Beatles – The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill

“If looks could kill, it would have been us instead of him”.

I got the White Album and Abbey Road in the winter of 1981 and immediately fell in love with both, mainly the White Album. The sheer volume of variety knocked me out. I had heard a lot of the songs already but this album changed me musically. When our band started to play I always wanted a variety in our sets. I wanted to play the loudest raunchiest song and then the next one be the quietest song ever. One example would be AC/DC’s You Shook Me All Night Long and then…Wonderful Tonight. I try my best for the blog to be like that also. John Denver one day and then The Stones…it’s warped…but so am I.

This song stuck in my head for months but I didn’t mind. John wrote this one while all of the Beatles were in India visiting the Maraharshi. It’s based on a true story. When they were there they did meet a hunter who shot tigers. The hunter’s name was Richard A. Cooke, and his wife Bronwyn explained that Richard, “had asked the Maharishi if it was a sin to kill a tiger. John and George were in the room. Maharishi’s response was, ‘Life destruction is Life destruction.’ Rik has not shot anything since. He became a freelance photographer for National Geographic.”

Richard Cooke

Richard Cooke in the blue shirt

This event ended the hunting career of Richard Cooke III. He decided instead to take up professional photography, working as a freelancer for The National Geographic Society for the next 40 years. His mother Nancy remained friends with fellow meditator George Harrison until his death in 2001.

Playtape

Sometime in 1969, Capitol released “Bungalow Bill” on a short lived format called “Playtape,” which was a tape cartridge made for portable players. Since there wasn’t much tape allotted to a cartridge, it took five volumes to contain most of the songs on the “White Album,” “Bungalow Bill” being featured on “The Beatles Vol. III.” These tapes are highly sought after today and are quite valuable.

It was widely known that John Lennon didn’t write fictional story songs. He was amazed that Paul wrote so many about fictional people like Rita the Meter Maid or Desmond and Molly. The only fictional departure from this song’s actual story is the throwback reference to comic books that John enjoyed during his childhood in the late ’50s and early ’60s. “Captain Marvel – The World’s Mightiest Mortal.”Captain Marvel

It’s John’s voice through the verses that I like…he could make any song sound interesting.

John’s lyrics contain “zapped him right between the eyes.” This American comic book reference to someone ‘zapping’ someone was something that John thought to be humorous, so he added it into the story as an inside joke, emphatically repeated afterward as “ZZZZAP!”  

The White Album was released in 1968 and peaked at #1 in the Billboard Album Chart, #1 in Canada, #1 in the UK, and #1 about everywhere else. The sessions were not the happiest time for the band but they came up with the most eclectic batch of songs they ever produced.

John Lennon: “At the Maharishi’s meditation camp, there was a guy who took a short break to go away and shoot a few poor tigers and then came back to commune with God. There used to be a character called Jungle Jim and I combined him with Buffalo Bill. It’s a sort of teenage social-comment song. It’s a bit of a joke.”

Paul McCartney: “This is another of his great songs and it’s one of my favorites to this day because it stands for a lot of what I stand for now. ‘Did you really have to shoot that tiger’ is its message. ‘Aren’t you a big guy? Aren’t you a brave man?’ I think John put it very well.”

John Lennon: “I had a sort of professional songwriter’s attitude to writing pop songs, I’d have a separate ‘songwriting’ John Lennon who wrote songs for the sort of meat market, and I didn’t consider them, the lyrics or anything, to have any depth at all. Then I started being me about the songs…not writing them objectively, but subjectively…I think it was Dylan that helped me realize that.”

The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill

Hey, Bungalow Bill
What did you kill
Bungalow Bill?

Hey, Bungalow Bill
What did you kill
Bungalow Bill?

He went out hunting with his elephant and gun
In case of accidents, he always took his mom
He’s the all-American bullet-headed Saxon mother’s son

All the children sing
Hey, Bungalow Bill
What did you kill
Bungalow Bill?

Hey, Bungalow Bill
What did you kill
Bungalow Bill?

Deep in the jungle where the mighty tiger lies
Bill and his elephants were taken by surprise
So Captain Marvel zapped him right between the eyes

All the children sing
Hey, Bungalow Bill
What did you kill
Bungalow Bill?

Hey, Bungalow Bill
What did you kill
Bungalow Bill?

The children asked him if to kill was not a sin
“Not when he looked so fierce”, his mommy butted in
“If looks could kill, it would have been us instead of him”.

