Tower of Song - who's on the top floor?

[Neil Foxlee]

Apologies if this has been covered before. Leonard Cohen only mentioned Hank Williams (see lyrics below, performance at www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYJf4J7VBaY ), but who's up there with him? NB: I'm thinking of LYRICS more than the music, though obviously that has to be good too. It might be a good idea to nominate a best song for each artist too, but no way am I going to let myself get involved beyond this first post! [Fat chance! - ed.]

Some pretty obvious suggestions in no particular order:
1. (Hank Williams)
2. Dylan

Two praised by Dylan:
3. Smokey Robinson
4. Jackson Browne

5. Paul Simon (American Tune)
6. Leonard Cohen
7. Bob Marley
8. Lennon-McCartney (who perhaps should be separate)
9. Randy Newman
10. Thomas Dorsey (gospel)
&c &c

etc etc. You could include giants of the American songbook (Gershwin &c), songwriting teams (Goffin-King, Motown and Stax writers), whatever.

Leonard Cohen - Tower Of Song Lyrics

Well my friends are gone and my hair is grey
I ache in the places where I used to play
And I'm crazy for love but I'm not coming on
I'm just paying my rent every day
Oh in the Tower of Song
I said to Hank Williams: how lonely does it get?
Hank Williams hasn't answered yet
But I hear him coughing all night long
A hundred floors above me
In the Tower of Song

I was born like this, I had no choice
I was born with the gift of a golden voice
And twenty-seven angels from the Great Beyond
They tied me to this table right here
In the Tower of Song

So you can stick your little pins in that voodoo doll
I'm very sorry, baby, doesn't look like me at all
I'm standing by the window where the light is strong
Ah they don't let a woman kill you
Not in the Tower of Song

Now you can say that I've grown bitter but of this you may be sure
The rich have got their channels in the bedrooms of the poor
And there's a mighty judgement coming, but I may be wrong
You see, you hear these funny voices
In the Tower of Song

I see you standing on the other side
I don't know how the river got so wide
I loved you baby, way back when
And all the bridges are burning that we might have crossed
But I feel so close to everything that we lost
We'll never have to lose it again

Now I bid you farewell, I don't know when I'll be back
They're moving us tomorrow to that tower down the track
But you'll be hearing from me baby, long after I'm gone
I'll be speaking to you sweetly
From a window in the Tower of Song

Yeah my friends are gone and my hair is grey
I ache in the places where I used to play
And I'm crazy for love but I'm not coming on
I'm just paying my rent every day
Oh in the Tower of Song

[Neil Foxlee]

I'm surprised nobody else has contributed to this (it was only meant to get other people to respond).

I'm also surprised I forgot Chuck Berry.

[Rob Hall]

There are so many candidates – where to start? I think that was why I didn’t respond to this thread initially. My first thought was: your list is as good a list as any that I’m likely to come up with. I might change the order a little, and I might not have Bob Marley in there, but there’s not much wrong with your list from my point of view.

My second thought was: where are the women? Then I went back to look again and you have Carole King as a possible. I’d make her a definite (on the strength of almost anything off the “Tapestryâ€

[Neil Foxlee]

How are we to judge the songwriting of the many artists whom we appreciate, but who sing in a language that we don't understand?

I did post this under 'Singing in English' (though I think Jacques Brel would otherwise qualify).

Perhaps I should launch a best chansons thread...

On the lyrics side, perhaps you're right about Marley. Another addition: Curtis Mayfield.

[Adam Blake]

I'm with Rob on this one. It's just too subjective. I mean, I'm thinking: where is Ray Davies? The author of "Waterloo Sunset", "Days" and "Autumn Almanac" - to my mind three of the most beautiful songs written in the English language - and then I thought, so what? Somebody else might think they were boring compared to Manu Chao, or Orchestre Baobab, or Tinariwen. And then recently Howard raised the subject of Gilbert O'Sullivan - mildly embarrassing Radio 2 style MOR performer popular in the early to mid-1970s. BUT...who happened to write (and have hits with) songs such as "Alone Again Naturally" and "We Will", both of which are perfect little evocations of a kind of Northern English lifestyle that was disappearing even then. Where are we supposed to put him?

My favourite songwriters are Carole King, Lennon-McCartney and Ray Davies - but what about Willie Dixon, or Chuck Berry? Or Smokey Robinson? Or Laura Nyro? Or Holland-Dozier-Holland?? Or Bob Dylan???

No, no, it's all too much! Sorry...

