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Paralegals & Legal Secretaries

: Practical Paralegalism

Brute Force, a Paralegal for Many Years, Enjoys a Much-Deserved Revival

By Lynne DeVenny

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Or, What Happened to the King of Fuh?

I blog partly because I love uncovering the strange and hidden gems of the paralegal world (and in the world in general), and this is absolutely too kool for school - but don't read any further if a little play on profanity ruins your day, and turn the speakers on your computer at work real low if you do decide to take a walk on the weird and delightfully wild side and listen to the rare single, "The King of Fuh." (Or, hells yeah, if your day really stinks and you have an office door, just close it and sing along really loud.) There's a bonus track, "Nobody Knows," on the recording; I'd totally go to hear this guy perform.

Once upon a time there was an American singer and wonderfully strange songwriter who called himself Brute Force, but was born Stephen Friedland. BF's best known for his 1969 single "King of Fuh". The song was banned from radio for its chorus, "There was a beautiful land called Fuh/And in this land there was a king/And everybody called him the Fuh King." (What? I bet I'm not the only one thinking, "I wish I'd thought of those cool lyrics.") But John Lennon and George Harrison loved it, and The New Yorker reports:

[When] Capitol/EMI refused to distribute it, the Beatles? Apple Records privately pressed two thousand copies and tried, unsuccessfully, to make the song a hit in England. After a series of rejections and disappointments, Friedland worked as a paralegal for many years.

But in 2001, he revived his music career and will be performing in Brooklyn this week on November 4. (He also "did some work on the film Ghostbusters.") If you're interested in reading more about Friedland's life and art, I really enjoyed this well-written paper, "Brute Force," written by David Chiu for the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism Research Center. Chiu says Friedland described his songs as "heavy funny," and I think there's plenty of room in the world for that.