Originally released as a single on Columbia in 1966, I’m Gonna Destroy That Boy is both achingly of its time and slightly pioneering and far-sighted. The What Four were marketed as an all girl garage band, but the sound of this record doesn’t suggest The Stooges or even anything that the all-girl groups at CBGB might have worked into their sets as a dim memory. There’s an attempt to capture the galloping pace of a British Invasion-style hit (or someone’s idea of it, but it doesn’t quite gel). The guitar solo sounds like an off-cut from a long forgotten surf record. All told it sounds less garage and more Go-Go, you can picture The What Four performing this on a TV show like Shindig! or Hullabaloo backed by an orchestra and dancing girls.
What makes it stand out are the relatively lo-fi production on the vocals - it sounds like all four women in the band are singing, but they’re mixed down with the result that the performance sounds scuzzy enough to qualify as garage rock rather than pop - and the directness of the lyrics which make no bones about the fact that the girls are going out with their looks and their sex appeal set to kill the object of their desire. They feel hot and they are going to make sure that the boy knows it and is powerless to resist it. I’m guessing that for all the talk of keeping ammunition under cover, the bullets are going to be straining to escape the chamber; they’ll have someone’s eye out with those nipples....
There’s a bawdiness to the lyrics which would have made this tune a good fit for someone like Mae West. Indeed, it’s a bit of a missed opportunity that when West recorded a rock ‘n’ roll album in 1966, at the age of 73, this song wasn’t put to her as one for potential inclusion. However, its far-sightedness comes in the fact that its sexually charged sentiments and self image of “looking good, feeling hot, catching my prey” seems to suggest that the roots of female-centred hip-hop should acknowledge a small debt to this track.
I’m Gonna Destroy That Boy owed its place on Peel’s playlist to its inclusion on the tracklisting for Girls in the Garage Volume 5, Romulan Records, latest release chronicling the seemingly inexhaustible supply of girl pop groups in 1960s America.
Video courtesy of funknroll.
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