[joel]

Brel & Barbara. Ferociously intelligent artists who wrote brilliant and complex songs in their own images (and even managed a remarkably bad film together).

The only cover of a Brel song I've heard that works isn't actually a cover. Abd al Malik really gets Brel, but does it his own way. Fantastic lyrics, too.

Gilbert O'Sullivan is an interesting case. Listening to a couple of tracks again on You Tube for the first time in, I would guess, 30 years, it strikes me that in France he would be a minor national treasure of 70s chanson. A Pierre Bachelet or Gerard LeNorman (My wife is a huge fan of GLN in the proper Japanese way and so has all the records, ephemera etc which is a tough for me as I really can't stand his music).

The fragments of Franco's lyrics I can understand also seem very strong...

[Adam Blake]

Gilbert O'Sullivan is an interesting case. Listening to a couple of tracks again on You Tube for the first time in, I would guess, 30 years, it strikes me that in France he would be a minor national treasure of 70s chanson.

Yes, that's true, but Gilbert O'Sullivan (despite being Irish) is as English as warm beer and rainy afternoons at the seaside. The French would never understand his mordant sense of humour.

[Hugh Weldon]

No I think the French would get him, though it's definitely a different style/sensibility to the chansonnier tradition. More pop more style, untranslatable English whimsicality perhaps. I always thought 'Nothing Rhymed' was an astonishing debut though and he never really matched that - the lyric alone would reserve his place in any tower, such a dark bitter encapsulation of guilt and misery and never getting anything right:

When I'm drinking my Bonaparte Shandy
Eating more than enough apple pies
Will I glance at my screen and see real human beings
Starve to death -
Right in front of my eyes
Nothing old, nothing new, nothing ventured
Nothing gained, nothing still-born or lost
Nothing further than proof nothing wilder than youth
Nothing older than time nothing sweeter than wine
Nothing physically, recklessly, hopelessly blind
Nothing I couldn't say
Nothing why 'cos today
Nothing rhymed

Just checked the chords and I'd also never reckoned the how musically interesting he could be, his usual vamping percussive keyboard style (on the poppier stuff) had made me forget how clever the climax of that particular song is, interesting diminished chords, very clever resolution, perfectly in line with the ideas in the words.

It parallels the complexity and cleverness you get in Brel, who I've only got to know properly over the last year or two. I was unimpressed by the Abd al Malik cover, but who needs covers? Scott Walker, Bowie and most memorably Alex Harvey (with 'Next') came close, but even if you don't have a word of French just try any of the great selection on youtube. 'Jef', 'Amsterdam', 'Quand on ne que l'amour' and see what an astonishing performer and actor of those songs he was, in a way that shows up Bowie's supposed actorly skills as pretty tame. In some ways perhaps Anthony Newley was closer to him (though too cabaret/showbiz) but I doubt the English will ever 'get' Brel or produce anyone really like him.

[Adam Blake]

Just checked the chords and I'd also never reckoned the how musically interesting he could be, his usual vamping percussive keyboard style (on the poppier stuff) had made me forget how clever the climax of that particular song is, interesting diminished chords, very clever resolution, perfectly in line with the ideas in the words.

Ingenious, isn't it? Also the drumming on that record is to die for. Me and my mate who seriously discuss this kind of thing reckon it was Ronnie Verrell. Same six-eight skip as is so effective on Cilla Black's "It's For You" - written for her by our Macca, and in a similar vein to "Nothing Rhymed", although nowhere near as sophisticated. That one and "We Will" are the ones, I reckon. "Alone Again Naturally" is great too, but the phrasing of "We Will" is just astonishing. And the lyrics are a miniature Ken Loach film set to music!

[Hugh Weldon]

Actually I was wrong about the diminished chords which were on 'Alone Again' but love anybody who can do that tension/resolution trick. And you're right about the drumming Adam, the string arrangement usually masked that for me.

'It's For You' is of course a very different song but a perfect comparison. It must be the most unusual Lennon McCartney composition, I couldn't imagine they ever recorded a version themselves, and strikes me as a hell of a difficult song to sing well, very strangely/cleverly constructed with the way the hook at the end of the first verse somehow also becomes the first phrase of the second verse, then the way the same 'its for you' hook at the end of the second verse shifts directly up one tone to the first line of the bridge. Who writes in that adventurous way now?

