52 GIRLS

"Layla" / Eric Clapton

Forgive me for recycling -- but even though I've already written about this song, it just had to be part of this series.

"Layla" -- we're talking the original, not unplugged-for-PBS, version -- reminds me of freshman year in college, when my friend Kathy and I cranked it up loud enough to make her next-door neighbor, named Leila, pound on the wall. At the time, though, (get this) I didn't even know Eric Clapton was in Derek and the Dominos. I didn't get the point of Eric Clapton until senior year, when I knew a bit more about both drugs and sex and suddenly his music made sense. Late to the party again.

Then my older brother Holt -- fount of all musical knowledge for a while, he who first told me the Beatles were going to be on Ed Sullivan, he who first brought Sgt. Peppers into our house -- informed me that "Layla" had been written about Patti Boyd Harrison, George's wife. Yes, the same Patti who would eventually divorce George and marry his best friend Eric. Having recently read Patti's autobiography Wonderful Tonight, I happen to know that did not turn out well for her. But listen to "Layla," and you can see -- she had no other choice.

Doesn't this just rip your heart out? He starts out teetering on the brink, peeling off that heartbreaking guitar riff, a miserable wail that just won't go away. Time and again it pierces through the song, annihilating everything in the passion of his unrequited love.

It's a story all right, but a story told in reverse. Verse one paints a dark version of the future: "What'll you do when you get lonely / And nobody's waiting by your side?" It sounds like a veiled threat -- "if you don't love me soon you'll lose me" -- but come on, this guy is not going anywhere. I know I said "unrequited love," but that's not right. He is convinced that she's really in love with him, though she can't admit it even to herself -- "You've been running and hiding much too long / You know it's just your foolish pride." Unrequited love is a blow to one's ego, but this kind of wrenching unconsummated love? It's a fire that won't be put out.

Verse two looks to the past: "I tried to give you consolation / When your old man had let you down." Reminding her, incidentally, that her old man HAS let her down, and is likely to do it again. (I believe it was George's affair with Ringo's wife Maureen that was the last straw.)  And there's Eric, the not-so-innocent bystander, languishing on the sidelines: "Like a fool, I fell in love with you / Turned my whole world upside down." I'm not saying it's great poetry, but the story he's telling requires -- no, DEMANDS -- a howl of anguish.

Eric's voice was never suited for howling, but his guitar sure was. And even when he strains his voice hoarsely, it's perfect for this song -- he's a lost soul, and she's got him on his knees, begging darling please . . . that part's about the present, this agonizing limbo of desire he's been trapped in too long.

And when, in the last verse, he moans "Let's make the best of the situation / Before I finally go insane," it sounds like he's insane already. "Please don't say we'll never find a way / And tell me all my love's in vain" -- like I said, he's not going anywhere. He'll play that tortured riff over and over again until he dies.

That magisterial keyboard solo by Jim Gordon (who co-wrote the song with Clapton) no longer seems to me to go on too long; it's like a man staggering around, unable to give up this wrenching passion, and the obsessive pent-up frenzy of the song is just right. No wonder Patti finally gave in. If anyone ever recorded a song like this about me, I'd be his in a nanosecond.

3 DOWN, 49 TO GO

52 GIRLS

"Carrie Anne" / The Hollies

I won't inflict "Holly Holy" on you, but I will sneak in my own name here. Let's time travel to 1967, the dwindling years of the British Invasion. Though my favorite Hollies song remains "Bus Stop" -- for reasons I explain here -- "Carrie Anne" runs a close second. If "Bus Stop" always seems like a rainy day song, then "Carrie Anne" is its sunshiny counterpoint 

You recognize it from the very first beat, the three-part vocal harmonies blooming out from the speakers, fully-fledged. After all, if harmonies are your trademark, why not deliver them right away, on the downbeat? Most other bands would have done this snazzy intro with guitar riffs, but they're proclaiming the trademark Hollies sound from the get-go.

Years later, Graham Nash admitted that he wrote this song (with fellow Hollies Tony Hicks and Allan Clarke) for Swinging London's top It Girl, Marianne Faithfull. In 1967, though, she was famously Mick Jagger's main squeeze, and shy Nash never gave her the song, changing the name to protect the innocent.

