there was a dated-but-relevant parody of The Night Chicago Died circa 1975 in Philadelphia called The Night the Bruins Died celebrating the Flyers’ first Stanley Cup win. Thought I could find the lyrics via Google but it is too obscure for even the Internet!
Hey, hey now. What’s with all the hate? Next you’ll be dissin’ One Tin Soldier
Must…control…fist…of…death…
I dunno. I think you’re giving Paper Lace way too much credit. Was “The Night Chicago Died” also allegorical? Maybe they just wrote a couple of goofy songs about American history.
If BDBAH was allegorical, what point was Paper Lace trying to make? That soldiers in Vietnam should keep their heads down? Not much of a point to be made there.
Now if you want to talk about “The Night they Drove Old Dixie Down” as a Civil War allegory for Vietnam, I think you’d have a much better point.
I know that just because I started this thread, it doesn’t make it “my” thread, but I really have to say that “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” really doesn’t suck enough monkey ass to have a place here. I’m sorry.
spoke- writes:
> I dunno. I think you’re giving Paper Lace way too much credit. Was “The Night
> Chicago Died” also allegorical? Maybe they just wrote a couple of goofy songs
> about American history.
>
> If BDBAH was allegorical, what point was Paper Lace trying to make? That
> soldiers in Vietnam should keep their heads down? Not much of a point to be
> made there.
I’m not saying that it’s much of an allegory, but it’s there. (Actually, “allegory” is misusing a literary term, and I only used that word because you did. An allegory is, strictly speaking, the aspect of a work of art in which there is a detailed, specific comparison between the work and a situation (often a religious one) in which you can match up numerous elements in the comparison. What we’re talking about here is something looser. Call it a metaphor, or a symbol, or just an underlying meaning.) It’s saying that the ordinary soldier always gets screwed in wartime. He should do what he can to keep himself safe and do no more than necessary to avoid getting charged with disobeying orders. When you think of it, this is an extraordinarily strong anti-war statement, even by the heavy anti-war sentiment of the times. The song picks a war and a side (the Union in the Civil War) that nearly everybody thought was in the right at the time, since they were fighting to end slavery. The song is saying that even in that situation it’s stupid for a soldier to exhibit more bravery than necessary.
I don’t know what “The Night Chicago Died” is a metaphor for. Heck, I don’t even know what the literal meaning is. It describes some completely fictional event in Chicago gang/police battles, since there was no such climactic battle (and certainly none in which a hundred policemen died).
Try this:
“On the East Side of Chicago” - Grant Park is about as east as one can get and stay dry.
“In the heat of a summer night” - August, 1968
“When a man named Al Capone/Tried to make that town his own/And he called his gang to war/Against the forces of the law” - Mayor Daley took a hard line against war protesters in Grant Park.
"Brother, what a night it really was/Brother, what a fight it really was…And the sound of the battle rang/Through the streets of the old East Side/’ - Chicago police using nightsticks to beat the protesters in Grant Park.
Til the last of the hoodlum gang/Had surrendered up or died" - subdued protesters being arrested.
“There was shouting in the street/And the sound of running feet” - other protesters getting the hell away from the pigs.
“And I asked someone who said/'Bout a hundred cops are dead” - plenty of protesters were arrested, including the eight that had allegedly incited the riot.
Wow.
That’s the most detailed analysis I’ve ever seen for a cheesy 70’s song (of which I am a big fan).
Care to take on “Run, Joey, Run”? 
How about “Angie Baby”? What really happened to the neighbor boy?
Near as I can figure, she trapped him in her radio.
I don’t remember ever hearing “Run, Joey, Run”. I probably did when I was a kid because my sisters always listened to the local Top-40 station.
Story songs have a tendancy to quickly capture the public’s imagination, then just as quickly annoy people after going into heavy rotation so they’ll never want to hear it again.
“Run, Joey, Run” was by David Geddes. It would have fit right in with the teenage death songs of the 50s.
He also recorded the drivel that was “The Last Game of the Season (a blind man in the bleachers)”.
“run joey, run” has an interesting counter point with “papa don’t preach”.
Lute Skywalker writes:
> “When a man named Al Capone/Tried to make that town his own/And he called
> his gang to war/Against the forces of the law” - Mayor Daley took a hard line
> against war protesters in Grant Park.
>
> “Brother, what a night it really was/Brother, what a fight it really was…And the
> sound of the battle rang/Through the streets of the old East Side/’ - Chicago
> police using nightsticks to beat the protesters in Grant Park.
>
> Til the last of the hoodlum gang/Had surrendered up or died” - subdued
> protesters being arrested.
>
> “There was shouting in the street/And the sound of running feet” - other
> protesters getting the hell away from the pigs.
>
> “And I asked someone who said/'Bout a hundred cops are dead” - plenty of
> protesters were arrested, including the eight that had allegedly incited the riot.
I’m not saying that it’s impossible that this interpretation is what the writer of the song intended, but that’s certainly a strained analogy. This analogy requires you to switch back and forth between protesters = Capone’s gang/Daley’s police = 1920’s Chicago police and protesters = 1920’s police/Daley’s police = Capone’s gang. And that’s only if you can accept beatings = deaths anyway.
But what I asked was what was the literal meaning of the song. Even if we accept that figuratively it refers to the 1968 battles between police and protesters, what is the song talking about on the literal level? There was never any such climactic battle between Capone’s gang and the Chicago police. Indeed, the song seems to be blatantly ignorant of what real gang warfare is about. In gang warfare, gangs murder members of other gangs, not policemen. Policemen rarely get shot at by gang members. Even ordinary non-police, non-gang members don’t get shot by gang members that often, and then it’s mostly by accident. Gang members know that if they shoot a policeman, they’re dead men. The police will eliminate the gang by whatever it takes. The only criminals who shoot police are ones who aren’t in a gang or some idiots who are in a gang who will get turned over to the police by the gang itself because the gang doesn’t want to be thought of as police-killers.
In order to rid the song of that bad rhyme at the end, I suggest an alternate:
“…and he kissed my mama’s face,
Goodnight, We’re Paper Lace.”
I used the term “allegory” because anyrose did. Anyway, stop picking at nits. 
I think we are using the word “allegory” in its commonly-understood sense and not in its most strict technical sense. According to Merriam-Webster, allegory is defined as follows:
…which certainly seems to jibe with what we’re talking about.
We’ll just have to agree to disagree about whether BDBAH is an allegory or metaphor for anything.
I will make a couple more points: the song came out in '74, when US withdrawal from Vietnam was pending. A little late in the game for a protest song, I think. And the song was from a British band. Not too many British bands dabbled in Vietnam protest songs as I recall.
Believe me, I couldn’t agree more.
Okay, I’m gagging as I do this, but I’ll type you a few lines and maybe it’ll ring a bell.
Daddy, please don’t!
It wasn’t his fault.
He means so much to me.
Daddy, please don’t!
We’re gonna get ma!rried,
Just you wait and see!
And, just to be a heartless bitch, I’m gonna spoil the surprise ending!
The girl steps between Joey and Daddy who has a gun and gets shot and dies while singing the above refrain in an increasingly weak voice.
Arrrg, Just when you think you are out, they drag you back in!
I work with people who live in Hegewish (sp?) and consider it to be on the east side of Chicago.
Me, I’m from the suburbs.
Same thing as most other pop songs. A figment of the songwriter’s imagination.