Those we may have left behind at this point can see Cilla do the business here, with the composers in attendance:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=rlsp6mteApI

[Adam Blake]

Ha ha! Had to laugh as finding a Fabs version of "It's For You" has been an impossible holy grail of mine for at least 25 years. I am grudgingly prepared to admit that it doesn't exist. Harmonically, it's got more than a bit in common with "Things We Said Today" - Macca was on a roll at the time. Actually, so was Lennon but I don't think he had much to do with it. George Martin must have done the arrangement, it's way too tricky for McCartney at that time, although he liked heavily accented triplets (Ringo's drum part to "Ticket To Ride") and he probably hummed the rhythm of the instrumental section to Martin who wrote it down and got a bunch of "proper" musicians in to play it. I'd love to know if McCartney was in on the recording session. He probably was, having just bought his house over the road from Abbey Road studios.

Cilla Black's best ever record by about ten million miles, there was actually a quite decent Britpop cover version by the group Salad - who got several brownie points just for having a go...

[Adam Blake]

God, I'm so obtuse! It just struck me: Paul McCartney and Gilbert O'Sullivan - both Liverpool-Irish...

[Hugh Weldon]

both Liverpool Irish

Sorry but the Liverpool Irish (amongst whom I number myself) would not regard Gilbert O'Sullivan as a member, seeing as he grew up in Swindon.

Also Lennon and McCartney are both very Irish surnames but I've never heard much Irish in their music, despite the fact they must have come across a lot of that Clancy Brothers/Dubliners style stuff endemic in the Liverpool folk scene from early on. I suspect like me they ran a mile whenever they heard it.

[Adam Blake]

Ohhhh... There I was formulating all sorts of theories... Actually, I suspect that the biggest single influence on Gilbert O'Sullivan was...The Beatles!

[c hristian]

and then again, there was Jaques Brel. sorry, but I was going to mention him. i see you all have. But he's worth bringing up just one more time, don't you think? GOD, no one wrote lyrics and subjects like him!!! Marvel just about every time. No THOSE are SONGS! Maybe Mahler's Kindertotenleider, as well? People need some SUBJECTS to SING about! None of this boy meets girl Bullsh*t! Well, actually, Brel does write about that too, but then it's the knife in your heart kind.

Recently I found another who could write a SONG! Folk Singer Rod McDonald. I saw him a few years ago in this little restuarant where there were maybe 8 people in the audience, and I SWARE, it was like seeing early Dylan in Greenich Village, though I'm not really old enough to know what that was like, and I already came knowing McDonald's music, and he has been around for a while, but OTHER THAN THAT!

First time I heard his song lyrics on the folk hour on the radio, it just knocked me out, and made every other song that followed sound like nothingness. Just nothingness!

The link is to ONE GREAT folk album! (and I am NOT much of a fan of folk, but wow, I do like Rod) :

http://www.rodmacdonald.net/atotalyrics.htm


The song that knocked me out when I heard it on the radio, thinking "wow, there still is someone out there that knows how to right a SONG!" is Sacrifice:

sacrifice
© 2003 rod macdonald (blue flute/ascap)
i'm just as patriotic as the next guy
i love my country, want to look after my family
and i understand that freedom isn't always free
no you sometimes have to sacrifice
to fight for what you believe in
and i believe in freedom, toleration, peace and liberty

ah but those who say you have to go and fight
never send their own to battle, it's always someone else's sacrifice
that makes the system go
as long as there's enough poverty
there'll be volunteers for the military
while the ones who run the show sit back and watch their millions grow

and sacrifice the young to feed the old
sacrifice the hot to serve the cold
sacrifice the patriotic for the gold
sacrifice the truth for the story being told
i'm all right, i'm just looking through the eyes
of my patriotic heart

i'm just as angry as the next guy
i don't want to see suicide bombers over me
or breathe toxic microfibers in the hall
so they tell you to strike first
before the other guy can hurt you
what if the other guy was never going to strike you at all

ah but then it all gets marketed like a movie
some great adventure across the world, some documentary
and compared to wars in history fought for real causes
againsty slavery, tyranny,
extermination camps
how could there ever be enough oil wells to justify the losses?

i'm just as likely as the next guy
to drive the kids to school or heat the house with fuel
but it makes for strange relations with tthe world
to suck up to the countries
that sell it to us cheap
while their people hate us and want to kill us in our sleep

and now no one is afraid to bomb civilians
from so high above the soil you can't even see the oil
or alone in marketplaces with bombs strapped on their chests
one side kills the other in return for killing them
til you look on the down the road, time and time again
all you do is is sacrifice the future for the past