Lyrics
The Stooges (Metallic K.O.)
I got my cock in my pocket, and I'm breezing down the old highway
I got my cock in my pocket, and I'm breezing down the old highway
Gonna whip it on you honey, taste your blood today
[ ]
I got my cock in my pocket and it's shoving up through my pants 1
I got my cock in my pocket and it's shoving up through my pants
Well I just wanna fuck, don't want no romance
Said I just wanna fuck, don't want no romance
Oh no
I got my cock in my pocket, my baby likes it
I got my cock in my pocket, well my baby likes it
I got my cock in my pocket, my baby likes it
I got my cock in my pocket, I'm breezin' down the old highway
I got my cock in my pocket, and I'm breezing down the old highway
Gonna whip it on you honey, taste your blood today
[ ]
Oh no
I got my cock in my pocket, my baby likes it
I got my cock in my pocket, well my baby likes it
Feel it
Feel it
The Fall
< We can put a man on the moon, but transcribing The Fall's cover of "Cock in My Pocket" is a task beyond human capabilities >
Commentary
< Post in progress >
Talk soon turns to a track from the album called “Stout Man” because, well, it’s called “Stout Man” and it sounds like James Williamson-era Stooges as Mark barks about a fat man pushing around a pram.
“That came about because the group are always going on about The Stooges and I’m a lot older than them, so I’m going like you don’t like the fucking Stooges. They think the Stooges is A/E/A/E and I said, you fucking do “Cock in my Pocket” [from the Stooges 1976 live album Metallic KO]. You know, they’re saying about the first Stooges album and I’m like don’t you fucking tell me about that, I bought it when I was 16. So, I said to them “alright then, cunt, learn “Cock in my Pocket”. Try and find that because I know it’s not on any of their LPs but of course they did because it’s on fucking ebay or something or they fucking shazammed it. So I said, learn it. It was a challenge.”
The group took up the challenge, almost too much for Mark’s liking, “They’d been tricking me, they’d been sneaking back into the studio to keep tightening it up. I couldn’t catch them out but in a car on the way down to London I was looking behind the seat and there was this CD, covered in dirt, with the original rough mix of it. I made them use that; they’d been doing about eight or nine different versions of it, it was pathetic. They must have worked more on that song more than any other on the whole album.”
“That’s interesting” I offer.
“No, it’s not fucking interesting, it’s a waste of my fucking time. The fucking smart arses. They should have been working on something else and they were just doing it over and over and over again. So, this little CD was like a little gift from heaven.”
Interview with Daniel Dylan Wray, vice.com (originally published by Noisey).
A Stooges cover version, played live on half a dozen known occasions from 2014 – 2015 (it wasn’t played at every gig during this period). It was listed as “Cock” on setlists at the following gigs:
- 10 August 2014 – Beacons Festival, Skipton (audience recording exists)
- 30 August 2014 – Fibbers, York (no known recording)
- 25 September 2014 – Concorde 2, Brighton (audience recording exists)
- 27 November 2014 – The Garage, London (audience recording exists)
- 28 November 2014 – Brudenell Social Club, Leeds (audience recording exists)
“Cock” evolved into “Stout Man“, which was released on The Fall’s 2015 album Sub-Lingual Tablet, but the live cover has not been officially released to date.
The Track Record says the final performance of “Cock in My Pocket” was at the Grauzone Festival, Amsterdam, on 30 January 2015. However, the setlist for that performance lists “Stout Man” not “Cock”. So it was technically the first performance of “Stout Man” rather than the last performance of “Cock”. To be fair, however, none of the putative performances of “Cock” I have heard seem to possess lyrics recognisable from the original: MES seems to be singing iterations of what became “Stout Man” over “Cock in My Pocket” on each occasion.
The Stooges’ original never received an official studio release either. A live version appears on side two of the semi-bootleg Metallic K.O. (Sky Dog, 1976), and a studio rehearsal was included on the Rubber Legs compilation (Fan Club, 1987).
Footnotes
- A lot of lyrics sites have this as “… I’m shovin’ it through your pants”, but it doesn’t sound like that at all, at least on Metallic K.O. ↩︎
Sources / Links
- The Annotated Fall: “Stout Man” [Archived]
- Pringle, Steve (2022). You Must Get Them All: The Fall on Record. [paperback edition]. Pontefract: Route Publishing Ltd. [Online store]
- Smith, Mark E. with Austin Collings (2009). Renegade: The Lives and Tales of Mark E. Smith. London: Penguin. (Originally published by Viking, 2008). [Available online in the Internet Archive]
- The Track Record: “Cock in My Pocket”
- The Track Record: “Stout Man”
- Wray, Daniel Dylan (2015). “‘I Don’t Like Northern People, I Don’t Like Mancunians’ – Mark E. Smith’s Guide to Britain”. vice.com, 1 June. [Text available online]. Originally published by Noisey [Archived].