Starting out seven years ago as a twenty-five-minute acid house/blues opus, A3's suddenly hot single, "Woke Up This Morning" (a.k.a. the theme to The Sopranos), has taken an odd path to the top. "It's had a strange and jagged existence," agrees A3 singer Rob Spragg.

In the process, the song has snatched the band from obscurity, not only aligning the group with one of America's most talked-about television shows, but A3's smoky "Woke Up This Morning" single now anchors the recently released Sopranos soundtrack, which is selling 24,000 copies a week, according to SoundScan. Not bad, considering A3's last album, Exile on Coldharbour Lane, has sold just 25,000 copies in America since its release three years ago.

Spragg and his British bandmates got a first-hand look at the mini-phenomenon last week when the band flew in from London for a performance on The Tonight Show. (Host Jay Leno fell for the song and told his staff to track down the band). "From bell boys to DJs, everyone in L.A. knows the tune; 'Yeah man, the fucking Sopranos.' I was surprised by the general awareness," says Spragg. "It's massive."

The song's origins date back to the early Nineties when Spragg, forever drawn to Howling Wolf and Muddy Waters samples, was inspired by a high-profile case in the British press about a wife who, after twenty years of spousal abuse, one day picked up a gun and shot her husband. Hence the song's infamous opening line: "Woke up this morning, and I got myself a gun."

So, despite the fact the song -- played over the opening credits as TV mob boss Tony Soprano motors his way through New Jersey's Lincoln Tunnel -- is today permanently linked with mob rub-outs, "Woke Up This Morning" actually began as a tale of female empowerment. Or, as Spragg puts it, "The song went from feminism to gangsterism in one full swoop."

That swoop began nearly two years ago when The Sopranos' creator David Chase came across the song (edited down from its original twenty-five-minute length) and supposedly told his producer on the spot that that was going to be the theme song to The Sopranos. "Our publisher called and told us about some mob show that wanted to use the song," Spragg says. "We got $40,000, but of course we owed all that to our record company. Then six months later we started getting calls from our friends in New York telling us all about the show."

The next milestone came at last year's Emmy awards, where, according to Spragg, whenever the show's cast members and writers made their way to the podium to accept an award, a sixty-four-piece, tuxedo-clad orchestra would strike up a lumbering version of "Woke Up This Morning."

A longtime fan of Delta blues and roots music ("I'm pleased and honored when people think we're an American band"), Spragg was nonetheless startled to discover that some rock and pop radio stations here balked at playing the song because of its "gun" reference. "When I was told by the suits at radio and MTV that I had to remove any reference of gun, knowing that America has an out of control approach to gun laws, I just gave a wry smile and said, 'If you think excising the word gun is going to make any difference, then go ahead.' I just see a great hypocrisy in being able to get a gun on any street corner, but you can't mention gun in a lyric." To avoid trouble, Columbia sent both the original version to radio, as well as an edited take, minus "gun" and a "goddamn." "The goal is to get the song on the air," explains one radio promotion executive for Columbia Records, which released The Sopranos soundtrack. "So we took the path of least resistance and cleaned it up."

Columbia may also have to clean up the song's video, which -- thanks to the magic of film editing -- shows the members of A3 riding in the backseat of Tony Soprano's SUV as he drives down the Jersey Turnpike. Turns out folks at MTV think the clip looks a bit too much like a commercial for the television show. "It has too much footage from the actual show," says an MTV spokesperson. "We've asked that they re-submit it so it looks more like an original video."

A3 is currently finishing up their next album. Dropped by Geffen following the label's merger with Universal last year, the three-man band is now in negotiations with Columbia for a new major-label deal. Spragg says that "Woke Up This Morning" might be included as a bonus track. "The song's had an amazing life. Let's hope it keeps going."

ERIC BOEHLERT
(February 28, 2000)