Response Songs

Response Songs #4 – A Blinding Insight?

Posted by thebestmusicyouhaveneverheard on February 21, 2013
Posted in: Response Songs, Rock History. Tagged: , . Leave a comment

Joni and Graham

I have made several posts over the past year about response songs.  All of these posts were based on things that I read.  This week I had a moment of blinding insight when I discovered a potential response song myself.  Here is my story…….

On Tuesday I was listening to Joni Mitchell’s 1968 debut album, Song to a Seagull, that was produced by David Crosby.   The first track of the album, I Had a King, came on and it was like I was hearing it for the first time.  As I listened to the lyrics I was thinking about how Joni and Graham Nash had been a couple and I started to wonder if Graham might have been the King that Joni was referring to.  Let’s listen to the song before I continue my story so you can share that moment with me….

This is truly a gorgeous song which makes me wonder why I was thinking so hard when listening to it (but sometimes I can’t help myself).  My blinding insight occurred as I continued to listen and here is how it sounded in my head…..

Holy shit, Graham had a song called I Used To Be A King on his 1971 debut album, Songs For Beginners.  I always thought it was just a follow-on song to his song King Midas In Reverse from his time with the Hollies but maybe it was a response song….

So…out comes Songs For Beginners and before you know it I Used To Be A King is blasting out of my stereo.  Listen with me……

So back to the conversation going on in my head….

These songs have to be related and surely I am not the first person to notice!  Let’s find out what other people might be saying….

Out comes my laptop and off I go to internet, the fountain of all knowledge.  Sure enough, I found a few references to these two songs……….the best one was from likemariasaidpaz.blogspot.com….

Graham Nash’s Songs For Beginners

I used to be a king
And everything around me turned to gold
I thought I had everything
Now I’m left without a hand to hold
But it’s alright
I’m okay
How are you?
For what it’s worth
I must say
I loved you
And in my bed
Late at night
I miss you
Someone is going to take my heart
No one is going to break my heart
Again
I love that song and I love that album. “I Used To Be A King” is ‘inspired’ by Joni Mitchell’s “I Had A King.” Joni’s song was written to early in her career to have been about Graham (she hadn’t met him yet); however, he wrote “I Used To Be A King” as he and Joni were in the process of breaking up. Though not about Graham, the two songs do work as a call and response.Graham Nash was always my favorite of the three in Crosby, Stills and Nash. I like David Crosby and Stephen Stills (and love Neil Young) but Graham Nash’s vocals and lyrics always spoke to me in a way that few ever manage to. I consider it one of the great losses of this period that Graham released so few solo albums. I think he easily outpaced other solo male singer-songwriters (including Jackson Browne and James Taylor) and that he could have been among the finest.
Songs For Beginners makes that so clear. It remains a perfect album.

After reading this I am convinced that the author of the above post nailed it!  Sure enough, Joni and Graham were not a couple when the song I Had A King was written and recorded!   Even though the song was not about Graham, I Used To Be A King is clearly about Joni and is almost certainly a clever reference back to I Had A King.

At the end of the day, I feel somewhat vindicated by my blinding insight!  Regardless, it was a really fun exercise.  As always, let me know what you think.

Here’s a little bonus.  Let’s listen to King Midas In Reverse, the Hollies song that I thought might might be related to I Used To Be A King…….

Two’fer Tuesday – Mary Had A Little Lamb/Working Class Hero

Posted by thebestmusicyouhaveneverheard on February 19, 2013
Posted in: Protest Songs, Response Songs, Rock History, Two'fer Tuesday. Tagged: , , . Leave a comment

Coming Soon

I have been promising to produce a series on American Protest Music for months and I am just about ready to roll it out.  What better way to get us in the mood than to cover a couple of post-Beatles protest songs from Paul McCartney and John Lennon for our Two’fer Tuesday post this week.

First up is a strange little protest song from Paul McCartney and Wings called Mary Had A Little Lamb.

Mary Had A Little Lamb

Nope….I’m not kidding, Paul released this little ditty in 1972 as a protest against the BBC (the cover for the single is shown above).  Let’s listen and then I will give you the rest of the story…..

You might be asking how Mary Had A Little Lamb became a protest song?  Well, Wing’s previous single, another protest song called Give Ireland Back To the Irish, was banned from the BBC.  Paul wrote and released Mary Had A Little Lamb in protest of the banning of Give Ireland Back To the Irish.  His thought process was that he would write a silly little song, one that the BBC couldn’t possibly ban, that everyone would know was making fun of the BBC ban of Give Ireland Back To The Irish.  Response to the song was mixed but I personally think that it was a brilliant move!  Believe it or not, the song rose to #9 on the singles charts.  As a bonus, let’s listen to Give Ireland Back To The Irish……

John’s song, Working Class Hero, was much more serious, as usual!  Working Class Hero was written as a protest of the inequalities of modern social classes and the ways that society works to make people not think about/protest these inequalities (Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV/And you think you’re so clever and classless and free/But you’re still fucking peasants as far as I can see).  As I noted, this was not a silly little ditty…..let’s listen….

I personally think this was John’s most powerful song in his post-Beatles solo career.  We will revisit it’s message as part of the upcoming American Protest Music series.

As always, let me know what you think!

Response Songs #3 – McCartney vs Lennon

Posted by thebestmusicyouhaveneverheard on May 27, 2012
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Paul and Linda McCartney released Ram in 1971 during the height of the litigations that were on-going as a result of the Beatles break up.

