I was noodling around with the chord of G thinking about Burns leaning back on his chair by the fire, humming some rhythms to himself, trying them out in his head.
The G became a D and a C and before I knew it I was strumming Take it Easy by the Eagles
I decided to go with it, is as one thing I’ve learned on this project is the intuitive nature of songwriting; the subconscious takes you to places and its best to go along. Edit too quickly and you arrest the process.
Well, I'm a standing on a corner In Winslow, Arizona And such a fine sight to see It's a girl, my Lord, in a flatbed Ford Slowin' down to take a look at me Come on, baby, don't say maybe I gotta know if your sweet love Is gonna save me We may lose and we may win Though we will never be here again So open up, I'm climbin' in So take it easy
A couple of lines really get me every time.
We may lose and we may win Though we will never be here again So open up, I'm climbin' in So take it easy
So much passion and youthfulness bundled in to 17 words. It felt familiar.
I laughed out loud when I realised where I’d heard it before: it was in To His Coy Mistress by Andrew Marvell
But at my back I always hear
Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near
and
...And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Through the iron gates of life:
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.
It's all about desire, acting on impulse and the sheer joy of being young and being alive and a whole world of possibility before you. But it wasn't just the conceit: (time's running out so let's get it on.) It was its pace and timing. There's a real, rolling rhythm to Marvell and to Jackson Browne. Have at look at his lyrics to "These Days"
I've been out walking I don't do too much talking these days These days These days I seem to think a lot About the things that I forgot to do And all the times I had
The chance to I stopped my rambling I don't do too much gambling these days These days
These days I seem to think about
How all the changes came about my ways
And I wonder if I'd see another
Highway
I had a lover I don't think I risk another these days These days And if I seem to be afraid To live the life that I have made in song It's just that I've been losing So long
Samuel Johnson's description of the Metaphysical Poets seemed apposite: those whose work was characterised by amongst other things, a greater emphasis on the spoken rather than lyrical quality of their verse.
In other words, it's as much about the music as the words – just like Burns
The musicality of words.
Listen to these two version of the same song. Same words, same tune but completely different sound - the weighting of the phrases, phrasing, timing, the tonal quality, even the mental space the singer seems to be coming from. They feel like they come from different centuries and different places, and if anything the Nico version (with the Velvet Underground) sounds more modern. But in fact the Nico version was recorded first, in Manhattan, in 1967, followed by Jackson Browne's recording of his own song six years later in Los Angeles.
The violin accents in the Jackson Browne version gave it an every more open, flowing, folky feel which made this performance different again. Browne is leaving space for fiddle and mirroring its phrases (or vice versa). This encouraged me to incorporate some violin in one of the songs that Burns sings: "Oh the Water."
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