The classic Bob Dylan song that inspired Shame: “The first time it clicked”
I’ve never left a Shame gig without a smile on my face, a beer stain all over my T-shirt and an inevitable bruise from the in-crowd chaos that their songs ignite.
To an extent, they almost do their songs an injustice as frontman Charlie Steen adorns the stage in either a faux-priest outfit or a pair of golden spandex boxers, playing the role of musical comedian. As part of the schtick, he deliberately dumbs down the music and encourages the crowds to lose their minds to the bona fide power of rock and roll.
It makes for one of the best live shows on the circuit, no doubt, but it makes for the uninitiated to leave without a true understanding of the complexity of their music. This is a band who, yes, play up to the British indie rock clichés, but with music that is brimming with hidden meanings and insightful narrative arcs.
Beneath the playful riffs of ‘Six Pack’ and ‘Lampoon’ are acute moments of societal and personal observation, be it ‘Spartak’ or ‘Quiet Life’. This is a band who are operating in the space of modernity, but pulling on the influences of very real and very serious greats to do so.
One of those is Bob Dylan. During Far Out’s recent Existential Boozer episode, frontman Charlie Steen opened up on Dylan’s influence on him as an artist and how his music and lifestyle have guided him through his own career.
He explained, “I guess in terms of people who’ve inspired and influenced me and who I can’t really doubt that genius in terms of someone who’s alive would probably be [Bob] Dylan. Lyrically, and also, you know, like, what else he did in his time, it was just more than music as well, you know, what he inspired and what he spoke about, politically and socially, it was, you know, I think you just can’t really touch him now.”
Steen crystallised exactly where that inspiration manifests itself by outlining the one song that made a marked impact on his early years. He recalled, “If I was to say the one that first made me realise it, was ‘Masters of War’ when I was like nine years old. That probably wouldn’t be my favourite now, but in terms of if I listen to that, that still reminds me of the first time it clicked.”
While nine years old is a pretty intense age to absorb Dylan’s scathing masterpiece, there can be no arguing that it made an impact on Steen, who now has made a healthy career for himself in music.
Because I guess, in some senses, you don’t have to understand the lyrics to engage with the fury. ‘Masters Of War’ is undoubtedly Dylan at his lyrical best, raining hell on the corrupt social structures that seem to drive the geo-political changes of the world, but the sort of desperation that existed in his young voice during the recording is equally as inspiring. It’s a song that has taught generations old and new, Steen included, how to express an unfiltered sense of truth through music.
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