We met at Diana’s and after welcoming Annie and before we discussed the subject of lyrics we started with two readings, one by Diana and one by Helen, of ‘The Thørkil Saga’ which took us up to chapter eighteen.

Diana then launched our discussion with an introduction to the extraordinary work of Paul McCartney. She traced his musical output from the Ferrymen through the Beatles with John Lennon, Wings, his collaborations with Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, Gerry Marsden, Holly Johnson, Paul Simon, Kanye West and a group he called The Fireman with Rusty Anderson, Brian May, Paul Wickens and Abe Laboriel Jnr. with whom he still plays. During his 1989 ‘Paul McCartney World tour’ Diana told us that he performed for the world’s largest paying audience of 184,000 at the Macarana Stadiumin in Rio de Janeiro. In 1991 he wrote, along with Carl Davies, his ‘Liverpool Oratorio’ which reached number 1 in Musical Weekly’s classical chart. She also told us that the large book she used for this exercise ‘The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present’ was described as a “self-portrait in 154 songs”. It was based on conversations he had had with Paul Muldoon the Irish poet. 

Diana’s first choice was ‘Blackbird’ which she described as a song for a black girl. McCartney wrote it soon after the assassination of Martin Luther King and he said “I am very conscious that Liverpool was a slave port and also that it had the first Caribbean community in England. So we met a lot of Black guys, particularly in the music world. At the time in 1968 when I was writing ‘Blackbird’ I was very conscious of the terrible racial tensions in the US. The year before had been a particularly bad year but 1968 was even worse... That imagery of the broken wings and the sunken eyes and the general longing for freedom is very much of its moment.”

Her second was ‘The Long and Winding Road’ McCartney said that “...there seems to be a double association of terrific sadness and also a sense of hope...” There is some delicious imagery and metaphor:
“The wild and windy night that the rain washed away
Has left a pool of tears crying for the day”

Diana’s third lyric was ‘Mull of Kintyre’ and she told us that McCartney set it in his farm there and said that “One day it occurred to me that there were no new Scottish songs; there were lots of great old songs that the bagpipe bands played, but nobody had written anything new. So, that was an opportunity to see whether I could. A new Scottish song written by a Sassenach? That would be fun.” It was the most successful single of his career and sold 2.5 million copies.

Annie was next to share her selections with us and she started with ‘Bad Moon Rising’ by Creedence Clearwater Revival. The lyrics she informed us were by John Fogerty their lead singer and songwriter. He denied that the song had a political subtext but it still became an anthem both for troops in Vietnam and for anti-war protestors across the country. Nevertheless Fogerty also said that “The song was a metaphor. I wasn’t just writing about the weather. The times seemed to be in turmoil. Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy had been assassinated. I knew it was a tumultuous time.”

Bette Midler was Annie’s second choice with ‘The Rose’. It was written by Amanda McBroom but never did much until Bette Midler the mega-starr, playing Janis Joplin, chose to sing it in the film with an eponimous name and it sold a million copies in its first year. Poetically it takes the form of three stanzas with a rhyming scheme of AAAA, AABB, AABB. It can stand alone as a poem describing the vicissitudes of love `with an optimistic outcome as she leaves us with:
“When the night has been too lonely and the road has been too long.
And you think that love is only for the lucky and the strong.
Just remember, in the Winter, far beneath the bitter snows,
Lies the seed that with the sun’s love, in the Spring becomes the Rose.”

Her third choice was ‘From a Distance’ by Julie Gold in which the singer says that literally when viewed from faraway, from space, say, everything looks so good with everyone moving together for the common good and it isn’t until the penultimate stanza that she makes her most salient point :
“From a distance you look like my friend
Even though we are at war...” In a short piece online Gold tells us about the trials of a songwriter, about all the jobs she was forced to undertake to become a full-time songwriter/singer:
“I sent “From a Distance” around to all my contacts. As usual, most did not even reply. Those who did found fault with my song. My friend and fellow songwriter Christine Lavin loved it and requested copies to send around to her friends and contacts. Within two weeks, my scratchy demo was getting radio play thanks to Christine. Then I came home one day to a flashing message on my answering machine. There was a gentle, unknown voice identifying herself as Nanci Griffith. Christine had sent her the song, she loved it, and was asking to record it.” She was still being a secretary all this time and it wasn’t until Bette Midler made it a hit that life started to look a lot better.