There was no, doubt, a lot of  bad blood especially between Paul and John.  Paul has admitted to taking a couple of shots at John in Too Many People from the Ram album.  The specific lyrics in question are as follows:

“You Took Your Lucky Break And Broke It In Two”

“Too Many People Preaching Practices”

The meaning of the first line clearly refers to the breakup of the Beatles, while the second line refers to what Paul perceived as John’s overly preachy activism (think of John and Yoko’s Bed In for Peace).  It’s my second favorite song from Ram so let’s take a listen.

In New York John was recording his Imagine album and the lyrics to Too Many People did not go unnoticed.  When Imagine was released it featured responses in two forms.  First, a post card was included in the album with a picture of John holding onto a pig by it’s ears which was clearly mocking the cover of Ram which featured Paul holding onto the horns of a Ram.

The second response was in the form of the scathing lyrics to How Do You Sleep which were clearly aimed at Paul.

“So Sgt. Pepper took you by surprise
You better see right through that mother’s eyes
Those freaks was right when they said you was dead
The one mistake you made was in your head
Ah, how do you sleep?
Ah, how do you sleep at night?
You live with straights who tell you you was king
Jump when your momma tell you anything
The only thing you done was yesterday
And since you’re gone you’re just another day
Ah, how do you sleep?
Ah, how do you sleep at night?

Ah, how do you sleep?
Ah, how do you sleep at night?

A pretty face may last a year or two
But pretty soon they’ll see what you can do
The sound you make is muzak to my ears
You must have learned something in all those years
Ah, how do you sleep?
Ah, how do you sleep at night?”

Even after forty years I am still shocked by the bitterness of these lyrics and the personal nature of the attack on Paul.  Let’s listen to the song.

If there was any doubt that the Beatles were really over, this song pretty much sealed the deal.  Just thinking about it today makes me sad all over again.

Stay tuned tomorrow…we will further explore Ram as our Album of the week.

Response Songs #2 – Lynyrd Skynyrd vs Neil Young

Posted by thebestmusicyouhaveneverheard on May 24, 2012
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For the second post in this new series we, once again, have Neil Young as the artist whose music generated a response from another group.  In this particular case, Neil wrote and performed a couple of songs about the south that rubbed the boys from Lynyrd Skynyrd the wrong way.  First us is a song called Southern Man, a song from Neil’s album After the Gold Rush that focuses attention on the south’s history of slavery and racism.  Let’s listen…

Not content with just one song about one negative song about the south, Neil “doubled down” by including the song Alabama on his Harvest album.  Alabama picks on the state of Alabama highlighting it’s poverty and the weigh of it’s burden from the days of slavery.  Let’s listen to it.

Lynyrd Skynyrd, decided to respond to Southern Man and Alabama with their song Sweet Home Alabama which calls out Neil in one of its verses:

Well I heard mister Young sing about her
Well, I heard ole Neil put her down
Well, I hope Neil Young will remember
A Southern man don’t need him around anyhow

Let’s listen to Sweet Home Alabama.  As Ronnie Van Zant says at the beginning of the song….turn it up!   (sorry about the ad!)

In reality, there was a lot of respect, and no real animosity, between Neil and Lynyrd Skynyrd.  Did anyone else notice that Ronnie Van Zant was wearing a Neil Young t-shirt in the Free Bird video I posted yesterday 🙂

This will not be the case in my next Response Song post which is based on real animosity and bitterness.  Stay tuned for that one, you don’t want to miss it.

Bonus….still haven’t had enough Skynyrd?  Check out their second album, Second Helping, below.

As always let me know what you think.

Response Songs #1

Posted by thebestmusicyouhaveneverheard on May 19, 2012
Posted in: Response Songs. Tagged: , . Leave a comment

Today’s post is the first in a new series that is titled Response Songs.  Response songs are ones that were written in response to another song.  To kickoff this new series we have Neil Young performing Sugar Mountain.  In the introduction to the song he mentions that Joni Mitchell wrote a song in response to Sugar Mountain.  Let’s listen to Neil…

Joni did indeed write her song The Circle Game after hearing Sugar Mountain.  Her is the story, in her own word, as provided by thrasherswheat.org (a website about Neil).

“In 1965 I was up in Canada, and there was a friend of mine up there who had just left a Rock’n’Roll band in Winnipeg/Manitoba near where I come from on the prairies to become a folk singer a la Bob Dylan, who was his hero at that time, and at the same time there were breaks in his life and he was going into new and exciting directions.

He had just newly turned 21, and that meant in Winnipeg he was no longer allowed into his favorite hangout which is kind of a teeny-bopper club and once you’re over 21 you couldn’t get in there anymore, so he was really feeling terrible because his girlfriends and everybody that he wanted to hang out with, his band could still go there, you know, but it’s one of the things that drove him to become a folk singer was that he couldn’t play in this club anymore. But he was over the hill.

So he wrote this song that was called “Oh to live on sugar mountain” which was a lament for his lost youth. And it went like this… [sings a few verses].

And I thought, God, you know, if we get to 21 and there’s nothing after that, that’s a pretty bleak future, so I wrote a song for him, and for myself just to give me some hope. It’s called The Circle Game.”

Let’s listen to Joni singing the Circle Game……

Let me know if you like the premise behind this post.  Also, let me know if you know of other response songs that I can include in future posts.