Look, I am an unironic, unabashed fan of 70s pop. Is it cheesy, trite, sometimes cringe-worthy? Of course. But then again, so are DT and I.
Which is to say I absolutely love this damn song. Even as I fully recognize that it's terrible.
I mean...terrible. And I love you best You're not like the rest You're there when I need you You're there when I need I'm gonna need you A long time ago I had a lady to love She made me think of things I never thought of Now she's gone and I'm on my own A love song has come into my mind A love song It was there all the time So lady Let me take a look at you now You're there on the dance floor Making me want you somehow Oh lady I think it's only fair I should say to you Don't be thinkin' that I don't want you
'Cause maybe I do
See what I mean? Do I lie? That's... listen, I don't need my pop songs to have lyrics worthy of Dylan. Sure, it's nice when they do, but you know what else works just as damn well? "A-wop-bop-a-loo-bop-a-wop-bam-boom." "Sha-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-tee-da.""De-do-do-do-de-da-da-da." Certainly "Mmmbop, ba duba dop, ba du bop, ba duba dop, ba du bop, ba duba dop, ba du, yeah yeah." Actually, come to think of it, those are all Dylan-worthy.
So he loves her best, she's there when he needs her, but she's gone and he's alone, and he's clumsily macking on a dancer he's been ogling and what? When's this taking place? Do we have three separate timelines going on at the same time in some sort of time is an infinite loop and all times are now?
Of course now. What we have is an embarrassing mishmash and none of it really matters much 'cuz melody and tasty harmonies, not to mention some truly sweet bass work and an almost contrapuntal guitar solo. Oh my goodness all so good. (Seriously.)
Now. Having said that, in 2016, it's a bit hard to listen to songs like this and not feel at least a bit SJW and wonder if maybe the guy should take a step or two back, play it several degrees cooler and, most of all, be quite confident she should be keeping a close eye on her drink.
Finally, this line?
You're there on the dance floor making me want you somehow
"Somehow"? I think Erin Brockovich said it best.
Not rocket science, friend. So don't be a creep and act like she doesn't know exactly what it is that's making you want her. (And, I mean..."somehow"? Dude, come on.)
Even normally astute critics such as one Peter Buck think (or at least thought) it weak at best. Which is astonishing, since "Wendell Gee" is where Michael Stipe, always an interesting, often a fascinating, lyricist became a truly great one.
Just as hundreds could have played Miles Davis's solos on Kind of Blue but not one other person could have written them, so too with Stipe's lyrics here.
Stipe may get too much credit for REM's success, as is so often the way with a band's frontman. But not here. No, here's it's entirely justified. Stipe's lyrics, which in their early days could be nothing more than a pleasing or perplexing combination of sounds and syllables, as he has admitted, here rises to the level of a great author. Which is the key to the song.
I said "the key" to the song, but that wasn't correct, because this is R.E.M. and rare indeed is the R.E.M. song that has only one key ingredient. So too here, as Mike Mills' chord changes are delightfully if not radically unconventional, starting with a fifth in the bass, before settling briefly on the tonic and then moving immediately to the supertonic. The following change, from the dominant to the dominant seventh, is the kind of small yet vital bit of coloration that most bands wouldn't even think of—the Beatles being, as they so often are, an exception—yet which makes a huge difference emotionally, lowering and lending ambiguity to the mood ever so slightly yet undeniably. The chorus, meanwhile, is largely a IV-I-V construction, with the tonic sandwich simultaneously imbuing the section with a feeling of resolution that's almost entirely unresolved.
As far as the rhythm section goes, Bill Berry plays the role of metronome beautifully, like Tony Williams on "In a Silent Way," while vocally adding some lovely yet subtle and nearly buried if serenely soaring harmonies (in stark contrast to Mills' far more obvious and busier vocal parts). Meanwhile, Mike Mills's bass dances around Peter Buck's guitar like Fred Astaire dancing with a sentient hatrack.
Instrumentally the real star, however, as he himself will be pleased to tell you, is Buck's banjo, providing a sonic contrast and fulfilling the function of guitar solo, as well as underpinning the song's southern roots.
As though that were really necessary. As if there were really any doubt.
