"........the day before you came."

Songwriters: Benny Andersson, Björn Ulvaeus
Performed by ABBA
LP: Released as a single '82 with B-side "Cassandra", later included in deluxe editions of The Visitors ('81)
When I heard it: 1986 or '87

Would it be too much to say this song reminds me of Brief Encounter? Would that be high praise? But it does - can't get past that. Brief Encounter is unquestionably one of the greatest films ever made, and ABBA's "The Day Before You Came", in my view, one of the greatest songs I've heard that borrows a plot from that near-perfect film.

I've always loved anything to do with a normal day's routine and will not (normally) break it for anything. This is rather strange, because at the same time, I am also quite the impulsive, hopeless romantic who is terminally bored with my bland, insipid daily routine.

I actually love making friends with people on daily routines, just like Agnetha does on her daily train in the video for "The Day Before You Came". There is something so delicious about getting to know people I only meet during daily routines. I like clockwork, and I also hate it. I'd say I love it for the people and I hate it for the work.

So, I must now confess. That I would love to meet someone on a daily routine and have my life completely changed. I may not have realised this when I was in my teens even though the feeling was actually stronger then. Fairy tale? Yes. Wishful thinking? Yes. Have I grown out of it? Very nearly. Can I, so, dump this song? You guessed it. OF COURSE NOT!

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Lancio and Photo Romances

In the 80s, when I was growing up.... (oh, come now, don't knock nostalgia just because you haven't yet got any. You millennials can be so annoying and soulless.)

In the 80s, we kids used to read what were called "photo romances". These were just like comic books, but had photo panels and speech-bubbles. Yes such things are laughable, when you look back, but there was a huge industry for them at that time and Lancio (prob'ly an Italian thing) was one of the leaders. If you had to produce a Lancio-kind hard-copy photo romance today, it would cost a pretty packet (not to mention how pointless it would be - there's no market for such things nowadays).

In these stories, the actors were always and in all circumstances perfectly photogenic, impeccably dressed, and the photos taken in real settings in full, soothing colour with very few rough edges. The actors' expressions conveyed their emotion s, and the speech-bubbles conveyed the conversations. Though the stories were intentionally derivative, thin and flimsy, people always managed to find the love of their life, however improbable it seemed from the start, and lived happily ever after (or so it was assumed). That is to say, photo romances were the visual equivalent of Mills and Boon, to anyone who remembers that kind of thing.

Lancio was Italian, and so distinctly European. No, not British, not American, but EUROPEAN. Just like ABBA's "The Day Before You Came". A pretty European blonde meets a handsome man on a train on her daily routine and her life is completely transformed. If this were not a song, it might well have been a superb Lancio photo romance.

Far as I know, this was Europe in the 80s. Behind any reasonably pretty face there always lurked unstoked passions usually smouldering under almost oppressive daily work routines. The music, movies, literature and art of the day usually picked up on these themes. The stories sound archaic, outdated and ancient to us today, but the single most important thing they show us clearly about their days is that life was SLOW. It progressed slowly. It overcame struggles slowly. Things took time. Sometimes they worked out, but sometimes they didn't. And that was okay. This has become incomprehensible to modern audiences, as we all know. It's no surprise - moderns usually disregard the journey and worship the arrival.

Many of ABBA's songs pick up on similar themes - no surprise because ABBA's music was essentially European. For example, "Nina, Pretty Ballerina" (about a demure worker by day, flamboyant dancer by night), "The Name Of The Game", "Honey, Honey", "Take A Chance On Me", "Angeleyes" and "Does Your Mother Know" (about flirting and teasing - a theme they did very well with), "Super Trouper" (the loneliness of a pop star whose love is often away), "When I Kissed The Teacher" (do I need to explain this?) "Dancing Queen" (essentially about breaking loose after a hard day's work), "Dum Dum Diddle" (a concert violinist's fan yearning for him - so European), "Waterloo", and "Mamma Mia" (about addictive love that cannot be overcome, try as one might), "Gimme Gimme Gimme (A Man After Midnight)" (take a wild guess what this is about), "If It Wasn't For The Nights" (about the tyranny of the nine-to-five), "Our Last Summer" (couple holidaying in Paris), and finally, one of their last-ever tracks, "The Day Before You Came".

ABBA, to my mind, is inextricably associated with Lancio's Photo Romances; and I think many 80s kids would share my feelings. Context, stories, wardrobe, locations, whatever.

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ABBA's most mysterious, analysed song

"The Day Before You Came" is arguably ABBA's last recording, though it was their penultimate single. It was recorded after the release of the final studio LP The Visitors ('81), as part of material for a new ABBA LP that did not materialise because the group disbanded by then. However, re-master editions of The Visitors do have the song. Re-masters of The Visitors contained all of ABBA's final singles "Under Attack", "Cassandra", "Should I Laugh Or Cry", and "The Day Before You Came".

