Suzanne Vega: Ironbound/Fancy Poultry and other meaty matters
- 10 hours ago
- 4 min read
Updated: 11 minutes ago
Ron Counte
Suzanne Vega has been touring the UK and Europe this summer so it’s a perfect time to revisit what for me is her finest album, 1987’s Solitude Standing. The record is probably best known for Tom’s Diner, featured in both full band and a cappella settings, but my favourite track is Ironbound/Fancy Poultry.
The song is about a working-class area in New Jersey where Portuguese immigrants go to buy cheap food to help feed their struggling families.
In the ironbound section near Avenue L
Where the Portuguese women come to see what you sell
The clouds so low the morning so slow
As the wires cut through the sky
The beams and bridges cut the light on the ground
Into little triangles and the rails run round
Through the rust and the heat
The light and sweet coffee colour of her skin
Kids will grow like weeds on a fence
She says they look for the light they try to make sense
They come up through the cracks
Like grass on the tracks
The mood is quite sombre to this point. But the song dramatically changes tone and rhythm and we we hear what sounds almost like an advertising jingle...
‘Fancy poultry parts sold here
Breasts and thighs and hearts
Backs are cheap and wings are nearly free
Nearly free’
The last line is delivered with a beautiful, soaring vocal tinged with sadness. We immediately grasp the double meaning: the low price of the product on sale and the lost freedom of the animals themselves. It’s an evocative combination of lyric and melody which gel perfectly to create a powerful impression of birds being almost free to fly away.
Fancy Poultry is an outstanding example of the many well-known songs that address the issue of meat-eating and animal welfare generally.
John Lennon penned The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill (1968) in outrage when Richard Cooke III, one of the party on the trip to the Maharishi’s spiritual retreat in Rishikesh, boasted about shooting a tiger. The Beatle later donated proceeds from Across The Universe to the World Wildlife fund.
Paul McCartney’s Wild Life in 1971, the title track of Wings’ studio debut album after the Beatles break-up, urged compassion for zoo animals and in Looking For Changes (1993) he gives it to us straight:
I saw a cat with a machine in his brain
The man who fed him said he didn’t feel any pain
I’d like to see that man take out that machine
And stick it in his own brain
You know what I mean
I saw a monkey that was learning to choke
A guy beside him gave him cigarettes to smoke
And every time that monkey started to cough
The bastard laughed his head off
Do you know what I mean?
On their 1978 album Tormato, Yes for once delivered a lyric we could actually understand when pleading with us Don’t Kill The Whale and donated a portion of their royalties to Greenpeace.
Pink Floyd went as far as to feature a dog on vocals on the playful blues track Seamus on Meddle in 1971. However, despite the title, there is little space given over to animal welfare on their 1977 album Animals where the focus is the evils of capitalism, the mindless masses and Mary Whitehouse.
In Earth Song Michael Jackson asks ‘What about animals?’ Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker famously demonstrated exactly what he thought of that particular number, infiltrating a crowded stage during the 1996 Brit Awards because he felt Jackson’s messianic act was in poor taste.
Despite being only a consonant away from being called Vegan, it turns out that Vega is not vegetarian or vegan though many, largely due to Fancy Poultry, regard her as such. However, there is a lengthy list of rock vegetarians including McCartney, Jackson, Morrissey, Thom Yorke, Johnny Marr, Ariana Grande, and even Geezer Butler of Black Sabbath. Perhaps he was inspired by viewing Ozzy Osbourne’s on-stage eating habits at close quarters. Others, such as Harry Styles, Billie Eilish and Moby have moved on to full veganism.
Morrissey doesn’t pull any punches in his 1985 song for The Smiths Meat Is Murder:
And the flesh you so fancifully fry
Is not succulent, tasty or kind
It’s death for no reason
And death for no reason is murder
And the calf that you carve with a smile
It is murder
And the turkey you festively slice
It is murder
Do you know how animals die?
While we are on the subject of eating meat we must take a moment to consider the song that advocates the joys of cannibalism. Not a sentence one comes across often. Silver Spoon was served up in 1971 by Grace Slick and Paul Kantner of Jefferson Airplane fame. Slick, who became a vegan, was apparently miffed at the hypocrisy of their Californian veggie neighbours. Here’s a taste of the tongue-in-cheek lyric…
Where are the bodies for dinner? I want my food
What if you were starving to death And the only food you had was me What would you say to the cannibal question Would your answer be perfectly free?
My old mama told you never to eat your friends With your fingers and hands But I say you ought to eat what you will Shove it in your mouth any way that you can
You think that I will come to your mouth Looking for a home But I get stuck sideways in your throat Like a good old chicken bone
You could learn to dine on your friends Pour their bones into a cannibal soup Muscles like steak and blood like wine Save the brains to feed to troops
Just humming Cannibal songs Cannibal songs
As Suzanne Vega might agree, it seems there is a song for every occasion.
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