I remember the show at the Garden after the Charlottesville riot when you wore a Star of David. How do you decide when you want to make your beliefs known?
Wearing the Star of DavidAt his show on August 21, 2017, Joel sported a Star of David on his jacket. At the same concert, Joel had images of Trump officials like Anthony Scaramucci and Sean Spicer — as well as James Comey and Sally Yates — projected behind him as he and guest Patty Smyth performed Scandal’s “Goodbye to You.” wasn’t about politics. To me, what happened in Charlottesville was like war. When Trump said there were good people on both sides — there are no good Nazis. There are no good Ku Klux Klan people. Don’t equivocate that shit. I think about my old man: Most of his family was murdered in Auschwitz.The story of the Joel family’s experience with Nazi Germany is told in full in the 2001 German documentary The Joel Files.The story of the Joel family’s experience with Nazi Germany is told in full in the 2001 German documentary The Joel Files. He was able to get out but then got drafted and went in the U.S. Army. He risked his life in Europe to defeat Nazism. A lot of men from his generation did the same thing. So when those guys see punks walking around with swastikas, how do they keep from taking a baseball bat and bashing those crypto-Nazis over the head? Those creeps are going to march through the streets of my country? Uh-uh. I was personally offended. That’s why I wore that yellow star. I had to do something, and I didn’t think speaking about it was going to be as impactful.
The other was how very much criticism has taken its toll on him over the years. He denies it...again and again and again. He has to, because he very noticeably keeps bringing it up again and again and again. And that sucks. Because someone who's accomplished as much as the late Sir William Joel of Long Islandington has should really be delighted with their life.
As one of the guys who's sometimes publicly mocked him ever so gently and lovingly, allow me to take a moment to talk about one of the many Billy Joel songs I really truly love and the thing about it which never ceases to impress me, no matter how many times I've heard it.
"My Life" is quintessential Billy Joel, with a lyric that aims for John Lennon, with perhaps some of Chuck Berry's braggadocio, but falls short (mainly in the second verse, which starts great but fizzles into empty albeit rhyming platitudes). Meanwhile, musically, it's a composition of which Paul McCartney himself could be proud, insanely melodic and with a plethora of hooks, including a few which are strictly instrumental and never actually translate to the vocal line.
It's got a compelling (and not entirely dissimilar to "Silly Love Songs") intro that starts quietly and builds until the whole band kicks in and delivers the first hook, just before the second hook is introduced—and again it's only this second hook which will actually turn into a vocal line and even there only as a faint vocal in the outro. Who does that? A guy who can produce the kind of melodies that the late Sir William Joel of Long Islandington can, that's who.
So the song is pretty standard, from a structural point of view. With one exception, but it's a pretty big one, and that's what always strikes me about this one. It's not that the verses and the chorus share the same chord changes and melody, although that is kinda interesting, especially given that the intro and outro—which normally would share either the verse or chorus changes—are different. It's the placement of the bridge and the treatment of the second chorus, as well as the way he repeatedly goes to the intro/outro music, using it almost as a substitute for a guitar or keyboard solo.
The song goes:
intro
first verse
intro/break
first chorus
first bridge
second verse
intro/break
second chorus
second bridge
intro/break
third chorus
outro
For the second chorus, though, he has Liberty DeVitto bring the drums down to half-time, lending (or trying to) gravitas, to the first two lines. Then things kick back in and we go to the break section. Then back to the chorus for a third and final time...but only half of it. And then we're into the extended outro, which is just the intro/break section, but with vocals this time, singing the keyboard hook from the original intro.
It's an odd construction. There are only two verses, he keeps going back to the intro music, and the song gets heaviest almost right before it closes it out—and then once it does get ready to close out, it hangs around for a surprisingly (and pleasantly) long time. It's...weird. It feels like a standard 8-bar pop song, structurally, but it's really not. It's slightly, or maybe even more than slightly, askew, but you don't really notice the first few dozen times you hear it, as you're just caught up by Joel's phenomenally catchy melodies and compelling lyrics.
But he's the late Sir William Joel of Long Islandington, a guy who's a master of songcraft, so he undoubtedly knows what he's doing. Which makes it even more perplexing and, for me, at least, appealing.
I confess, the Lemonheads never really did it for me.
Even at the height of the alt-rock explosion in the early 1990s, which was right at the time they entered the mainstream with so many others, I just didn't feel that connection with them. I liked a few of their songs, sure (as may be obvious right now, given the title of this post), but the connection I felt to Nirvana and Pearl Jam and Soundgarden and Sonic Youth? Nope, just wasn't there.
Hell, I felt more attached to the Gin Blossoms and Jayhawks and Smashing Pumpkins than I did to this Boston-based trio. Not to mention some other bands I truly dug (and still do) like Toad the Wet Sprocket and Counting Crows. The Lemonheads just didn't ring my bell the way others did.
It may have been the fact that Head Lemonhead (LemonHead?) Evan Dando annoyed the hell out of me. Much the way that Chris Martin's antics have always gotten in the way of Coldplay's music for me, Dando's slacker cum pretty boy poseur lean (fair or unfair) just made me say, "Yeah. No. Not for me." Despite the fact that he sang well and created some damn melodic music.
But his look seemed more like that, a look. Nowhere near as honest as the hard, tortured realism of Kurt Cobain or the detached introspection of Chris Cornell or the guarded, seething rage of Eddie Vedder (although granted, Eddie's act grew tired within a few years, though fortunately he changed his tune and today seems to personify veteran rock-n-roll cool). Dando's pose struck me as unearned; again, right or wrong. And it turned me off.
I've softened since. I'm older! And I've come to really appreciate the loose, dreamy breeze of a lot of what the Lemonheads did. And never moreso than today's entry for Favorite Song Friday.
Favorite Song Friday - The Lemonheads - Into Your Arms
I've said it before about other songs and I'll say it again. This is perfect pop. Period.
From the opening rake of that simple D/D major chord bounce, "Into Your Arms" is so damn listenable it almost seems to have been manufactured in a lab. It's pretty much I-IV-V all the way from there, save for the stopover at E minor which lends a nice little gentle edge to it. But everything works without tricks and, surprisingly, without pretensions or any overplay. It's just a plaintive, simple love song played out over plaintive, simple chords.
I know a place where I can go And be alone Into your arms, into your arms I can go I know a place that's safe and warm From the crowd Into your arms, into your arms I can go And if I should fall I know that I won't be alone anymore
Dassit, baby. Two verses repeated twice each. One bridge repeated twice, Maybe 25 words total in the whole song? You don't need to rewrite Beethoven's 9th to produce essential and lovely pop rock. Hell, you don't even have to rewrite "Hey Jude." If you're gonna go simple, you stay simple. That's "Into Your Arms."
Dando's voice is a perfect instrument to meet this song's lonely and heart-on-sleeve plea. He sounds like he's leaning over his last drink at the bar, telling the girl next to him that he doesn't want much, only to be able to feel safe with her. His voice is weary and tested, but it jumps to profoundly powerful when he hits the end of the bridge ("...won't be...alone...be alone anyMORE.") He takes his time to get his thoughts out and when he does, he doesn't say much. But just like the unbending, jangly chord pattern, it's all he needs. His agency is earned in this song by never veering from the path.
And when it's done, it's done. The song almost sounds like a windup toy running down at the end as it just slowly, faithfully grinds into silence.
I don't love the Lemonheads, probably never will. But I love this song. Because the band knew all along what it was and what it wasn't. And let it exist as the sweet slice of poppy goodness it was meant to be.
All three of our loyal readers may have noticed it's been a bit somnolent 'round these parts for the past year or two, at least in comparison to the first four years of the blog—the dropoff is pretty precipitous.
There are, of course, a lot of reasons for that. Life, as it will, intrudes. Novelty wears off. We run out of semi-pseudo-insightful insights to inflict upon an innocent world. The anti-Christ took office.
