Go, Go, Go, Little Queenie

Ooooooh, interesting article on the the history of Queen Elizabeth in rock songs:

The Queen ascended to the throne in 1952, the same year the UK singles chart was launched. The first song about the Queen was Young Tiger’s extremely literal 1953 calypso I Was There (At the Coronation). She looked “really divine”, apparently. But prior to the Sex Pistols, the monarch’s presence in pop was largely confined to fanciful cameos. The bitterly mediocre narrator of the Kinks’ David Watts grumbles that he has never met the Queen. The fireman in the Beatles’ Penny Lane keeps her portrait in his pocket, but then so does anyone who carries cash – as Paul Weller sings in the Jam’s Down in the Tube Station at Midnight: “I fumble for change, and pull out the Queen.”