Getting "Loaded"

Driving around today I was thinking of the song "Loaded," the first single off the landmark 1992 Primal Scream record "Screamadelica." It's a grand, lurid, anthemic, clap-happy party song -- just right for a Saturday night drive down the Strip -- and it may already sound vaguely familiar to the neophyte listener... and here is why I think that might be the case: "Loaded," as I've tried to explain to anyone who will listen, is really a mix of THREE popular, long-enduring songs; two of them rock tunes and the third a Christmas hymn.

It's long been my contention that Primal Scream's "Loaded" borrows heavily from "Sympathy for the Devil" by the Rolling Stones and the Beatles' "Hey Jude" -- but then ALSO blends in (actually starts with) the melody line of a third song, a hymn we always sang in church around Christmastime. "Gloria," I think was the name of it... "in excelcious deo" was the subtitle, part of the lyric, or something close to that spelling...

But I can hear elements of those three songs woven together seamlessly -- not sampled, but recreated from the melody of "Gloria" to the slowed-down bongo beat of "Sympathy." Then -- after a slow build that layers a new sound or instrument into the mix every four lines -- roughly the bongo beat/cymbal crash/glockenspeil, then the bassline, followed by piano, then fourth come the strings, then horns, violin, handclaps, and finally (by my count anyway) the eighth or maybe tenth "add" to the mix, a tambourine kicking in at 2:46.) And it's that steady, shaking tambourine I find so evocative of "Hey Jude" (before the bottom of the song falls out and strips down to a light, echoey drumbeat before building up again.)

------------> And then "Loaded" itself is sort of "answered," I think, or maybe outright stolen, by the Beta Band for the tune "Alleged" from their record "Hot Shots II" -- a song that blends together all of the above, and the one I was actually listening to today that got me thinking again about "Loaded."

I don't know if anyone else has heard this, or would hear it in the same way I'm describing, or if any of this is making any sense whatsoever to the reader....but hey, there you have it.

L