But upon reflection, a large part of it's because the death of David Bowie hit us pretty hard. Hard enough that a good friend who knows me well pinged me the next day and asked, simply, "so, nothing but Bowie or no Bowie at all?" The answer was pretty much no Bowie at all, for nearly a week. I just couldn't. (DT, on the other hand, went the opposite route, listening to pretty much nothing but DB.) This is the hardest I've been rocked by a musician's death since Kurt Cobain, in no small part because—to some extent, as with Cobain—it was so unexpected.
Fuckin' Bowie, man. He headfaked us yet again. After his heart attack in 2004, he virtually disappeared almost entirely for nine damn years. A very few live appearances here, a very few guest recordings there, a delightful turn as Nikola Tesla, but nothing substantive. And it seemed like that was that. And that was okay. Bowie had by that point more than given us more than anyone could ever expect from one artist.
I've been listening to an awful lot of Bowie recently—surprise surprise, I know, that I should have turned away from my temporary Thin White Duke asceticism and gone entirely in the other direction—and I realized that on his last tour, when he wanted to reward the audience by playing an old favorite (out of, say, 25 songs played on a given night, often no more than half and sometimes quite a bit less would be from his most popular period, with the majority being "newer" material completely unfamiliar to the casual fan),
And then out of nowhere he released a single and then an album and then just before his death his most acclaimed new album in decades...and then he's gone. Brilliant and unpredictable to the last. Dammit.
***
Here's a piece I wrote a few years back about the song which is often my favorite Bowie song, as well as the one I generally think is probably his best. When it comes to an artist of Bowie's stature, best is rarely easy to definitively pin down, and varies according to whatever metric the judge is going by. And when it comes to our most-beloved artists, which song or album is the favorite doesn't always track with what's the best. And yet this song, more than almost any of his others, is almost always in my personal top five for both categories, and often in the pole position.
***
So I read one of those “best of” lists recently. Silly as those lists tend to be, I do love them so, and not just because they frequently give me an excuse to get angry. But this one—a list of “best covers ever”—was worse than most, if only for the inclusion of The Wallflower’s version of David Bowie’s “Heroes.”
A great cover brings something new to the table. Sometimes, as with the Beatles version of “Twist and Shout,” it brings an irrepressible energy, and perhaps the greatest single vocal from one of the greatest singers in rock history, a performance so powerful you can literally hear his voice shredding by the end. Others successfully recast the composition itself, pulling it from genre to another, as with Jimi Hendrix’s cover of “All Along the Watchtower,” a reconceptualization so effective that Bob Dylan himself adopted it.
The Wallflowers do none of this. Instead, they perform the song as though it were a full band karaoke.
It’s a fine performance, in some respects: the drummer is your typical 90s post-grunge drummer, which is to say, he bashes enthusiastically. The aural background relies much more heavily on mildly distorted guitars than Bowie’s original, with its emphasis on synthesizers. If the musical backing doesn’t add to anything to our understanding of the song, neither is it especially embarrassing.
That’s left up to singer and bandleader Jakob Dylan. He starts the song with the kind of jaded, slacker ennui that’s practically a parody of the era. Later, when the “emotional” part kicks in, he can finally be arsed to sing above a seductive whisper, but even here his voice has a kind of blank, dead-eye stare quality to it. It seems to imply he doesn’t mean any of it, but his phrasing of the final chorus, with its long, drawn-out assertion that they can indeed “be heeeeeeeeroes” would belie that interpretation. The result is a bunch of pretty sound and half-hearted attempts at fury which mean less than nothing.
Generic mid-90s and flawed as their version is, it’s made even worse by the video, a mix of lip-synching and footage from the Godzilla remake. Bowie, of course, was one of the first artists to realize and explore the possibilities of video, as well as the most nakedly savvy about the potential for commercialization of not just one’s art but one’s own self, as when he sold stock in his own back catalog. But this video make it absolutely blatant that the Wallflowers viewed the song as nothing but commerce, with not even a nod to actual art, as Dylan sings about being a hero while casually dodging Godzilla’s tail—a particularly humorously unironic bit of stupidity, as Dylan is, in fact, doing nothing heroic, not even bothering to warn his band members that they’re about to be crushed to death. It’s crass and vacant, which makes its inclusion on any “best of” list perplexing, to say the least.
Compare and contrast Bowie’s various versions. His original studio version has a cold, mechanical backing, made up largely of washes of synthesizer, and highlighted by Robert Fripp’s slippery lead guitar. His opening vocal, detached and chilly, fits in perfectly, its resigned air somewhat frightening.
As the song progresses, his emotions begin to change, to become rougher and more open. In the second verse he laughs gently, as though the idea of making plans when the future is so uncertain—and the most likely outcome unpleasant—is darkly ironic, yet all the more attractive for that. “We can be heroes,” he says to the song's fantasy queen, “forever and ever. What you say?” The only response is Fripp’s echoing guitar lines. Come the third verse, Bowie takes his doomed daydream even further, wishing his dream girl could swim like a dolphin, convinced they could be heroes if only she could.
And then he gets to the fourth verse and Bowie lets loose vocally in a way he rarely had before or would after, taking the melody up an octave and almost shouting his determination that they should be rulers, if only for a day. The fifth verse clues us in to what it is that has him so beaten down, and yet determined to fight back—he and the female to whom he's singing are standing in the shadow of the Berlin Wall, and soldiers are firing and reality has crashed down and there’s no chance they’re going to make it: they’re never, ever going to be king and queen, they’re not going to swim like dolphins and they’re not going to be heroes. And, yet, in his refusal to meekly acquiesce, even if in his own heart, there is something heroic, something noble, in his defiantly doomed stand.
Or so it seems. Because after you think the song’s over, a last verse comes in out of nowhere. “We’re nothing,” he admits. “And no one will help us. Maybe we’re lying.” There’s a reason the punks never turned on Bowie, the way they did the Beatles and Stones and Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd—this is every bit as true to the spirit of punk as anything by the Clash or the Pistols.
It’s instructive to note how Bowie himself has approached the song in subsequent years. During his fabulously successful 1983 Serious Moonlight tour, he approached it, as with most of his catalog, in a sort of Elvis-Goes-to-Vegas manner. But whereas that same approach was horrifying when Dylan tried it in the late 70s, in Bowie’s case it felt more like an affectionate look at his own history, sharing it at last with the mass audience he’d so long craved and sought; because Bowie was so famous and critically acclaimed, it's easy to forget that until the Let's Dance LP, he'd only ever had one real U.S. hit single, and that had been eight years earlier: an eternity in pop terms.
The performance is kicked along by Tony Thompson, the most dominant, aggressive drummer he’d ever play with; Dennis Davies is one of the most underrated drummers in the history of rock and roll, with a resume only a handful of drummers could match, while Zach Alford and Sterling Campbell may actually have been more technically accomplished, but couldn't compete with Thompson's accomplishments and the subsequent power he held, in terms of both importance and prestige. If the performance is a long way from its origins, it’s still enjoyable—the jaunty horns may undercut, rather than provide a fruitful juxtaposition of, the lyric’s theme…but, on the other hand, you know: horns. Horns are pretty much always good. And pastel, smoothly dancing Bowie was such a change, such an enjoyable new character from the chameleon.
But compare that to his acoustic performance at Neil Young's annual Bridge School Benefit in 1996. Proving—as though there were necessary—that acoustic doesn't have to mean laidback, Bowie is intense, whispery, almost defeated at times, all of which is appropriate to the song and never less than gripping. This is, perhaps, sorta kinda what the Wallflowers were going for, and proves that, with the proper approach and a ton of talent, it was indeed possible...just not by them.
And then there's Bowie's treatment of the song on his 2003 Reality tour. Only about a third of the songs during a typical show were from the most popular parts of his songbook, with the vast majority being pulled from his less than blockbuster albums of the 1990s and 2000s—an interestingly deliberate act of non-pandering. “Heroes,” would be one of the last songs of the show, and it’s presented almost as a gift to the fans, a thank you to them for sitting through, say, the lesser known “Never Get Old,” rather than, say, “Space Oddity.”
