Tag: Fleetwood Mac

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The Scariest Song Ever Recorded

Which is it? “Monster Mash”? Theme from “The Exorcist” (Tubular Bells)? “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance”? “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap”? “Sympathy for the Devil”?

Nah. The scariest lyrics I have ever heard are those in the sidebar to the right: “You Don’t Own Me”. And you can draw a line from that song through the 60’s and 70’s to Lindsay Buckingham’s “I’m So Afraid”, or, more indirectly, “The Chain”, and you would have the darkest, fiercest, most frightening lyrics imaginable. And unique. Can you think of another song like it?

And please, please, please, in the name of all that is decent and respectful and witty, don’t cite “I am Woman”. (Helen Reddy claimed that she wrote the lyrics while Ray Burton wrote the music; his recollection is that she gave him some scraps of ideas but he is the one who turned it into a set of lyrics and a song. Reddy performed the song at– get this!– the 1981 Miss World competition. Reddy used the money she earned from the song– while repeatedly claiming she “wrote” it– to buy mansions, speedboats, limousines, and jewelry. She squandered almost all of the money and went through an acrimonious divorce in 1982.)

But if you said “I’ve Never Been to Me” is it’s evil twin– it’s polar opposite– damn right!

Now– you may have noticed that this proto-feminist lyric was written by… yes, two men. Turns out that one of them, John Madara, is also associated with the ridiculous “Dawn of Correction”, a song that testifies to the absurdity of it’s own message. Look it up sometime– it’s an answer to “Eve of Destruction”. But don’t mistake it for a right-wing response like Barry Sadler’s “Ballad of the Green Berets”. “Dawn of Correction” points out that things aren’t so bad– we have the Peace Corps, and the United Nations!

So, unsurprisingly, the writer of the most feminist lyric of the 60’s is a liberal.

So what’s so scary about “You Don’t Know Me”? It’s the affront to the most fundamental of all human needs. We often think of it as the need to love. But in it’s naked form, isn’t it really a lot more like the desire to be loved, to be needed, to be indispensable to someone we badly want to be indispensable to?

There is the shock of “don’t say I can’t go out with other boys”– an attack on one of the most fundamental assumptions we hold about love relationships: it’s exclusivity. I don’t need you– so our relationship depends on whether or not I want you. And if I want someone else, I’m not going to allow anything in our existing relationship– the poor boy– to be an impediment to my pursuit of those other relationships.

It gets worse! “Don’t try to change me in any way”. Yes, yes, we all claim that we love our beloved just as they are, and almost none of us mean it. In fact, the ability to manipulate someone goes right to the essence of our relationships, as much as we all passionately deny it. And once again– if you won’t change because I want you to change, doesn’t that really mean that my power over you– because you love me so much– is really limited? That my fantasy of you suffering because you have lost my affection and approval is deflated and empty?

But the pinnacle of horror isn’t even expressed until we get to “I don’t tell you what to say/Oh [I] don’t tell you what to do”. To some people, that sounds a lot like “I don’t care what you do”, and that is the last, fatal statement on a relationship that has entered the terminal phase. But doesn’t it really mean that I accept you as you are, and that I love the qualities you have, not the ones I imagine you have after I have fixed you up? I think so. But that’s not where most of us are at. It’s not what — if we were honest– most of us really want from a relationship.

The sitcom “Cheers” had one thing right– Diane and Sam like each other but both recoil in horror at the prospect of admitting that either of them needs the other. When Diane succeeds in teasing even a modest admission from Sam, that he does kind of like her, she immediately mocks and humiliates him. It’s all very high schoolish– craving the power to refuse. To be “old enough to repay/ but young enough to sell” as Neil Young put it.

You Don’t Own Me
by John Madara and Dave White Tricker.

You don’t own me,
I’m not just one of your many toys
You don’t own me,
don’t say I can’t go with other boys

And don’t tell me what to do
And don’t tell me what to say
And please, when I go out with you
Don’t put me on display, ’cause

You don’t own me,
don’t try to change me in any way
You don’t own me,
don’t tie me down ’cause I’d never stay

Oh, I don’t tell you what to say
I don’t tell you what to do
So just let me be myself
That’s all I ask of you

I’m young and I love to be young
I’m free and I love to be free
To live my life the way I want
To say and do whatever I please

A-a-a-nd don’t tell me what to do
Oh-h-h-h don’t tell me what to say
And please, when I go out with you
Don’t put me on display

I don’t tell you what to say
Oh-h-h-h don’t tell you what to do
So just let me be myself
That’s all I ask of you

I’m young and I love to be young
I’m free and I love to be free
To live my life the way I want

I’m pretty fed up with the Internet song lyric sites telling you that this is Leslie Gore’s “You Don’t Own Me”, or Elvis Presley’s “Suspicion”, or Madonna’s “Don’t Cry for me Argentina”.

