When the dust finally settles, the song I showcase today is (probably) just a very beautiful love song, gorgeously sung. If that works for you, so let it be. That image works for me too. On a very residual, left-over level.
When I first heard it, the last thing I thought was that it was a love song.
There was legendary preamble to my getting hold of Carole King's album Tapestry (1971). I had heard of how the album "snapshotted" the golden summer of music, the sixties, with effortless ease. Each of the songs became icons, showing a songwriter who was quietly, strongly, cannily, very knowingly, one of the most articulate, expressive and distinctive of the flower-power era. The album became (and still remains) a signpost for all time in the 'rock' era and swept the Grammy Awards in 1971 with 4 awards - Record of the Year, Song of the Year, Album of the Year and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. A before-after moment.
With this preamble, when I finally got to hear the album, I was amazed at King's enormous control of her art (at least on the Tapestry album, if not her later efforts). The songs seemed to have been recorded with a stark and spare sound, essentially piano with rock band, with plenty of time and space in them, necessary depths to probe, potent things to say. And yes, laid-back, with all the time in the world to appreciate the muse and ruminate through.
The album also revealed a formidable songwriter whose skills few could match at the time; Tapestry is filled with 12 Carole King originals, except two or three she wrote in tandem with her songwriting friend Gerry Goffin. I'd have to say it's hard, really hard, to find a 12-song album filled with such iconic, unforgettable songwriting on each song. I've heard a lot of music and I can say that for sure. Topping Tapestry would take another Carole King with the muse she had at that time....rare. Very, very rare. King herself never managed to top the album in any of her later efforts.
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"Home Again" is one of the littlest, tiniest songs on Tapestry, completely eclipsed, overwhelmed and out-thundered by heavyweight classics like "I Feel The Earth Move", "It's Too Late" (Record of the Year, 1971), "Beautiful", "You've Got A Friend" (Song of the Year, 1971), "Smackwater Jack" and most poignantly, the unforgettable "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow".
If you asked a million people what their favourite song on the album is, "Home Again" would probably be chosen by a measly few hundred, or even less. Maybe less than a hundred.
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Don't know if you've ever felt the inexorable-ness of not being able to reach yourself. If you've ever felt distanced from yourself, like you're outside of yourself and looking down at yourself, and yet unable to reach yourself and be at peace. It's like a numbness where you're not you, though you miss yourself and love yourself and want to reach yourself, but you can't. You know something is wrong; when you take the time to introspect, you find you have not been able to be yourself and still, you can't do anything about it.
A great loneliness comes over me, like losing my way, alone, drifting, not being able to find myself. There are no expressions of me-ness. It's almost zombie-like. And through the fog, I come to terms with what had exactly happened -
Sometimes I wonder if I'm ever gonna make it home again
It's so far and out of sight
I really need someone to talk to, and nobody else
Knows how to comfort me tonight
Snow is cold, rain is wet
Chills my soul right to the marrow
I won't be happy till I see you alone again
Till I'm home again and feeling right
Snow is cold, rain is wet
Chills my soul right to the marrow
I won't be happy till I see you alone again
Till I'm home again and feeling right
Till I'm home again and feeling right
I wanna be home again and feeling right
I had written myself away, and only I knew it. I swore I would not let people close, ever. People saw me, but they couldn't see that I was not me anymore; I had locked that door and deliberately thrown the keys away. People saw a zombie-me, only they didn't know it was a zombie-me. Carole King, in her incisive muse, had put me into words.
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Not only did "Home Again" effortlessly capture what I was trying to come to terms with, but the chord work also perfectly catalysed my musical horizon at that point in my life. The song SOUNDED very simple, till I actually tried to play it. In essence, yes, its structure is simple, just like the greatest songs ever written. Simple, because though what goes into making them simple is a lot of very hard work, the finished product shows none of the entrails of build and development. The tools are all put carefully away and all you hear is the song, sounding brilliant yet simple.
The opening riff is classic, a gentle rock'n'roll if you will. There's also the soaring verse, opening out the options - there are some lovely chords there. And of course, the evocation of just how cold snow can be, how wet rain can be, and the chills of the soul, need the minor progressions.
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I'm not too sure locking myself in at that point was right. But I must soberly realise today, in retrospect, that sometimes, the feeling of being trapped (when you're actually NOT) can lead to strange decisions...... These days, I know where home is. I try not to wander too far, lest it goes out of sight and I have to bear the snow and the rain...and the chills. Does this sound strange? It's actually more sinister than it sounds.....strange is just the beginning.
If you really didn't understand any of this...it's okay. Just listen to the song and see if it speaks anything at all...to you.