There's quite a bit of self-assured banter with the crowd before he cues the band. But note the way he enters concurrent with the band, rather than allowing the typical musical intro to tip off the crowd. The backing is relaxed, sparse, and laid back, almost an unplugged treatment, with few of the prominent synths and, initially, none of the classic guitar hook. He smiles, he croons, a master toying with…something. The song? The crowd? His own mortality? Although he couldn't have known at the time, this was, after all, Bowie’s last tour.
But then the band ramps up a bit after the first chorus and by the time of the second verse, he seems to get more serious. The playfulness disappears, replaced by a more searching demeanor. This isn’t the Bowie of the 1980s revue. This is closer to the tormented Bowie of the 70s Berlin grimness.
After the second chorus, the band is fully kicked in, and by the third verse, Bowie himself seems intense, searching. And the fourth verse has Bowie utterly committed, but with a kind of fierce joy.
We get to the triumphantly repeated chorus, and he grins and claps…and then comes that final verse, and for the first time, he grabs the microphone and walks away from center stage. “We’re nothing,” he sings, off to the side and closer to the audience than before. “And no one can help us. Maybe we’re lying…you’d better not stay. We can be heroes, just for one day.”
And boom. The music ends on his drawn out last note.
The band kicks back in for another round of sing along, and Bowie joyfully holds the microphone out for the crowd to sing along—but it’s an odd place to have ended, even if the moment’s swept away.
That’s with the hindsight of repeated viewings, though. What strikes you immediately is just how happy, how beautiful, even how, yes, triumphant Bowie seems during those final moments.
Of course, one of the things that always must be kept in mind when analyzing David Bowie is how openly chameleonic he is—he’s always been open about being fascinated by the idea of personas, changing them every album or two. He’s interested in approaching rock and roll the way a writer approaches a novel—as a means to tell a story and explore various ideas, and not just to sing one’s diary. With his theatre background, it’s impossible to know when, if ever, he “means” something, the way we always assumed, when we were teenagers, our musical heroes meant the things they sang. So with Bowie, when you find an especially impassioned performance, it’s simply not possible to ascertain whether he was really that passionate during that particular performance or whether he was just doing an especially convincing job of being passionate.
David Bowie’s a genius when it comes to synthesizing disparate elements in a larger and more effective whole, and with this song he reached the kind of rarified air only the very greatest can ever hope to even glimpse. That lightweights like the Wallflowers even considered attempting this song illustrates as well as anything could just how hopelessly overmatched they were before they even started.
As a wise man once said, you come at the king, you best not miss.
One of the great things about punk, past all of the anger and the pathos and the defiance and so much else, is that so many of the standard bearer punk rock songs, when you cut to the core, are just so melodic. Think Patti Smith at her best. Or the Stooges with "Search and Destroy," among others. Or basically the entire Ramones catalogue. The list goes on, from "London Calling" to "American Idiot" and everything else in between. All of these young (and not so young) punks had something loud and urgent to say, but dammit if you couldn't sing along with it while they did. Or even, in some cases, dance to it.
That's what I love about today's entry in our occasional "Favorite Song Friday" series.
Favorite Song Friday: People Who Died — The Jim Carroll Band
This is punk rock. I mean this is punk rock with a capitol damn P. Jim Carroll was many things and was really really good at all of them. He was a neo-beat poet who grew up worshiping the likes of Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs. He was a best-selling author whose The Basketball Diaries remains as visceral a depiction of the urban nightmare of despair and addiction as anyone has ever written. He hung with and had the respect of the the proto-punk New York crowd, the likes of Patti Smith and Lou Reed and Robert Maplethorpe. He was a young basketball star who lived through addiction and survived addiction, with the scars to prove it. And in his spare time he fronted a punk/new wave band, The Jim Carroll Band, that while they weren't quite The Clash or The Ramones or Black Flag, for a brief while in the early 80s they were pretty damn good and a pretty damn clear representation of what New York City punk rock was really all about. Carroll's poet's soul, his storyteller's mind and, yes, his punk rocker's heart resulted in at least one truly great piece of punk artistry, "People Who Died."
There's not much more to this song that a churning 4/4 beat, a breakneck bassline, a couple of very tasty guitar solos and an eight-stanza glimpse into Jim Carroll's personal definition of hell. "People Who Died" is a literal list of what the title says; people in his life who died young and painfully, either from disease, ODing, war, murder or suicide. Every inch of the eight verses (three of which are repeated at the end) gives us a rapid-fire memorial of people in life whom he lost.
Carroll doesn't really bother trying to sing, he more raps and rasps his way through the hyperpaced list of the lost. And the words are so tragic and gripping you practically want him to stop, to say "No mas." But then comes the chorus and the song shifts from the frenetic poetic dirge to a fist-pumping rally cry to the lost. "Those are people who died, died!" he shouts/sings, "Those are people who died-died! They were all my friends! And they died!"
You shouldn't be able to dance to those words. Or sing along with passion to those words. Or allow those words to liberate you and make you rise from street-level where all the dead bodies lay to a place beyond death and despair where actual life can be celebrated. There's no way that should be possible in a song that is so riddled with death from opening to close. But you can. You can because Jim Carroll didn't just write down a list of people who died. He wrote a song to remember, mourn and, yes, celebrate them.
And read the lyrics. This is gutter poetry at its very finest, something only someone who had lived it and somehow emerged from it could possibly write:
Teddy sniffing glue, he was 12 years old Fell from a roof on East 2-9. Kathy was 11 when she pulled the plug 26 reds and a bottle of wine. Bobby got leukemia, 14 years old He looked 65 when he died, he was a friend of mine. Those are people who died, died! Those are people who died, died! Those are people who died, died! Those are people who died, died! They were all my friends! And they died! G-burg and Georgie let their gimmicks go rotten So they died of hepatitis in Upper Manhattan. Sly in Vietnam took a bullet to the head Bobby OD'd on Drano on the night he was wed. They were two more friends of mine, two more friends that died! Those are people who died, died! Those are people who died, died! Those are people who died, died! Those are people who died, died! They were all my friends! And they died! Mary took a dry dive from a hotel room Bobby hung himself from his cell in the tombs. Judy jumped in front of a subway train Eddie got slit in his jugular vein. Eddie, I miss you more than all the others - and I salute you brother! Those are people who died, died! Those are people who died, died! Those are people who died, died! Those are people who died, died! All of my friends, they died! Herbie pushed Tony from a Boys' Club roof Tony thought his rage was just some goof. But Herbie sure gave Tony some, some bitchin' proof. And Herbie said, "Tony, can you fly?" But Tony couldn't fly. Tony died! Those are people who died, died! Those are people who died, died! Those are people who died, died! Those are people who died, died! They were all my friends! And they died! Brian got busted on a narco rap He beat the rap by rattin' on some bikers. He said, "Hey I know it's dangerous, "But it sure beats Rikers." But the next day he got offed, by the very same bikers! Those are people who died, died! Those are people who died, died! Those are people who died, died! Those are people who died, died! They were all my friends! And they died! Teddy sniffing glue, he was 12 years old Fell from a roof on East 2-9. Kathy was 11 when she pulled the plug 26 reds and a bottle of wine. Bobby got leukemia, 14 years old He looked 65 when he died, he was a friend of mine. Those are people who died, died! Those are people who died, died! Those are people who died, died! Those are people who died, died! They were all my friends! And they died! G-burg and Georgie let their gimmicks go rotten So they died of hepatitis in Upper Manhattan. Sly in Vietnam took a bullet to the head Bobby OD'd on Drano on the night he was wed. They were two more friends of mine, two more friends that died! Those are people who died, died! Those are people who died, died! Those are people who died, died! Those are people who died, died! They were all my friends! And they died! Mary took a dry dive from a hotel room Bobby hung himself from his cell in the tombs. Judy jumped in front of a subway train Eddie got slit in his jugular vein. Eddie, I miss you more than all the others - this song is for you my brother!
Those are people who died, died! Those are people who died, died! Those are people who died, died! Those are people who died, died! All of my friends, they died!
Jim Carroll died in 2009 at 60, far too young but, I suppose, way longer than he may have ever expected to live given his descent in his young life into heroin and hell. But he left behind a diverse and indelible canon of work that any writer would have been proud to call their own.
