100 Greatest Songs of the 90’s #22 Primal Scream – Loaded

Released : 1990

For it’s punters – half a million plus sweaty, goggle eyed, lockjawed teenagers in disused buildings up and down the country – acid house brought plenty of life changing moments. But despite the hysterical reaction of the British media, it was never really the movement your mother warned you about, more a walk on a wilder side with peripheral characters who were usually more Howard Marks than Reggie Kray.

Then again, if there had been one band that you thought the disco biscuit phenomenon might kill off (Metaphorically), it would’ve been Primal Scream. Having swapped their C-86 jangle for leather kecks and the rockisms of a Muscle Shoals era Mick and Keef, the Scream were widely regarded as dinosaurs not even smart enough to know they were extinct yet; then along came a man called Andrew Weatherall.

As divine intervention would have it the band’s press officer Jeff Barrett had slung him a copy of their not exactly flying out eponymous second album. The Boy’s Own publisher and DJ loved it’s unfashionable rootsiness, particularly the ballad I’m Losing More Than I’ll Ever Have – and at Barrett’s request he set about remixing it.

What happened next changed both Primal Scream’s future and his own. Given free reign by Gillespie, Weatherall recast the song as Loaded, complete with amongst many outlandish flourishes the now legendary Peter Fonda sample, snatched phrases from Robert Johnson’s Terraplane Blues, a slide guitar and a drum loop pilfered from Edie Brickell. A song reborn, it sounded like heaven but if everyone was high, Alice In Wonderland’s rabbit hole filled with the ghosts of rock n’ roll. There was nothing to be afraid of here, unless your mum didn’t want you to be free, or to have a good time.