Fire Brigade - The Move

Fire Brigade by the Birmingham band The Move was released in 1968 as their fourth single. It is a consummate piece of pop music, two and a half minutes long. It starts with the sound of an old fashioned fire engine, has a very catchy hook of a guitar riff (apparently derived from "Somethin' Else" by Eddie Cochran and a favourite of the composer but almost twangy enough to be Duane Eddy) and some nice background vocals (including onomatapoeic hoots). It even has an excellent middle eight, courtesy of Carl Wayne, the main vocal being taken by Roy Wood, the song's composer. (On Flowers in the rain the roles had been reversed). Wood apparently wrote it to order the night before in a hotel room. Sessions for the song began the next day, on 16 November 1967, at Olympic Studios, Barnes, London. There are apparently other versions of it, including one with Matthew Fisher of Procol Harum on piano. In a 1976 interview for Sounds magazine, Wood said, "When The Move began I had a lot of children's fairy stories I'd been writing and the songs grew out of them, childlike with a lunatic side like 'Fire Brigade.' I really worked on the words." When consulted, the lyrics are surprisingly poetic. The basic idea is that there is a girl who is so hot she "could set the place on fire". Hence the need to "Run and get the fire brigade, Get the fire brigade" as you "See the buildings start to really burn". The metaphor is legitimate because it well describes the excitement only a teenager really experiences.