"People Who Died" was part of that canon. A big part. A song for the dead and dying. Written and delivered by someone who was and remains very much alive in a world he helped to shape.
I've often thought of Journey as the anti-Beatles. Not that they were against everything or anything the Fabs stood for or represented—just the opposite, in fact; even without knowing much about what the band members believe in their heart of hearts, I'm quite confident all of them grew up loving the lads. No, I think of them as the anti-Beatles because each and every member of the most popular lineup of the band (although, really, it goes for the musicians who were members before they got really popular, as well as the ones who came after their heyday) is an absolute monster on his instrument. I mean, seriously, you just don't get better, really, on a technical level, than Steve Perry, Neal Schon or Steve Smith. And yet, unlike the Beatles, none of whom were technically all that accomplished—save, perhaps Paul McCartney, on bass—Journey managed to produce nothing transcendent, and little that's really, objectively, of lasting value.
Harsh, I know. So let me temper it with this caveat: a handful of their songs remain wildly popular, and I fully admit to liking several, including "Separate Ways," despite (perhaps) its staggeringly terrible in a slow-motion-train-wreck-can't-look-away manner.
And then there's "Faithfully." Another entry in the "oh, life is so hard on the road when you're a fabulously wealthy and popular musician" category, I absolutely adore this song unreservedly and without the slightest hint of irony—no mean feat, when you consider the mustache in its accompanying video.
Now, usually on our Favorite Song Fridays, we over some sort of analysis, whether it's a close reading of the lyrics, or perhaps our ham-handed stab at delving into the chord progression in some sad pseudo-music theory attempt. Not here. I got nothin', other than to mention Smith's typically spectacular drumming, and the fact that the lyrics are straightforward, which helps them scalpel their way directly into your heart, or at least, into my heart.
One funny note, though: apparently, Prince called up "Faithfully" composer Jonathan Cain, immediately after The Purple One had recorded "Purple Rain," to see if that masterpiece was too close to the Journey song. Cain assured the lil fella that other than sharing some chords, it was not, in fact, too close. For some reason, that makes me love the song even more, as well as Prince, and who knew that was even possible?
This may be cheating ever so slightly as I'd never heard this song before five minutes ago but the fact remains it's the song I love more dearly than any other song I've ever heard before. And somehow the video is even better.
Look. Let's this get this right out of the way up front: I'm not saying this is a great song. I am, however, saying that it's far better than its reputation. And, moreover, I'm saying I love it so very hard.
Sure, its production is ridonkulous, and I say that as someone who has loved unabashedly and unreservedly many of Hugh Padgham's records. And yet it's hard to deny that the production is so 1980s it should be wearing parachute pants.
But it's not all the production's fault. Macca's style is in full bloom here, for good and bad. The good is that, of course, it's an insanely catchy song, with a bridge that most good artists would kill a dozen homeless people for in order to use it as a chorus. And the verse is even catchier. And neither comes close to how catchy the chorus itself actually is. And his voice sounds great, even for him—once you get past the silly pseudo-accent he adopts for the count-in. And, frankly, the overt sexuality of the lyric is somewhere between bracing and kind of embarrassing, and good for him. (I think.)
But then he throws in bits like the "Oklahoma" part and what the hell is with that? First of all, structurally, it's weird—the kind of weird he seems to revel in, as though he'd mastered the perfect pop form long ago and so has to deliberately try to sabotage songs in order to keep things interesting. (To be fair, he's probably not wrong.)
Anyhoo, the most famous musician in the world can do many things, but convince someone he's a boy from Oklahoma ain't one of 'em. I mean...look at the expression on the woman's face at 2:14. She tries to be cool and pretend she's not utterly stoked to be in the presence of a damn Beatle...but she can't. No one can. And no one's not fully aware that Sir Paul McCartney was born and bred 4475 miles from the Sooner State. And then, to make things worse, he has the silly drum break, apparently determined to outdo (or perhaps indo) John Fogerty on "Zanz Kant Dance."
Wow. That's a lot of negativity from a guy who claims to like the song. And I don't really have all that many arguments to counterbalance the criticisms. Except this: it's Paul. And all that stuff is true, this is kind of a lousy record, well below "Silly Love Song" standards (and I'm not kidding about that). But it's still got Paul damn McCartney unleashing that impossibly great voice on a fantastic melody, the kind which inspired the brilliant Douglas Adams to write:
Arthur could almost imagine Paul McCartney sitting with his feet up by the fire on evening, humming it to Linda and wondering what to buy with the proceeds, and thinking probably Essex.
Also the video's a hoot.
Supposedly this is literally the first time McCartney had ridden the underground since 1962. That's pretty believable, but would also make a dandy urban legend. Either way, watching the reaction of people realizing they're near a Beatle just doesn't really get old, and he's so damn charming that his deep-seated need to please and be liked somehow doesn't grate (too much). Also, his hair looked better back before he started dyeing it.
So. Yeah. Not a great song. But at least every few years I'm hit with the urge to listen to it and whenever I do I find myself playing it a half dozen times because really some people just wanna fill the world with silly love songs, and what's wrong with that?
One of my favorite songs he ever wrote is, in fact, one of
his greatest: 1968's “America,” from the wondrous Bookends album.
It’s such a beautiful piece of music and a such a personal and moving story;
two young lovers making their way across the country in search of…something. It’s
a heartfelt travelogue where the search is everything, to the point where we
really don’t even know what the destination is. Nor do we need to, I don’t
think.
And as much as any Simon and Garfunkel song, "America" I think truly shows just how essential Arthur Garfunkel was to the final product. Sure, Paul did the songwriting, played guitar, took an awful lot of the lead vocals. But listen to what Arthur's voice does to this song. His harmonies make it soar and lend it a level of soul that is almost impossible to imagine would be there without him.
But a recent listen of the song had me thinking about the songwriting first and foremost, and what an unusual turn it was for Paul Simon. This is one of the best examples I have ever heard of blank verse, minimalist songwriting, and it's not something Paul did too often.
Let us be lovers, we'll marry our fortunes together
I've got some real estate here in my bag
So we bought a pack of cigarettes
And Mrs. Wagner pies
And we walked off to look for America
"Kathy," I said as we boarded a Greyhound in Pittsburgh
"Michigan seems like a dream to me now"
It took me four days to hitchhike from Saginaw
I've come to look for America
Laughing on the bus, playing games with the faces
She said the man in the gabardine suit was a spy
I said, "Be careful, his bowtie is really a camera"
"Toss me a cigarette, I think there's one in my raincoat"
"We smoked the last one an hour ago"
So I looked at the scenery
She read a magazine
And the moon rose over an open field
"Kathy I'm lost," I said, though I knew she was sleeping
"I'm empty and aching and I don't know why"
Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike
They've all come to look for America
All come to look for America
All come to look for America
Now one of Paul's trump cards has always been to take an array of songwriting styles and make them work.
"Homeward Bound" is more of a straightforward
rhyme scheme, with some internal rhyme for good measure ("...all my work
comes back to me in shades of mediocrity...").
"The Boxer" goes
for poetic flourish, particularly in the final verse, which is astounding when positioned with the straight narrative that largely proceeds it. It is also largely unrhymed until the end of each verse, which
is incredibly difficult in its own right.
"The Sounds of Silence" has no chorus (like "Homeward Bound" does and which the "Lie la lie" part ably represents on "The Boxer") and instead depends on a series of couplets which lead up to a steady reveal at the end of each verse.
"Graceland" embraces pop as much as it does its African sensibilities and stands as a more traditional, middle-aged update of the search we first hear about in "America."
But "America"
is written blankly as a straightforward narrative, not a rhyme in
sight, and it works to a tee. It sounds like something Hemingway would write, if Hemingway were a songwriter.
Just look at the fourth stanza as a perfect example. It's downright journalistic, no images or metaphors to describe what's happening, just plain voice, first-person reporting, and it's staggering in its simplicity. Particularly considering Paul Simon's gift for being such an intricate and imagistic writer.
"Toss me a cigarette, I think there's one in my raincoat."
"We smoked the last one an hour ago."
So I looked at the scenery,
She read a magazine,
And the moon rose over an open field.
