvel characters of the MCU era was directly inspired by The Beatles.

If you know the Beatles, you know there’s no live performance by them of this one, but I am linking the “Esher demo” version, which comes from some of the recordings made at George Harrison’s estate, Kinfauns. As a massive Beatles fan, the Esher demo tapes are incredible to listen to. I’m also linking a live cover with (low quality) by two of my favorites, Jack Johnson and Eddie Vedder.

Link to song – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDcDCZGcZj8

Link to Esher demo – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjz4Xujx8Wg

Link to JJ and EV – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVMZn6ciCx0