10/5/07: Teenage Filmstars “I Love To Clean My Polaris Missile” (1979)
Hey, it’s
two Fridays in a row where we’re writing about whimsical post-punk bands out of late-70s England. Is it an exciting new trend here, or just the old trend of coming home at midnight and realizing we didn’t bother to write an entry yet, and desperately rummaging for the nearest thing on our cluttered desk? Yeah, there’s a mystery…
Anyway, “I Love To Clean My Polaris Missile” is by Teenage Filmstars—or, more accurately, whatever band that Teenage Filmstars were during the few months that they were broken up and had yet to reform as The Times. (That’s a picture of The Times above.) This catchy tune was recorded during that upheaval, and didn’t see a release until a 1992 compilation. The song remained relevant, though, since you could find Polaris missiles on UK submarines right up to the mid-90s.
“I Love To Clean My Polaris Missile” is a simple celebration of one man’s love for his beautiful Cold War weaponry. Our friends at the Lockheed Corporation—with support from Edward Teller—had these nuclear-armed ballistic beauties flying as early as 1960. Not so coincidentally, that same year kicked off the favorite decade of Mod-obsessed songwriter Ed Ball, who’d be the constant force between Teenage Filmstars and The Times. If there’s some Leftist slant to Ball’s love song, it’s lost in translation. Besides, Ball was likely a big fan of
The Man From U.N.C.L.E., and Napoleon Solo and a Polaris missile both certainly had everyone’s best interests at heart.
This upbeat tune mainly goes on about the importance of keeping a Polaris missile polished enough so that its owner can see his own reflection. It’s kind of like how a Marine looks at his rifle, and doesn’t the Navy deserve its own version? That reflective motif pays off in the final verse, too:
I love to clean my Polaris missile
So if under attack
I may counter-attack
And show the world
They can see my own reflection
You know what else would cast a good reflection? About 630,000 miles of desert turned into a glass parking lot. Polaris missiles are a thing of the past, but a song like Ball’s reminds us that the need for a Polaris missile remains as strong as ever. Too bad that the tune fell between the cracks, since it could’ve been Ball’s big chance for an American hit single. Remember how everyone was united in Ronald Reagan’s vision of a strong defense back in the ’80s? Well, at least that’s how the Democrats tell the story now.
Make it your own: “I Love To Clean My Polaris Missile”—which, incidentally, is a lot of fun to type—can
be found on the new
O Level: 1977-1980: A Day In The Life of Gilbert & George. It’s an updating of that 1992 compilation of Ball’s two early bands, with
O Level preceding Teenage Filmstars. Ball never recorded a song about
The Man From U.N.C.L.E., but the
A Day In The Life… collection also includes an early take on “I Helped Patrick McGoohan Escape,” which would later give The Times
their own memorable tribute to ’60s television.
