The Nothing/Nothing Paradox: The Hollies: "The Air That I Breathe"

It is a delicate thing, what this song talks about; it talks about a certain moment, a moment of fulfillment and privacy; something ordinarily not something to discuss or even sing about, but this did not stop Albert Hammond and Mike Hazelwood from baring their souls, so to speak.  This song was originally done by Hammond on his album from '72, and then by Phil Everly on his the next year, and since the Hollies were Everly Brothers fans they came across it and decided to record it themselves.  This is as much as I can figure; the Hollies needed a hit, and Allan Clarke was back in the band and able to handle the soaring chorus. 

But as usual, I have to wonder, what is this song about?  I mean, it's obviously about post-coital bliss, but what that is borders on non-existence.  "No light, no sound, nothing to eat, no books to read*" - if he could make a wish, it would to be in this state of non-wanting, to get away from the physical world altogether.  His body is weak; his mind is at rest.  He wants for nothing but to breathe, to be separate but together (he, rather bossily, tells his Other to sleep, but what if she feels the same way - pleasantly weak and wanting nothing more)?

To bring something so common but, well, intimate to a song is tricky, as it requires a noble forthrightness and honesty, which can seem a bit cloying or cheesy, and I can't say that the Hollies avoid that altogether - it has always struck me as ironic that songs that are about being happy and quiet and contented can be so, well, loud - and this does also have the hapless early 70s stigma of the whole Love Is... cartoon thing about it, as well.  Open, honest, sensitive - I can't help but applaud Albert and Mike for this, for mentioning this moment and its glory - a glory that the production makes into a kind of king-for-a-day moment, an escape from the turmoil-of-1974. 

The 70s were a time when people shared thoughts and feelings with each other, maybe overshared - though there is the inverse of the tough man who says nothing but nevertheless has feelings, dammit, and this song speaks to him, there in his privacy, reaffirming that what he feels is worth a song, a one of dips and gliding arches, rising and falling like a bird in flight.  It's not a sexy song, per se, but of peace, of stillness, of a soul at rest.  Which is nice, but...and I know I can't be the only one of my Gen X crowd who felt a little uneasy hearing this as a kid...what is this song really about?  Nothing, in essence - a falling away - a lack of self, which in Boomer logic means it must be given a big production.       

The legacy of this song is a little strange - it's kind of a mall-psychedelic-mellow-out-man song muscially; all about the ultimate moment of forgetfulness and detachment, save from the Other.  And yet there it is, reworked a bit as "Creep" by Radiohead (how many heard this song and were influenced by it?  Come on down, Richard "HEEEEEEyyyyyyyAAAAAAAAHHHHHEEEEEEYYYYYYYYYY" Ashcroft) which is the ultimate song about someone who most certainly isn't at peace, doesn't fit in, has a want and wants to be special, noticed, loved - but nope, no luck, he doesn't belong "here" - where he does belong, he's not sure, but it's not with the Others he encounters, hates and yet longs to be.  (I wonder if these Others are the posh kids going to Oxford, cool scenesters, or what.)  Radiohead were sued and gave credit where it was due for taking this song and making it their own, an angry, implacable jab at a world full of mindless bliss, oblivious to anything and anyone else.  And "Creep" has more resonance now than this song - as everyone wants to feel special, more than they want some near-death lack of want.  Or at least that's how it looks to me, these days. 

Next up:  a man who's lost without his love.

*I can't imagine another song like this that mentions books, if there are any other songs about this specific situation.

Oceanic: Perry Como: "It's Impossible"

I sometimes think the major differences in music are not between genres or styles or methods but in depth and feeling; and by that I don’t mean ‘soul’ as such.  Once you are married you realize there are simply two different kinds of music – or rather, that there is music that those who are married can listen to and comprehend in a different way than those who have never been married can.  This is not a superior position, believe me; if anything, it’s a humbling one.

To be married is simply to want, need and love another – one particular other – forever.  It is the permanence of it that scares many, the commitment – just to that one other person.  No matter how much wealth or fame or glamour or power a person might have, that commitment to another has to be first.  There are many who make rock/pop music that have tried and faltered at marriage, as it requires something quite different from what goes hand-in-hand with so much pop; searching, losing, courting, breaking up, agonizing over the Other or being happy finally finding the Other.  Marriage – the wedding – is the goal here, the line beyond pop usually, exhausted from all this happiness and heartache, stops.  Getting married is the ultimate in girl group music, beyond which nothing pretty much exists besides wedded bliss.

