Wasp Man

Album: Two's Missing (1969)
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Songfacts®:

  • This Keith Moon penned song was the B- side to the band's single "Relay." The origins of the track lay in a late-1960s incident aboard a plane flight. Roger Daltrey recalled to Uncut magazine October 2001: "It all happened on a flight from Copenhagen back to London. We hit some bad weather and, my god, I've been in some planes that have done some things in my time but this f---ing plane was like a rollercoaster ride, it almost flipped over."

    "We'd got through this weather and it all sort of leveled out and everybody was puking and sitting in almost total silence," Daltrey continued. "Now, meantime, Moon's disappeared. He was sat with this groupie bird who had this tiger-skin coat which he's taken, and her bra. Needless to say this girl had very large mammaries. So he disappears up the back of the plane to the bog. Everybody's still puking and the captain's come out and he's standing there apologising, saying it's the worst weather he'd ever been through."

    "Then from the back suddenly there came this 'bzzzzzzzzz!' We looked round and it was Moon stood with the two bits of her bra over his eyes like big fly eyeballs and he's got her tiger-skin coat tied round his neck like a cape," Daltrey added. "And he shouted, 'Don't worry, folks – Waspman's here to save you!' And he did this thing up and down the plane buzzing away as Waspman, kissing all the women and just f---ing around in general. By the end of it everybody was just rolling about laughing. He'd taken the edge off that hairy situation and cheered everyone up."

    "So that's how 'Waspman' was created," he concluded. "We'd already done 'Batman' a few years before so we said, 'OK, we'd better write a theme for Waspman!'"

Comments: 1

  • Sludge from WheelingThe guitar is very similar to In A Hand Or Face.
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