The songs belong to the composers and writers, not the singers. The songs will return again and again as other artists cover them, and the constant tag should be the name of the composer.

By the way, in terms of female empowerment, “I Will Survive” is not only a crummy song, but it was also actually written by a man. So much for all that audacious self-satisfaction. But then again, as I said, truthfully, it’s a horrible song. [Added 2018-11]

Another horrifying extraordinary song of personal autonomy “That’s the Way I’ve Always Heard it Should be” (written by Carly Simon and… wait for it… yes. A man: Jacob Brackman, 1971):

You say we can keep our love alive
Babe – all I know is what I see –
The couples cling and claw
And drown in love’s debris.
You say we’ll soar like two birds through the clouds,
But soon you’ll cage me on your shelf –
I’ll never learn to be just me first
By myself.

You owe it to yourself to listen carefully to this song, with the lyrics before you: it’s one of the finest songs of the 1970’s, and one of the most powerful statements about the realities of women and men and romantic love, ever.

So why, oh why, oh why, are the lyrics by a man (Jacob Brackman, a friend of Simon’s from high school)? Why!? Can’t a woman eager to proclaim her need for independence and self-realization at least write her own lyrics about it? Jeez! The best I can hope for is that she told him how she felt and he put it into very, very elegant words. But it’s still disappointing.

And one more, from The Mamas and the Papas (John Philips)

You gotta go where you wanna go
Do what you wanna do
With whoever you want to do it with
…you don’t understand
that a girl like me can love
just one man…

There is something uncannily poignant in that — she’s young and naïve, and at that moment, he’s the only man she will ever truly love. And she may be right– she may find someone else, but it will never be the same. Written by…. a man.

And, okay, one more yet– from “The Chain” by Lindsey Buckingham

And if you don’t love me now
You will never love me again
I can still hear you saying
You would never break the chain.

I almost forgot. This one might be the scariest of all– Lindsey Buckingham, again, whipped into a despairing frenzy at the thought of being unable to express or receive love, thereby condemning himself to solitude. You have to hear this one to receive the full effect– like John Philips, Buckingham works a lot of his magic around the arrangements and performance, rather than the lyrics: (From “I’m So Afraid”)

I been alone
Always down
No one cared to stay around
I never change
I never will
I’m so afraid the way I feel

And yet one more– Lucinda Williams “Side of the Road”

If only for a minute or two
I wanna see what it feels like
to be without you
I wanna know the touch
of my own skin
Against the sun, against the wind

It must be said: at least Lucinda wrote her own lyrics.

But then again, isn’t she a lesbian?

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Go Your Own Way

For a few years in the mid-1970’s, the album “Rumors” by Fleetwood Mac was ranked the best-selling album of all time. One listen and it’s not hard to see why. Rumors has something for everyone, the romantic, the rocker, the thoughtful sentimentalist. I didn’t usually buy pop albums back then– Tom Petty and Jackson Browne were about as mainstream as I got– but I bought a copy of Rumors. My favorite song was Lindsey Buckingham’s “Go Your Own Way”, but the most haunting was a group effort: “The Chain”.

fleetwood.jpg (16168 bytes)

fleetwood.jpg (16168 bytes)

There was considerable attention paid to the fact that the members of Fleetwood Mac appeared to be documenting personal experience in their songs. Lindsay Buckingham and Stevie Nicks were married to each other, as were John and Christine McVie. During the life of the band, both relationships floundered. “Go Your Own Way” is poignant, though you wouldn’t know it from the lyrics alone:

You can go your own way
You can call it another lonely day…

I don’t know the details, but a few years later, Nicks and Buckingham went their own ways and got divorced, and so did the McVie’s.

A couple of years ago, the band reunited for a concert and a new album. As a rule, I am not fond of rock band reunions. The Beach Boys flogged themselves around for years and years and it was downright embarrassing, especially when they tried to drag Brian Wilson along. The Eagles set a record for ticket prices — and greed– on their last tour. What are they selling? Nostalgia. It’s kind of pathetic. They couldn’t stay on top of the charts with new material, so they disbanded. The members all had disastrous solo careers. They all squandered their money on fast cars, drugs, and loose women. Now they’re broke. But all those baby boomers are rich and conspicuous and just looking for something fake and ostentatious to squander their money on and here we are– still singing “California Girls” and “Hotel California” and reliving our misspent youths. Sponsored by Schlitz.

