Daddy's Speeding

Album: Dog Man Star (1994)
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Songfacts®:

  • On September 30, 1955 James Dean was driving his Porsche 550 Spyder on U.S. Route 466 (later State Route 46), when a black-and-white 1950 Ford Custom Tudor coupe, driven from the opposite direction, moved to take the fork onto State Route 41 and crossed into Dean's lane. The two cars hit almost head-on. The actor was rushed to Paso Robles War Memorial Hospital and pronounced dead on arrival. Contrary to reports of his speeding, the Highway Patrol officer who attended the crash said "the wreckage and the position of Dean's body indicated his speed was more like 55 mph (88 km/h)." Suede frontman Brett Anderson told Suede.co.uk about this story of a dream/fantasy about Dean' s death: "I was immersing myself in overtly clichéd Hollywood iconography at the time. I guess it was an extension of the isolation/ pornography themes where I saw people forming relationships with fantasy figures rather than real people; Our new communities were soap operas, our new friends were characters in American sit-coms."
  • Anderson told the Suede site about his singing on the track: "I wanted to give the vocal a Lennonesque quality, that magical dreamlike way he sang songs like 'Day In The Life' and 'Across The Universe,' which I thought would complement the phased, otherworldly tone of the music."

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