“Lunatic Fringe” by Red Rider

"Lunatic Fringe" came off As Far as Siam, Red Rider's 1981 album, a slow-burning warning shot from the Canadian band's guitarist and songwriter Tom Cochrane. He wrote it troubled by the anti-Semitism he saw creeping back in the '70s, with a book about Raoul Wallenberg, who saved Jews from the Holocaust, stoking the fire. It often gets pinned on the murder of John Lennon, but the song already existed by then; Cochrane just happened to cut the first demo that night, and the echo between the two pushed him to put it out as a single even though the label doubted it would sell.

Richard Landis produced, and the result is brooding art rock, all menace and creeping dread. It reached number 11 on Billboard's rock airplay chart, and in 2009 SOCAN gave it a Classic award for passing 100,000 plays on Canadian radio.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.