He fictionalized some of the details, too. The singer has evidently known Carrie Anne since they were kids: "When we were at school our games were simple / I played the janitor you played a monitor." (Marianne Faithfull went to a girl's convent school, so this part can't be true.) In 1967 my favorite movie was To Sir, With Love, which gave me an exotic notion of an English secondary modern; I had no idea what a monitor was, but I loved the way Allan Clarke pronounced it.

But it quickly becomes a tale of innocence lost: "Then you played with older boys and prefects / What's the attraction in what they're doing?" I can just see her, tousled blonde hair, the short plaid skirt of her uniform revealing an extra length of thigh. Slipping a kittenish look across the classroom at her former playmate while the head boy slings a proprietary arm around her shoulder. And our hero, still a kid (girls do mature faster), is clueless and confused by her budding sexuality.

When this song came out, in the spring of my seventh grade year, I wasn't a Carrie Anne myself -- I was the brainy girl in glasses, watching the cool kids start to pair up. I sympathized more with the singer of this song -- holding my breath, waiting to see how his hopeless crush turned out.

The harmonies swoop back in for the chorus, pleading: "Hey, Carrie Anne, what's your game now / Can anybody play?" I love those Graham Nash high harmonies; they practically demanded that we girls sing along. But that octave jump down to "game" adds a dark note of warning. It's a very different thing to play games as an adult, messing around with people's minds and hearts.
 
Verse two sketches grown-up Carrie Anne, admiringly at first -- "special," "independent," a glorious Sixties free spirit. That part is so Marianne Faithfull. But he's grown up too, and he can see the cracks in her façade: "You lost your charm as you were aging / Where is your magic disappearing?" Heresy! Maybe this is why Nash had second thoughts about giving this song to Marianne Faithfull -- if I were her, I wouldn't particularly care for this bit.

I'm a little baffled by the middle eight, which repeats over and over, "You're so like a woman to me." LIKE a woman? Well, if she isn't a woman, then what is she?  But listening to those overlapping harmonies, logic seems irrelevant -- it's the tapestry of vocals that matters, building to a moan of desire. And then it's overtaken by that memorable musical break, with Caribbean steel drums -- the first pop record ever to use steel pan drums (fun facts to know and tell). As Allan Clarke recalls it, just as they were recording this, Tony and Graham happened to hear a busker playing steel pans down on the street and they brought him into the studio. A random choice, but a perfect fit for the springy syncopation of this song, halfway between samba and reggae.     

He brings the song full circle in verse three, picking up the school imagery: "People live and learn but you're still learning / You use my mind and I'll be your teacher." It's time for a new chapter in both their lives, and now that her It Girl status is fading, maybe at last he has a chance. And isn't that what she needs -- someone who can see her as she really is and still believe in her? "When the lesson's over you'll be with me / Then I'll hear the other people saying, / Hey Carrie Anne....." Happy endings all around.

In point of fact, Marianne Faithfull would stay with Mick Jagger for another three years -- but then, who knows what would have happened if Graham Nash had given her this song?  After all, if Patti Boyd could leave George Harrison for Eric Clapton on the strength of "Layla". . . .

2 DOWN, 50 TO GO

52 GIRLS

"Alison" / Elvis Costello

Might as well get this one out of the way. C'mon, you knew I couldn't leave out my Elvis.
 
From his 1977 debut album, My Aim Is True. After all these years, it's amazing to realize that this guy was this good this early.

The intro's spangly riffs are so disarming  -- on an album full of punchy quasi-punk revved-up tracks, "Alison" is what passes for a slow song.  How casually he starts out: "Oh, it's so funny to be seeing you after so long, girl," as if he's just run into her on the high street, shopping at Marks & Sparks.

But tension immediately rears its head-- "And with the way you look I understand that you are not impressed."  Can't you just see her narrowed eyes, her crossed arms?  There is definitely some history here. And, wouldn't you know, he's got some ammunition ready to shoot back: "Well I heard you let that little friend of mine / Take off your party dress." Elvis turns vicious real fast. Oh, the note of betrayal and jealousy, made specific by that flirty little dress. Do we not see that seduction, replayed every time this song comes on the stereo?  Ladies, do we not feel the dirtiness of the sequined straps sliding off our shoulders, the ominous whzzt of the lowered zipper?

