Gaslight - The Ugly Ducklings, 1967

 
 

She don’t really want my love
But she won’t set me free
She wants to own me

She’s gonna make me blow my mind
If I don’t get away my doctor told me
I’m walking around talking to myself
I don’t know where I'm at half the time
I look at her picture, I see her face
I think of what she is and I start cryin’

Gaslight – that ought to be her name, ‘cause she’s everybody’s flame
Gaslight – you can turn her on to the love you desire
Gaslight – she’ll light you up and set you afire
Gaslight – you’d better be cool, or you’ll wind a up a fool like me

I know there’s got to be a way to change that girl
You know how much I need her
She knows what she’s got on me
And she knows that I can bring myself to leave her

I’m walking around talking to myself
I don’t know where I am half the time
I look at her picture, I see her face
I think of what she is and I start cryin’

Gaslight – that ought to be her name, ‘cause she’s everybody’s flame
Gaslight – you can turn her on to the love you desire
Gaslight – she’ll light you up and set you afire
Gaslight – you’d better be cool, or you’ll wind a up a fool like me (x2)

Lord – yes she will

Gaslight – that ought to be her name, ‘cause she’s everybody’s flame
Gaslight – you’d better be cool, or you’ll wind a up a fool like me

 

 
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When I worked for Blacks Cameras in the Don Mills Plaza back in 1979, my manager's name was John Read. He told me he played bass, and his old band was getting back together. They had just released a new album, Off The Wall. I barely remembered their original 1967 hit, Gaslight, but I became an instant fan of The Ugly Ducklings. Their music, although rooted in the '60s, fit in perfectly with the Punk/New Wave movement of the late '70s and early '80s.
 
The Ugly Ducklings were a five-piece, so-called garage band formed in 1965. Back then, they only released one album, Somewhere Outside. The single Gaslight is their claim to fame, and it made the top 40 across Canada in the fall of 1967. The CHUM charts in Toronto showed that it peaked at number one. Besides the 1979 album, they were included in a few compilation albums, and managed a minor live release in 2004.