I can just see Perry Como shaking his head.

The thing about this commitment – one that the single folks might dimly realize, at times – is that it’s for life.  It stretches out into the infinite, into the unthinkable.  Como stands right at that edge, amongst the sun and the stars, an astronaut of the heart.  He explains how much his love means to him and how endless and profound it is, to the point – and I think you can hear it in his voice, bolstered by the arrangement – where he realizes how small he is himself in relation to love, artful, unconditional love*.  Asking him not to love his Other is impossible, just as so many other natural things simply are, no questions asked.  Behind his are some pretty intense and unnerving feelings and ideas, the main one being that being married – and this is a marriage song – is a big task, a lifelong one, and one that cannot be ended.  Divorce – the concept is alien, pointless.  Even death is not the end, as you are always linked to your Other in one way or another, he or she is always there. 

I’m not sure if those who are still worrying about how they will share space in the bathroom or who takes the garbage out – those who are uneasy about the physical aspect of living with someone else – will react to such a metaphysical song.  It may well sound irrelevant to them, or intimidating, or more than a little soppy.  Or hard to imagine – just how can one person be so utterly committed to another?  Others might think it a great romantic ballad, that kind which sounds lovely and says all the right things, without really getting the implications behind what Como is saying.  But here he is, right at the foundation of things, seemingly at the root of existence itself, helpless at the fact that love is so much bigger than himself, that it is (as I take it) something that was created a long, long time ago, and will exist for the rest of not just his life but life itself.  (That it is a song, a bolero, from Mexico, just emphasizes all this for me, in some deep-rooted way**.)

That this decade is known for its spike in divorce rates is well known; the 70s was a tough time for many married folks, I’d imagine, as the ideas about what married life was all about were changing, but Como is here to remind us that it’s a profound experience that is lovely and comforting and for life.  There’s a whole new generation who are getting married and settling down around now, for whom this is their song; the 70s exist, in a way, to see if they truly understand the intensity and immense experience marriage is, beyond any pieces of paper or jewellery.  This was the single my late father-in-law bought for his wife (now my mother-in-law) for Valentine’s Day; a time when people celebrate that twang! of the arrow, that change which starts as a warmth in the heart and then spreads out to the rest of the universe.  The two become one; and that one unites with something a whole lot bigger than itself. 

Next up:  back to the world of the single girl. 

*The tinkling piano aping the ocean’s waves crashing on the shore is, admittedly, rather cute, which is to say it’s sweet and all, but audibly not enough to really get across the feeling here.  But then, what is?  The pathos of this song is that there isn’t really any way to get across musically what is being sung, music itself has to take a backseat here, just as the singer does.

**That this was another NME #2 behind "My Sweet Lord" has its own ironies, of course.

Rock and Roll: Deep Purple: "Black Night"

As the late 60s wound down, two genres of rock began to evolve; one was the HRS way of boogie, keeping rock free from any sort of pretence beyond the willingness to ‘get down’ ‘the road.’  But there were those who heard the blues and wanted to expand them or extend them in ways beyond the norm, beyond laddishness, beyond going down to the pub (even though they were pub fans themselves, of course)…

Figuring out just where heavy metal starts, what constitutes it, and what its true heart lies is difficult, but not impossible to figure out.  The phrase ‘heavy metal’ is in “Born To Be Wild” (a fairly metal sentiment, I think) and is thus Canadian*; metal itself happened when The Beatles recorded “Ticket To Ride” (or maybe it was Jimi Hendrix or Cream or any other heavy band of the period; theories and accounts vary).  However, Marshall stacks arose, volumes and eardrums were tested, and heavy metal was fully underway by 1968, when Led Zeppelin appeared, and Deep Purple began at the very same time.  It’s impossible to mix up the two bands, though, as Led Zeppelin were behemoths intent on devouring the world, while Deep Purple were more intent on bringing a paradoxical heaviness and lightness to rock, as they do here.

