Have you stopped to think what floats your musical boat? Some people like a good tune, others appreciate top class musicianship. There are those who love to dance so anything with a good beat can put a smile on their face. Many people like the Singer. I hate it when a singer is described as having a good voice……………what’s that about???…………….When I hear that phrase it sets my teeth on edge! it is generally used when someone is admitting to enjoying banal, middle of the road pap justifying their lamentable taste by saying he/she’s got a good voice. All professional singers are because they can. Therefore, what people should say is I think he/she is a good singer…………..much better n’est-ce pas? You can then follow it up by apologising for your appalling taste!
I love all of the above things about music (although I can’t dance!) but I do have a particular love for a good lyric. How would I define a good lyric? For me a good lyric involves me emotionally, draws me into the song and makes me think about the words as I listen. The songs I learn to play on guitar invariably have lyrics I like. I suppose this distracts me from the tuneless whines and croaks that are my singing voice.
Below is a selection of my favourite lyrics. I hope you check out the songs. Do you have favourites? If so, please share them. I promise I’ll check them out.
The Band played Waltzing Matilda
Today is the 75th anniversary of VE day. Victory in Europe, the defeat of Nazi Germany, the end of the Second World War. It feels hollow to me as the world is currently fighting Covid-19, an invisible enemy. A foe that renders today’s high tech weaponry impotent. I’m also suffering war fatigue. Two Gulf wars, Afghanistan and Syria make me yearn for a decade or two of peace.
The Band played Waltzing Matilda was written by Eric Bogle a Scottish-born Australian singer-songwriter. The song tells the story of a young Australian who is conscripted and sent to fight in the Gallipoli Campaign of the First World War. This was a brutal campaign in Modern Turkey where there were 250,000 casualties on both sides. Bogle’s song is harrowing and seeks to show the harsh reality of a war that killed forty million people. That’s not a misprint, forty million people died in four years.
As many countries are holding VE day celebrations today the last verse of The Band played waltzing Matilda is particularly poignant.
So now every April I sit on my porch
And I watch the parade pass before me.
And I see my old comrades, how proudly they march
Reliving their dreams and past glory,
I see the old men all tired, stiff and sore
Those forgotten heroes from a forgotten war
And the young people ask “What are they marching for?”
And I ask myself the same question.
But the band plays Waltzing Matilda,
And the old men still answer the call,
But year after year, the numbers get fewer
Someday, no one will march there at all.
I first heard the song performed by The Pogues on their Rum, Sodomy and the lash album. It is the Pogues version in the link below. Please give this song a listen and reflect on the horror of war rather than the glory.
Goddamn HIV – Mary Gauthier
As the world struggles with the Covid-19 it is worth reflecting on a virus that was first clinically observed in the United States in 1981 (hey Don, no-one called it the American disease!). HIV became better known as AIDS and seemed to mainly attack gay men and IV drug users. The virus quickly became known as the gay disease and increased the hatred and mistrust of the gay community. Many Christian fundamentalists saw AIDS as God taking retribution against the sins of Gay people and drug addicts. As with Covid-19, many conspiracy theories flourished claiming that AIDS was a man-made virus specifically developed to attack ‘undesirable’ elements of society.
In April 1987, Princess Diana opened the UK’s first purpose built HIV/Aids unit that exclusively cared for patients infected with the virus, at London Middlesex Hospital.
In front of the world’s media, Princess Diana shook the hand of a man suffering with the illness.
She did so without gloves, publicly challenging the notion that HIV/Aids was passed from person to person by touch.
She showed in a single gesture that this was a condition needing compassion and understanding, not fear and ignorance.
Eventually AIDS affected the heterosexual population and unsafe rather than ‘unnatural’ sex became the enemy.
Thankfully today HIV can be successfully treated therefore need not be seen as a death sentence.
