The Music of November 22: Jesus, Buddah or JFK?

About XTC's 1992 modern rock hit, "The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead"

[This is the first in an occasional series that considers songs influenced by the assassination of JFK.]

The leadoff song on the British band XTC’s 1992 “Nonsuch” album is called “The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead,” a mid-tempo rocker whose title, and harmonica, are subtle nods to Bob Dylan (who has many “ballads” in his songbook.)

The tune’s lyrics do not immediately strike one as being overtly about the assassination of John F. Kennedy. A listener could interpret the words to be allusions to him or to any number of martyrs.

When he spoke, it would raise the roof

Peter Pumpkinhead told the truth

But he made too many enemies

Of the people who would keep us on our knees

Hooray for Peter Pumpkin

Who'll pray for Peter Pumpkinhead?

Peter Pumpkinhead was too good

Had him nailed to a chunk of wood

He died grinning on live TV

Hanging there he looked a lot like you

And an awful lot like me!

‘Three Nails — Three Bullets’

However, the video that accompanied the song’s release left no question that its subject — at least for the purpose of the 5:07-minute video — was JFK’s assassination and circumstances surrounding it.

We see a reenactment of JFK’s motorcade through Dallas with look-alike actors playing the roles of the presidential couple. We see Partridge himself wielding a hand-held camera a la Abraham Zapruder. There are allusions to the Bay of Pigs, the site of the failed 1961 CIA raid on Cuba that engendered much agency enmity toward JFK. There is also a nod to the subsequent assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. Marilyn Monroe, a rumored JFK paramour, features prominently.

Perhaps most poignantly, there are images of three bullets called “three nails” (and visa versa, three nails called “three bullets”) — a fairly unambiguous allusion to the three bullets allegedly fired at Kennedy in Dealey Plaza and the idea that he, like Jesus Christ, was publicly crucified. If you haven’t got the metaphor yet, there are maps of Dallas and Jerusalem.

When asked about the images in the video, Partridge said:

“.. [W]ell, the song is basically about this fellow who gets martyred for what he believes in and seeing that it was going to be a single in America, I thought I'd pick on two big American patron saints, St. John, and … JC. I thought people would find the images memorable.”

Interestingly, there were different versions of the video — the one above and another edited to be more suitable for American audiences.

The concern wasn’t the obvious JFK angle, but rather the religious aspects. XTC had gotten into hot water six years earlier with its 1986 release “Skylarking,” which begat a B-side single (also penned by Partridge) entitled “Dear God” that essentially declared the songwriter’s atheism.

Sacrificed Jack-O-Lantern

Partridge has discussed the inspiration for the song in a variety of ways through the years. However, one aspect has remained unchanged: It began as a paean to an actual pumpkin.

Andy Partridge (Source: Wikimedia Commons, Jean-Luc Ourlin)

After Halloween one year, Partridge hoisted his carved pumpkin upon a stake in his backyard, where he passed it daily.

“Actually, the name's from a jack-o-lantern I carved. After Halloween, I stuck it on a fence post in my garden and every day I'd go past it on my way to my composing shed. And every day it would decay a bit more. I felt so sorry for it, I thought I'd make it a hero in a song.”

(In one interview there’s mention of the pumpkin’s fate being similar to that of Oliver Cromwell, the man who briefly led England in the wake of the English Civil War that temporarily ended the monarchy. When the monarchy was restored shortly after Cromwell’s death, his body was disinterred and his head put on a stake outside Westminster as a warning to anti-royalists.)

For Partridge, Peter Pumpkinhead was essentially a martyr for truth: “He's every hero, every politician, every religious leader who's far too good to be true and by telling the truth becomes a martyr.

Is Peter Pumpkinhead Jesus or JFK or Buddha?”

Partridge said he began thinking:

“‘Hmmm, what would happen if there was somebody on Earth who was kind of perfect?’ I just started to extrapolate on that idea. … And the more I thought about it, the more I thought, ‘god, they'd make so many enemies!’ You know, if they really encouraged humanity and humaneness and love and sharing and giving, they would really piss off so many people in power, that those people in power would do everything they could to stop them, including killing them!’ … It's just a little fable saying, there's no way you can get away with being perfect. … There is the Jesus thing in there — you know, his teachings obviously upset the status quo of the Jews and Roman occupiers at the time, and they colluded to have him bumped off. ‘We'd better shut him up.’”

In yet another interview Partridge said:

“People have said. ‘Ooh, it's Jesus, isn't it?’, ‘Ooh, it's Kennedy, isn't it, this song?’, ‘This is a song about Lennon, isn't it Andy?’… It's about all those people, and none of them. He's a kind of a general, all-purpose, hero figure that is too good for his own good. And, as with all good hero figures, the government have him bumped off. Which is very sinister, and kind of run-of-the-mill for people who get too big.”

“The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead,” which, like the rest of “Nonsuch,” was produced by veteran British knob-twiddler Gus Dudgeon (Elton John, David Bowie), reached No. 1 on the U.S. Modern Rock Tracks Billboard chart on May 30, 1992, holding the top spot for two weeks.