Tuesday, March 8, 2011: TWOfer Tuesday - The "Gunter Glieben Glauchen Globen" Edition

I had a serious love/hate relationship with the band The Offspring for a lot of years.

See, whenever I heard a song start up with the words "Gunter glieben glauchen globen" I automatically assumed it was Def Leppard's Rock Of Ages.

I'm of a certain age, so that song means a lot to me, and had a huge impact on me. In fact, their whole Pyromania album was one of my favourite records growing up.

But, after 1994, all those hollowed lyrics did was trip me up. You see, after The Offspring got their filthy little mits on them, the only time I ever heard those words was to introduce "Pretty Fly (For A White Guy)"

Which, I admit, is an amazing record, don't get me wrong. Trust me, our world is in dire, desperate needs of the inspired mockery and sarcasm like The Offspring dishes out on this track. One can only wonder what their take on today's Lady Gaga's and Justin Bieber's would be.

But, at the end of the day, that into, those four words, which mean absolutely nothing by the way*, belongs only to one song. I love you Offspring, but I hate that you still trip me up.





*From this VH1 interview with Def Leppard frontman Joe Elliott:

VH1: What is "Gunter glieben glauchen globen"?

Elliott: That's the intro to "Rock Of Ages." It's Mutt Lange [the producer of Pyromania]. There were no guitars in the verses, just drums. So instead of counting off one, two, three, four, he'd say these ridiculous things to make everybody laugh. One of them was "chapatti puppadum something something," all about Indian food. The other one was "Gunter glieben glauchen globen." Some German guy sent a letter to our Artist Pages and said that it's German for "running through the forest silently." I'm assured it isn't. This guy must have just escaped from the happy house or something.