Walk on the Wild Side

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Favorite Song Friday: Gypsy

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.

Small Blue Thing

Suzanne takes your hand. And she leads you to the river.

OK, maybe Leonard Cohen's Suzanne did that, but not Suzanne Vega. Though the lovely and brilliant Ms. Vega does take us somewhere with her quirky and exquisitely crafted songs and stories. And that somewhere is always impressive, whether she's wearing rags and feathers or not.

Scott and I have talked a lot about Suzanne over the years, and admittedly he knows infinitely more about her than I do. But I still love her stuff, her voice, her meticulous attention to every word she sings. And on more than a few days I put on one of her albums and soak in the wondrous artistry.

Today was one of those days, on the drive into work. And the album was her first. And the song that stood out today was "Small Blue Thing," the musical equivalent of a perfect little piece of blown glass. Delicate, singular, complete.

Today I am a small blue thing
Like a marble, or an eye
With my knees against my mouth
I am perfectly round
I am watching you

I am cold against your skin
You are perfectly reflected
I am lost inside your pocket
I am lost against
Your fingers

Very few people can write lyrics like this - it's like an extended haiku, deeply personal and oblique and laden with sharp, focused images. And what I admire is how confident Suzanne was that they would work as lyrics, how wonderfully they would play against bell-clear guitar notes and how they would spring to life in her wholly unique voice.

Here's a terrific live performance that really does demonstrate the fragile, specific beauty of "Small Blue Thing."