In many ways, "The Day Before You Came" is one of ABBA's most-analysed songs. There are many "interpretations", almost none of which seem corroborated the songwriters. All it says to me is that it is an intriguingly open-ended tale of a pretty blonde meeting a handsome man on her daily commute, which somehow changes her life irrevocably. I can't confirm or deny any other interpretation.

The intrigue which surrounds the song is, I would say, due solely to the fact that the song's protagonist chooses to dwell on what her life used to be before it was changed irreversibly, describing it in acute detail almost to the hour, while saying nothing about her life after the transformation, leaving that part open to the listener's interpretation. If you're interested, Wikipedia dwells long and hard on this, none of it to any point, I'd have to say. Today's audiences crave closure and endless analysis - I don't. Open-ended-ness is not a problem for me at all.....life would be very boring indeed if not for open-ended-ness.

Another factor contributing to the intrigue is the music of the song. It's very far, very far indeed from the effervescent 3-4 minute ABBA singles of their hit halcyon years. Very far. The music, with its minor key progression and diminished chords in the interludes, carries a haunted tone of ominous doom that fits snugly into their sound on their last LP The Visitors rather than any of the first five LPs. The rhythm is eerily static throughout, emphasising the hauntedness.

I know it might sound eerie, but "The Day Before You Came" casts a portent of doom across the future years of ABBA's members, after they disbanded. It's not pretty. ABBA might have been a dream come true, but dreams have people in them, whereas none of the four members could count on any of the others to be with them after the breakup; and in some way, though I've tried to shake off the feeling that the breakup was for the best, time has shown that this isn't true. But you can judge for yourself.

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Must have left my house at eight, because I always do
My train, I'm certain, left the station just when it was due
I must have read the morning paper going into town
And having gotten through the editorial, no doubt I must have frowned
I must have made my desk around a quarter after nine
With letters to be read, and heaps of papers waiting to be signed
I must have gone to lunch at half past twelve or so
The usual place, the usual bunch
And still on top of this I'm pretty sure it must have rained

The day before you came

I must have lit my seventh cigarette at half past two
And at the time I never even noticed I was blue
I must have kept on dragging through the business of the day
Without really knowing anything, I hid a part of me away
At five I must have left, there's no exception to the rule
A matter of routine, I've done it ever since I finished school
The train back home again - undoubtedly I must have read the evening paper then
Oh yes, I'm sure my life was well within it's usual frame
The day before you came

I must have opened my front door at eight o'clock or so

And stopped along the way to buy some Chinese food to go
I'm sure I had my dinner watching something on TV
There's not, I think, a single episode of Dallas that I didn't see
I must have gone to bed around a quarter after ten
I need a lot of sleep, and so I like to be in bed by then
I must have read a while
The latest one by Marilyn French or something in that style
It's funny, but I had no sense of living without aim
The day before you came

And turning out the light
I must have yawned and cuddled up for yet another night
And rattling on the roof I must have heard the sound of rain
The day before you came

"You gave the best you had to give...."

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.

"But 'don't look back in anger', I hear you say..."

“Don’t Look Back In Anger” almost bleeds a distinct, sharpish edge of self-justification and emotive sadness - typical of its time.

The lyrics seem to be an explanation, but we still don’t understand. The explanation fails. It’s inadequate. It’s unclear what they explain and to whom the explanation is being offered - it also seems unsolicited. Further, the whole thing seems devoid of context - rather like one of those Tolkien tales where you can trust neither the sky above your head nor the earth below your feet, because neither actually exists. If all this weren’t enough, the explanation isn’t even a good one, because the words are utterly unequal to the task.

But there is intense, passionate, driving emotion. As an emotional statement it is ravishingly beautiful, innocent in its purity, tender in its teenage mawkishness and astonishingly vulnerably firm and strong as only adolescence can be.

Even so, why strive so hard to express something that one does not even possibly know, that no one asked about? That is without context?

I don’t know. And in this case, neither does the songwriter - he says that to this day he does not know what the song means.

People often write songs like “Don’t Look Back In Anger”, not knowing what they mean to say and not being able to say what they mean. It’s not unique in that predicament. In places it’s not even beautiful. It’s just a set of words. Disparate clumps of sentences.

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I heard “Wonderwall” sometime in 1996 and somehow I knew immediately that something bigger and more definitive was waiting in the wings - that moment of legend was gonna be here any time now.  Then I thought “Champagne Supernova” was it. It was only a bit later that I heard “Don’t Look Back In Anger” and looking back, it’s safe to say they’ve never done anything remotely of this calibre either before or after.

Looking at the song now, it seems unmistakably redolent of The Beatles, very closely resembling “Let It Be” which has the same intense, passionate, vulnerable, driving emotion and a very closely similar chord structure. Still, all things considered, apart from being a kind of pathbreaking inspiration and apart from Ringo’s ride drumming, “Let It Be” is, admittedly, a somewhat lesser thing. I can’t believe I just said that but I can’t take it back and be fair at the same time.