Mary Gauthier wrote this song from a young man’s perspective. It is incredibly moving as it describes how it must have felt to be a Gay man as the AIDS virus took hold. I feel I need to share the lyrics in full as I feel it would be inappropriate to share snippets:
My name is Michael Joe Alexandre
I’ve been a queer since the day I was born
My family, they don’t say much to me
My heart knows their silence has scorn
My friends have been dying, all my best friends are dead
I walk around these days, with their picture in my head
Spending my time thinking ’bout some things they said
And I don’t know what’s happening to me, goddamn HIV
And I don’t know what all of this means
I don’t think it means what it seems
We used to party all night ’til the dawn
I can still see the boys with their tight leather on
In the downtown bars, where it always is night
I can hang with my friends and feel alright
I was 30 years old when the sickness first came
And it rode through my world like a wind-driven flame
Leaving ashes, memories, funerals, and pain
And I don’t know what’s happening to me, goddamn HIV
And I don’t know what all this means
I don’t think it means what it seems
When I was a boy, I’d get scared late at night
And my momma would come, and turn on the light
But there’s nobody here with me tonight
And I don’t know what’s happening to me
Sometimes at dusk, I walk the train tracks
And I walk and I walk like I ain’t coming back
I look at the sky so endless and black
Man I swear it’s swallowing me
Goddamn HIV
Check out the moving video
Caribbean Wind – Bob Dylan
A departure from deep, meaningful lyrics for this one which is Ironic considering that it is written by Bob Dylan. I could have picked Blowin’ in the wind, Times they are a changin’, Hard rain’s gonna fall or Like a rolling stone to celebrate the genius of Dylan. Instead I have picked one of his lesser known songs; indeed it took me years to track it down.
It took me many, many years to appreciate the genius of Bob Dylan. I loved Knockin’ on heaven’s door when I it came out as a single but remained largely ignorant of the rest of his work. In my first year of work I was coerced into playing a song at a Christmas party. I worked with a guy called Wonk who loved Dylan. He eulogised about Baby stop crying from the Street Legal album, particularly the way he delivers the opening line;
You’ve been down to the bottom with a bad man Babe
Now your back where you belong
My English teacher Terry Mayes would have loved the alliteration in that first line.
Anyway, I agreed with Wonk and we played Baby stop cryin’. Needless to say we sucked and I forgot about Dylan for a good few years after that.
I read a book about Bob Dylan in the early nineties and the author repeatedly rhapsodised about the song Caribbean Wind. I resolved to give it a listen and see whether I concurred (more great alliteration, this time from me!). It took me another twenty years to track the song down. Comrades, I wasn’t disappointed. The lyrics are good but it’s the way that Bob delivers the opening lines that nail it for me. I know that Bob’s singing can be an acquired taste but there can be no doubting his genius for the way he phrases the words.
She was well rehearsed, fair, brown and blonde
She had friends who were busboys and friends in the Pentagon
I was Playing a show in Miami, in the theatre of divine comedy.
Talked in the shadows, where they talked in the rain
I could tell she was still feeling the pain
Pain of rejection, pain of infidelity.
When I read the lyrics above I can’t help thinking that they shouldn’t work. Believe me brothers and sisters they do. The way Bob sings them is awesome. Spoiler alert…….there are alternate versions of this track that start with completely different lyrics!
The last verse goes;
Would I have married her? I don’t know I suppose,
She had bells in her braids and they hung to her toes.
But I heard my destiny say to be movin’ on
And I felt it come over me, some kind of glow,
For the sake of “Come on with me girl, I got plenty of room”
But I knew I’d be lyin’, and besides she had already gone.
And that Caribbean wind still blows from Nassau to Mexico,
From the circle of ice to the furnace of desire.
And them busy ships of liberty on them iron waves so bold and free,
Bringing everything that’s near to me nearer to the fire.
Is it autobiographical? I don’t know. As it is one of Bob’s lesser known tracks there is little fan/academic speculation about lyrical meaning. It’s a great song anyway so well worth a listen.
Woodstock – Joni Mitchell
The first version of this song that I heard was by Mathews Southern Comfort. It was a number one single in the UK in 1970 (incidentally, Ian Mathews was an original member of Fairport Convention).
