“Monkey In Your Soul”—last song, side two of Pretzel Logic (1974)

This Pretzel Logic album was a bit of musical journey—I remember getting it, I was what... 14, so it's no wonder I was a little perplexed. A lot of the songs took me literally years to warm up to, but this catchy, audience friendly number at the end always cheered me up. Then, I suppose, years later, after I had eventually come around to most of the rest of the record, I might have found this a little quaint. It's kind of like an ice cream sundae at the end of a meal, complete with maraschino cherry and whipped cream. It's just so catchy and friendly, you might think it's simple, but it's really not. That fuzzy bass kind of dominates the song, but if you listen to it over a few times, it more or less disappears, and you hear the rest of the instruments, including a kind of haunting electric piano, and the at first friendly horns and expressive lyrics start to sound actually weird. This matches the lyrics, more or less. It's just two verses, each followed by a very short chorus: “I fear the monkey in your soul.” He's singing to “you”—but is this autobiographical? It is about a woman? No, of course not. Most likely it's fictional characters who exist in the “I fear the monkey in your soul” world. I can imagine myself coming up with that phrase, say at the age of 28, and then just carrying it around for years, like a gold ring with a red stone, which when removed, unleashes what appears to be a curse, but is actually, for those astute enough to see it, the tempered death wish we all have, sugarcoated, soaked in something that tastes good, but is otherwise very, very bad.

—Randy Russell 12.3.19