A Welsh politician has upset royalists after sharing a link to Rainbow's 1978 track Kill The King on Facebook, five days after the coronation of King Charles III.
Dave Jones, a Labour Party Councillor and an elected member of the local authority of Conwy county, North Wales, angered some of his constituents with the post, which includes the lyrics "Kill the King, Tear Him Down, Kill the King, yeah, Strike him Down." The post was then shared on Twitter by an aggrieved constituent, who tagged Labour leader Keir Starmer in the tweet.
But the Glyn-y-Marl ward Labour councillor has explained that the whole episode was a misunderstanding and that he's wholly innocent of posting anti-monarchy sentiments.
Jones says that he posted the song onto his Facebook “story” together with a photo of Conwy Castle and that Facebook then automatically added the song’s lyrics to the post, which has since been removed.
As he explains it, the politician merely wanted to incorporate some "medieval-type" song to accompany his image of the castle, which was built by King Edward I during his conquest of Wales, between 1283 and 1287.
“I’ve got a councillor page, which is usually information, but this was my personal Facebook page,” Jones explains to the Daily Post. “I used a picture and created a Facebook story, using a song by the band Rainbow, and the picture is of Conwy Castle.”
He continues, “[H]ence my use of the song Kill the King, which is a medieval-type soundtrack. So it has nothing to do with our present King Charles III. … The only thing that was in my mind was that it was a lovely picture of Conwy Castle and that Conwy Castle was built by Edward I.”
Jones adds: "Edward I built it to rule over North Wales, and I just thought it was a fun thing to do to put the song Kill the King on the post. OK, Edward I has been dead a long time, but it was just because he built the castle.”
A spokeswoman for Conwy County Council says: “The post has been made by the councillor in his personal capacity and is not linked to Conwy County Borough Council in any way."
Despite the song's violent imagery, Rainbow frontman Ronnie James Dio once revealed that the song is actually about a game of chess.