It has often needed to be pointed out that rock lyrics are not poetry. They do not, generally speaking, work on the page the way poetry does, and only truly come to life when sung. That's often very much the case with Stipe's lyrics, especially (but not only) his early ones. It's not at all the case with "Wendell Gee," although even here, Stipe's lyrics are less poetry and more southern gothic magic realism flash fiction prose. To that end, Stipe's lyrics start in media res, like a good southern storyteller. "So I was down at the holler the other day..."
That's when Wendell Gee takes a tug upon the string that held the line of trees behind the house he lived in
That's the opening. What other rock song has ever started that way? (A: none more.)
He was reared to give respect but somewhere down the line he chose to whistle as the wind blows, whistle as the wind blows through the leaves
Okay. So far we've got a pleasant song about an odd but harmless outsider, a guy who was raised right but chose to live on the outskirts and go his own way—in other words, another Fables of the Reconstruction of the Fables song. Which is a good thing.
And then.
He had a dream one night that the tree had lost its middle so he built a trunk of chicken wire to try and hold it up But the wire, the wire turned to lizard skin and when he climbed inside
Before we have time to process this bizarre, dreamlike scenario, it's immediately followed by a return of the chorus, with additional lyrics:
There wasn't even time to say goodbye to Wendell Gee So whistle as the wind blows Whistle as the wind blows through the leaves
Peter Buck's banjo then takes over, giving the listener time to absorb what just happened, if that's possible. Then another run through another chorus, albeit one with again some additional/different lyrics:
If the wind were colors and if the air could speak Then whistle as the wind blows Whistle as the wind blows through the leaves
And just like that, Michael Stipe shifted from intriguing rock lyricist and inside sidled into the pantheon of southern gothic writers such as Carson McCullers, Flannery O'Connor, Fred Chappell and William Faulkner. With gorgeously evocative phrases such as "if the wind were colors and if the air could speak," Stipe sketches a character study of a mythical yet somehow relatable figure such as Wendell Gee, who disappears into a dying a tree wrapped in lizard skin. And somehow, as with a novel having a corpse for a narrator or the best magic realism, it works.
Despite appearing to hew more closely to literature than gutbucket rock and roll, "Wendell Gee" is in fact very much part of the classic rock and roll lineage. Just as there as some things which words cannot truly capture, for which only something such as "a-wop-bop-a-loo-bop-a-wop-bam-boom" or "da-doo-ron-ron-ron" or "sha-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-tee-da" or "de-do-do-do-de-da-da-da" or "hello, hello, hello, how low" can properly convey the full emotion, so too a phrase as emotionally evocative and overwhelming yet mysterious and indefinable as "if the wind were colors and if the air could speak."
It is one measure of just how weird Fables of the Reconstruction of the Fables is that a song about a guy disappearing into a lizard skin tree is the absolute perfect ending. Even more, it's one measure of its greatness. But far from its only one.
And that's R.E.M. and Fables of the Reconstruction of the Fables. As cerebral and defiant a band as ever existed, and yet securely in the great rock tradition while simultaneously standing outside it—which is itself part of the great rock tradition. How appropriate.
For reasons which escape me, many hardcore Bruce fans not only don't think "Crush on You" is a fine song, they actively dislike it, thinking it's the weak spot on the otherwise magnificent River album, and a low point of his recording career.
Which is just asinine. The song is, at worst, an enjoyable throwaway, certainly no less good than fun frat rock songs like "Double Shot (Of My Baby's Love)" or "Wooly Bully" or "Nobody but Me" or "Wild Thing" and how much less vibrant would our lives be without those gems?
I mean, musically, this is just great down and dirty gutbucket rock and roll right here.
And lyrically?
My feets were flyin' down the street just the other night When a Hong Kong special pulled up at the light What was inside, man, was just c'est magnifique I wanted to hold the bumper and let her drag me down the street
Okay, the "Hong Kong special" line may not have aged terrible well, but rhyming "c'est magnifique" with "drag me down the street" is seriously sheer gold.
Admittedly, the chorus
Ooh, ooh, I gotta crush on you Ooh, ooh, I gotta crush on you Ooh, ooh, I gotta crush on you tonight
is not likely to make Bob Dylan nervous, but then again, I submit my beloved "Louie Louie" and trust the point is made.