It’s sweet, sweet – to see tributes to the Beatles in the 90s, as charming as any that McCartney might have written, or as hard-hitting as Lennon might have. It is also rare.

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At the end of everything, there is a throbbing sadness about songs like this which is so indelibly associated with adolescence. The lingering aftertaste is that of not being able to explain anything even though one has tried and after all the words (just like I’m doing right now……..)

Take me to the place where you go
Where nobody knows if it`s night or day

Stand up beside the fireplace
Take that look from off your face
You ain`t ever gonna burn my heart out

So Sally can wait, she knows it’s too late as we`re walking on by
Her soul slides away, but “don`t look back in anger”, I hear you say

I know I’m going to wish I never said it but I found something very comforting in the wall of sound in the song – organ, guitars and drums; but most especially in the chord structure. I can remember feeling how I couldn’t explain, how I was being misunderstood, and how I could take comfort in the loneliness of not being able to explain, and in the beauty of a chord structure. Even after I’d worked it out and then played it a hundred times, I never lost anything by playing it one more time. And I wish I could sing like that – maybe I could if I tried.

Okay….I’ve said enough; there is a time when one does things like write songs with no context, no overarching story, and are just beautiful sentences strung together, but which only explain by failing to explain, and which make a coherent stand in their stammering incoherence. “Don’t look back in anger”, though, like the song says – “AT LEAST NOT TODAY”. There will be a day when it all comes back to you…….but don’t wait up for it – that’s the best way to meet it.

None of this makes any sense, does it? Ah yes but it does….and if you aren’t catching it then go do the daily crossword….nothing left here to say. It’s okay if you don’t understand – it must be me and the way I say it. Not your fault.

But won't you listen anyway? Mawkish, yes. Bumbling, yes. Incoherent, yes. But won't you listen among those crashing chords.....to the absolute horror behind Noel's howling guitar at the end of the lead solo - on the A minor G F chords....maybe the music will explain what the words cannot....and you'd have done a noble thing.....listening to that which is failing to be said. That's how adolescence is. You want someone to listen, but sometimes no one actually does.

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Slip inside the eye of your mind
Don`t you know you might find
A better place to play
You said that you`d never been
All the things that you`ve seen
Will slowly fade away

So I start the revolution from my bed
Cos you said the brains I have went to my head
Step outside the summertime`s in bloom
Stand up beside the fireplace
Take that look from off your face
You ain`t ever gonna burn my heart out

So Sally can wait, she knows its too late as we`re walking on by
Her soul slides away, but don`t look back in anger I hear you say

Take me to the place where you go
Where nobody knows if it`s night or day
Please don`t put your life in the hands
Of a Rock n Roll band
Who`ll throw it all away

So I start the revolution from my bed
Cos you said the brains I have went to my head
Step outside the summertime`s in bloom
Stand up beside the fireplace
Take that look from off your face
You ain`t ever gonna burn my heart out

So Sally can wait, she knows its too late as we`re walking on by
Her soul slides away, but don`t look back in anger I hear you say

Don`t look back in anger
Don`t look back in anger
Don`t look back in anger
At least not today

"so many never do"

July or August 2005.

Someone in office had a hits collection of Dan Fogelberg, whose LP Phoenix (1979) I had just heard; I had been listening at the time to The Innocent Age (1981), some songs from which were on the collection.

One song stood out, which I will talk about some other time on this blog for sure. It was "Sutter's Mill", a tale of the American Gold Rush.

One day, I heard what was the tail-end of "A Love Like This", probably from the most dramatic part of the guitar solo till the end.

Dan Fogelberg has done some decent, emphatic rock on his LPs, but "A Love Like This", believe it or not, sounded far louder than any of his songs I'd heard up to then. The right word has to be "louder" - it was, to start with, a question of volume. There is a lead guitar solo that is really, really loud. Melodic, yes, as was always expected from Dan, but also loud, which was surely not expected. I thought what anyone who knows anything about Dan Fogelberg would have thought - that there had to be some compelling reason why this particular, specific song had to be done so emphatically loudly.

When I listened closer, I found a piano that was also loud, but which played some really iconic chords and progressions. I was beginning to get hooked to it, and then I heard the words. Initially, of course, I thought it was just a very loud love song Dan had done for some reason. Nothing really exceptional. There was nothing on his other LPs I had heard that was so crassly loud, and that too just a love song.

I am just another boy; of course I don't take to 'love songs' that easily. I still don't, as a matter of fact.

After I thought I had the song all figured out, then, and only then did it just cut the floor clean away from beneath my feet. To this day, there is no other romantic song I have heard that is so sold out with abandonment, so utterly without restraint. After I had 'connected' to what Dan was saying here, the song became (and remains) an icon for me. I understand 'why so loud'. I would hear it every evening, at what I call the 'magic' hour - between quarter to five and half past - when everything beautiful becomes positively spellbindingly more so. I thought about finding a 'love like this', about getting tongue-tied, clumsy, bumbling and sweet sixteen when I was around....well, whoever she would be.