As I got older and became fascinated by the history of the Woodstock festival I learned that the song was written by Joni Mitchell. In 1969 Mitchell was in a relationship with Graham Nash of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. She did not play Woodstock because her manager told her that it would, instead, be more advantageous for her to appear on The Dick Cavett Show. She composed the song in a hotel room in New York City, watching televised reports of the festival. “The deprivation of not being able to go provided me with an intense angle on Woodstock,” she told an interviewer shortly after the event. David Crosby, interviewed for the documentary Joni Mitchell: Woman of Heart and Mind, stated that Mitchell had captured the feeling and importance of the Woodstock festival better than anyone who had actually been there.
I came upon a child of God
He was walking along the road
And I asked him, where are you going
And this he told me
I’m going on down to Yasgur’s farm
I’m going to join in a rock ‘n’ roll band
I’m going to camp out on the land
I’m going to try an’ get my soul free
We are stardust
We are golden
And we’ve got to get ourselves
Back to the garden
We went to Woodstock in 2016. I mean we stayed in Woodstock town in New York state. The festival actually took place in Bethel sixty miles North East of Woodstock. We drove down to Yasgur’s farm, the site of the festival. It’s no longer a farm but there is a fantastic Woodstock festival museum. I’m not a big festival fan. I’m too old now and I have always preferred hotel rooms to tents anyways. Personal preferences aside, the Woodstock festival is iconic in that it defined the spirit of the Sixties and the summer of love.
It is a tribute to the genius of Joni Mitchell that she managed to convey the spirit of the festival despite only seeing it on the TV in a hotel room. I could have picked Big Yellow Taxi or This flight tonight from Joni’s formidable canon of songs but Woodstock is a towering testament to her genius (more great alliteration, are you watching me Tez?).
If you watched the Live Aid concert from Wembley Stadium in 1985 then you will surely remember the performance of U2. They started with Sunday Bloody Sunday than they played Bad, a 14 minute version!! Bono jumped into the crowd getting them to sing along with the chorus. They were supposed to finish with their hit single Pride (in the name of love) but didn’t get to play it as Bad went on so long. Their performance garnered rave reviews and global superstardom quickly followed. Bad shares a common theme with There she goes by the La’s, Golden Brown by the Stranglers, Dead Flowers by the Rolling Stones and Happiness is a warm gun by the Beatles. They are all about Heroin. Most people need to be told what those songs are about. My next choice needs no clues.
Heroin – The Velvet Underground
I have made big decision
I’m gonna try to nullify my life
‘Cause when the blood begins to flow
When it shoots up the dropper’s neck
When I’m closing in on death
Heroin is on the Velvet Underground and Nico album. While ‘Heroin’ hardly endorses drug use, it doesn’t clearly condemn it, either, which made it all the more troubling in the eyes of many listeners. It is one of two Heroin related songs on the album the other being I’m Waiting for my man. While the latter is a song about scoring the drug, Heroin is all about taking the Drug, graphically describing shooting up and the rush that follows. Heroin has killed too many people, ruined too many lives to be celebrated. Lou Reed is open and honest about it, a common trait in his songwriting.
John Walker’s Blues – Steve Earle
In November 2001 during the invasion of Afghanistan, American forces took Taliban prisoners following a battle. One of the prisoners was John Philip Walker Lindh, an American citizen. As you can imagine this was front page news back home in the USA, the press usually referred to him as John Walker. He was returned to America and following a plea bargain was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment in February 2002. Walker was released in 2019.
Steve Earle wrote this song and sings if from John Walker’s perspective. The song was not well received by the American media who labelled Earle unpatriotic.
If my daddy could see me now, chains around my feet
He won’t understand that sometimes a man’s
Got to fight for what he believes
And I believe God is great, all praise due to him
And if I should die, I’ll rise up to the sky
Just like Jesus, peace be upon him
A shadu la ilaha illa Allah
There is no God but God
I think that Steve Earle was brave to tackle such a sensitive subject. The album it came from, Jerusalem, tackles other controversial subjects such as peace in the Middle East. As a lover of a good lyric, I find songs such as John Walker’s Blues fascinating. A great track by a great artist. Checkout the video below and see how it makes you feel.