It's helped, of course, by an irresistible melody and, again, some of the most breathtaking interplay between the two singers we've ever heard. And it sets up for what follows; one of the saddest and most devastating lines rock-n-roll has ever produced. No drama, no bombast, just one more simple statement. And it hits like a hammer.
"Kathy I'm lost," I said, though I knew she was sleeping.
"I'm empty and aching and I don't know why."
It's a gift to write like this, because it's so hard to mesh blank verse with melody and make it work. It's an even greater gift to have this be only one of the types of writing at which you excel. Paul Simon, flaws and annoyances aside, once occupied some very rare, very special terrain as a songwriter. He surely did.
Call it a vast oversimplification on my part. But even with a decent knowledge of the huge and wondrous canon of rock-n-roll lyrics, I can’t think of a song that opens up with more of a lyrical gut-punch, with a more clearly defined and blunt statement of purpose.
Yes there are equals. “Like a Rolling Stone.” “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” “Tomorrow Never Knows.” Patti Smith’s “Gloria.” The Who’s “I Can See For Miles.” "Born in the U.S.A." I get that. They are all equally as visceral, as pointed, as clear and concise in intent from their opening lines.
Just no more than Sinead O’Connor is in the words that open one of her best, most personal and most raw and pointed songs, “The Emperor’s New Clothes.”
The song is laced with acid and spite, seething anger and frustration. And it comes with the full knowledge that she is a part of this story, that she holds a stake in all that has happened. It’s not victimization; it’s realization and self-reporting. It’s about love that’s not there and anger that is difficult to express. That’s “The Emperor’s New Clothes”—that’s what Sinead is doing in this 25-year-old song.
And that’s why those opening lines floor me. The juxtaposition of the sad regret of the first line with the unhinged madness of the second line is a warning shot for what’s to come. It will not be sentimental. It will not be wistful. It will not be apologetic. But it will be honest and it will—it will—be something we won’t forget.
That’s why in the old school lesson vein of a “topic sentence”—make your intent clear from the outset, Mr. Marcus always advised—those opening lines are so perfect.
The rest of the song is a marvel. Two chords, from opening to close, that never deviate. The dance beat comes with a not-at-all subtle layer of menace. Sinead’s voice, always a fascinating instrument in her ability to go from vulnerable to commanding within nanoseconds (Mikal Gilmore of Rolling Stone called it going from "ethereal to feral," and he was very right), stays more towards the understated side mostly throughout, but it drips with pathos and soul-bearing desperation.
And the writing is so…primal. This isn’t Sylvia Plath, but it does come across like a Sylvia Plath rough draft, or maybe even a page of notes. A sampling:
I see plenty of clothes that I like But I won't go anywhere nice for a while All I want to do is just sit here And write it all down and rest for a while
Everyone can see what's going on They laugh 'cause they know they're untouchable Not because what I said was wrong
Whatever it may bring I will live my own policies I will sleep with a clear conscience I will sleep in peace
Maybe it sounds mean But I really don't think so You asked for the truth and I told you
Through their own words They will be exposed And they've got a severe case of The emperor's new clothes
These are words that need to get on the page now. Not tomorrow, not when they are fully formed, not after they’ve been pondered and thought-about for awhile. This is a bleeding, struggling need to get these thoughts out without any more hesitation, whether they or anyone else is ready or not. This is as confessional as confessional songwriting gets in its sense of urgency and immediacy.
(I haven't even mentioned the video, which it equally jarring. Sinead in some ways almost seems to want to blend into the background, clad in a shapeless black tunic, remaining largely expressionless as she reluctantly half-dances/careens he way across the stage in front of a small, collegial audience. But that face, those eyes. That's what you keep seeing; you can't look away.)
For that reason and others, “The Emperor's New Clothes” this is one of the bravest, most brutally honest songs I have ever heard. From one of the bravest and most brutally honest—for better and for worst—songwriters/performers I have ever heard.
And it all starts with that opening line.
It seems years since you held the baby While I wrecked the bedroom
It might not be as poetic and soaring as, “Once upon a time you dressed so fine, threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn’t you?” But it’s no less shocking. It may even be moreso.
One of the first things I remember learning about the Kinks was that Ray Davies was an extraordinary songwriter, one of the all-time greats, with an unsurpassed eye for detail and a penchant for looking at unusual subjects with incisive delicacy, or standard subjects from unusual points of view.
Since at the time, the only Kinks songs I knew I knew were "You Really Got Me" and "Lola," I simply took it on faith.
Turns out, for once, I was right to. All those things were true, and more. The Kinks are one of those bands that most rock fans know a good half-dozen or more songs, and that's enough for them. But, in my experience, the deeper you dig into their discography, the bigger a fan you tend to become...to a point. Delve into their 60s output, going all the way back to their blues heavy debut, and you're likely in for life. Gaze too deeply into the abyss of their early 70s RCA concept albums and you risk overload and burnout, although for some it's entirely possible it'll be their favorite section of the oeuvre. Grow up in middle America in the 70s as a fan of classic rock, and it's their Arista LPs from the second half of the decade that might resonate most fully.
I like pretty much all of it. (Preservation Acts I-IX were a bit too much for me, to my shame.) But over the years, maybe my single favorite Kinks song is this 1984 semi-hit.
ensemble dance in videos has really come quite the long way, hasn't it
I liked their previous few hits, "Come Dancing" and "Don't Forget to Dance" quite a bit. If nothing else, it was a hoot seeing these British Invasion vets on MTV right next to the likes of Duran Duran and Adam Ant, especially given how defiantly retro those dancehall tunes were. But "Do It Again," now...that was rock and roll. Nothing wrong with genres that aren't rock, once you've accepted they aren't rock and are therefore inferior. (I kid, I kid...mostly.) But still and all, to see one of the main godfathers of punk kicking ass again 20 years on? Even as a teenager, I thought that was pretty badass.
But it took me another decade to realize that this wasn't just Ray Davies slumming with his take on the Rolling Stones pump-'em-up anthem "Start Me Up." It was something like that, sure. But it's hard to believe (a post-1965, at least) Davies would be capable of writing something as one-dimensional and ham-handed as that Stones gem, even if he tried. (More likely, he'd find himself exploring a protagonist whose lack of impulse control leads him into sordid adventures worthy of the Marquis de Sade...or perhaps a pipe-fitter whose wandering eye and love of alcohol led to the implosion of his marriage and alienation from his beloved children.)
So with "Do It Again." It is the kinda of get stoked song beloved by those who program time-out music for the NBA. But it's more than that. It's hard to believe it's not at least partially autobiographical, especially given that original Kinks drummer Mick Avory—the last non-Davies member of the band to have been there from the beginning—was fired after 20 years during the making of the album. Not to mention the simple fact that Davies was now 40 and looking around at his compadres—the Who had broken up, John Lennon was dead, the Stones were...whatever they were by that point (A: massive and rich and shitty)—he must have felt the impending, inexorable doom of time.
But it's so much wider in scope than that. "Do It Again" manages to be straightforward anthem, pointed analysis of the never-ending work cycle and matter-of-fact character study, all at the same time.
Standing in the middle of nowhere Wondering how to begin Lost between tomorrow and yesterday Between now and then
And now we're back where we started Here we go round again Day after day I get up and I say I better do it again
So far, it would seem to be largely autobiographical, a still popular but possibly fading rock star facing band turmoil and the need for more product, exhorting himself to yet again gird his loins and do what once upon a time came so easily.
Where are all the people going Round and round till we reach the end One day leading to another Get up go out do it again
Then it's back where you started Here we go round again Back where you started Come on do it again
This sounds more like a worker bee of some sort—perhaps in a factory, maybe in a cubicle—looking at the meaningless, faceless, endless nature of so many jobs in modern society, the pointlessness of this utter necessity.
And you think today is going to be better Change the world and do it again Give it all up and start all over You say you will but you don't know when
Here the tone shifts and it's easy to imagine the singer is addressing a more youthful listener, perhaps someone just past the apex of optimism, or someone who's always just about to go to the gym, stop smoking, finally finish That Thing. You know, That Thing you really want to finish and are going to. Any. Day. Now.