Being one who believes in The Divine, I don't really think much of what is claimed for human 'romantic' love. But "A Love Like This" helps me believe that there is much about romantic love which can indeed touch the divine. One of the song's only faults (and admittedly a very significant one) is that the words on the last verse (among the most grand and breath-taking words Dan has ever penned) describe something surely no human being can do for another. The 'light that guides me home', can only be Divine. There can be some level of this that a human being can reach, but not all the way. Only God can do that. Only God can be 'the star by which I steer, the only star I know'. Human beings can only go so far.

I must open my heart to you a bit, dear reader. If I might have 'fallen in love', as it is understood under the sun, this song captures it better than any song I've ever heard. If indeed there is 'romantic love', it must be so drunk with the one who is loved, that there is absolutely nothing held back, no cost weighed, no caution, no plan B, no soul left to be sacrificed, nothing. The die has indeed been cast, all the money's in and the bets are down, and all the fat is in the fire, all the eggs in one precious basket. My life for yours. There are no ducks in a row. It is ALL and ALL is lost if the one who is loved fails or is somehow removed.

Frightening? Yes, indeed. Cold and sweaty palms, heightened heartbeats and breathlessness are just trivial. But what if one really does find such a love under the sun? This is no small thing and I beg of you to consider this soberly - don't mistake it for less than it is, and don't mistake something less for it. It is quite common for many not to ever, ever find it, because there's only that much love to go round and also because it is not a fair world and this has to be accepted. It's a harsh truth and I must say it as indelicately as possible, lest one fail to take it seriously.

A love like this
Is so hard to find
And so many never do
And loves like this
When they even exist
Are precious and few
You know they're precious and few!

Aye, there's the rub. SO MANY NEVER DO. That, after the song has cut the floor off under you, brings you back down to earth (whose floor has gone).

Many say and believe (and I among them) that love may be romantic in the beginning, but as it grows over time it is hardly about romance; and so they discount this no-holds-barred opening. I do not. If indeed human love is what is claimed for it and expected of it, it cannot exclude the romantic. Just cannot. At any stage into which it grows.

And I hate what I've written. It is so lifeless, pedantic, boring, moth-eaten and so bereft of any soulfulness. But I will let it be, because though I do want to open out this song to you, there are places you cannot come with me. I am not exactly free to tell you all. Let what should never be known indeed remain forever so. Rather than reveal more than I should, let me suffice to say this much without lying.

....and about Dan Fogelberg? There will be other opportunities and I will use those to tell you about this gentle, beautiful soul.

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What remains is to talk about the song's music. There is one chord that I still haven't figured out, a lovely chord, the 6th chord in the intro (and it repeats on all those lines that close the verses). it is also the sequence which ends the song when the lines 'the light that guides me home' is repeated three times.

Much, much later, I discovered that "A Love Like This" appears on Dan's River of Souls (1993) LP, about which I know nothing else and, to the best of my knowledge, heard nothing else from.

And now the lonely days are done 
And with each rising of the sun, love begins anew

And if you ever ask me why I know that my love will never die 
I'll say these words to you

Of all the souls I've ever known 
Mine sings to yours and yours alone 
And yours sings just to me

In all this world I'll never find 
A heart that could beat as close to mine 
And this time I can see

A love like this is so hard to find 
And so many never do

And loves like this, when they even exist 
Are precious and few 
You know they're precious and few

A love like this is so hard to find 
And so many never do

And loves like this, when they even exist 
Are precious and few 
You know they're precious and few

Down the miles, through the years 
Yours is the star by which I steer 
The brightest star I've known 

And when I feel all hope is gone 
Yours is the love that leads me on

The light that guides me home 
The light that guides me home 
Your light will guide me home

"There are whispers at night in the halls of paintings"

Basically 90% of all songs seem to be either “Baby, I love you so”, or “Baby, you’ve done me wrong”.

What I’m saying is “What is the song?” And the song is either “I’ve done you wrong”, or, “Baby, I love you so”, no matter what style it’s played in. 

- Al Stewart, from a 2012 interview, as quoted in Wikipedia.

Elsewhere in the same interview, Al Stewart says that he prefers not to use words almost everybody does in songs - words like 'baby' (to mean a girl, or a sweetheart). So does he succeed? Apparently not. 

That's because here and there, tucked away in many of his LPs, are paeans to lonely young people, mostly women, aching to belong, to love and be loved, to find some salve for their desolation of loneliness. These songs are sometimes about historical persons (such as "Marion the Chatelaine" from 1995's Between The Wars,) or about people Al has invented ("Almost Lucy" from 1978's Time Passages and "Lori, Don't Go Right Now" from 1984's Russians and Americans,) and some we aren't really sure ("Gina In The Kings Road" from 2005's A Beach Full Of Shells.) These portraits are not superficial; Al manages to get inside the person's skin like a splinter and unearths some of their very essential, unspoken needy cries, utter isolation and desperate loneliness.

I can't seem to stop myself from thinking a lot these days that "Mona Lisa Talking", from A Beach Full Of Shells is pretty much in the same category, though it seems neither a paean to any specific person, actual or invented; nor a portrait. The song inevitably does have to do with Da Vinci's famous painting, but it seems that it does not speak ABOUT it so much as FROM it; and it speaks TO any 'pretty baby' who might conceivably deduce, from the painting's mysterious aura, that love is to be found far from home.

Mystery enshrouds Da Vinci's painting; it is now definitely one of those works about which no one really knows (or can claim to know) anything for sure. The blame for this can be laid at history's door; it always seemed to me that the painting was romanticised, deservedly or otherwise, into the historical quicksand it has become today.

Traditional explanations of it are expectedly simple - that it is just a portrait of a lady named Lisa Gherardini from the del Giacondo family, for which purpose Da Vinci was commissioned. The fact that he embellished a simple portrait with the mystifying smile definitely is deemed merely coincidental. It is also deemed that instead of the marital ring, he painted her hands with her right hand resting on her left, to suggest virtuousness and fidelity. These little touches, inadvertent or not, seem to have played into the hands of those who wanted to romanticise the work. But I guess this was a foregone, inevitable thing, seeing as it even today impresses me as a curiously 'live' and 'current' portrait rather than as a sterile record of someone called Lisa Gherardini. Mystery is surely promised, if not delivered. What we DON'T KNOW about the portrait (and the one whose portrait it is) has kept us going feverishly down the centuries, that's for sure.

This seems to make Al's lyric in "Mona Lisa Talking" all the more comforting and correct - especially in the refrain:

Go home, pretty baby
Go on home, pretty baby
You will go home to the one who is waiting for you,
Anything that you want, anything that you do
You will go home to the one who is waiting alone for you.

As always, Al makes his point delicately yet cannily and knowingly; but to put it in brutally didactic language, he might seem to be saying that the mystery must now finally be swallowed up in fulfillment and the wanderer in search of love must go home, because that's simply where love always was and continues to be found, before the 'romanticisers' came and confused things terribly by their treasure-hunting in the streets. The Mona Lisa is just an ordinary, faithful, virtuous wife with a wonderful smile full of mystery. No more, no less.

Al's bridge and last verse in "Mona Lisa Talking" definitely seem to support what I've just said:

Oh I know, you think you're part of a tragic song
You can show reasons it's over, but I know you're wrong

These renaissance girls know what they're saying
There are whispers at night in the halls of paintings
You think you're the first to come untethered
But we've been watching you forever

So often, the women Al writes about seek love in places where they should never expect to find it - in a smile that promises but does not deliver, on the streets in search of 'mystery'. It's time now to go home, where love always is, and where it is most pleasurably and rightly to be found. A tribute to right living and fidelity, if you like, to put it in brutal black-and-white. Just like the traditional explanation of Da Vinci's painting - a virtuous wife.

Does this seem to take a lot of promise and bite out of the Mona Lisa? Yes and no, but admittedly more 'no'. The smile is still promising; so what if it is no longer just mysterious but also merely familiar? The ultimate fulfillment of promise and mystery is to find love at home and not in the transitory face of a stranger in the dark - we have come full circle indeed.

The soul always aches for home doesn't it. So then, go home, pretty baby.

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Many critics box Al's music into a very convenient category called 'folk-rock', which is okay in its way but there's so much more than merely that going on in his songs. For my part I hate categorisation unless it clarifies the musician's roots, if needed, to some extent. In the 2012 interview I referred to earlier, Al says that his songs end up being 'geographical, historical, from a movie' because he prefers to write songs about things no one else is writing about. He also says he thinks of his songs as 'aural films' (a beautiful expression,) which is what I always thought them to be because the lyrics are so visually evocative in a way few musicians are able to achieve in pop culture. His one recent LP that does this more effectively than any other is A Beach Full Of Shells, something that has begun to dawn on me so much more recently. 

When I first heard the songs on A Beach Full Of Shells I felt a number of them, though substantial, had been left dangling and unfinished intentionally or otherwise. There are still a couple of songs that seem that way. It was only after quite a few hearings that "Mona Lisa Talking" began to impress; and today, I regard the song as one of Al's very best in the tradition of very few of his great songs in my estimation - it stands alongside "Flying Sorcery" (on Year Of The Cat, 1976) and even beside his magnum opus, "Roads to Moscow" (on Past, Present and Future, 1974.) It also begins to rival my favourites considerably - "Merlin's Time" (24 Carrots, 1980,) "Lindy Comes To Town" and "Night Train to Munich" (Between The Wars). It certainly is the best song (by a long way) of his post - Between The Wars LPs.

Al confesses that he likes the opening chord sequences (just as I always suspected) and I love them too. The chords give the song a plaintive, emotional, loaded tone, full of the weariness of a love not found, decisively vital to its premise. Laurence Juber's guitar solo at the end of the song is very lyrical and expressive, as always, but it makes the song seem even more poignant than it actually is.

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This is the Mona Lisa talking
Out on the street where love goes walking
Into the shadows that can't hide you
Here is a voice that speaks inside you

Go home, pretty baby, go on home, pretty baby
You will go home to the one who is waiting for you
Anything that you want, anything that you do
You will go home to the one who is waiting alone for you

This is the Mona Lisa calling
Out of a patch of oil and water
Over the street lamps and the river
Out of a smile that lasts forever

Go home, pretty baby, go on home, pretty baby
You will go home to the one who is waiting for you
Anything that you want, anything that you do
You will go home to the one who is waiting alone for you

O I know you think you're part of a tragic song
You can show reasons it's over, but I know you're wrong

These Renaissance girls know what they're saying
There are whispers at night in the halls of paintings
You think you're the first one to come untethered
But we've been watching you forever

Go home, pretty baby, go on home, pretty baby
You will go home to the one who is waiting for you
Anything that you want, anything that you do
You will go home to the one who is waiting alone for you

This is the Mona Lisa talking
This is the Mona Lisa talking

"...don't wade too deep....in bitter creek."

I find it absolutely incredible to this day that "Bitter Creek" did not become The Eagles' biggest hit, or their defining moment. It just sits prettily, forgotten, like sunken treasure, in its faded-postcard sepia surroundings in their 1973 LP Desperado. The dust has never cleared on this their finest pearl, undiscovered by many.

From the moment I heard the group for the first time, I was searching for a song like "Bitter Creek" - but I realised this only in retrospect. When I finally found the song at least a decade or so later, I must say - it seems like they spent all their time as a group trying to record a song like that, but succeeded once and once only. And what a success it is! It is their finest hour, Bernie Leadon's crowning glory as a songwriter. People say all kinds of things about "Hotel California" and think The Eagles did nothing more. After you've heard "Bitter Creek", you might think they should have stopped right then because they'd certainly achieved the essence of their "Eagle-ness" right there. They had crossed the frontier; they never should have tasted the fool's gold they did with their later LPs. "Hotel California" is, in comparison (not to put it too harshly) just too vapid.

In one of the live performances, Bernie says, "let's go out in the desert for a while..." No song I've ever heard evokes an American desert like "Bitter Creek" - it's a photograph, a 5 minute movie if you like, of Arizona. In its stone-hard guitar jangle, you can feel the sweat on your brow, the choking aridity in your throat, the bruises of cycads, the taste of grit and gravel in your bloody caked lips and teeth, metal spurs clanking on hard, unforgiving stone, the hiss of a rattlesnake at your heel, and the shadow of your nemesis towering behind you as he chases you down. The song effortlessly evokes all the best westerns - The Searchers, High Noon, Gunfight at the OK Corral, The Gunfighter, Bad Day at Black Rock, Shane - and any others you can think of - all of them.

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One of the things rock groups did in the early days was record "concept albums".

A concept album isn't too hard to understand - it's just an album in which all songs contribute to the theme ("concept") of the album; sometimes there is a slim story running through which will typically reach its denouement at the last song but one, and the last song would be a kind of epilogue to the whole thing.

Of course this meant many things about the quality of such an album. The group might feel free to be a bit lax about writing bonafide songs; there would be unfinished bits sometimes strung together; or it would seem like an album of hastily assembled segues, not accomplished songs. This is indeed the quality of many a "concept album", it must be admitted.

Not so about Desperado. It is a creative tour-de-force. It is so finely honed that in Randy Meisner's "Certain Kind of Fool", it is absolutely impossible to discern whether the lyric is about a cowboy outlaw, or a rock musician. This is pivotal, because the "theme" or concept of this particular concept album is the life of an outlaw/rock star. It is hard to tell where (or indeed whether) the one ends and the other begins. The concept is developed quite consummately and evocatively, zoning right in and turning the spotlight on the potent and deadly toxin that both the outlaw and the rock star share - the absolute unwariness of the (inevitable) moment when the dream turns sour. It used to be fun once, but something happened, and now there's no way out.

"Certain Kind of Fool" ends with the absolutely amazing line "It wasn't for the money - at least it didn't start that way.....it wasn't for the running, but now he's running everyday.."

"Desperado" gets further into the skin of the whole concept, opening out a raw wound that never heals - "your prison is walking through this world all alone"; "you're losing all your highs and lows, ain't it funny how the feeling goes away?".

"Bitter Creek" takes the tale where it was galloping along to right from the start - to bitterness which needs to play out its song in defiance, even if it is the end of all song. It is, undoubtedly, the end of all things in the tale.

