Lyrics

Well my baby drove off in a brand new Cadillac
Ooh, my baby drove off in a brand new Cadillac
Well she looked at me, daddy, I ain't never comin' back

I said baby, baby, baby, won't you listen to me
Come on sugar, come on hear my plea
Well she looked at my Ford, we'll never agree
Cadillac car! Oh yeah!

Well the Caddy's rollin' and going 'bout ninety-five 
Well the Caddy's rollin' and going 'bout ninety-five
Well me and my Ford, we're right by here side

I said baby, baby, baby, won't you listen to me
Come on baby, come on hear my plea
Turn that big car around, come on back to me
Hangin' on Scotty, here we go!

Well my baby took off in a brand new Cadillac
Ooh, my baby took off in a brand new Cadillac
Well she looked at me, daddy, I ain't never comin' back

I ain't never comin' back
I ain't never comin' back
I ain't never comin' back

Well my baby drove off in a brand new Cadillac
My baby drove off in a brand new Cadillac
Said "baby, I ain't never comin' back"

I said, "baby, baby, baby, won't you listen to me"
"Come on sugar, come on hear my plea"
"Turn that big car around, come on back to me"

Well the Caddy's rollin' and going 'bout ninety-five
Well the Caddy's rollin' and going 'bout ninety-five
[  ]

I said, "baby, baby, baby, won't you listen to me"
"Come on baby, come on hear my plea"
"Turn that big car around, come on back to me"

My baby took off in a brand new Cadillac
Well, my baby took off in a brand new Cadillac
Well she looked at me, "I ain't never comin' back"

She ain't never comin' back
She ain't never comin' back
[  ]

Commentary

< Post in progress >

“Brand New Cadillac” was written by Vince Taylor (the stage name of Brian Holden) and originally released by Vince Taylor and His Playboys as the B-side to “Pledgin’ My Love” in April 1959 (it wasn’t a UK hit). It’s a relatively early example of an ‘original’ British rock and roll song, albeit contemporary photos and footage seem to show that Taylor’s act and leather-clad image was copied pretty much wholesale from Gene Vincent.

Although it was an original composition, “Brand New Cadillac” is clearly a pastiche of romanticised American rock and roll culture. The very use of the Cadillac brand name is symptomatic of that. Cadillac were one of the earliest American car-makers, founded in 1902 and bought by General Motors in 1909. A luxury brand (equivalent to Rolls Royce), not made in Britain, there would have been few Cadillacs in the country in 1959, and those few would have been reserved to those wealthy enough to buy them on import (Lendrum & Hartman, who had a showroom in London’s posh Mayfair district from 1927, were the approved importers).

“Brand New Cadillac” has been covered many times, most famously by The Clash for their album London Calling (1979). As far as I can tell The Clash don’t seem to have played it live before 1979.

The song is listed on Mark E. Smith’s draft setlist for the nascent Fall, then known as The Outsiders, dated to circa December 1976, and also appears in the “Recorded/presentable – covers” category on the “The Outsiders Group – output + kraft” document dated 25 January 1977.

No studio version of The Fall’s cover is known to exist.

The earliest documented live performance of “Brand New Cadillac” by The Fall was at The Squat, Manchester, on 26 May 1978 (predating The Clash, therefore). It’s possible that it was played prior to that, given the holes in the documentary record, but on the other hand our knowledge of The Fall’s early gigs has been dramatically expanded by Omega Auctions’ sales of setlist records from Mark E. Smith’s personal files, covering several gigs during the 1977 – 1978 period, and there remains no evidence of it having been played before that Squat date. Its last known outing (acknowledging again the incompleteness of our records) was at Eric’s, Liverpool, on 28 July 1978. In those few months it is known to have been played six times, and recorded twice.

Tommy Mackay, having only heard the Band on the Wall version when he wrote his book, found it a “fairly unremarkable cover with lo-fi tinny sound”, but professed to find the “repeated shouted ending of ‘Cada!… Lac!” “entertaining” (2018, p.21).

Footnotes

1. Presumably 95 kph, rather than mph. ↩︎

Sources / Links

• Mackay, Tommy (2018). 40 Odd Years of The Fall. Place of publication unknown: Greg Moodie.
• Pringle, Steve (2022). You Must Get Them All: The Fall on Record. [paperback edition]. Pontefract: Route Publishing Ltd. [Online store]
• The Track Record: “Brand New Cadillac”
• Wikipedia: “Brand New Cadillac”