Then it's back where you started Here we go round again Day after day I get up and I say Come on better do it again
The days go by and you wish you were a different guy Different friends and a new set of clothes You make alterations and affect a new post A new house a new car a new job a new nose But it's superficial and it's only skin deep Cause the voices in your head keep shouting in your sleep Get back, get back
Once again, the focus changes, and it closes inward, gets more personal, less socio-economic. And while it's extremely unlikely Davies had that year's earlier mega-hit, "Dancing in the Dark," in mind when writing this verse, the similarities are striking.
Back where you started, here we go round again Back where you started, come on do it again
Back where you started, here we go round again Day after day I get up and I say, do it again Do it again Day after day I get up and I say, do it again
And we're out, ending on the somewhat precarious subtonic, rather than resolving to the more common tonic, with its sense of stability. And what we're left with is a general sense of unease, all pounded into us through the scalpel of one of Davies's catchiest melodies, and powered by the never surpassed and rarely even close to equalled assault of Dave Davies guitar playing, here in all its stabbing, distorted glory.
The conventional wisdom has it that George Harrison, with his first proper solo album, All Things Must Pass, recorded not only his best LP, but in the view of many, the best solo record by any former Beatle ever. It sounds crazy, the idea of anyone recording an album better than something John Lennon or Paul McCartney could put out—sorry, Ringo; you know I love you—until you actually listen to All Things Must Pass, at which point a coherent, convincing rebuttal becomes significantly harder.
The conventional wisdom has it that George was then more or less tapped out. His next album, Living in the Material World, was good, maybe even very good, but not great, and certainly not the masterpiece All Things Must Pass was. And from then on, more or less, each album got weaker and weaker, some featuring a few good tracks and lots of filler, and a few not even that.
It's not entirely without merit. When Harrison played his one (sadly all too brief) post-Dark Horse tour in the early 90s, the bulk of the set was drawn from his Beatles days, his first solo LP and (unfortunately) his most recent, Cloud 9, with the 7 albums that came in between represented by at most a song each, and in most cases, none at all. Which would seem to indicate George himself had a pretty decent idea of the relative merits of each of his releases.
But then there's this utterly perfect pop gem. Originally written for Ronnie Spector, and recorded for but not released on All Things Must Pass, it sat in a drawer, forgotten, for half a decade before George finished it off for 1975's Extra Texture. Which just.
How could anyone lose track of a song as flawless as this? Its sparse lyrics say all that need be said, which manages to avoid Harrison's tendency to get a tad preachy. And while Phil Spector could undoubtedly have made it sound like, well, a Spectorian grand production, it actually doesn't sound all that much like a Spector song at its base. Instead, it sounds like the perfect missing link between vintage mid-60s Motown and soon to be released smash hit with all-time great bassline "Silly Love Songs," by fellow former fab Paul McCartney.
Although a hit at the time, "You" has been forgotten over the years, which is a shame. (On the other hand, given what a punchline "Silly Love Songs" has become, maybe there are worse fates.)
Nostalgia is such a tricksy baggins. One tiny misstep and you plummet into precious sophomoric navel-gazing, and understandably, since generally nostalgia means looking back at a time when you were less world-weary, less pessimistic, more, well, young.
Morrissey stays well on the right side of that line with his sparse lyrics to this b-side, ever so lightly sketching out just the faintest of images, dropping hints as to what may (or may not) have happened with the most delicate of brush strokes, the lack of much concrete detail enabling the listener to identity more easily.
Johnn Marr's lovely fingerpicking and Andy Rourke's always wonderful bass provide a delicate and unwavering support for some of Morrissey's most gentle and, especially towards the end, unmannered vocals, his baritone leaving no doubt as to his adulthood, and yet his wistful wonderings of "are you still there? Or have you moved away?" followed by wordless pinings manage to make it clear that there are some things you never fully leave behind.
I would rather not go back to the old house
I would rather not go back to the old house
There's too many bad memories
Too many memories
When you cycled by here began all my dreams
The saddest thing I've ever seen
And you never knew how much I really liked you
Because I never even told you
Oh, but I meant to
Are you still there?
Or have you moved away?
Or have you moved away?
I would love to go back to the old house
But I never will
I never will
As a Bob Dylan fan, I'm not supposed to like this song. That's my understanding of the conventional wisdom, at least. It's smack dab in the middle of Bob Dylan's least beloved—and, objectively, least plain good—period, a span which did have some high points (hello, Infidels!) but an awfully lotta dross, whether it was his religious albums or sub-par live records or what have you—and there was more than a little what-have-you. And it's off Empire Burlesque, an album which is never, ever going to break into any Dylan fan's Top 10 and, really, shouldn't ever even come close, my personal fondness for it aside.
What's more, the earlier version of this song, cut for the aforementioned Infidels, and known as "Someone's Got a Hold of My Heart," is often thought to be superior, with the much more produced and rewritten "Tight Connection" considered overproduced and, well, kinda jive. What's more, the lyrics to "Tight Connection" have been criticized as being overly dependent upon quotes from film noir movies.
I don't buy any of it. Certainly Dylan's made more than a few production mistakes in his time (although considering he's released 35 studio albums, how could he not?). But I remained unswayed by the critiques, finding the song's lyrics more evocative and powerful than most of his material from the time. (I mean, a mere six years after Slow Train Coming, his lead single off his new album contains the line "I never could drink that blood and to call it wine"?) Most of all, of course, is that underneath everything is one of his catchiest ever melodies, with tasty guitar from Mick Taylor and anchored by the nearly peerless rhythm section of Sly and Robbie.
And yet, perhaps even more than that, the song contains some of my favorite singing of any Dylan on record. An oddly overlooked element of Dylan's genius is that he is an outstanding musician. His lyrics get the lion's share of the attention, and understandably, but he's an eminently capable keyboardist, a good harpist and an excellent guitarist. And as anyone who'd listened to hundreds of hours of his live performances (pre-2000s, at least) could tell you, his sense of pitch is far better than most would expect, given his notoriously unconventional timbre. Yes, he's one of the premier practitioners of sprechstimme, in which the individual notes of a melody are only lightly touched upon in a semi-speaking manner—but an opera singer will admit it's a far harder technique to pull off than you'd expect, given how prevalent it is in rock and hip-hop.
On "Tight Connection," he veers back and forth between straightforward singing and a type of acting, where his tone will become mildly skeptical or dangerously seductive or slightly baffled. The really outstanding feature of his singing, though, is how he plays with the beat, often hanging back, like a good soul or funk drummer, then occasionally rushing the beat ever so slightly before hanging back again, and then suddenly hit right on the beat (or even a series of heavily syncopated notes), to emphasize that wherever he's placing the notes are entirely by design and not just haphazard luck (or from half-assing it).
I wish there were a video up on YouTube that wasn't, well, the official video, since I don't think the Miami Vice look ol' Bob was then sporting does the song any favors, although the Springsteenesque look he's also rockin' in places, what with the blonde Tele and leather jacket and baseball cap's pretty amusing. (And, yes, I know Dylan was well known for his leather half a decade before Springsteen even landed a record deal.) And the middle female in the karaoke band is staggeringly attractive—and of course she's the one that somehow seems to sorta kinda morph into Dylan at the end? Like I said, the video's not the best way to experience the song, but needs must when the devil drives, as Dylan never said.
(For the sake of comparison, here's the original version. It's good, no question, and its singing does seem more nakedly impassioned, but more than anything the song in this form seems to be the answer to the question no one asked, which was "hey, what if Bob Dylan tried rewriting 'Sweet Jane'?")
There are times, watching this video—as impeccable a union as can even be conceived between ravishing visuals and aural perfection—that it's easy to forget that John Mayer might possibly be the greatest guitarist, not just of his generation, but of the past 35 years. If he'll never threaten Jimi Hendrix's place, certainly since Jimmy Page abdicated the throne, he's a serious rival to the Edge and Johnny Marr and Nils Cline and Tom Morello, and most likely towers above them all.