"I'm not going to get too sentimental / Like those other sticky valentines," Elvis declares, high-mindedly, but he didn't need to -- we've already guessed that sentiment is off the table. And with a deft bit of word play, he lands another accusatory jab: "I don't know if you've been loving somebody / I only know it isn't mine." What a ball of emotion there -- jealousy, loneliness, hurt, a little voyeurism maybe. (Soon as he uncouples some and body, I instantly focus on the body part.) And the way the melody hovers uncertainly on "isn't mine" -- heartbreak.

And in verse two, it gets even worse -- because, hello, she's not just sleeping with other people, she's married another guy. Don't be fooled by the conversational cadence as he sings "Well I see you've got a husband now." Casual again, eh? But the next image is almost dadaesque: "Did he leave your pretty fingers lying in the wedding cake?"  (I've never looked at a wedding cake the same way since I first heard this line.) Hear how he punches the consonants with vitriol. "You used to hold him right in your hand," he speculates -- a hand job? -- followed by "I'll bet he took all that he could take." He's torturing himself, imagining their pre-marital hook-ups with salacious curiosity. Did they get married because she was knocked up? Elvis makes us wonder. It would certainly make him feel better to think they were forced into it.

Now here comes my favorite part of the song. Shifting upward in key, he bursts out: "Sometimes I wish that I could stop you from talking / When I hear the silly things you say." The way he hits that word "stop" -- it's like he's slamming his fist into a wall. (I've seen him sing this in concert and completely stop the song on that word, for a least a minute, while the audience goes wild.) He does want to hurt her; the veneer of civilization is perilously thin. And there's a dangerous undercurrent to that next line, too -- "I think somebody better put out the big light." My mom used to talk about turning off "the big light" in a room, meaning the ceiling light, but I imagine Elvis is threatening something else -- maybe even killing her, putting her out of her misery, "'cause I can't stand to see you this way." (Elvis later wrote a song called "The Big Light," on King of America, in which it means a blaze of sudden comprehension and clarity.) He's a master of using sly metaphors to vent dark emotions without committing them openly. Whatever he meant, that line is indelibly engraved in my mind.

Indirect as it is, there's a story here. I picture Alison as the most normal sort of popular pretty girl -- maybe a little loose (she did succumb to his dress-peeling friend), yet not a slut. And not stuck-up, I'm guessing -- chatty, friendly, nice enough, at any rate, to have given young Elvis a reason to count himself among her "valentines." But did they ever sleep together? I bet not; his jealousy has all the power of unsatisfied lust. And now she has slipped away from him, into a normal pretty girl marriage to a guy who's probably perfectly decent, despite Elvis's petulant insinuations to the contrary.

No, she isn't a mere slut -- if she were, Elvis wouldn't be feeling so hurt. And hurt he is indeed, betraying his vulnerable heart in those tender, yearning, desperately sweet choruses. EC could always play the bespectacled geek card, hoping the girls would mistake his nerdy look for sensitivity. "Alison / I know this world is killing you / Ohhh, Alison / My aim is true." In other words, why didn't you pick me instead? And for just a minute, hearing how earnestly he wails her name, even I am seduced. 

But not so fast, Alison. "My aim is true" -- such a perfect bit of double-speak. (So perfect he took it for the title of the whole album.) Sure, his intention is true-hearted, but he's also a dead-eye sniper of love, and he will take her down.

Poor girl.

1 DOWN, 51 TO GO

52 GIRLS

"52 Girls" / The B-52s

Yesterday's post got me thinking. Thinking about songs named after girls, specifically.

So welcome to my next blog project -- a series called 52 Girls. Each song that I feature in the series will have a girl's name in the title, and will ideally be a perfect little short story in the form of a song. I've already got more than enough in my library to fill out the project, but nominations are always welcome -- half of the music in my library these days seems to have come from recommendations from you guys.

Why 52?  If you have to ask, may I have the pleasure of introducing you to this gem from the B-52s' debut album: 

 

I've written about this album before, one of my all-time favorites. Technically it doesn't fit the series criteria, as there's nothing to it but a list of girls' names -- excuse me, girls of the U.S.A. -- whom Kate and Cindy claim we can see on the beach. But as a preface to the series, I couldn't resist.