Am I really reading too much? Sometimes dreams turn sour and then trap us with their manipulation, their slavery of us. This is especially true of an outlaw who starts believing in his fragile fortune far too long to be able to escape when it lets him down; and for the rock star too, who believes his own words and lifestyle so much that he finds out, much too late, that he's been worshipping himself and that he is now trapped by what he's made of himself.

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The bitter irony and legacy of "Bitter Creek", of course, is that it proved to be prophetic, by hindsight - the experience of The Eagles as a group with the pot of gold they made for themselves with their music. The un-self-conscious, free-wheeling creative promise of the Desperado LP gave way to the mixed feelings of their next LP, 1974's ominously titled On The Border. One of These Nights (1975) brought them closer commercially to their gold, while the music got less interesting; the rot had well and truly set in. When their commercial peak arrived - 1976's much-Grammied trans-Atlantic international hit LP Hotel California, it caught them off-guard and totally by surprise. The musical creativity was conspicuously missing, though the band had not realised it. The dream had turned sour, but they didn't know it then. They had become superstars, but found the creative tap root empty, the emotional roller-coaster ride ultimately deadening; the bottom fell out of it all. They laboured over-cautiously and feverishly a few years over their next LP The Long Run (1979) by when they had to admit they'd had enough not just of their own music but of each other too; they were finished as a creative unit.

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The musicianship on "Bitter Creek", and also every track on Desperado is so un-self conscious that it is an absolute, rare delight. It's amazing what musicians can do when they really have nothing to prove. You hear nothing, on "Bitter Creek", of the leaden, tired, utterly ordinary groove you hear, on say, a track like "Victim of Love" (on the Hotel California LP) Ironically, when I finally heard "Bitter Creek" for the first time (in 1991), it was clear to me that this was what I had always believed The Eagles had been capable of; that they had promised much and delivered little on their other efforts.

Desperado was the last LP on which only the original four played, and looking back, it was their finest hour as a group. Of course I must say this is a minority view; by popular consent, everybody's favourite Eagles LP is Hotel California, and everyone's favourite Eagles song, "Hotel California". But I stopped running to the beat of that particular drummer long ago.....and I would urge you, listener, to do the same.....

The song says it well...."an old man told me.....tried to scold me.....'oh son, don't wade too deep....in bitter creek.'" Wish The Eagles might have listened to themselves back in 1973......

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Here's the entire Desperado LP in one video. "Bitter Creek" is the last but one song.

Once I was young and so unsure 
I'd try any ill to find the cure 
An old man told me 
Tryin' to scold me 
'oh, son, don't wade too deep in bitter creek....' 

Out where the desert meets the sky 
where I go when I wanna hide 
Oh, peyote 
She tried to show me 
You know there ain't no cause to weep 
At bitter creek 

We're gonna hit the road for one last time 
We can walk right in and steal 'em blind 
All that money 
No more runnin'
I can't wait to see the old man's face 
When I win the race 

Desperado (1973)

"..so much water moving underneath the bridge.."

Songwriter: Graham Nash
Performed by: Crosby, Stills and Nash ("CSN")
Album: Daylight Again (1982)
When I heard it: 1994, unless my memory fails me.

Crosby, Stills and Nash. Their unique vocal blend carried an entire generation. They voiced concerns of a generation in protest in an era which saw unprecedented definition and redefinition of the word "freedom".

It was a unique coming together of three uniquely talented musicians, each capable of tapping into a rich vein of songwriting skills, each almost flamboyantly gifted. For great musicians to come together is not as simple a thing as mere logic would have it. Each has their own distinct musical vision and idiom; and to almost sacrifice their own individual vision on the altar of the cause of the group is for many an impossible thing. It has led to more breakups among musical groups than any other difficulty.

Against all odds, Crosby, Stills and Nash came together from diverse musical backgrounds and actually sounded like a single unit. Their harmonies to this day remain mostly unattainable, the sum transcending its parts with boundless ease. The lode of inspiration was so rich that more than any other singing group, they still represent the late 60s-early 70s most distinctly.

Still, the same old bugbear laid them low; and, as Stephen Stills admitted on one of the videos of the song I showcase today, they felt the stifling and the suffocation of being constrained by each other, and "couldn't talk to each other for many years"; and then, as he rightly says, here they are many songs, bands and harmonies later, many dollars later, many years later, after "much water moving underneath the bridge", together again to sing a song telling us all about it.

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"Wasted on the way" comes from a Crosby, Stills and Nash LP that is best consigned to the scrap heap of musical history. It features just three tracks worth the effort ("Wasted on the way" being the best of these), but those three tracks remind us amply of their halcyon days when the vocal blend was infused with rich, soulful inspiration. The rest of the LP is eminently forgettable, just little more than musical noise. Only those who have heard Daylight Again in its entirety will know what a forlorn, dismal LP most of it is. This is certainly no "daylight", not to speak of daylight "again".

