Murray Head – One Night in Bangkok
#quotefromthe80s
One night in Bangkok and the world's your oyster
The bars are temples but their pearls ain't free
You'll find a god in every golden cloister
And if you're lucky, then the god's a she
I can feel an angel sliding up to me
#MurrayHead #OneNightInBangkok
In the first days of November 1984, a very original song entered the English charts and it soon became very famous throughout Europe. It was a very particular song, because it was part of the soundtrack of a musical expected to be on stage in London; therefore, it told a story that was a little out of the ordinary.
His interpreter enjoyed some fame in England, but was absolutely unknown in the rest of the continent. On the other hand, the authors of the song and the soundtrack were well known, because Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus were the two male members of ABBA. We are of course talking about the beautiful One Night in Bangkok, taken from the soundtrack of the musical Chess and sung by the talented Murray Head.
Son of a documentary filmmaker and an actress, Murray Head has always made music, but he didn’t have much visibility until 1970, when he became part of the concept album of another musical that would later become very famous. Yes, because if you take the Jesus Christ Superstar album (which strangely could not find a production to be performed in theaters), you will discover that the producers Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd-Webber had given the role of Judas Iscariot to Murray Head.
As we know, the musical became very famous first on Broadway and then in the theaters of London’s West End and then around the world, but Murray Head did not participate in the theater performances, and his voice can only be heard on the album.
After nearly fifteen years of moderate fame, the chess game that fate plays with Murray Head’s career comes to a turn. Tim Rice, once again, was working on the lyrics for Chess, and remembered his pupil Murray Head, to whom he would entrust (this time also in theatres) the role of the American player.
Chess told a great metaphor on the theme of the Cold War through a world chess championship match played by a Russian player and an American player. In the real world, the world champion in charge and the challenger who emerges from the global selections play several dozen games over a period that often lasts for many months, until one of them achieves a pre-established number of victories (but given the level of the players the most common result is a draw).
These endless tournaments took place more or less every three years, often between a Russian and an American chess master (but in some cases both were Russians). The tournaments often took place in Moscow, but other times they took place in unusual places, such as Iceland in 1972, the Philippines in 1975 and 1978, or Merano, in Italy, in 1981. And all these places are in fact mentioned in the song, set precisely on the eve of a hypothetical clash between the fictitious Russian champion Anatoly Sergievsky, and the American champion Freddie Trumper, played by Murray Head.
Was director Tim Rice perhaps inspired by the great masters of those years such as the American Bobby Fischer or the Russians Korchnoj and Karpov? Almost certainly he was, but he did not want to tell their personal stories, but rather to recreate the atmosphere of the Cold War through the metaphor of chess. In the musical, the series of matches that is about to begin will take place in Bangkok, the capital of Thailand (which has never actually hosted this kind of event).
Bangkok however, we know, is certainly a city symbol of art, culture and wonderful natural scenery, but it is also synonymous with voluptuousness, pleasure, perdition. In short, the ideal place where chess masters can lose concentration, not only in bars and massage centers, but also in tournament venues, especially if a lady in the staff of one of the champions falls in love with the opponent, as it happens in the musical.
The lyrics of the song actually always balance on the edge of a double meaning, not so much with regards to the Cold War, but rather for the contrast between the rigorous world of chess and a city reality made up of sensuality and temptations. The American champion Freddie is certainly aware and intrigued by a reality, as he himself says, of bars, temples, massage parlours, in a city that he still considers crowded, polluted and stinking.
And even if he declares that he prefers cerebral fitness to old sacred and muddy rivers or the statues of reclining Buddhas, the refrain takes us back to a continuous dilemma between carnality and history, where it is very easy to come across gods and goddesses, often not so distant in substance, let’s say, considering that in Thai culture the so-called “third sex” is absolutely recognized through transgender identity, even if the issue is much more complicated and today the term “kathoey” becomes increasingly limiting and obsolete.
One Night in Bangkok had significant problems in Thailand, and was censored for its lyrics, and for how Freddie\Murray Head seemed to mock sacred rivers, temples and other elements of Thai reality, including the use of the name Siam and the reference to Yul Brinner who had played the King of Siam in another musical and in the film that was based on it, The King and I.
One of the characteristics of the song that I appreciated most was the fact that Murray Head was not singing, but rapping, a style that was really fascinating and which was still quite rare in 1984, especially in Europe, where we only had some examples with Falco and the resounding success of Der Kommissar or with Captain Sensible with his wacky Wot.
In the choruses, however, the main singing voice is not Murray Head, but the Swedish singer Anders Glenmark, a great collaborator of ABBA. The musician who plays the characteristic flute solo during the song is also Swedish, Björn Lindh, who among other things managed to get a surname with a punctuation mark approved, becoming “Björn J:son Lindh”.
The video is a real teaser for the musical (which however would be released almost two years later), with Murray Head singing amidst choreographies of temples, chess, all in a context of sensuality. A very modern video, if we think that it was shot in 1984, and without huge special effects it certainly manages to evoke exotic and dreamlike atmospheres. The video was directed by English director David G. Hillier, who later directed some episodes of series in Great Britain, as well as some episodes of Teletubbies.
The following year, One Night in Bangkok was also recorded by the Canadian singer Louise Robey, in a slightly sweeter version than Murray Head’s, and with a video that still recalled the sensual atmospheres described in the song.
In short, Murray Head found himself experiencing well-deserved success thanks to a very particular song and story, but with his experience and talent he managed to make One Night in Bangkok one of the songs that really gave a particular atmosphere to the most beautiful of all decades!
Murray Head on Wikipedia
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