 

If you want to get picky, in point of fact there are only 23 names in this song. I guess they qualify as 52 girls because they belong to the B-52s inner circle, or something like that. Kate and Cindy themselves appear in the list, but otherwise? I'd love to know if these were specific friends of theirs, though I personally have never run into anybody of our generation named Effie, Madge, Mabel, or Biddie. Plus, the list clearly includes some random celebrities, like Jackie Onassis, and Tina Louise from Gilligan's Island. (Note that I had to put a comma there so you wouldn't think that Jackie Onassis was on Gilligan's Island.)  Is Brenda meant to be Brenda Lee? Is Mercedes Mercedes McCambridge? Because I really don't know any other Mercedeses . . .

 

Anyway, the song's not about the girls, it's about the party. So enjoy -- and stay tuned for the other girls.

 

 

"Mary Anne" / Marshall Crenshaw

I heard this on the grocery store musak the other day. What?!! Either grocery store musak is getting hipper, or I've evolved into the middle-aged, Hush-Puppy-wearing, easy-listening person that grocery store musak has always catered to.

No, that just can't be. I categorically reject the idea that Marshall Crenshaw does easy-listening music. Is it easy to listen to? Well, yeah . . . but that's soooo deceptive.

It is true that this song is now, what, more than 30 years old?  It appeared on Marshall's 1982 debut album, which I did own in 1982 (one of the few times I've actually been current with the music).  Even at the time, this record had a retro feel, harking back to the classic early rock-'n'-roll of Buddy Holly, the Everly Brothers, and Ricky Nelson. (Play this next to Ricky's "Hello Mary Lou" and you'll see.) Still, there's a modern jangle to this album that places it firmly in its own time.

Ah, the 80s. The decade when music scurried into its niche caves and refused to come out. Marshall Crenshaw, for better or worse, got filed into Power Pop. He was not angry enough for punk, not high-concept enough for New Wave, too subtle for metal, not corny enough for country rock. The power pop mantle never quite fit, though. It ignores the sneaky musical sophistication of Crenshaw's records, and the soulful earnestness that raises them above pop clichés.

When I posted this grocery store sighting (hearing?) on Facebook, a friend of mine, who happens to be named Mary Ann, knew the song immediately. (Naturellement. Do I not sit up whenever I hear "Holly Holy," "Holly Up on Poppy," or even "Holly Jolly Christmas"?)  Classic pop songwriting gambit: Name a song after a girl, and every girl with that name will make it "her" song. The Beatles, of course, went one further and put a "you" in their song titles, so every girl could make it "her" song. But I digress....

My friend Mary Ann's memory of this record is that the only lyrics are her name over and over, with an occasional "I really want to tell you." True, that is the chorus, and the chorus gets repeated a lot. But she's missing some great stuff in the verses.

It starts out, provocatively, in medias res: "It isn't such a crime / It isn't such a shame / It happens all the time / You shouldn't take the blame." Immediately we're curious -- what has happened? What's the crisis? We're plunged right away into their relationship. Let's say he forgot to call her, in those pre-cellphone days, or I suppose it could have been an amatory mishap in bed, a failure to perform ("it happens all the time" ranks right up there with "size doesn't matter" as a sextime excuse). I have to admit, though, my first thought is of Paul McCartney singing "Martha My Dear" to his English sheepdog who ruined the carpet ("Hold your head up, you silly girl / Look what you've done.")  Did MC ever have a dog named Mary Anne?

 

But I think the heart of this song is the repeated second half of the verse, as he sweetly urges her to lighten up: "Go on and have a laugh / Go have a laugh on me / Go on and have a laugh / At all your misery." What a great boyfriend, coaxing her out of her black mood, giving her permission to relax. (Love the generosity of "have a laugh on me.") And yes, getting himself off the hook, quite possibly, but in the best way. Because these are the relationships that last, the ones where partners are willing to be caretakers of each other's moods and well-being. 

The second (and third) verse delicately hints at this tendency of hers: "You take a look around / And all you seem to see / Is bringing you down / As down as you can be." (Followed again, both times by the "Have a laugh" exhortation.) Think about this in tandem with "Cynical Girl," on the same album, and a picture starts to evolve. We don't expect to see such psychological acuteness in a simple pop song, or such wisdom about relationships, but this has always been Marshall Crenshaw's secret weapon.