The purpose of metal is to describe, as best can be done (in this case with lead guitar, bass, organ, drums and lead singer) the perils and pitfalls of being an outsider, alone, forever on the move lest something worse happen.  There are lots of variants of course, but I think that aloneness counts; that perpetual sense of threat, whether natural or manmade.  Here the narrator is alone, it’s dark, he cannot see, and desperately wants to get home – not to rest under a tree or on the beach, but home, real home, wherever that is.  There is something vaguely existential hanging over all this (notice that there are no references, as I feel there would be, to women if Led Zeppelin had written this song) – and that if you mishear it, as I did, as ‘black knight’ then there is already a medieval element here, though the Purps were as modern as you like, not given to singing about fairies or may queens like Black Sabbath or Zep themselves. 

Ian Gillan sings the song straight, with perhaps a smile of sympathy here or there; Blackmore hammers out the riff he picked up from Ricky Nelson’s version of “Summertime**“; classically-trained Jon Lord, leader of the group, demonically keeps up with Roger Glover on bass and Ian Paice*** on drums.  This is already one tough unit who can pretty much outrock everybody (everyone involved had been playing in bands for years; Blackmore had worked with Joe Meek when he was fifteen).   That they do so naturally and even swing a little doesn’t detract from their crunch, but certainly helped this song do as well as it did; a lot of people must have felt themselves to be lost in darkness a long way from home at this time, longing to get there and wary of traps and dead ends.  It’s a simple, anxious and noisy song, perfect for both The Fall and Metallica to cover, unpretentious and lovable in its own way.

This was the beginning of Deep Purple’s inroads into heavy metal (and the first single they’d written themselves); Deep Purple In Rock was a hit, as were Fireball and Machine Head  – their classical and psychedelic sides were put aside for hard rock, though there is always a classical aura about them, compared to other groups.  (It’s not a great leap to assume that the other music metal heads love is classical, particularly the more heavy symphonic and operatic corners, where walls of tormented noise are pierced by the shrieks of one or several singers.) 

There is hope and determination here, a kind of grit, that is typical of the group; not so much of the ‘woe is me’ complaining that can make some metal wearisome, if not out-and-out scary or depressing****.  Deep Purple never set out to carry the world on their shoulders or confront tyrannical evil; theirs was a sleeker, more elegant version of metal that could appeal to not just self-appointed outsiders, teenagers and nerds but everybody who wanted to rock on, not mellow out, in the early 70s.  For that they tend to not get the props that they deserve; which is a shame, as out of all the early bands it’s the one I find the easiest to listen to, the most surprising and likeable.  The band’s sensibilities were not just in rock but in classical, soul and jazz, even; with this song they manage to get heard by everyone, not just albums-only-buying fans, to hook who-knows-how-many fresh ears to what they are doing, to a style of rock that will not just succeed but prevail over the decades, as they themselves did, changing line-ups but continuing, defying expectations as usual. 

Next up:  another young man lost, way out, out beyond the woods.      

*As are everyone’s favourite metal band, Anvil.

**The living here is the exact opposite of 'easy.'

***To see a drummer with glasses as normal as him is pleasing in a way; he reminds me a bit of my friend Benet, though Benet isn’t a metal fan, per se.

**** Note how ultimately groovy "Smoke On The Water" is as compared to the  Zep's completely insane "Achilles' Last Stand" and then reflect again on how non-mythological the Purps are in comparison.  Deep Purple can make something out of nothing, can make even disaster sound attractive.

The Flesh Succeeds: Nina Simone: "Ain't Got No/I Got Life/Do What You Gotta Do"

After great grief, there has to be a stock-taking; a simple assertion of what and who you are. It is a painful thing to realize that you don't have things, that what you once had is gone; you have to rejoice in what you do have and make the most of it, while you can.

Nina Simone's recording of this song* came just a month or so after Dr. King's assassination, a time of anger, a time when a purpose that seemed unstoppable had to be buoyed up and sustained. Simone was no stranger to covering songs from musicals and besides the gospel-style music I am guessing she picked this one (actually a medley of two songs from the first act of HAIR) as it directly addresses the loss everyone was feeling...that they had nothing left - nothing external, not even a name. The eternal value of the person and his/her right - freedom - that was all that was left. It is like hearing a birth in reverse; everything, even the mother, is absent. Life is the main thing; it is the only thing. That no one can take away, though as the story in HAIR runs, even that is a debatable point...

