Hair of the Dog
a bit o’ rock & roll trivia
“Now you’re messin’ wit’ a … a son of a bitch… yeah, you’re messin’ wit’ a … son of a bitch.”
You know the song, we all know the song. If you were a kid and you had the Love Hurts record on 45, and you played the flip side to see what it sounded like, because the song on the flip side is called Hair of the Dog, and that sounds like it might just be a creepy song, and maybe even a good one, you were in for a pleasant surprise. This was a great song, a rocker, not a ballad like the radio hit on the top side, but a raunchy, ball-crushing, throat-straining rocker, with cussing! Yep, oh man, they’re saying “son of a bitch” over and over again, is this not so cool!?
And such a kid may or may not know what the phrase ‘hair of the dog’ means, it depends on how old he is, old enough to drink, or to know anything about 1970s drinking culture. And half a decade down the road, in the movies, the phrase would be given a new life:
“Hi, Lloyd!” a grinning Jack says, settling in at the bar.
“What’ll it be, Mr. Torrance?” asks the equally grinning, properly attired, very creepy (and pale) bartender.
“The hair of the dog that bit me, Lloyd,” replies Jack, with a near-comical air of pompous, brooding seriousness.
Of course you recognize those lines, spoken by a not-quite-yet insane Jack Nicholson conversing with the ghost bartender in the empty hotel. And you kind of know what he means, right? Sure you do.
The flip side of the 45 record eventually became more popular than the ballad on the top side, but no Top-40 AM station was going to play it, because this was 1974, and you just don’t play songs that repeat “son of a bitch” over and over again, you just don’t. Maybe a prog-rock station on one of the big city FM dials would sneak it in and get away with it, but that was about it.
And for the same reason, the song itself was named such. Nazareth wanted to name both the song, and the album, Son of a Bitch (and rightly so…), but the record label said no. No, no, no, its 1974, and Ian Hunter may be cleaning chimneys over there in Blighty, but you don’t name an album Son of a Bitch in 1974 America. Or the U.K.
But they did…
In a roundabout way, with the changing of one single letter, the swapping of an ‘A’ for an ‘E’, they named the song exactly what it should be named, and nobody at the record company caught on. And none of the fans caught on either, and there are some old Boomers wandering around even still, playing Hair of the Dog on their Spotify and Pandora sites, still wondering why such a great old song was blessed with such a stupid title, and one that had nothing to with the song. It was about a sneaky woman with a rep for taking advantage, and a guy who wasn’t going to take any shit from her, not him, because he was a tuffy, he was big, he was a son of a bitch and you just don’t mess with his angry ass. Nothing anywhere in that song about dogs, or hair, or… dogs? Nope. Analyze it, sure, the woman was a bitch, the guy was a son of one, did that matter any? No…
But… sure it did. One letter, remember? An ‘A’ for an “E”… a bitch, a dog, a son, hair, hair of the dog, a hangover? No, what the… wait! There it is! O you big dummy! But it was clever, it was riddle-worthy so it was. One letter. Son of a bitch — hair of the dog.
Son of a bitch — hair of the dog…
Son of a bitch — heir of the dog…
It works. It really does.
“Now you’re messin’ with a … heir of the dog,
You’re messin’ with an … heir of a dog!