Yes, “Hotel California”– that epic diatribe against shallow, grasping materialism– is now performed by shallow, grasping, aging former rock stars. You may now call them “entertainers”.

There are exceptions. Yes, the Rolling Stones continue to tour, and yes, they have corporate sponsors, but at least they continue to put out original music on a regular basis. So does Bob Dylan and Neil Young. Neil Young even has the integrity to refuse corporate sponsors– one of the very few 60’s icons who hasn’t sold out.

Anyway, back to Fleetwood Mac and “The Chain”. The chorus is

if you don’t love me now
you will never love me again
I can still hear you saying
you must never break the chain

This was not my favorite song when the album came out. I couldn’t understand it. I didn’t think it was very meaningful. And there wasn’t much to the lyrics– about four lines worth.

Now I have a better understanding of what it means. If you have been in a relationship for a long time, you know each other in a way that young lovers never do. There is no mystery, no promise, no exciting possibilities. Instead of seeing someone who represents a whole world of new experiences and ideas and feelings and relationships– you see someone with whom you have exhausted opportunities together, and whom you realize is not likely to ever change or grow or improve. Your relationship is established in concrete. Your social circle is congealed. Your potential has been realized. Even your income is probably relatively fixed.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing. If the relationship is still good, there are other bonds, and familiarity, and understanding, and the thing we refer to vaguely as “home”. The world can be a demanding, stressful place– there should be one place where you are unconditionally accepted and loved. When a relationship works, that’s what you get.

But if you fall out of love with that person– if you lose the daily acts of affection and intimacy and consideration– it will be, I think, almost impossible to rebuild that relationship later. “If you don’t love me now”– right now, this very moment– it will be impossible to fall in love with me again. What we have left is the baggage of your life, your children, your mortgage.

You could still go on for forty or fifty years, without ever feeling passion for each other again. Some people think that is magnificent. Family values. You should hang in there and try to work it out.

Or you could dissolve the relationship. But that’s pretty depressing too.

You get the feeling, from the content of Rumors, that Lindsey Buckingham wanted out of his relationship with Stevie Nicks, and that Stevie Nicks didn’t want him to leave:

It’s only right that you should
Play the way you feel it
But listen carefully to the sound
Of your loneliness
Like a heartbeat… drives you mad
In the stillness of remembering what you had
And what you lost… [songwriter: Stevie Nicks]

But these are just songs. People write from the heart, but they also have an ear for rhythm and an eye for strong imagery. Maybe it was the other way around.

Ian and Sylvia, the folk duo who had their best years in the 1960’s, (“Four Strong Winds” is probably their best-known song), also did a reunion concert a while ago. Like Buckingham and Nicks, they were a married couple writing and performing music together. Sylvia Fricker ran away from home in Chatham, Ontario, (“River Road”) and joined the older Ian Tyson in Toronto, and they had a pretty good career together, mostly covering songs by Dylan, Lightfoot, and others. And like Buckingham/Nicks, they eventually split up. Sylvia left Ian because she felt somewhat stifled by the relationship, and felt a need to develop her own potential away from his dominating influence. In all of their recorded music, Sylvia rarely solos.  [I later read that there were affairs…]

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At the reunion concert, they sang a lot of love songs, about relationships starting and relationships dying. I had the feeling that Ian was inviting her back, in song, pleading with her, promising that it would be different this time. Sylvia looked more like, hey, it’s just a damn song. Let’s get the nostalgia thing over with so I can get back to my life. The chain was broken. She works in Toronto for the CBC. He has a ranch out in Alberta.

Why are so many pop singers so physically attractive? At the most superficial level, you would think that what we’re really after here is a voice. But of course, that is nonsense. In fact, the music industry will quite often take someone who can’t sing at all, but has a great body, and turn her or him into a singer.  Or someone who is attractive and can act:  the Monkees.  They never do that with someone who is overweight and has a bad complexion. No, singers have to be beautiful because part of the experience of listening to their music is a powerful sense of identification and fantasy. All around the world, men imagine that Stevie Nicks and Sylvia Fricker and Shania Twain and even Madonna are thinking about them when they sing songs about passion and surrender and desire. And women feel the same way about Donny Osmond.

Well…

If you have Rumours in your collection (if you’re a baby boomer, the odds are pretty good), give “The Chain” a fresh listen. Then turn up “Go Your Own Way” really loud and dance with the kids.

Note 1: Nicks and Buckingham actually split up as the album was being recorded, not afterwards.

Note 2: Nicks’ wrote a song called “Silver Springs” which was left off the album for management reasons. Nicks reportedly went ballistic when she found out and never forgave whoever it was she thought was responsible for the decision, which might have been Fleetwood and McVie.