Pancho and Lefty – Townes Van Zandt
Steve Earle is Townes Van Zandt’s biggest fan. He recorded an album of covers of Townes’ songs and once famously said;
‘Townes Van Zandt is the best songwriter who ever lived. I’d stand on Bob Dylan’s coffee table in my cowboy boots and say this’
Steve Earle later pulled back a little proclaiming Dylan to be a genius. Townes Van Zandt was a great songwriter but he was also a complicated man. He was an alcoholic and a drug addict which contributed to him never achieving the fame he richly deserved.
Pancho and Lefty is a fantastic song. I like to imagine Cormac McCarthy hearing this song and deciding to become an author. This song paints the Wild West as an unforgiving place. Many have speculated on the songs meaning but Townes never revealed what inspired him to write it.
Living on the road my friend
Was gonna keep you free and clean
Now you wear your skin like iron
Your breath’s as hard as kerosene
You weren’t your mama’s only boy
But her favorite one it seems
She began to cry when you said goodbye
And sank into your dreams
Pancho was a bandit boys
His horse was fast as polished steel
Wore his gun outside his pants
For all the honest world to feel
Pancho met his match you know
On the deserts down in Mexico
Nobody heard his dying words
That’s the way it goes
All the federales say
They could have had him any day
They only let him hang around
Out of kindness I suppose
The song has been covered by Emmylou Harris and Willie Nelson amongst others. I first heard it performed by local singer Ronnie D Smith and his band Geronimo’s Cadillac. It was always my favourite song in their set. For me the best version is on Townes Van Zandt live at the Old Quarter Houston.
Chelsea Hotel#2 – Leonard Cohen
The Chelsea Hotel referred to in this song is located at 204 W 23rd street in New York City. It has been the home of numerous writers, musicians, artists and actors over the years. Arthur C Clarke wrote 2001: a space odyssey while staying at the Chelsea. Dylan Thomas was staying there when he died. Mark Twain, Jack Kerouac, Tennessee Williams, Brendan Behan, William S Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg all lived at the Chelsea hotel.
The hotel has been a home to actors and film directors such as Stanley Kubrick, Lillie Langtry, Ethan Hawke, Dennis Hopper, Eddie Izzard, Uma Thurman, Elliott Gould, Elaine Stritch, Jane Fonda, Russell Brand, the Warhol film star Viva and her daughter Gaby Hoffmann, and Edie Sedgwick.
Musicians who have called the Chelsea home include include the Grateful Dead, Nico, Tom Waits, Patti Smith, Jim Morrison, Iggy Pop, Jeff Beck, Dee Dee Ramone, Johnny Thunders, Willy DeVille, Marianne Faithfull, Cher, John Cale, Édith Piaf, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Robbie Robertson, Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin. Madonna lived at the Chelsea in the early 1980s, returning in 1992 to shoot photographs for her book, Sex, in room 822. Sid Vicious and his girlfriend Nancy Spungen were living at the Chelsea when she was murdered there in 1978.
Leonard Cohen stayed at the Chelsea hotel in the late sixties. He wrote Chelsea hotel #2 about an affair he had with Janis Joplin who was also staying there. I’ve heard Cohen say that he regrets being so frank in the song but I don’t think Janis would have minded. His admiration and respect for her shine through.
I remember you well in the Chelsea hotel
You were famous, your heart was a legend.
You told me again you preferred handsome men
But for me you would make an exception.
And clenching your fist for the ones like us
Who are oppressed by the figures of beauty,
You fixed yourself, you said, “well never mind,
We are ugly but we have the music.”
The Chelsea hotel closed for renovation in 2011. It has still not reopened. 40 long term tenants have fought and won legal battles for their right to stay there. Ownership has changed hands three times in the last eleven years and as of May 2020 there is still no sign of the Chelsea hotel re-opening.
