Spoiler alert: He’s already dead! (Isn’t that how spoiler alerts work?)

Forty-five years ago this month, the Texas band Bloodrock had a minor hit with “D.O.A.,” and to my mind, it was a turning point in the history of rock music. There had been plenty of other songs about death—”Teen Angel,” “Last Kiss,” “Leader of the Pack,” etc.—but they were tearjerkers all, with melodies that appealed to the better angels of our nature. Not Bloodrock’s “D.O.A.” The musical equivalent of being too wasted to move, the song was a harbinger of extreme rock styles to come. (I suspect that’s part of the reason the Butthole Surfers and R.E.M. both covered the song during the early 80s; you can hear their takes at the bottom of this post.)

“D.O.A.” isn’t one of those sad ballads where a car hydroplanes on Lovers’ Lane and hurtles over Makeout Point, consigning some young person’s romance to the shitcan. For one thing, it’s sung from the point of view of the victim of the fatal crash, not the bereaved survivor, and that’s, like, pretty heavy: at one point, the hospital attendant leans over to whisper “softly” to the narrator that he’s not going to make it. In its full-length album version, “D.O.A.” is eight and a half minutes of unrelieved suffering, during which the terror of death is mitigated only by the loss of feeling:

Life is flowing out my body
Pain is flowing out with my blood
The sheets are red and moist where I’m lying
God in heaven, teach me how to die

 

 
Because it’s based on the tritone interval of an ambulance siren, it’s tempting to compare “D.O.A.” to “Black Sabbath,” released the previous year. But where “Black Sabbath” builds to a thunderous climax, “D.O.A.” just lies there bleeding on your carpet until the pain stops.

Though guitarist Lee Pickens has said the song was inspired by a friend’s death in a plane crash, contemporary listeners like author R. Serge Denisoff thought it was about drugs:

Bloodrock’s “D.O.A.” was the musical account of a drug overdose. Toward the end of the song a siren-like sound was produced. Many radio stations were hesitant about airing the song due to an alleged FCC notice (70-930) which reportedly banned simulated sirens in broadcasts due to the fear of possible automobile accidents and other public hazards. Capitol Records and Bloodrock producer Terry Knight attempted to persuade [program directors] to broadcast the record on the basis of its alleged popularity, the notice notwithstanding. Bill Gavin’s tip sheet reported “Phenomenal phone response wherever played plus big sales. Gruesome content has blocked most major station airplay, but KINT-El Paso programs it as a public service and reports good reaction from several drivers who said they drove more carefully after hearing it on their car radios.” Capitol reproduced this statement in a mailing to radio stations.

Below, hear three compelling reasons why no one asks me to DJ anymore.

Bloodrock’s original eight-and-a-half-minute epic:
 

 
R.E.M. plays “D.O.A.” on Halloween 1983 (opening for the Cramps at the Peppermint Lounge under the name “It Crawled from the South”):
 

 
The Butthole Surfers play “D.O.A.” in 1982: