Is Anyone Else Hearing This?

One man’s desperate quest to stand out from the crowd

Did you know about the hidden link between Peter Sellers’ The Party” and the ‘80s hit “I Wanna Be A Cowboy?”

I admit that I like to think I’m special – a unique individual entirely distinct from other people with all my own thoughts, perspectives and opinions. You know, just like everyone else does.

But *thinking* you’re unique is one thing – getting confirmation is another entirely. That’s why it’s so gratifying on those rare occasions when the universe delivers proof of one’s singularity.

I know because it happened to me just a few years ago while I was listening to an ‘80s radio station and the 1985 hit “I Wanna Be A Cowboy” from the band Boys Don’t Cry came on. At the 2:17 mark I stopped and cocked my head like that dog in the old Victrola ads, hearing something I’d never noticed in the dozens of times I’d previously listened to the song. Specifically, I heard someone in the background with an odd accent say “White man speaking with forked tongue, isn’t it?”

This probably doesn’t strike you as particularly noteworthy, especially in a cowboy-themed song. I, however, instantly recognized the line from the 1968 film, “The Party,” starring Peter Sellers as a genial but struggling actor from India who is mistakenly invited to a swank Hollywood party.

Sellers delivers the line during a scene when his character meets his hero, larger-than-life Western film star “Wyoming” Bill Kelso, played by Denny Miller. You can watch the scene here.

Upon learning that Sellers’s character is an “Indian,” Wyoming Bill pretends to draw a gun and says, “Gotcha covered, injun!” Sellers squeals with delight and responds in his Indian accent with a series of other clichéd cowboy movie lines, one of which is “White man speak with forked tongue.” The joke, of course, stemming from the cowboy actor’s confusion over what “kind” of Indian Peter Sellers is.

I should note that since Sellers portrays the character in what we now term “brownface,” the film would probably be listed by Netflix under the category of “Old Movies That Are Funny But Also Pretty Racist.”

Let’s Go Searchin’ Now

To find out whether I was right about this connection between “I Wanna Be A Cowboy” and “The Party,” I turned to the source for answers to all of life’s important questions these days: social media. I tracked down Boys Don’t Cry lead singer Nick Richards on Twitter and DM’d him with this question:

“I was wondering, how often do fans recognize the ‘White man speak with forked tongue’ sample in I Wanna Be a Cowboy as coming from the Peter Sellers film ‘The Party?’”

Shockingly enough, he promptly responded:

“It wasn’t a sample. It was our drummer Jeff Seopardie who said the line on the recording. But yes, it was a Peter Sellers line. I think you’re the first ever person to spot that.”

And there it was! Validation! I was the “first ever” person to identify an obscure movie line referenced in a widely forgotten song nearly 35 years after its release!

Is this achievement equal to, say, discovering the source of the Nile, inventing the light bulb or being the first man to walk on the moon? Yes, yes, it is. Oh, OK, fine. No it’s not. But I can still legitimately claim to be the Neil Armstrong of discovering obscure Peter Sellers movie references in 80s-era one-hit wonders. It has to be true – it’s on my LinkedIn profile!

Paul Is Dead To Rights

As long as we’re on the subject, I actually have *another* example from the world of popular music that speaks to my unique capacity for finding these sort of “Easter eggs.”

This one occurred while I was enjoying this old Beatles TV performance of “I Want to Hold Your Hand” on YouTube from November 1963.

Watching closely, I noticed that at the :41 mark Paul McCartney briefly flubs the lyrics. During the song’s second verse, he begins to sing, “You’ll let me be your man” rather than the correct lyric, “You’ll let me hold your hand.” If you watch with the audio muted, Paul appears to be singing “You’ll let me be your hand.” Which, to be honest, sounds a lot more like a lyric you’d hear in a Beatles song from their later, psychedelic-infused era.

The video has more than 15 million views and almost 3,000 comments, most of which revolve around how great the Beatles were and how much better music was back then compared to the crap we hear today. Perhaps my favorite comment came from @jimmy5634, who said, “They were so raw, so real, what you see and hear is authentic creativity in its purest form.” This, despite the fact that in the clip, the Fab Four were very clearly lip-synching.

Yet, as far I could tell, no one in the comments section noticed this little error. Sadly, I couldn’t go directly to the source since Nick Richards informed me he didn’t have Sir Paul’s contact information (adding, “and please stop messaging me”). So instead I searched the Internet to determine if this was a topic of discussion among Beatles fans. Virtually every aspect of the Fab Four’s lives and careers has been examined more closely than the Zapruder film, and yet I could find no mention of this amusing piece of Beatles arcana.

Even though I can’t contact Paul McCartney directly, I have imagined running into him, in line at the DMV for example, and asking if he remembers this flub – and, most importantly, whether anyone else has ever noticed it.

It’s probably just as well that there’s very little chance of this happening. Because even a music legend doesn’t want some stranger reminding him about a screw-up he made on TV some 60+ years earlier, especially if he’s been relieved that no one appeared to notice in all this time. Under the circumstances even the famously “nicest Beatle” would probably try to punch me in the nose.

Speaking of which, perhaps in a future column, I’ll share how I am also likely the only person on earth who has been yelled at on separate occasions by Chevy Chase, Richard Dreyfuss and Bernie Sanders.

By the way, I wasn’t sure whether I should write about this topic, so I asked my wife if she thought it would come across as “too braggy.” She responded with a blank stare. “You think this sounds like bragging?” she asked. “Bragging about what, exactly?”