Dead Man's Curve

"Dead Man's Curve"
Single by Jan and Dean
B-side	"New Girl in School"
Released	1964 (U.S.)
Format	7"
Genre	Pop, Teenage Tragedy
Label	Liberty Records
Writer(s)	Jan Berry, Roger Christian, Brian Wilson, Artie Kornfeld

"Dead Man's Curve" is a 1964 hit song by Jan and Dean detailing a teen drag race gone awry. It reached number eight on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart.

According to the song, the race starts at Sunset and Vine between a Corvette Sting Ray and a Jaguar XKE, traveling on W. Sunset Blvd. going west. Passing the streets, N. La Brea Ave., N. Crescent Heights Blvd. and N. Doheny Dr. The original Schwab's Drug Store was located just east of Crescent Heights on Sunset. Deadman's curve could be after N. Whittier Drive or the next curve after Delfem Drive, or even at the intersection of Sunset and Doheny, but likely artistic license is used to place the events within surroundings having names familiar to listeners outside of California. It's regarded as a teenage tragedy, one of the most popular of all time.

Although Jan Berry would later have a tragic near-fatal auto accident in his own Sting Ray in 1966, it was not on Sunset Boulevard but on a side street in Beverly Hills. Deadman's Curve was used as the title for the 1978 biographical nationally televised movie about Jan and Dean.^[1]

Versions

Three versions of "Dead Man's Curve" were released:

Version #1: Original version from the 1963 Drag City album

Version #2: Single "hit" version with added horns, strings, additional backing vocals and sounds of a car skidding and crashing; from the 1964 Dead Man's Curve/The New Girl In School" LP.

Version #3: An earlier rejected studio mix from the 1966 Filet Of Soul album.

Live versions appear on the 1965 Command Performance and 1971 Anthology albums

There are a few minor lyrical differences between the versions #1 and #2 listed above:

Version #1 - "my frenched taillights," "the strip was deserted" and "pulled her out and there I was"

Version #2 - "my six taillights," "the street was deserted" and "pulled her out and there we were"

The song was covered by The Carpenters as part of their oldies sequence on their album Now & Then. This song has also been covered by the bands Blink-182, Nash the Slash, and the Belljars, whose version plays over the closing credits of the 1998 film, The Curve.

References

1. ^ snopes.com: Dead Man's Curve

External links

• Google Map of the route described in the song
• Google Map location of Jan Berry's accident

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