His lyrics, obviously, are every bit the match of the transcendent music, with lines such as
I like to think the best of me is still hiding up my sleeve
since where else would one keep one's best but tucked away up one's sleeve like a parlor trick? It is the rare lyricist, indeed, who could come up with such a resting place, as most would think that an artist would prefer to show his best face, his best work, to the world. But John Mayer is not just any wordslinger.
This small but perfect gem opens with "Welcome to the real world," she said to me condescendingly
which is juxtaposed against the later insightful query
And all of our parents, they're getting older I wonder if they've wished for anything better While in their memories Tiny tragedies
Oh goodness. The way the question is unanswered—indeed, the entire thought wholly unfinished, as if the pressure of the impending chorus caused him to leave it hanging there like a tattered, wilted piece of mistletoe left bereft after Valentine's Day, so despondent it apparently never even occurred to ask the parents in question the question. The angst is unparalleled in rock and roll—only Drake or Smith or perhaps Donovan or Bieber could come close in scope and depth—and all the more anguished for it.
I just found out there's no such thing as the real world Just a lie you've got to rise above
Voice of a Generation? No. Or, rather, yes, but that's not enough, that's not nearly enough. That's like suggesting Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart had a little musical aptitude, or Steve Guttenberg possessed a modicum of comedic talent. So Voice of Our Generation? Sure. But Voice of All Generations is more like it. But most important of all is this: John Mayer is the Voice of My Soul. He says the things I feel but lack the talent, the courage, the words to say.
Take, for example, the concluding lines
And when I stand on these tables before you You will know what all this time was for
with their luminously literate allusions to leaders such as Bonaparte, Churchill, Palin, Khan, Gingrich, Alexander, Caesar, and the unstated but indisputable conclusion that he and he alone, John Mayer, will be there, magnificent atop the formica tables in the cafeteria to lead his poor benighted catechumens, like a modern-day Zelda Rubinstein with the body and visage of Apollo, into the light, not via the pearls of wisdom falling from his mouth but merely by sheer dint of his awesomeness, as no words will be needed. No, not for the likes of John Mayer acolytes—and whom amongst us cannot modestly call ourselves one? No, all they, all we, will need to do is gaze upon him and enlightenment shall be theirs. It shall be ours, all of us. That's rock and roll.
And speaking of: then, as the coup de grâce, we have the video itself, meaning we are blesséd to be able to watch him move, observe as he takes those lofty, abstract yet concrete concepts and alchemizes them into physical manifestations of integrity as his body translates those wisps of genius into the visuals of a pop song. As much as his dancing here reminds one of Michael Jackson in its feline, aqueous grace, it's his heavy-lidded, slack-jawed yet burning intensity that draws the obvious comparisons to the King himself, Elvis Presley. And when he gets to the goosebump-inducing bridge and purrs, "I am invincible," who would argue the point? Is there any such argument to be made?
I first saw Suzanne Vega at the Orpheum Theatre in Boston in 1990, just
after graduating from college. It was entirely done on a whim – a friend and I
were having dinner in Hartford,
for some reason we knew the concert was happening that night, so we decided to
head 90 minutes north to go see her. It’s funny—I have no recollection as to
how we even knew where we were going. This was, of course, before GPS and
cellphones and Google Maps and I’m not even sure we had a roadmap in the car.
My guess is I knew how to get to Boston,
and once there we just winged it.
The point is this is often the most enjoyable way for me to
see a show—without much anticipation and, often times, without much
expectation. Scott and I saw a show by the Smithereens in much the same way at
Toad’s Place in 1988 and we were both very impressed. When I saw NRBQ for the
first of many times at UConn in 1990, it was a decision I literally made after
midnight for a show that started, I think, at 1 am, and I became a fan from that moment forward. Suzanne Vega that night in Boston
wasn’t the best show I ever saw, nor was it the most memorable or even deliver
anything unexpected. What is was was an excellent two hour show by a woman
whose music I always liked and, from that night on, appreciated more and more
as the years went by.
This was on her Days of Open Hand Tour, many albums and
(eep!) decades ago. What struck me that night about Suzanne Vega is what still
impresses me all these years down the road. That total lack of pretense with
which she carried herself onstage, even as a younger performer just on the cusp
of stardom that night, and the good humor and graceful…I guess the word would
be approachability that she brought with her.
All are ingredients for an engaging, likable performer, and
it made the night for me. And starting that night and ever since, one song of
hers stood out. One song became, hands down, my favorite song she ever did. And
remains so today. And it is today’s choice for Favorite Song Friday.
Favorite Song Friday –
Suzanne Vega – “Gypsy”
“Gypsy” appears towards the end of Vega’s breakthrough
second album Solitude Standing, and all these years later it strikes me that it
never became a hit. It had what her other hits had—easy and lovely melody, a
hummable chorus and lyrics that were instantly relatable. Alas, it was a
straight-ahead ballad, slower paced than that album’s biggest hit “Luka” and
without the social commentary that song came armed with. And it didn’t have
that subversive a cappella seduction that the album’s other hit, “Tom’s Diner,”
had. So perhaps for the same reason I thought it could have been a hit—its
simple accessibility—it wasn’t destined to be.
No matter. “Gypsy” remains a masterpiece.
Suzanne Vega wrote a love letter with “Gypsy” to a boy she knew for a short time while they worked together at a summer cap, and it actually stands as one of the first songs she ever
wrote, when she was still a teenager in the late 1970s. That fact alone is what gives the song its
heartbeat. “Gypsy” is not written as a look back, but is told in the present,
as it happening to her. The affection, the kindness, the kinship are all
experienced in real time. Even the parting of the ways, forecast at the end
though never witnessed, is presented as something that will happen, not something that has. She finally released
the song a decade after she wrote it, but the immediacy she lends to the story
creates a layer of timelessness. And that is what makes the story told in “Gypsy”
resonate so deeply.
You come from far away
With pictures in your eyes.
Of coffee shops and morning streets
In the blue and silent sunrise.
But night is the cathedral
Where we recognized the sign.
We strangers know each other now
As part of the whole design.
Oh, hold me like a baby
That will not fall asleep.
Curl me up inside you
And let me hear you through the heat.
Oh…
You’re the jester of this courtyard
With a smile like a girl's.
Distracted by the women
With the dimples and the curls.
By the pretty and the mischievous
By the timid and the blessed.
By the blowing skirts of ladies
Who promise to gather you to their breast.
Oh, hold me like a baby...
You have hands of raining water
And that earring in your ear.
The wisdom on your face
Denies the number of your years.
With the fingers of the potter
And the laughing tale of the fool
The arranger of disorder
With your strange and simple rules.
Yeah now I've met me another spinner
Of strange and gauzy threads,
With a long and slender body
And a bump upon the head.
Oh, hold me like a baby...
With a long and slender body
And the sweetest softest hands.
And we'll blow away forever soon
And go on to different lands.
And please do not ever look for me
But with me you will stay.
And you will hear yourself in song
Blowing by one day.
But now hold me like a
baby
That will not fall
asleep.
Curl me up inside you
And let me hear you through the heat.
Oh…
Vega delivers “Gypsy” to us with a poet’s soul and a
romantic’s heart. Aided along by a gorgeous acoustic guitar and some
rich-yet-tempered production from indy god Mitch Easter and punk forerunner Lenny
Kaye, the lyrics are image-rich and personal without being bogged down by
sentimentality. She paints a stunning picture—“…the blue and silent sunrise,” “…night
is the cathedral,” …hands of raining water…fingers of the potter…”—of a love
story that has grown past infatuation and into something deeper. And embedded
in the chorus (“Hold me like a baby…”) are the pervasive themes of the song:
comfort, closeness and contentment.
Despite her talents as a songwriter, Suzanne Vega greatest
strength (to me) comes in her voice—bell-clear and affectation free. Rather
than depending on crutches like tremolo or vibrato, she attaches an almost
minimalist ease to her singing voice, generating a tonal clarity that is wholly
unique and perfectly suited to her meticulously crafted lyrics. It’s not a
voice that can break glass or even knock you over (thank God), but in the way
Vega employs it, it remains one of the most perfect and powerful voices in music
over the last 25 years. Without question.
