Tiger Feet

In the annals of glam rock, a genre not exactly renowned for its lyrical subtlety, "Tiger Feet" by Mud stands out as a particularly perplexing example. Released in 1974, the sugary confection of a song is armed with an ear-catching melody and a beat guaranteed to get your head bobbing like a malfunctioning bobblehead. But then there are the lyrics. Instead of the usual glam tropes of glitter, platforms, and questionable gender roles, the song fixates on a woman's, well, "tiger feet." Now, metaphors can be a tricky business, and while one might attempt to decipher this as a veiled comment on the lady's fierce dancing style or perhaps a taste for particularly ferocious footwear, the truth is altogether more prosaic, bordering on the absurd. The songwriting duo behind the song, Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman, were serial hitmakers in the 1970s, having penned glam anthems like Sweet's "Ballroom Blitz" and Suzi Quatro's "Devil Gate Drive." Apparently, inspiration struck Chapman in the most domestic of settings: wallpapering his house. As the story goes, while meticulously aligning the stripes, he muttered, "That's neat, that's neat, that's neat," and glancing down, noticed some stripes of wallpaint splattered on his mate's feet. Eureka! A rhyme was born.

The song started in a demo studio in Denmark Street. "We were in Central Sound and had finished a session," Nicky Chinn recalled to Uncut magazine. "We had some studio time left and it was just the two of us. Mike picked up a guitar and started strumming. Out came 'Tiger Feet.' It was obvious immediately that we had something. We then took it to my flat in Hill Street in Mayfair to finish it off. It was written with Mud in mind." He added: "Songs these days have to make a bit more sense. So much of glam rock didn't make sense. Tiger Feet doesn't make sense, but it paints a great picture. It's a party picture. Does it make sense, probably not? But it sounds great. Glam needed to sound and look great with driving rhythms."

When Mike Chapman first played "Tiger Feet" to the band on an acoustic guitar, Mud singer Les Gray thought it was a terrible song. "It was just 'That's right, that's right, that's right,' but by the time we had worked out the arrangement, it was very strong," he recalled in 1000 UK #1 Hits by Jon Kutner and Spencer Leigh. "That riff at the start has a jazzy feel to it. It was played on a fuzz guitar but a trad band could play it. When we did it on stage, the reaction was incredible."