The important thing is that it's all underlaid with love, which he reiterates in the chorus:  "Mary Anne, Mary Anne / I really wanna tell you, Mary Anne, Mary Anne / I'm thinking of you / Mary Anne, Mary Anne / I really wanna tell you / Mary Anne, Mary Anne, Mary Anne." Okay, that is a lot of Mary Annes. But it's lovely, isn't it? It's as if his heart is too full of her to think of anything else.

I often wonder, when I listen to a song, whether the words came first or the music. In this case, I'd guess it was the music.  That's not just because the lyrics are so simple -- the basic rhymes, the repeated line openings -- because as we've seen those deceptively simple lyrics do carry some deft psychological twists and turns. But this tender, heart-lifting song already says it all in the music.

Notice how the verses set up a neat pattern, lines one and three walking down the scale only to be scooped back up the scale by lines two and four, as if refusing to stay down in the dumps. And in the chorus, I love how the "I really wanna tell you's" and "I'm thinking of you" curl tenderly around the ends of the lines, riffs more than phrases, while the "Mary Anne's" sing forth, proclaiming his joy in her. The uplift, the stubborn optimism, is all there in the melody, and that backbeat syncopation, with its whispers of samba and jazz, is irresistibly energizing.

And catchy, of course -- undeniably catchy. Which is why my friend Mary Ann remembered it all these years, and most likely why the grocery store muzak-makers picked this song. It sure had the shoppers dancing in the aisles the other day. Maybe even made them so happy, they bought more pork chops, Charmin, and Cheerios. Who knows?  Now if we could just get them to buy more Marshall Crenshaw records. . . .

R.I.P. Phil Everly

As a coda to yesterday's post . . . yet another cover of "Last Thing On My Mind," this one sung by the late, great Phil Everly.

Again, the Everly Brothers were just before my time -- that's me, always playing catch-up. I do own a copy of Dave Edmunds' and Nick Lowe's EP of Everlys covers, but even that I only bought in 2008 when I discovered Rockpile years too late.  So I won't claim to have been an Everly Brothers fan. That doesn't stop me from being genuinely sad at the news that Phil Everly, the younger of the duo, has just passed away at age 74.  (Only 74? So they were really still kids when they starting making hit records in 1957...)  

I'm sure I saw them perform on TV variety shows -- from the old school programs like Ed Sullivan and Perry Como's and Andy Williams', down to network attempts at hipness like Shindig! and Hullabaloo.  (Or was it Shindig and Hullabaloo!?). I certainly knew who they were, even if I vaguely confused them with the Righteous Brothers. I know, I know, totally different sound and those guys weren't even brothers, but all that flew right over my grade-school head.

I had no idea which one sang the high part and which one the low part, or rather the not-as-high part, in their close brotherly harmonies. (For the record, research tells me Phil was the higher voice). But I definitely recognized their songs when I heard them on the radio. "Wake Up Little Susie" was probably my favorite -- what was yours?

The Last Thing on My Mind /
Tom Paxton

Inside Llewyn Davies continues to haunt me. I won't say it's the best picture of 2013 -- Alexander Payne's Nebraska was just as memorable, maybe even more original -- but it's definitely on my short list. No surprise, really: I've always been a huge fan of the Coen brothers' work, and besides, I love movies about music. Which this one most triumphantly is.

The nostalgia of the movie is lost on me, mind you. In 1961 I was barely conscious of music, other than what streamed out of the kitchen radio on Washington Boulevard in Indianapolis -- which I can tell you was a whole different from Washington Square in Greenwich Village.

Still, secondhand nostalgia can be powerful, too. Several songs in the movie hit my ear with a pow! of instant  recognition, and this one? The most hard-wired of them all, apparently, since I can't stop singing it to myself.

Blame that brief post-Beatlemania folkie phase I went through (late to the table as always). I remember seeing Tom Paxton's name in liner notes, alongside Phil Ochs and Leonard Cohen and Ian Tyson -- names that meant nothing to me, yet I memorized them, sensing someday they'd come in handy. Did I first hear "The Last Thing On My Mind" on a Peter Paul & Mary album, or was it Judy Collins' version?