“Gypsy” also conveys a happiness to it that belies the inevitable
breakup it foretells; one more trump card in Suzanne Vega’s storytelling. She tells
her story with a mixture of whimsy and wonder, clearly smitten with the one she
sings about yet seeing much more than the surface reveals. We don’t have to
know the color of his hair or what a knockout he may have been when we know
this instead:
You’re the jester of
this courtyard
With a smile like a girl's.
The wisdom on your face
Denies the number of your years.
Yeah now I've met me
another spinner
Of strange and gauzy threads,
With a long and slender body
And a bump upon the head.
Suzanne Vega has always had the eye for detail that allows
her to tell a story with subtlety and depth, rather than relying on convention
or any sort of standard form. To wit: “Gypsy” is a love song, indeed, yet one
that never mentions the word “love.” It doesn’t have to.
Finally, there’s way it ends. Vega uses that rather unusual
turn of looking into a future that is, in effect, still the past. And in doing
so she so beautifully engages a mechanism that, if done correctly, stands as
one of my favorite songwriting tropes—a promise to one day write about these
times.
Maybe you’ll be out
there on that road somewhere,
Some bus or train
traveling along.
In some motel room there’ll
be radio playing,
And you’ll hear me
sing this song.
-Bruce Springsteen, “Bobby Jean”
Things I can never
tell you,
Down the line someday,
You’ll be a song I
sing.
A thing I give away.
- Paul Westerberg. “Things”
Please do not ever
look for me,
But with me you will
stay.
And you will hear
yourself in song
Blowing by one day.
- Suzanne
Vega, “Gypsy”
This is exactly how Suzanne Vega says goodbye in “Gypsy.” In
a way that extends that warm, lasting affection far past any notion of melancholy,
far beyond any tearful parting of the ways that we never even see and really don’t
need to. Instead she brings it all to some place in the distant future, where
it will remain as alive as ever. And where she promises to not only never
forget, but to tell the story.
“Gypsy” may not have been written to
us, but it is indeed, all these years later, for us. All of us.
There’s no way that a teenaged Alex Chilton could have known
in 1966, with his voice rich in soulful southern gravel as he belted out rock-n-roll
gold like “The Letter” and “Cry Like a Baby,” that he would one day front a
band that wouldn’t get half the attention that his Box Tops did, but it would
be that very band that would become the proto-postpunk and college rock fore-bearers for a generation to come.
I mean, how could he? He had no idea in 1966 that Big Star
would exist. He was 16! And postpunk? Hell, punk rock hadn’t even reared its head yet. At
least not as a genuine rock movement, anyway.
But there ‘tis. In the 1960s Alex Chilton possessed the
grittiest voice on the pop charts, the archetypical “blue-eyed soul” sound that
was raw and throaty enough to become an instrument as vital to the Box Tops
sound as the dreamy keyboards or country-fied guitars. And then he hit his 20s
and decided to form a
band that seemed to lean way more on Roger McGuinn or Stephen Stills’ influence
than the Holland-Dozier-Holland sound of his youth.
It was a dramatic turn, that is to say, the transition from
The Box Tops to Big Star. Not only that but he had taken to writing his songs
(with partner Chris Bell) rather than signing other people’s material. The
simple tales of young lust turned to the more introspective 1970s ilk of the
singer-songwriter. At which he more than excelled. This wasn’t the same kid who was belting out “Soul Deep.”
And for those who noticed, the change must have been alarming.
But that’s the thing. Not many folks noticed. At least not
right away. Their three albums between 1971 and 1974 all received good reviews,
but the sales were minimal. When Bell
died in a car accident after Big Star’s third album, that was pretty much it.
Chilton moved on to his next chapter.
Somewhere in there, though, and in the years to follow his
legend began to build. That Memphis
cool, that grown-up voice now aching with sincere, pained longing, and those lyrics
that placed his heart smack out there for all to see. There was a melodic raggedness
to Big Star’s sound that was there for a reason, a sound that gave hints to what
was soon to come from the CBGB and from Athens and from Minneapolis and from, yes,
eventually Seattle.
I mean, it’s easy to see why he had such a profound influence
on Paul Westerberg (who of course penned one of the Replacements greatest songs in his honor, eponymously). Paul Westerberg even sounds like a less-refined
version of Alex Chilton. But you also get why Michael Stipe and Peter Holsapple and
Frank Black and Evan Dando and so many other singer-songwriters of Generations
X and Y worshiped him too.
Which brings us to today’s installment of Favorite Song
Friday. Which is somewhat appropo, given what month we’re still in.
Favorite Song Friday—Big Star—“September Gurls”
Those opening chords. Those opening chords!
Those scraping, jangly chords that
open up the song and carry it to the very end. Those chords sound like someone someone
crying in the rain, staring up at a closed window he knows will never open. It’s
a jarring and unsettling way to open up a love song, but damn if it also isn’t
just so pretty, too!
September gurls do so
much
I was your Butch, and
you were touched
I loved you, well
nevermind
I’ve been crying, all
the time
December boys got it
bad
December boys got it
bad
September gurls I don't
know why
How can I deny what's inside
Even though I'll keep away
Maybe we'll love all our days
December boys got it bad
December boys got it bad
When I get to bed
Late at night
That's the time
She makes things right
When she makes love to me
September gurls do so much
I was your butch and you were touched
I loved you, well never mind
I've been crying all the time
December boys got it bad
December boys got it bad
Read
these lyrics and one thing you notice—after, I guess, the spelling of “gurls,”
which, well, I just don’t know, but it probably has something to do with that
eternal obsession of youthful love Chilton always seemed to have—is its never
exactly clear who “September Gurls” are or why “December boys got it bad.” (Aside from maybe the plain fact that Chilton was, well, born in December. Occam's Razor and all that.) But really, we don't know. Not
at all. Nor is it clear who or what “Butch” is or means. It’s a loveletter, the
contents of which are possibly only understood by one person, and maybe not
even her.
What we
get is a fairly sparse and heartfelt plea. These words mean something to someone,
though, and maybe that’s the point. But they are nonetheless breathtaking. And honestly, as someone who very often
loves great songwriting and great lyrics above all else, and has assembled myriad
lists in his head of his favorite lyrics over the years, this little toss-off:
I loved you, well never mind
…is and
remains one of my favorite lyrics of all-time. It’s beautiful and it’s silly.
It’s petulant and immature and desperate and defeatist and it’s bluntly honest
and plainly confused and it’s all of six
words long and I just used 10 words to try and describe it!
Every
little inch of this song is lovable and memorable. The sweet and sunny
harmonies that hang over it. The lustrous background vocals and cries that take
the song up into the ether. Chilton’s shows some damn
impressive range, starting high and staying high and going ever higher when he
hits the “When I get to bed” bridge. And that weeping, descending guitar line,
which you just know Peter Buck must’ve listened to a thousand or two times,
seems to offer a pleasant nod to everything that led Chilton to this point –
Motown and Stax and Liverpool and his beloved Memphis. It’s all in there, neatly tucked into 2:44 of rock-n-roll splendor.
“September
Gurls” is neither a kiss-off or a sappy plea. Or it’s both. It is what you want
it to be, as so much of the best music so often is. When Chilton died in 2010,
his postpunk godson Westerberg wrote an op-ed about him for The New York Times.
He summed up his career thusly:
Success
shone early on Alex Chilton, as the 16-year-old soulful singer of the
hit-making Box Tops. Possessing more talent than necessary, he tired as a very
young man of playing the game — touring, performing at state fairs, etc. So he
returned home to Memphis.
Focusing on his pop writing and his rock guitar skills, he formed the group Big
Star with Chris Bell. Now he had creative control, and his versatility shone
bright. Beautiful melodies, heart-wrenching lyrics.
That’s the story of Alex Chilton, leader of Big Star and, as
Westerberg would later describe him, “folk troubadour, blues shouter, master
singer, songwriter and guitarist.” And what he left behind, with “September
Gurls” and plenty more, keeps him going, makes him relevant to those of us who
weren’t even alive when “The Letter” was released.
September comes to an end in four days. “September Gurls”
exists forever.
