Kung Fu

Song Notes

A two minute punk thrash, which incorporates Tim’s love of martial arts and a kicking riff. Legend has it that the song was written by Tim Wheeler in five minutes on Boxing Day 1994 while he was at Belfast International Airport. It was recorded in one take the next day. This is the claim printed on the single artwork. The intro to the song is a clip from the movie Close Encounters of the Spooky Kind starring Sammo Hung, who is heard speaking.

The song marked the beginning of Ash’s long relationship with producer Owen Morris, who produced the albums 1977 and Nu-Clear Sounds. The song is a live favourite and has remained a constant in the bands set list. During the 90s “Kung Fu” traditionally finished the bands set, but has since been moved further up the set. On the Nu-Clear Sounds tour the band extended the song to over five minutes, with DJ Dick Kurtaine filling the breakdown with martial arts noises and computer game sound effects.

The song plays during the blooper/outtake reel of the 1996 Jackie Chan film “Rumble in the Bronx.

Tim talking about “Kung Fu” in 2015, 20 years on from its initial release:

I still love playing it, It gets a great reaction straight away - everyone starts going crazy, it always gets the crowd moving and it’s also really fun and easy to play. It’s no sweat at all for us at this stage.

I guess a lot of the best moments of our shows over the years have happened during that breakdown - and some of the worst. Mark used to go climbing all around the venues. One time in Melbourne he made it all the way to the sound desk at the back of the hall and finished the song from down there, but he had plenty of less successful attempts too. Once he fell from the lighting rig onto my mic stand and basically destroyed it along with my entire guitar pedal set-up. I’m pretty sure he broke both his feet jumping off a balcony during Kung Fu as well.

Rick McMurray during the Tim Burgess Twitter listening party for 1977 in April 2020:

The song was almost a B-side! This was written in 3 minutes before we left Tim’s house for the airport to do our first recording session with Owen. He’d been watching a load of Jackie Chan movies and bingeing on Ramones records.

Being slated for a B-side we’d originally recorded this goofy bit over the drop down section but when we realised how good it was we edited it out.

We went into the studio with Owen during a break in The Verse’s recording sessions for a “A Northern Soul”. Owen had decided they needed a break before they killed each other. That’s how I got to play John Bonham’s kit which he used on Led Zeppelin.