When the Hotel finally re-opens I am going to stay there. I walked past it on my first visit to NYC in the late eighties. New York was a different place back then. Times Square was sleazy, 42nd street was a no-go after dark and Central Park didn’t feel safe at any time………….I loved it!!! We walked past the Chelsea hotel but to my eternal shame we didn’t go in and drink a beer with the ghosts of literary and Music legends.
Checkout the clip below, Leonard Cohen tells the story of how the song came about before playing it. A taste of history from one who helped to write it.
The ghost of Tom Joad – Bruce Springsteen
Tom Joad is the protagonist in Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath. It evokes the harshness of the Great Depression and arouses sympathy for the struggles of migrant farmworkers. The book is rightly regarded as an American classic. Steinbeck masterfully depicts the struggle to retain dignity and to preserve the family in the face of disaster, adversity, and vast, impersonal commercial influences. He based his epic on his visits to the migrant camps and tent cities of the workers, seeing first-hand the horrible living conditions of migrant families. His novel, with its easily accessible, colloquial style, was widely welcomed and hailed by working-class readers, though it was just as widely panned by business and government officials who took umbrage at its socialist overtones and denounced it as “communist propaganda”; some local areas, including Kern County, California, where the Joad family settles, branded the book libellous and even burned copies of it and banned it from libraries and schools. Nonetheless, it was the top-selling novel of 1939, and it won a Pulitzer Prize in 1940. The Grapes of Wrath also did much to earn the author the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962. Steinbeck plainly stated his purpose in writing the novel: “I want to put a tag of shame on the greedy bastards who are responsible for this [the Depression and the plight of the worker].”
Springsteen wrote the Ghost of Tom Joad in the mid-nineties with contemporary times being likened to the great depression and the dust-bowl migration.
Now Tom said “Mom, wherever there’s a cop beatin’ a guy
Wherever a hungry newborn baby cries
Where there’s a fight ‘gainst the blood and hatred in the air
Look for me Mom I’ll be there
Wherever there’s somebody fightin’ for a place to stand
Or decent job or a helpin’ hand
Wherever somebody’s strugglin’ to be free
Look in their eyes Mom you’ll see me.”
Springsteen was widely misunderstood when he wrote Born in the USA the fist-pumping title track of his seventh album. To some it felt like a celebration of being born in the USA — when really, it’s a defiant song about ‘I was born in the USA, and I deserve better than what I’m getting.’ I think plenty of people didn’t get what it was about, including the president of the United States. There is no mistaking the sentiment behind the Ghost of Tom Joad.
The clip below is from a Springsteen tribute concert. I love this because Jim James of My Morning Jacket decides to take on Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine in a guitar duel. I guess we all make mistakes!!!
Human Cannonball – Webb Wilder
Something light hearted to finish. Human cannonball sees the protagonist of the song getting a gig with a circus as the human cannonball of the songs title. They say that some kids dreamed of running away with the circus. Elvis Presley starred in the film Roustabout in which he joins a struggling carnival and helps turn it around. It’s no classic but nonetheless is one of Elvis’ better films. Webb Wilder makes joining the circus sound like a good career choice. Lyrics aside, Human Cannonball is a rollicking rock’n’roll tune that never ceases to make me smile.
Saw the ad in the paper
Said the hell with it all
Took a gig with the circus
As the human cannonball
It didn’t take long
To learn my trade
Very first show
Man, I blew the folks away
Now, the job’s a little risky
But I’m my own boss
I got to tell ya, Jack
It really gets me off
It’s a great video, check it out!
Well that’s all folks, ten of my favourite lyrics. My last blog about conspiracies was a little deep so it was great to get back to writing about music. I had a blast listening to these tracks again and I hope that you will listen to at least some of them. I don’t expect Webb Wilder is a the top of anyone’s playlist but you are missing out on a great artist (he’s also a good actor). If anyone else has a favourite lyric then let me know and I’ll check it out.