Hey Hungarian Joe! concert-theatre

The idea hit me from out of the blue. Jimi Hendrix turned a black ballad about a jealousy killing into a worldwide hit titled Hey Joe. I translated it forty years ago and have been playing it ever since.

For some reason, it occurred to me that if I as a Hungarian have an American stage name, i.e. Hobo, then Joe can also be Hungarian, and I proceeded to write the outline of the murderer’s back-story in one sitting.

Joe was born by the name of József Magyar at the end of the 1970s. His father became a banker at the time of the regime change, he used to beat József, whose mother was an actress who would play anything except the role of being his mother. Józsi hated school, he wanted to become a soccer player. He got to know blues, and the song he liked best was Hey Joe.

He played centre forward on the Budapest Public Transport Company Soccer Team, and after each goal he scored, he would yell a line from the song, “I’m going down to shoot my old lady.” That’s why he was nicknamed Joe.

He didn’t want a big life, he became a tram driver and married the first woman who would sleep with him. She thought the banker father would grant them a life of wealth, but soon found out that that was never going to happen, and so she cheated on her husband.

Joe caught her with her lover and after she humiliated him, shot her dead with his father’s shotgun. He then called the police and admitted to everything.

He got a heavy sentence, spent sixteen years in prison, struggling daily with his remorse and shame. He was then released and found himself here, in today’s Hungary, which was nothing like the country he grew up in. He lived on the street, couldn’t get a job, eventually became a busker, which is how he came across a former class-mate, who gave him a job and put him up.

This is the extent of the story I wrote in 26 lyrics, it is due to come out in the autumn as a double-disk audio book. I showed the material to Attila Vidnyánszky, who envisioned a two-character stage show around the songs. Joe will be played by an actor, and I, as usual, will be the narrator.

Well, that’s all I as a “thin-skinned author” can say in may defence right now”.