Because it is summer; because it is the middle of the year, a time when life trills in the evening trees with a sleepy vibrancy, I continue to think about rock and roll (and what is the best rock song ever). But now I turn to rock and roll that is purely romantic, that makes me want to be a lover, a lover of life and the noble embrace. I want to think of those artists that make me want to kiss my wife, to hold her and never let her go. I want to think of those artists who capture lost love; who write and sing of broken dreams, or the great distance between lovers that lovers cannot avoid. I want to think of marriage, of holding hands; of the warm and wet kiss in the dark.
There are many artists, of course, who speak to this deep longing for love, for reconciliation, for reunion. U2's "With or Without You" brings to mind that woman I thought I could not live without; nor could I live with her, as she so painfully made clear. The Scorpions' hard rock ballad, "Still Loving You", still rings with all the passion I have felt for a woman who could wring no passion from her cooling heart. And Bruce Cockburn's "Lovers in a Dangerous Time" prompts me to think of the vortex of hate and infidelity that swirls around two hearts duly betrothed, tempting them to disdain their vows, their love.
Perhaps no single artist is more romantic (in my musical history) than Dan Fogelberg. At times, he was even too romantic. That the guy could rock is clear; his "Face the Fire", an anthem rallying resistance to nuclear power, is a crankingly good tune. But his love songs, like "Dancing Shoes", "Sketches", or "Souvenirs" are so good as to be painful. The beauty, the pathos, the simplicity. Ahh. I am reeling even now. And the absolutely crushing theme of "Auld Lang Syne" -- with his "just for a moment, I was back at school" closing the song, as the "snow turned into rain" -- has caused some part of me to cry ceaselessly for the past 23 years.
There is a moment in Journey's lovely "Faithfully", when Steve Perry simply sings "Oh" three times with such melodic beauty the pain and longing are palpable, and I am transported to the very breast of Venus, where I weep.
Indeed, there are too many such songs to number; too many hearts have known broken love or love's failure. Too many souls have felt the abandonment, the pain of rejection, associated with love's unavoidable risks. Artists abundant have spoken to this with such accuracy, with such poignancy, it would be foolish to think that the love song is not the essential song of humanity. We cry for love; we yearn for it like a sunset seeks a dawn: we want to know love over and over again.
Tonight, right now, I listen to James Blunt's "High". Right now, it is the most beautiful love song I've ever heard. Oh, yes, there are others who have reached such heights. But tonight, James Blunt sends me running for cover; and he sends me to those places where everything else strips away as so much nonsense. Poetry and prayer, priest and president, seem inconsequential. There is love; there is sharing the dawn with the woman this man was meant to meet, through fire and rain and splitting skies and the fiery darts of sin; through sickness and even through the very gates of death.
And yet I only touch the hem of romance.
Peace.
©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.
9 comments:
Thanks for the thoughts.
Fogelberg. Way too romantic. I listened far too many times to "There's a place in the world for a gambler".
Doesn't Rock (by its rebellious nature) strip off all romantic notions of love and, rather, describe a love them and leave 'em approach to love?
Well, Brady, you make a good point. Much of the rock and roll canon indeed seems bereft of romance. Is this the very soul of rock and roll, to "love 'em and leave 'em"? Perhaps. But if it is, how utterly sad. Such music, however, is not the sort I enjoy listening to. I like the philosophical stuff of rock and roll, the poetic, and the romantic. The slash and burn, sexual conquest emptiness of so much rock has no audience here. That there are, however, some truly romantic tunes out there bringing respectability to the rock and roll canon is undeniable. I am grateful for those artists who strive for something transcendent in love, beauty, truth; reaching for something eternal.
Peace.
BG
I respectfully disagree with the notion that rock and/or roll is anti-romantic. I think one of the key themes is the musical expression of youth, the experience of going through adolsecence and becoming an adult.
This process is rife with joy and pain (as I think all of us can remember). It includes the joys of falling in love and experiencing sex for the first time, and the pain of heartache and breakups. Underlying it all is a sense of developing independence and freedom that we all gain as we grow older and (hopefully) wiser.
Many songs will focus on one or the other of these themes, but they are all related.
My nomination in Bill's discussion, Born to Run, focuses on themes of first love (I wanna know if love is wild/I wanna know if love is real), burgeoning independence and a sense of yearning to see what we can do on our own.
Anyway, that's how I see it.
emaw_kc,
I completely agree with you. I think my essay and subsequent comment (to Brady) shows this to be the case. But I think we must admit that much of rock and roll is not romantic at all: there is the whole psychedelic, drugged-out, party-on, "Head for Backstage Pass" (a Jeff Beck tune) sort of stuff; there's the political, we-can-change-the-world-with-peace genre; there's the running from the law, screw-the-man genre; and this is to name only a few possible rock attitudes.
But I find tremendous romantic longing, imagery, and tone in a lot of rock and roll. There is feeling there, passion; there is alienation, anger, rage, doubt, solitude; and there is the gentle breeze of remembering something fleetingly beautiful, perhaps all the more beautiful because it was fleeting.
Peace.
Gnade
r.sherman,
Oh, how often I stood "high on this mountain, the clouds down below, [I am] feeling so strong and alive". Netherlands was an almost perfect album.
It very much became the central album of my freshman year in college (though my first year was 1980, when you would have been a junior, right?). Unlike you, the album did not draw me into a particular romance, but out. The album became part of my breaking up with a girl; for some reason, Fogelberg gave me the strength (a little) to do it. The irony is that the girl I was dating, Judy Beth, gave me the album.
Peace.
BG
Thanks for the comments. I love this Fogelberg discussion. In some ways, he seems so retro now, but back then he spoke to my heart. He has aged much better than, say, Neil Diamond…
Just for the record, I was not expressing what I think Rock is, but how Rock (and true rocker?) portrays itself/themselves. Rock is, in its beginning and in its 60's development, anti-establishment, with romantic, live-happily-ever-after love as part of that establishment.
In a recent conversation, a Rock "connaisseur" labeled one POP and the other ROCK.
All and all, this discussion makes me want to get back to my music library in CH!
When I was 15 years old, my uncle played a double album by Dan Fogelberg called "The Innocent Age." It became and remains in the top three of my favorite collections. I remember hearing an interview of Fogelberg after the album came out, and he talked about how painful yet gratifying it was to write those songs which had such personal meaning to him. There's a song on that recording called "Nexus" which I really like, and there's also a very sentimental and poignant duet with Emmylou Harris called "Only the Heart May Know."
This is taking me down memory lane!
Perhaps the most beautiful love song in the world is 'There is a Light that Never Goes Out' by The Smiths:
"And if a double-decker bus
Crashes into us
To die by your side
Is such a heavenly way to die
And if a ten ton truck
Kills the both of us
To die by your side
Well the pleasure, the privilege is mine"
Wow.
LB
Alright, some small consensus is emerging that, as far as love songs are concerned, Dan Fogelberg could get it done. Brady is right about Fogelberg sounding dated; and he has aged pretty well. I watched him play some sort of recent concert aired during a PBS fundraiser. It was a bit painful to see how old he (and I, too) has gotten. And it was tough to hear him struggle to reach the great sonic highs (and he was up there during his heydays); many of the songs were played a few steps lower to accomodate him.
Now Luke mentions a song I am not sure I've heard. I will have to search my archives; some tunes are familiar, I just don't know the names. But I would think I'd remember death by a double-decker bus. I did go and read the Wikipedia review of the song. Sounds as if some folks don't see it as a true love song. Interesting.
Blessings!
Gnade
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