Eagle Rock (song)
"Eagle Rock" is a classic Australian song, released by Daddy Cool in May 1971 on the Sparmac Record Label. It went on to become the best selling Australian single of the year, achieving gold status in eleven weeks, and remaining at #1 on the national charts for a (then) record ten weeks. "Eagle Rock" also spent 17 weeks at the #1 spot on the Melbourne Top 40 Singles Chart. The song was re-released by Wizard Records in 1982, and reached #17 on the Australian singles charts.
Guitarist, vocalist and the song's writer Ross Wilson was living and performing in London when he wrote the song. He explained his inspiration for the song:
It came from a Sunday Times liftout magazine A-Z on music. In the before blues section there was an evocative photo of rural black Americans dancing in a dirt poor juke joint - the caption was along the lines of "some negroes 'cut the pigeon wing' and 'do the eagle rock'". —Ross Wilson, 2001"Eagle Rock" was a popular 1920s black dance performed with the arms outstretched and the body rocking from side to side, 'Doing the eagle rock' is also a metaphor for sexual intercourse.
The accompanying promotional video, directed by Chris Löfvén, was "put together quickly for $300 and shows the band in some old Melbourne haunts including the Dolphin Café in Clarendon St., South Melbourne, St. Kilda's Aussie Burger Bar opposite Luna Park and live shots from the 1971 Myponga Festival held in South Australia."
In May 2001, Australasian Performing Rights Association (APRA) celebrated its 75th anniversary by naming the Best Australian Songs of all time, as decided by a 100 strong industry panel, "Eagle Rock" was declared second behind the Easybeats' "Friday On My Mind".
In 2010 'Eagle Rock' was added to the National Film and Sound Archive's Sounds of Australia Registry.
Read more about Eagle Rock (song): Song in Popular Culture, Parodies
Famous quotes containing the words eagle and/or rock:
“O thou undaunted daughter of desires!
By all thy dower of lights and fires;
By all the eagle in thee, all the dove;
By all thy lives and deaths of love;
By thy large draughts of intellectual day,
And by thy thirsts of love more large then they;
By all thy brim-fill’d Bowls of fierce desire,
By thy last Morning’s draught of liquid fire;
By the full kingdom of that final kiss
That seiz’d thy parting Soul, and seal’d thee his;”
—Richard Crashaw (1613?–1649)
“Safe upon the solid rock the ugly houses stand:
Come and see my shining palaces built upon the sand.”
—Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950)