Sometimes I spot a little stranger standing 'cross the room My brain takes a vacation just to give my heart more room For one kiss, darling I swear everything I would give Cause you're a walking, talking reason to live
And there 'tis right there, reason enough—far more than, in fact—for the song to exist. "My brain takes a vacation just to give my heart more room" is, no two ways about, great damn writing. That sums up, in one line, the effect of love—let's call it love, shall we?—on humans, or at least humans of the young male persuasion. That is exactly what it feels like and no denigration intended to its forefathers but if forced to choose I'd hold out as long as I possibly could but in the end I believe I just might take it over some other famous lines expressing the same sentiment, such as "a-wop-bop-a-loo-bop-a-wop-bam-boom" or "da-doo-ron-ron-ron" or "sha-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-tee-da" or "de-do-do-do-de-da-da-da."
Well, now she might be the talk of high society She's probably got a lousy personality She might be a heiress to Rockefeller She might be a waitress or a bank teller She makes the Venus de Milo look like she's got no style She make Sheena of the Jungle look meek and mild I need a quick shot, Doc, knock me off my feet Cause I'll be minding my own business walking down the street...watch out!
And again, although the song needs no further justification, "she makes the Venus de Milo look like she's got no style " is simply wonderful writing. It's good enough, in fact, that the conclusion of the couplet, which is a fine line on its own—"she make Sheena of the Jungle look meek and mild"—seems a mild let-down by comparison. But no matter. A song with lines as fine as the two best here is more than good to go.
Springsteen himself said, during a soundcheck back in November 2009, in preparation for playing it for only the second time since the few dozen times he performed it back in 1980:
"Yes, folks, it could have been...let me think...'Loose Ends'...it could have been 'Take 'em As They Come'...it could have been 'Roulette'...it could have been 'Where the Bands Are'...it could have been...But instead it is...one two three four!"
Later that same night, after playing the wonderful version embedded right above this very line, you can hear him crow, "a hidden masterpiece!" Sure, he may have been speaking with a healthy dose of sarcasm, but then again, he may not have been. And either way, he was very nearly right.
I don’t know what possessed me to pick up an expensive import copy of Brian Eno’s Music for Films when I ran across it in a small independent record store in Washington D.C. when I was about seventeen. I’d never heard a single second Eno’s work, although I knew him from his collaborations with David Bowie and, to a much lesser extent, Talking Heads.
But buy it I did. And when I got home a few days later, I cranked up the stereo, having not the slightest idea what to expect. I listened. And a bit less than an hour later when I was able to move again, I shut my mouth, picked up my eyeballs from where they’d fallen on the floor and popped them back in. And my life has never been the same since. I’d bought my first ambient record.
Ambient, to me, often sounds like what I’d imagine a long space voyage would sound like if the spaceship were built in the late seventies and the designers were inspired by the sterile beauty of Stanley Kubrick’s films. It’s usually fairly or very slow, although sometimes the beat is so ambiguous as to be almost missing altogether. On most of Eno’s ambient recordings there are rarely any percussion instruments used in the normal way. Things shift in and out of focus, appear and disappear, come and go, as though you’re traveling through a musical fog. Here, listen to this—it's the very first Eno I ever heard:
Right? See what I'm sayin'? Didn't that just totally fill your very soul with a heady and untenable combination of quiet peace and desperate longing? It sounds, to me, like lying back, all alone, staring up at the sky on a beautiful spring day in a verdant, pastoral (is there any other kind?) field which happens to be located on a spaceship bound for a distant galaxy on a decades-long voyage.
This is not music for everybody, I realize. During my college years I played Music for Films several times a week, I’d guess, when I wasn’t playing The Replacements or R.E.M. or Springsteen. It was a sort of aural palate cleanser. The only other Eno I bought back then was Another Green World which is, for my money, his masterpiece. Another Green World is a bridge between Eno’s ambient work and his more traditional pop-related material. In fact, most of the album is actually ambient, something which is easy to overlook, so striking are the numbers with lyrics. Chief among them is the odd piece of pop perfection which is "St. Elmo’s Fire."
I’ve never been entirely sure why this song smacked me over the head as it did the very first time I heard it, but writing the piece just now, I played it a half-dozen times in a row and the thing still does a number on me. It’s superficially a straight-forward pop song, three minutes long, three verses, three choruses, guitar solo, the whole regular schmeer. Yet it’s sort of a really catchy pop song done by an alien who’s really, really familiar with our culture and gets it completely…almost.
