The opening bars of Alabama 3’s (aka A3 in the US) “Woke Up This Morning” are synonymous with the opening credits of The Sopranos.
And the lyrics fit so well with the premise of the show that you’d be forgiven for thinking it was written with the New Jersey mob drama in mind.
But that couldn’t be further from the truth. Although it was inspired by a real-life killing.
In 1989, in Warwickshire, UK, Sara Thornton, who had suffered years of abuse at the hands of her alcoholic husband, realised ‘all that love had gone’.
Following an argument on 12th June, Sara took a knife and stabbed Malcolm Thornton who later died in hospital. She never denied the killing but pleaded manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility.
Despite evidence from neighbours who had seen her beaten unconscious and a charity worker who once saw Malcolm punch his wife, Sara was convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment as she had stabbed him while he was drunk and asleep on the sofa.
Sara appealed the verdict, but her appeal was quashed in 1991. Significantly, though, while the case had originally received very little media attention, the campaign group Justice for Women became active in supporting Sara at this point.
In 1996, with the support of Justice for Women, her lawyers and growing public awareness of the case, Sara’s murder conviction was quashed.
Her lawyers had successfully argued that she was a victim of battered woman syndrome – a form of PTSD.
A retrial took place in 1996, in which Sara was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 5 years in prison, which she felt was a fair sentence for killing her husband under those circumstances.
She was released immediately, though, as she had already served her time.
The case inspired the UK band Alabama 3 to write a song about it. But when they came to pen it, ‘got yourself a knife’ didn’t quite fit. So, with a bit of artistic licence, they changed it to ‘got yourself a gun’.
So, how did a song based on a domestic manslaughter in the UK make its way across the Atlantic and end up on the opening credits of a ground-breaking gangster show?
Via serendipity. One day, series creator David Chase was driving the stretch of road that Tony would follow in the opening of the show when the song came on the radio.
It struck a chord with him, he pitched it to HBO and the rest, as they say, is history.
