What does it really feel like to have “nothing left to lose”? Each of us reaches the point where we’ve got “nothing left to lose” at some time or other in our lives. Some of us are aware when we’ve reached there - most of us are blissfully unaware. And though some of us recover, a good many of us never do.
I have learned, very painfully and slowly, that during our lifetime, we rarely know or are able to admit the things we stake our lives for. And when those things have sucked the life out of us, we are just hollow shells left with ‘nothing left to lose’. Some of us crumple and perish; others fill the hollow shell with something or other, and try again. Chillingly, most of us don’t even know what is going on, or why we feel so empty.
You gave the best you had to give
You only have one life to live
You fought so hard you were a slave
After all you gave there was nothing left to save
You’ve got nothing left to lose (you’ve got nothing left to lose…)
No, you’ve got nothing left to lose (who’d want to be standing in your shoes?)
So what then? “Beware of what controls you?” Yea, but more accurately, “Beware of what you want, because you cannot control it - it will control you.”. That’s how it is with us. “Desire” becomes “want”, and “want” becomes “need” and then “need” becomes “need more and more forever and ever”. We think that getting what we want makes us happy; actually, it often sucks us dry. The happiness of fulfilled desires, at least this side of eternity, comes with a “use before” date. After the fleeting happiness dries up, our (fulfilled) desires leave within our souls a yawning abyss of emptiness - a bottomless pit. We can cave in. Implode.
How are we to know what it is that controls us, though? Surprisingly, and chillingly, these things that control us are not always bad things. They are things that started out good, but then became cannibalistic dragons that prey on us.
And what is life like, under the control of things we thought we are in control of? It’s the lust of the chase, usually unaware. It’s going through life actually waiting for the cards to fall right. One card, then we wait for another, the lust is in our hearts and we are full of the deadly thrill of waiting for the next card. We don’t know when it’s time to stop. No number of friendly cards is going to be enough until it’s too late to see what it’s done to us. Until we have ‘nothing left to lose’…..and ‘everything to gain’.
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When I first heard the band we know as “The Alan Parsons Project”, I was intrigued. It was 1987, I was still a 10th grader, school wasn't over yet and I loved the music. A little later I heard a rumour, half true, that Alan Parsons had been Pink Floyd’s “lights boy”. Of course I fell for that one - hey. I was just 16! It wasn’t hard to throw me. The half truth is that Parsons was, in fact, Pink Floyd’s recording engineer, not their “lights boy”.
More bits of the Alan Parsons story trickled in over the years - I learned he’s worked for Al Stewart, Ambrosia, and many other acts. Wikipedia credits him with being responsible for the grandstanding saxophone solo in Al Stewart’s top money-spinner “Year Of The Cat”, but this is not a corroborated story. Pink Floyd credited him with a very significant contribution to their most bearable LP Dark Side Of The Moon ’73. The arcane aura in Pink Floyd’s essential sound also permeates The Alan Parsons Project’s music, but whereas it works well for The Project, enhancing their motif sound, in Pink Floyd’s case, at least to my ears, it just sounds like unmitigated doom without any meaningful context. However, this is something that I realised only much later, just like the picture slowly coming to life when all the bits make sense.
Pink Floyd apparently invited Alan Parsons back in ’75 to oversee their next LP Wish You Were Here, but he refused their invite, choosing instead to form The Project with Eric Woolfson, a songwriter he had met during the Dark Side Of The Moon days.
I’d always wondered why the group called themselves The Alan Parsons “Project” – but now it makes complete sense. In its 70s-80s avatar, The Project was nothing more than a core creative duo (Parsons and Woolfson) with musicians Stuart Elliott (drums), David Paton (bass) and Ian Bairnson (guitar). They had a host of vocalists from time to time - Lenny Zakatek, Chris Rainbow, Colin Blunstone, and Elmer Gantry most often. Consequently, the songs were just set pieces that were not played live. I heard that the later incarnation post 2000, called The Alan Parsons Live Project, are essentially a live band, who do play the old songs live. But it’s quite revelatory to know that the songs we loved from The Project might never have been played live…..