But Simone's voice, astringent and fierce, makes it sound as if life is at the same time a base line from which to start and something that is hers, as if she had in fact created herself. The burden of not having anything becomes a blessing of a clean slate, again rejoicing in the physical body (HAIR is a very physical show, from its title on down) and the life all of these parts lead together to make up a human being (not unlike this song, which is also one of liberation). The body as a weapon; the body as an ultimate assertion of something that cannot be lost, unless there is death...and this is a song, ultimately, of life over death, of life over the "measly little world" (cf. Hendrix) that would tie it down. It is also an angry though - as if all these losses were unnecessary in the first place, robbings that have left the person with nothing more than themselves.

"Do What You Gotta Do" is a Jimmy Webb song, which is to say it's about freedom and love and how they clash. It is another song as well about how she knows she's hard to love and her heart is her own; this is self-possession on another level. If he has to be free, well, that seems inevitable; 'they' are against him and she loves him more than they ever will. Instead of being deadly fierce here Simone trembles and admits vulnerability, not as a virtue in and of itself but as a symbol, paradoxically, of strength; she is strong enough to love and let go and may never get to see him again...because there is something bigger out there that he has to do - follow his "dappled dreams" that she understands, even if no one else does.

In the first song, she asserts her freedom; in the second, she honors the freedom and needs of someone else. As the 60s come to a close, it seems freedom is the ultimate right and the ultimate gift; but there is another side to them, that wants a sense of belonging and attachment, a side that is less HAIRand more Grease. In the swirling and confusing late 60s, some basic truths have to will out first, and the toughness and quiet sorrow and acceptance here are and were the best ways for riding out a difficult period.

Simone strode in, better equipped than most to handle the situation; and Alan "Fluff" Freeman's support of this is how it got, improbably, into the UK chart in the first place**. Next we go back to the old guard, for a song about love and loss...




*The version I've posted isn't the single one that has applause from the April 7th concert mixed in, presumably to make it 'flow' as a total album ('Nuff Said!) I can only wonder if, years later, a certain producer remembered this and did his own live-to-studio tinkering for this classic (for all I know it was influenced by her; Elton certainly respected her, as anyone would).

**I am still puzzled as to how this, also a cover of a song from HAIR, only got to #11; I guess it was just the times. I still find it overwhelmingly moving...more evidence, I'm guessing, of my American childhood.

Of Sausages and Self Sacrifice: Jimmy Dean: "Big Bad John"

A man and his son look at the marble stand near the new mine, in silence; it is a quiet, nearly windless day somewhere in Tennessee, perhaps West Virginia or Pennsylvania. Mining country, a place of stoicism and endurance. They look at the inscription and the boy blinks and then the father begins to recount the story. Was he a bad man? Well, you wouldn't want to cross him, there were rumors...about New Orleans, but New Orleans is a place, a world away from the green grassy hills here. He came here to get away from all that. Maybe he did something so bad he needed to get away from the world, to literally go underground. The pitiless labor of the mine is not something you do on a whim. But he did it, and he did it well, and nobody bothered him much and everything was fine...until...that day. Like that one, dad? he asks. Yes, much like it. John just stood there and held that roof and everyone scrambled up to the sky for their lives. And he remained? Yes, and he remained. A slight pause. Was he a good man after all that? Yes, he was. Was he happy? A longer pause. I read a man once who talked about mining, in his way. The labor, endless labor of it. "The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy." He wasn't in the habit of quoting Camus out loud, but the Algerian knew what he was talking about. Was Big Bad John's life absurd? Not in the least. He didn't treat it that way. But yes, he died as happy as a man could be expected to, in such a short time. Self sacrifice, you know, is a tricky thing. To give your life for others is the most profound thing of all. They walked away slowly down the road.

It is absurd, in its way, to know that Jimmy Dean went on from this and other country hits to being a maker of sausages; but perhaps after positively existential hits like this one, the more tactile and solid world of food appealed to him. A quiet, shy drifter comes to town and saves many men (courtesy of Lee Hazelwood, of course - this is a soul record of sorts, by the way); an amiable Texan starts a food company to give literal nourishment to the U.S. Dean's voice is authoritative and yet admiring; and yet another bad-man-comes-good story is added to the many that America has already given the world. 1961 comes to a close, on a note of seriousness of purpose, as if something is about to happen. And in a way, it is.