It starts off with some knocking, perhaps wood blocks, perhaps not and the sound of something, perhaps a tape, starting up. Then a few notes are repeated over and over on the piano, a driving motion that’ll serve as the pulse of the song. Some clattering percussion, almost devoid of rhythm, enters. Insistent chords bang out on another keyboard instrument, first insistently syncopated but subtly shifting so it’s instead squarely on the first downbeat. And then Eno starts singing.
He’s got a somewhat talky sort of voice but if it’s not necessarily much better than other talkers like Lou Reed (when Reed cares to try) or J Mascis, it’s a bit more accessible and less grating. It may not knock Lennon or McCartney off their perches as amongst the greatest rock voices ever, but it fits the material.
The first verse lets us know what we’re in for:
Brown Eyes and I were tired We had walked and we had scrambled Through the moors and through the briars Through the endless blue meanders
And without a pause we go into the chorus:
In the blue August moon In the cool August moon
What does any of this mean? What could endless blue meanders be? After listening hundreds of times, I have no idea. Nor could I possibly care less. The words work. The sound of them, the images they convey, the tone they set, are all that matters. They sound good and somehow manage to mean nothing in a rather poetic way without being pretentious at all. They’re almost little more than another instrument, like the piano or the percussion or the guitar solo, yet weighted with some emotional resonance I don’t fully understand. Another verse and another trip through the chorus gives us more of the same:
Over the nights and through the fires We went surging down the wires Through the towns and on the highways Through the storms in all their thundering In the blue August moon In the cool August moon
Then the final verse:
Then we rested in a desert Where the bones were white as teeth, sir And we saw St. Elmo’s Fire Splitting ions in the ether
Again, the scene set is beautiful and haunting and if we get no more than stray images and a hint of story supplied mainly by ourselves, it’s no less powerful for that. And then comes what may be the most amazing part of the song: the guitar solo.
As Eno is not one to bow to tradition just for tradition’s sake, there aren’t a lot of solos in his work. Yet here he’s got a guitar solo right smack dab in the standard place. Except that it’s not. For one thing, rather than soloing over the verse chords or the chorus chords once, the guitarist, King Crimson leader and frequent Eno collaborator Robert Fripp, solos over the chorus chords, seems about to wrap things up, and then decides to go over another chorus. What’s more, when the lyrics kick back in for two more choruses, he keeps soloing, albeit more softly. Which means that very nearly one-third of the entire song is the guitar solo—and well over one-half if you include the sections where Eno is also singing over the solo—a ratio wildly out of balance for a pop song. Meanwhile, harmonically, the entire song is remarkably simple, with the verses consisting of nothing more than the I chord, and the chorus just vi-IV-V repeated over and over.
But more than anything it’s the sound and style of the solo itself that’s so stunning. It’s not clear whether Fripp wasn’t sure what to play or whether he was just asking Eno what he was looking for, but Eno later said:
"...on ‘St. Elmo’s Fire’ I had this idea and said to Fripp, ‘Do you know what a Wimshurst machine is?’ It’s a device for generating very high voltages which then leap between the two poles, and it has a certain erratic contour, and I said, ‘You have to imagine a guitar line that has that, very fast and unpredictable.’ And he played that part which to me was very Wimshurst indeed."
So if you can just picture those two poles in the background in all the Frankenstein films, with the electricity sparking back and forth between them, you can imagine this solo. It’s a really gorgeous and melodic version of that. And it’s the combination of the anarchic, blistering guitar solo, the odd instrumentation elsewhere in the song, the impressionistic lyrics and the sheer melodic appeal of the tune itself that makes this one of the great, albeit rather obscure, pop songs in history.
In the blue August moon In the cool August moon In the blue August moo In the cool August moon
It was only recently, though, that I realized that Eno's lyrics are essentially a highly intellectualized version of "a-wop-bop-a-loo-bop-a-wop-bam-boom" or "da-doo-ron-ron-ron" or "sha-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-tee-da" or "de-do-do-do-de-da-da-da" or, for that matter, "hello, hello, hello, how low." There are somethings which regular words are not capable of quite capturing, and sometimes words mean so much more than they seem.