Turns out everybody's had a go at "The Last Thing on My Mind."  The usual folk music suspects, of course -- Joan Baez, Sandy Denny, the Kingston Trio, the Seekers, even an early incarnation of the Mamas and the Papas, known as the Magic Circle.  Maybe because of that bluegrass-inspired fingerpicking, it translated easily to country music too, as a hit duet for Dolly Parton and Porter Waggoner, not to mention Doc and Merle Watson, Willie Nelson, and the Carter Brothers. Jose Feliciano threw in a samba beat; the Move did it with psychedelic haze. Both Glen Campbell and Glenn Yarbrough recorded overproduced schmaltzy versions; Neil Diamond and Anne Murray both had to emote it to death. There are two covers that I really do like, one by Gram Parsons and the other a reggae version by Delroy Wilson. But they are rare examples of taste and restraint.

Which is why it's a relief at last to excavate the original.

Sure, it's a sad song. But it's a tender song, a wistful song, and it's a mistake to hammer the hell out of its emotions. That legato melodic line, underlaid with just a delicate picked acoustic guitar -- that's all this winsome thing needs.

That first line is significant -- "It's a lesson too late for the learning" -- because all the remorse the singer expresses is futile. That girl is already packing her bags, nearly out the door, and nothing he can do or say will stop her.

He poses it as a question in the chorus -- "Are you going away with no word of farewell? / Will there be not a trace left behind" -- but the answer is clearly YES. So clearly, that he doesn't wait for an answer, but follows up with a sorta apology -- "Well I could have loved you better / Didn't mean to be unkind / You know that was the last thing on my mind."

Ah, intentions. He didn't mean to be a jerk. Still, he was one. He was careless and neglectful; even he admits that. In the third verse, he takes a stab at making her feel guilty, for making his songwriting dry up. ("Every song in my breast lies a-borning" -- archaic folkie-speak for a writer's block.)  Yet in the last verse, he's still acknowledging his shortcomings: "You've got reasons a plenty for goin' / This I know, this I know / For the weeds have been steadily growin'. . ." That's a great metaphor, isn't it?  He hasn't tended the garden of love, so to speak, and now he's faced with the inevitable results. He's stuck in his own passive self-regard, which is no way to get that girl to change her mind and stay.

Notice that, in fact, the girl barely exists in this song. There's no sense of a dialogue; he never describes her or remembers things she did. It's all about him and how miserable he is. But boy, does he get that right.

The song's architecture is incredibly sound. The first and third lines of every verse rise hopefully, while lines two and four limp back down the scale and down to earth, with ominous repeated phrases, echoes of futility -- images like "made of sand," "round and round," "underground." "This I know, this I know," as if he's muttering to himself.  In verse three even the repeated phrases are repeated, "without you, without you" sung twice like a death knell. It's hopeless, buddy, only you're the last to see it.

And as the chorus changes to an even higher key, the husky admission of guilt from the verses turns to a woeful plea, edged perhaps with panic or self-pity, depending on the singer. Still, it doesn't feel urgent, does it? Plaintive, yes, but I don't feel any true change of heart. Sure, he'd like her to stay, but is he willing to change to make that happen? I do not hear one word about that.

I'd like to imagine Paxton wrinting this after a real-life break-up, sitting on a lumpy mattress on the floor of a Village railroad flat, lighting a cigarette and pulling his guitar towards him for consolation. More likely he was just doodling on the guitar, trying to work up some new material for next Saturday's gig at the club, and the rhymes began to lead him in a certain direction. Yet he certainly captures the egocentrism of still-raw heartbreak.

It's very much a song of its time. We can't expect it to have the jagged pain of a 70s album cut, or the post-modern referencing of a 90s track. What we do get is the brooding introspection of the beatnik, the weariness of the post-war survivor, and yes, a little navel-gazing, courtesy of the newly fashionable art of psychoanalysis. Gone is the slickness of 40s and 50s big band pop; in its place is self-expression, intimacy, a willingness to be vulnerable. The sea change of the 1960s started right down there in the Greenwich Village clubs.

All those cover versions with their jumped-up emotions miss the point -- that this guy can barely get out of bed right now. He's not belting out his heart with a full orchestra, or harmonizing with his back-up singers. This is folk music, people. Less really can be more.