“Nothing Left To Lose” is the fourth part of an ambitious 16-minute title track from The Project’s LP The Turn Of A Friendly Card ’80. This is a tidy little ‘concept’ LP, with only mild edges of what we used to call ‘prog-rock’. The obvious reference to card-playing in the title would seem (at least to me) to be an euphemism, an analogy, for our obsession with the disordered loves in our lives. You can think of the entire LP as a chronicle of how these disordered loves wreck us. “Nothing Left To Lose” is the culmination of the story. As far as the storytelling goes, the LP is competent if not brilliantly creative. As far as the music goes, it’s coherent but perhaps a little too accessible. Even so, there is an arcane tinge, not entirely without charm, to many of the songs which might lead some to think of the whole thing as a pretty little watercolour.
If you like your ‘prog-rock’ with a soft touch, picturesque, accessible and at least a bit of charm (as I do), you will like The Turn Of A Friendly Card (as I do). As it is, The Project, in my opinion, never did anything better. Later LPs had either more froth than substance (too easy), or too much orchestral pretension. The Turn Of A Friendly Card is the leanest Project LP with the surest touch, if you like it said that way.
The 16-minute title track "The Turn Of A Friendly Card" takes up the entire second side in the original releases of the LP. The track consists of 5 segued songs - the title song (two parts – the second is a reprise), the songs “Snake Eyes” and “Nothing Left To Lose”, and instrumental “The Ace Of Swords”. The track begins with Part 1, where the gambit is laid out – a grim picture of people in chains on “a wheel in perpetual motion”, “who belong to all races and play out the games with no show of an outward emotion” – presumably a reference to how oblivious we are to things that control us; in this specific case, card-playing. “Snake Eyes”, the next song, is an enjoyable rocker, with its insistent cry “Just one minute more, give me just one minute more” – the typical and constant refrain of an addict. The instrumental “The Ace of Swords” is the battle, the game, on which everything depends. “Nothing Left To Lose” administers the last rites to the inevitable loss of the battle and the war, and Part 2 of “The Turn Of A Friendly Card” closes out the LP.
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Analysis aside, I’ve never been able to listen to “Nothing Left To Lose” as merely a good song (which it surely is). It always touches an emotional nerve.
Perhaps it’s associated with a time in my past that I remember feeling well at heart. It’s true, you know - there aren’t too many times in my life when I remember feeling well. I heard it in 1989 which is a year I remember very fondly - very fondly indeed.
Perhaps it’s the most satisfying Alan Parsons Project track I’ve ever heard - and it kind of came unheralded from left field to get to that place. I say this because it completes the story of its LP quite potently, both lyrically and musically. I would recommend that it be heard within its context of the five-song suite on the LP to get what I’m saying here and also get the full force of what the song is all about.
The accordion solo in the song sets off emotions within me - emotions that I find are frequently associated with warm-hued sunsets, or with the dappled sunlight of early evening. There has always been something about the accordion that does this to me and leaves me a little tender and dewy-eyed. I am susceptible - like the solo in Simon & Garfunkel’s “The Boxer”, or the warm, rich, enveloping backdrop in Bruce Hornsby’s “The River Runs Low” - and the solo in “Nothing Left To Lose”.
Clearly portraying what it is to be shown tender kindness when you’ve got nothing left to lose, and are playing for life – this is what the song really does for me, both musically and lyrically. It speaks the hard truths - regret, coming to one’s senses after the madness - as delicately and refreshingly as possible.
Scornful thoughts that fly your way
You should turn away,
‘Cause there’s nothing more to say
The dawn of reason lights your eyes
With the key you realise
To the kingdom of the wise
As the music in “Nothing Left To Lose” draws to its end, it morphs into a reprise of the harder rock motifs of the LP – the riffs of “Snake Eyes” and “I Don’t Wanna Go Home”, to close out the LP musically. I somehow sensed this would happen when I heard it for the first time, and so it turns out…..sweet fulfillment.
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I’ve kept the most chilling part of the whole tale to the end.
We often are unaware or unable to acknowledge that when we’ve lost everything there is to lose, life dissolves into a nothingness that is actually, curiously a-spiritual and amoral. In one sense we’re back to where we started, but in another sense, there is either “everything to gain” by continuing, or…..not.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained
No more lingering doubt remained
Nothing sacred or profane
Everything to gain
Cause you've nothing left…….
There is freedom when there’s nothing left to lose, but it might be a very deceptive freedom – like how we still, rather uselessly, are still able to choose when there are no options left.
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Click here to listen to the entire 16-minute Side B track on the LP.