But "Wasted on the way" tells the story of this unique group who made musical history, then plummeted into oblivion and then regained their chemistry for 3 unique minutes. Perhaps you think I'm making too much of the song. But then, to be able to say that, you'd have to have heard the Crosby, Stills and Nash LPs that defined their generation, and then listened to "Wasted on the way" in the context of the surrounding ruin of its LP.

The song itself is written by Graham Nash, and it is very redolent of his best efforts for the group - especially songs like "Teach your children". It holds together triumphantly well in the studio recording, but technically, I'd have to say it is a deeply flawed song; either that, or it is songwriting genius. I want to draw attention this because I spent a considerable of time first trying to distill out the main melody from the lush harmony, and then, in desperation, I looked on the tube for live recordings that could unravel the melody. What I found shows the song up - there isn't one single live performance that sounds anywhere like the studio recording. There are still 3 parts, 3 singers; but something is unmistakeably missing. For starters, the melody is not sung by one part, but different parts on different lines. Secondly, the appearance of a melody (if indeed there is one; I suspect there isn't one after all) is reinforced on the studio recording by a single voice overlaying ("overdubbing") the "melody" in falsetto. In live performances, there is no such overlaying and this shows up the song for the threadbare effort it really is (see the live videos later on in this post). In my view this is a fatal flaw; but many might equally say it is proof of unique songwriting skill and I don't find it difficult to agree, in a certain sense.

The song's musical problems notwithstanding, what emerges even through the flaws is a glorious, free-flowing, soulful flamboyance that finishes up in a crescendo of rich harmony, every single decibel Crosby, Stills and Nash as any of their best work.

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In many ways I felt they would not have been able to do a song like this during their heyday; it had to be during their decline. Its insight can only be tested over time; when the creative juices are flowing and you feel like Superman, insightful reflection is neither easy nor even wanted. I'd say it took the intervening years, the loss of togetherness, the internal friction, the "time out", the exhaustive aftermath of road-weariness, and a bunch of individual life experiences through which each emerged, to bring out a song like "Wasted on the way". Stills never matched the creative genius he displayed in his first LP (Stephen Stills, 1971); Crosby went through repeated brushes with drug addiction and run-ins with the law. "Wasted on the way" is a tribute to the endearing candour of a unit that did not mind calling the lows. Actually, upon reflection, one must allow that they had always been known for their candour.....

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The song did not come home to me immediately. I heard it in 1994, I think, and there was a time when I had a singing group I sang with, a few uniquely talented friends, and I spent a long time trying to bring "Wasted on the way" on to our repertoire, without any success. We never even practised it once. Looking back, it might have been quite a learning experience for us if we had indeed tried. The song grew on me over the years and is now a staple very much on repeat on my iPod; it never fails to bring comfort about the passing of years.

I must include two videos of remarkable attempts to harmonise the song, just to draw attention to the very interesting problem of untangling the melody from the harmony. It's one of the toughest songs to sing, to be sure.

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqBK7nwMpuU (an interesting attempt, quite successful, with two ladies and one gentleman, from India)
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUwFLYiavME (cover by one Adam Cole. A significant attempt because it uses the format of the original studio version, and by so doing, unravels the layering and helps us appreciate the work that's really gone into this song)
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oW2SG75TvdM (one of CSN's live performances where Nash provides a teeny weeny bit of history)
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIIdm6azzJw (the most definitive CSN live performance, where Stills at least claims to come clean about the reason for the song; he is not implausible at all, I must say)

To those of us who only remember Crosby, Stills and Nash's heyday, "Wasted on the way" is needed for closure. Indeed it is the last significant song to have their uniquely stamped inspiration on it as a vocal trio; they have not managed to get it back since, to this very day. Sometimes we must soberly acknowledge to ourselves that our talents are slippery and elusive; and we never know and can never measure or even predict what we have, the essence of our gifts as individuals. Friends are vital; they help us transcend ourselves and give us memories and souvenirs. And though it all slips away......as it most inevitably will, it must not slip away for want of trying.......

Look around me,
I can see my life before me;
Running rings around the way it used to be
I am older now,
I have more than what I wanted,
But I wish that I had started long before I did

And there's so much time to make up
Everywhere you turn
Time we have wasted on the way,
So much water moving underneath the bridge..
Let the water come and carry us away

Oh when you were young,
Did you question all the answers?
Did you envy all the dancers who had all the nerve?
Look around you now,
You must go for what you wanted,
Look at all my friends who did and got what they deserved

And there's so much time to make up
Everywhere you turn
Time we have wasted on the way,
So much water moving underneath the bridge..
Let the water come and carry us away

So much love to make up
Everywhere you turn
Love we have wasted on the way,
So much water moving underneath the bridge..
Let the water come and carry us away
Let the water come and carry us away