Rock is big on the glamour, the grit, the guts, and the groove, but rarely are the patron saints of the genre known for caution, moderation, or playing the long game.
Give ’em a windfall and they’ll blow it on a Rolls Royce. Give ’em a drink and watch them empty the shop. Give ’em a whirlwind holiday romance and watch it turn into a devastating 3-album run culminating in the most public spat in tabloid history.
Point is, rock stars like to take chances. They’d rather run the gamut with risk and see how things play out. It should come as no surprise that this approach naturally makes the best music, and is evidenced by rock’s long love affair with games of chance, where cards, dice, and spins of the wheel provide a ready-made language for lives spent in the moment. As such, here are some of the most iconic rock anthems deidcated to those games.
The Rolling Stones: Tumbling Dice
Keith Richards originally named this track “Good Time Women”, before Jagger rewrote the lyrics around gambling and an everyman himself struggling to perform reliably.
The result is a classic of the Stones’ repertoire, complete with a swaggering, grubby underdog who turns out to be more charming than they should be. “Tumbling Dice” isn’t really about the casino, with gambling acting as the metaphor for someone whose every act might result in something different.
Fifty years later, games have changed somewhat. Dice and card tables now coexist on online bingo sites with everything from mobile poker to hybrids like slingo, but Jagger’s premise remains the same: we all wanna know how the next turn will play out.
Motorhead: Ace of Spades
If the Stones made gambling sound louche, Motörhead’s roaring head-banger made it sound like doing 120mph down the M1 in a souped-up lorry.
“Ace of Spades” is three minutes of cards, the unknown, and Lemmy well-and-truly throwing caution to the wind in one of the most deranged bacchanalia ever to hit the studio. This, of course, was more than just a random metaphor. Lemmy was famously fond of fruit machines and reportedly wrote the song using gambling clichés because he wanted something packed with recognisable imagery, according to interviews.
Its philosophy is magnificently simple: forget the destination; the excitement is in playing the hand.
