This is skin-crawlingly sleazy – the slippery funk bassline, the euphoric sweep of the strings, the jagged disco guitar… but most of all the words. And the way they’re delivered.
Then there’s the video – a debauched and depraed Don Johnson and a beautiful model straight off the set of a Duran Duran video – and Madelaine Hart’s sweet vocal on the chorus, contrasting with Dury’s gravelly semi-spoken baritone.
The song is Baxter Dury’s introduction to the sleazy central character of his fifth album, Prince Of Tears: the braggardly, swaggering, self-styled salamander, “The Night Chef,” “Mister Maserati”, “The Sausage Man,” “The Eye Doctor.” And, at one point, Morgan Freeman.
“The album is full of little fictional snapshots based on actual experiences,” Dury says of Prince Of Tears. “They’re biographical film soundtracks for an imaginary film about myself, which is fictional.
“The man singing and speaking it all is unreliable; he can’t see the world properly. Its massively delusional, but because of that it’s also emotionally true.”