Chris Darrow wrote Whipping Boy, a song performed by Ben Harper on Pleasure And Pain (Cardas records, 1992) and Welcome To The Cruel World (Virgin, 1994).


Chris Darrow : "I grew up in Claremont California and started playing music quite young. I played ukulele as a 5-year-old and finally took up the guitar at the age of 13. My first guitar came from the Folk Music Center owned by Charles and Dot Chase. The Chase's daughter, Ellen was in school with me and as you know, she is Ben's mother. We have known each other since high school and her parents became a fixture in my life. I spent many an hour at the Folk Music Center playing instruments and listening to records.

I started playing music, primarily folk and bluegrass, and eventually got into popular music and started a recording career with the Kaleidoscope in 1966. I later joined the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, worked with Linda Ronstadt, Hoyt Axton and James Taylor. Soon I was doing recording sessions for people, from Gene Vincent to Helen Reddy, which eventually led to a solo artist recording deal.

My second solo album, Chris Darrow, was recorded in England at Trident studios. I used many English musicians and had a great time doing it. Whipping boy was originally recorded in 1972 and the band was Caleb Quaye, Roger Pope and Clive Chaman. My pal Steve Cahill played mandolin and I sang and played electric lap slide. The members of the rhythm section had worked on both Elton John and Jeff Beck records.
The song was written about a strained marriage and I needed to vent my feelings. The term whipping boy comes from the Middle Ages when the rich could pay someone to take their punishment for them, hence, Whipping Boy. The Catholics had something similar in that you could pay someone to eat your sins instead of getting the karma attached. They were called sin eaters.

Ben, as a teenager, began working for his grandparents, which led to him working as an instrument repairman. He also started playing music with his pal Tom Freund. Ben was hanging out with a flamenco guitar pal of mine, Ian Beardsley. He and Ben began coming by regularly to hang out and listen to records, etc...
As time went, on Ben began to come by on his own and we would talk about many things. He was torn between repair work and playing music. I encouraged him to pursue his career as a musician and suggested he try to record an album. I told him I thought that I had a song that might be perfect for him, it was Whipping Boy. Soon after he and Tom recorded their album and included Whipping Boy on it.

A friend of mine, JP Plunier, loved the song and asked me to introduce him to Ben. JP was looking for a video to film and thought Ben would be perfect subject. JP was looking for work in the video industry and had a champion at Virgin Records. The introductions were made and the rest is history. The original video was the introduction of Ben to the recording industry. There was a bidding war, with Virgin winning the prize. Whipping Boy became the first release from his first album. The song was remixed by the Dust Brothers and became a dance hit in Europe via an album called Subterranean Abstract Blues/Rebirth of Cool, which featured Portis Head, Massive Attack, Beastie Boys, Bomb The Bass and Paul Weller."

Interview by Emmanuel Rivet / swer.net - Dec 12, 2000