The Murder Of Daniel Faulkner

Album: Hurtsmile (2011)
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Songfacts®:

  • Hurtsmile is fronted by the former Extreme singer Gary Cherone. Like Saxon's "Red Alert", this is another of those tracks that sounds more like a news report set to music than a song. The words are fairly unlyrical but factually accurate.

    At 4 a.m. on December 9, 1981, Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner was murdered in cold blood by Mumia Abu Jamal - the former Wesley Cook. He was sentenced to death, but that sentence was later reduced to life in prison.
  • Cherone, who has performed with Van Halen, used footage of the film The Barrel Of A Gun for the video. This documentary was made by the acclaimed Black film-maker Tigre Hill, who was inspired indirectly by the Kennedy Assassination. As he explained in a debate at the Philadelphia Constitution Center on November 8, 2010, he saw parallels with the conspiracy literature surrounding the incident which inspired another Saxon song - "Dallas 1pm" - as well as countless conspiracy "theories," books, and articles. But when you stripped away all the bunk, at the end of the day, there was only one perpetrator - Oswald in the former case; Abu Jamal in the second.

    While truth is often stranger than fiction, it is seldom as popular, and Hill's reputation plummeted with those who felt Abu Jamal was innocent.
  • Cherone's song fades out with the bagpipes playing the "Londonderry Air"... that's "Danny Boy" to you. >>
    Suggestion credit:
    Alexander Baron - London, England, for above 3

Comments: 1

  • Veritas Lan Astaslem from UsaWesley Cook should have been put to death rather than be allowed to broadcast from a jail cell at taxpayer expense. I and others who respect innocent human life long for the day Wesley will be put 6 feet closer to where he will spend eternity. That a college actually had this murderer as commencement speaker from his cell on Death Row speaks volumes, all negative, about the pathetic state of many American colleges. Blue Lives Matter to people who care about justice.
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