Hear the Psychedelic Furs cover of ‘Mack The Knife’
The Psychedelic Furs are one of the more emotionally complex groups of the post-punk era. Tracks like ‘Pretty In Pink’, ‘Love My Way’ and ‘President Gas’ are at once vengeful and romantic and seem to traverse a whole spectrum of emotions in a few short minutes. There are times when the group’s music possesses a profound sense of unity; other times, it’s as though it’s been deliberately crafted to juxtapose Richard Butler’s lyrics.
That same contrast between music and lyrics is what makes ‘Mack The Knife’ so brilliant. The track has an incredibly long history, having been composed by Kurt Weill and the playwright Bertolt Brecht way back in 1928 for the German play The Threepenny Opera. The ‘Mack’ of the title is Macheath, the play’s central protagonist, also known as Mack The Knife. The play, which follows Mack as he turns his criminal empire into a legitimate business, is a satire of the rise of capitalism, all set to a sultry jazz score.
Teen pop idol Bobby Darin saw The Threepenny Opera in Greenwich Village in 1958 and decided to start performing the song as part of his nightclub act. A year later, he decided to record the song for himself, which he released in March 1959 on That’s All. The song was eclipsed by the success of ‘Dream Lover’, which was released the following May. Still, demand for ‘Mack The Knife’ continued to grow thanks to Darin’s regular nightclub performances, and Darin released it as a single in August 1959, at which point it became a huge hit.
Darin wasn’t the only one to find success with ‘Mack The Knife’. The song has been a US Top 40 hit for seven different artists, including jazz greats Louis Armstrong and Billie Holliday. Holliday learned the lyrics on the plane from Stockholm to Berlin, where she was set to perform. Halfway through the performance, she forgot the words and ended up improvising the following verse: “Oh what’s the next chorus, to this song, now / This is the one, now I don’t know / But it was a swinging tune, and it’s a hit tune / So we tried to do ‘Mack the Knife'”.
The Psychedelic Furs’ version of ‘Mack The Knife’ served as the B-side to ‘Pretty In Pink’ and was later featured as a non-LP B-side on the band’s self-titled studio album, appearing alongside tracks like ‘India’, ‘Flowers’ and ‘Sister Europe’. Full of angular riffs and churning beats, it’s a perfect blend of krautrock propulsion and British popcraft. If only old Brecht had lived long enough to hear it.
