Conspiracy Music (Part 4)

We now move forward to 1991 and the release of The Pixies’ “Motorway to Roswell,” the penultimate song on their fourth and final album, Trompe le Monde.  The conspiratorial subject matter of this song should be self-explanatory.  Some UFO buffs think the legend of an extraterrestrial spacecraft and its occupants crashing into a desert near Roswell, New Mexico to be traceable only as far back as Charles Berlitz and William Moore’s 1980 book The Roswell Incident.  Not so.  The roots of the legend—in print, at least—can be traced back to the very first UFO book ever published:  BEHIND THE FLYING SAUCERS (1950) by Variety newspaper reporter Frank Scully, whose last name was later used by Chris Carter for FBI agent “Dana Scully,” one of the main characters of Carter’s long-running television series The X-Files. 

 

It’s worthwhile to note that Dana Scully is not the only fictional character based on Frank Scully.  The September 1954 issue of EC Comics’ Weird Science-Fantasy (#25) featured an eight-page story by Al Feldstein and Wally Wood entitled “Flying Saucer Report” in which journalist “Frank E. Keely,” author of a book called The Truth About the Flying Saucers, tells the reader in earnest, “I wrote an article for a show business weekly, claiming that two flying saucers had crashed in the southwest.  I told how, in the wreckage, investigators found the bodies of several little men dressed in strange costumes.  I claimed that the Air Force had spirited away the bodies and the discs for secret analysis.”  This is a fairly accurate summation of Chapter 12 (”Inside Flying Saucers”) of Scully’s book. 

A few months later, in December of 1954, the EC editors devoted an entire issue of Weird Science-Fantasy (#26) to a documentary-style reportage of all the most significant UFO sightings up to that point illustrated by the likes of Al Feldstein, Wally Wood and Joe Orlando.   

The inside front cover eschewed the advertisements one would ordinarily see in that space and featured instead a strident message to the reader headlined in bold:  “THIS IS A CHALLENGE TO THE UNITED STATES AIR FORCE!”  The effect of this single issue on a generation of future UFOlogists and UFO enthusiasts can’t be overestimated.  In fact, it could be legitimately claimed that this issue of Weird Science-Fantasy is the first “documentary” comic book, which is now a burgeoning sub-genre within the field of sequential art (see, for example, Will Eisner’s 2005 conspiracy-themed graphic novel The Plot:  The Secret Story of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion).  Scully’s book created an enduring substrate of American—indeed, global—mythology that has only grown stronger over the decades.

Though Scully was attacked vehemently upon the publication of Behind the Flying Saucers and his career nearly ruined as a result, thirty-six years later William Steinman’s UFO CRASH AT AZTEC (1986) verified many of the allegations Scully published way back in 1950.  The two books form a four-decade-long hendiadys, and are best consumed back-to-back.  

 

Now let's flash forward to the early 1990s when Scully and Steinman's complex web of legends, rumors, half-truths and bald facts eventually emerge as The Pixies’ penultimate song, “Motorway to Roswell,” the entirety of which can be heard HERE. 

“Motorway to Roswell” by Black Francis

Last night he could not make it
He tried hard but he could not make it
Last night he could not make it
On a holiday
So many miles
Looking for a place to stay
Near some friendly star
He found this mote
And now we wonder where we are
How could this so great
Turn so shitty
He ended up in army crates
And photographs in files
His tiny boat
Sparked as he turned and grazed our city
I started driving on the motorway
I was feelin’ down
Last night he could not make it
Last night he could not make it
He tried hard but he could not make it
Last night he could not make it
On a holiday
So many miles
Lookin’ for a place to stay
Near some friendly star
He found this mote
And now we wonder
How could this so great
Turn so shit
He ended up in army crates
And photographs in files
His tiny boat
Sparked as he grazed it
He started heading for the motorway
And he came right down.

Significantly, only a year before Trompe le Monde was released in the United States, “Motorway to Roswell” was preceded by an even more overt culmination of the allegations in Scully’s books in the form of  Megadeath’s song “Hangar 18” from their 1990 album Rust in Peace.  When the songs are listened to one after another, “Hangar 18” can be interpreted as a direct sequel to “Motorway to Roswell,” picking up the alien’s unfortunate tale after the crash described by The Pixies:

“Hangar 18” by Nick Menza

Welcome to our fortress tall
Take some time to show you around
Impossible to break these walls
For you see the steel is much too strong
Computer banks to rule the world
Instruments to sight the stars

Possibly I've seen too much
Hangar 18 I know too much

Foreign life forms inventory
Suspended state of cryogenics
Selective amnesia's the story
Believed foretold but who'd suspect
The Military Intelligence
Two words combined that can't make sense

Possibly I've seen too much
Hangar 18 I know too much

The entire music video for “Hangar 18” can be seen HERE.