It Took Seconds

Five minutes and fifty-two seconds: Of the disco tracks that have survived in the popular imagination, Boney M’s “Rasputin” is perhaps the least respectable. It showcases the absurdist, anything-goes side of disco, the side that drew in the novelty-seekers and wedding dancers, the side that - legend has it - repulsed rock buyers grown accustomed to judge pop by standards of seriousness and artistry. Fuck that, say Boney M, let’s live a little, let’s do a record about Grigori Rasputin, the Mad Monk, let’s fill it with all the Russian musical shorthand we can, let’s get people doing drunken cossack dances on church hall lacquer floors!

Because Frank Farian is no fool, “Rasputin” is impeccably constructed - full of bumps and peaks; on parent album Nightflight To Venus it flows out of the spacey title track to produce a visionary collision of the past and the future! Certainly the track goes well beyond “so bad it’s good” - maybe you come for the kitsch and the lyrics and the growling but you stay because Frank Farian has built a song that makes you stay.