All the children sing
Hey, Bungalow Bill
What did you kill
Bungalow Bill?

Hey, Bungalow Bill
What did you kill
Bungalow Bill?

Hey, Bungalow Bill
What did you kill
Bungalow Bill?

Hey, Bungalow Bill
What did you kill
Bungalow Bill?

Hey, Bungalow Bill
What did you kill
Bungalow Bill?

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Author: Badfinger (Max)

Power Pop fan, Baseball, Beatles, Alternative music, old movies, and tv show fan. Also anything to do with pop culture in the 60s and 70s... I'm also a songwriter, bass and guitar player. Not the slightest bit interested in politics at all.

33 thoughts on “Beatles – The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill”

  1. I’m a little embarrassed that I knew nothing about this song. I’ve sort of written it off as a novelty and not particularly as entertaining as Maxwells Silver Hammer or Yellow Submarine. I guess if I’d actually listened to it more than once I would have realized that is not the case. Very interesting, thanks for the education.

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    1. I always liked this one…one of the songs that make The White Album different….and yea…it IS catchy like those others. I like the meaning behind it and his lyrics.

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      1. I remember because I don’t have a mellotron but I have all of the sounds of the mellotron for my midi keyboard…I remembered this one.

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  4. Where was I then? I never heard of Playtape (nor the story behind the song). I always loved this song. Sometimes I pretended the line was “eleph-hunting gun” because I liked the image of that, like he normally hunted elephants but used the gun to hunt tigers that day.

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      2. Oh I hate moving…it’s such a pain. You never know how much stuff you can accumulate until you move. I’m glad you are getting settled again.

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  6. A cool little over-looked song of theirs. I didn’t even instantly know it when I saw the title but as soon as I started hearing it , of course I did. Good on the Maharishi for his lessons and on Cooke for changing his ways. A lot more risky and challenging to get a good shot at a tiger with a 35mm camera than with a high-powered rifle.

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    1. It was a fun post to write…damn I wrote it in June I believe lol. I’m glad it was an anti-hunting for sport.
      It’s an usual song…a sing along chorus with those surreal lyrics in the verse.

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  7. Yep, its a nice wee sin-along Yellow Submariney style Kiddy chorus song until you get to ‘He’s the All-American bullet-headed Saxon mothers son.’ Lennon never put so much bile and contempt into one line better IMHO.
    I guess Paul was word-playing a bit too with ‘Rocky Raccoon;’ maybe one sparking off the other writing-wise for one last time?

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    1. It was pure contempt… I agree. This one and Happiness is a Warm Gun is to me some of his best vocals.
      They were still helping each other at this point…and they were both better for it.

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      1. Yep. ‘Happiness’ shows how his mind could see a phrase or see something and he could subvert it it, see it from another- usually acidic- point of view. you just reminded me of ‘I’m So Tired,’ the ‘Curse Sir Walter Raleigh, he was such a stupid git’ line. In a few flippant words he puts out his frustration, self-loathing over smoking , insomnia, any number of every day frustrations. Genius.

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      2. That is a great example of him during this time. You could feel it by the way he was phrasing it. I always thought of I’m So Tired as the ugly sister to the brighter I’m Only Sleeping…

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  8. Great post, Max. I remember when I first heard the song, I felt it was a bit odd and paid much more attention to the next track, which I instantly loved! 🙂

    Subsequently, I learned a bit of “Bungalow Bill’s” background but didn’t know about Captain Marvel. I also had not idea about the “Playtape” format.

    Good stuff! 🙂

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  9. It’s a brilliant song. I think of this one and the piggies song as being of the same ilk. Lots of good background info on it. Was that Yoko in there as BB’s mom? I was just a teen the first time I heard this (at the house where I babysat) and being so affected by the whole album. I felt the acid in this song.

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    1. Yes it was Yoko…AND…you may have to help me but I thought Chris O’Dell was singing on this a little in the background. If my memory is correct this was the first time she got into the studio…or one of the first.
      That is cool that you remember when you first heard it.

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      1. I will have to find the O’Dell book (read books get swallowed up fast in my hoarders paradise) and will see what song it was she first sat in and sang on. Will let you know.

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  10. Wow. Never know the thing as Playtape existed Max. It still boggles my mind that The Beatles were always thinking ahead and never got into a rut creatively. I also like your discovery point of the White Album and I’m glad your warped! lol

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