Album: Life Won’t Wait
Year: 1998
. . .
But Life Won’t Wait saved its best shot for the very end.
Which, sometimes Rancid’s generosity could be exhausting: wading through 20 tracks of pummeling punk rock mixed with speedy ska probably wasn’t everybody’s idea of the best way to spend an hour of their life, not to mention the time it took to sort out the individual songs from each other. So I do wonder if some people even made it to the end of Life Won’t Wait and got to this utter stunner of a track.
A genuinely thrilling combination of punk rock and reggae that hadn’t been heard in 20 years “Coppers” started off with a joyous, spidery guitar solo from Lars Frederiksen which leads directly into the toasting of Dr. Israel, who who Wired describes at the time as “[wiring] his distinctive, socio-political consciousness with mystic Rastafarian rhetoric, deep electronic grooves, and good-time dancehall reggae,” providing a counterpoint to the incredibly catchy chorus that Tim Armstrong & Frederiksen tenderly sing together.
London you gonna find them
New York, LA, back to Kingston
All i see is you fightin
All i see is you fightinLondon you gonna find them
New york, LA back to Kingston
All i see is you fightin
All i see is you fightin
With Dr Israel interjecting “London Town” and “Kingston, JA” in and around that chorus, while Armstrong’s guitar provides mighty crunch, the amount of empathy is off the charts: they’re genuinely worried about all of the fighting they’re seeing, but they’re not sure what to do about it, as Armstrong sings.
Also empathetic: the steel drums, played by Stephen Perkins from Jane’s Addiction, which provide about 47 different levels of hooks, as they
snake in and out of the song, which gets close to breaking after each bridge.
Easy, you know it ain’t easy
Got to make a decision
Got to learn to say no, no, noI’ve heard from inside of the walls
A deadman can’t hear all the calls
Who lives like a sheep in the city concrete
Never runs deep and dies from the heat
The first time around, the guitars rev up as somebody screams “yeahhhhhhhhhhh” and it seems like “Coppers” is gonna switch gears into an anthemic punk son, but that’s just a misdirection, but instead Armstrong chants the the final verse as Matt Freeman’s bass, Brett Reeds skank and the steel drums provide support:
Coppers and hoods
Deadman stood
It ain’t no good when you’re misunderstood
When you rot in a jail
Wishin you would be out on the street like robinhood
All those who fall those who try
Let them go home victimized
You ain’t gonna see a power demise
Not on your life time see it hypnotized
Another chorus, some Dr. Israel toasting over harmonized “ooooooohs” and “Coppers” rolls into the bridge once again, almost falling apart when Frederiksen once again sings “dies from the heat” and it echos into a tape rewind and the joyous spidery guitar solo, after which he then shouts the chorus at the top of his lungs while Dr. Israel wiggles around him.
London you gonna find them
New York, LA, back to Kingston
All i see is you fightin
All i see is you fightinLondon you gonna find them
New york, LA back to Kingston
All i see is you fightin
All i see is you fightin
“Coppers” is lovely and noisy and elliptical and maddening all at the same time; absolute lightning in bottle.
“Coppers”
Dr. Israel – “Coppers (Brooklyn Version)”
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