Helen entertained us with ‘John Barleycorn.’ In this version three kings from the East decided that John Barleycorn must perish, so that they killed him and buried him deep down but:
“Well then there came a shower of rain
Which from the clouds did fall
John Barleycorn sprang up again...” They then took “great sharp scythes” and cut him off at the knees, bashing his head against a stone. The allusion to the treatment of a field of barley continues with flailing, grinding and putting him into a vat and ultimately :
“We pour him into an old brown jug
And we call him home-brewed ale.” Helen advised us that the song originated in old English or Scottish folklore dating back to the Elizabethan era.

Her second offering ‘Mother Mo Chroi’ by Shane McGowan of The Pogues in which he proclaims his love for Ireland which he was leaving, presumably to further his career in the U.K. In the last stanza he says that after a long period away from where his heart, (Mo Chroi), belongs he is about to return for:
“My kids will never scrape shit round here
And I won’t die crying in a pint of beer.”

Helen’s third was very much of the same sentiment. It was by Robert Tannahill known as the ‘Weaver Poet’. He had put the verses in the hand of his next door neighbour, Alexander Kilpatrick, a Paisley weaver as he was leaving to join  the 22nd, the Renfrewshire Militia on their way to Ireland. It is sung in the first person as he says goodbye to his aged parents “And the bonnie lass whom I adore” He says that he cannot dismiss:
“The trumpet calls to War’s alarms,
The rattling drum forbids my stay” He casts a longing look at his country’s “Misty Vales and mountains blue”  It is, therefore, a relief to find that Alexander lived to be ninety years of age!

Marie read the lyrics of Bob Dylan’s ‘Gates of Eden’ to us and probably for the first time I realised that as logical and poetic his songs sound when he sings them, reading the lyrics alone without his music brings one face-to-face with both their richness of imagery but also their difficulty. One needs to assume that Dylan feels that on entering those gates the idea that all sins are forgiven and that we will continue on in perfect peace and harmony is totally erroneous. His thesis seems bleak, if honest, for on passing through the Gates of Heaven appears to step us into nothing more nor less than oblivion. The richness of his verse, surreal, one might say, is countered by the emptiness of his vision of what comes after death. In stanza four all that resonates is empty laughter:
“...Alladin and his lamp
Sits with Utopian hermit monks
Side-saddle on the Golden Calf
And on their promises of paradise
You will not hear a laugh
All except inside the Gates of Heaven.”

Marie’s number two was ‘Hejira’ by Joni Mitchell. Ken Hymes said of it "“To me it evokes a deep longing, and serves as a somewhat sardonic but heartfelt elegy for failed dreams and broken promises, personal and social." In 1977 David Shanton stated “She speaks of the woes of the road and of relationships which pass in the night. She speaks of flight (Hejira meaning the flight of Mohammed.)” Her lyrics take the form of three stanzas of sixteen lines finally closed with a repetition of the first three, plus one more. The second concludes with a very true but depressing:
“We all come and go unknown
Each so deep and superficial
Between the forceps and the stone.”
It’s certainly auto-biographical throughout, regretting past loves, but her closing line has a future, has hope, as she is still:
“ A defector from the petty wars
Until love sucks me back that way.”

Geoff began with the lyrics to a song about brutal, racial murder and injustice in America. “Strange Fruit” performed by Billie Holiday which became her signature song although, at first, she said it made her fearful of retaliation. It was written by Abel Meeropol a Jewish high-school teacher as a protest poem exposing American racism, particularly the lynching of Black Americans. The song is both rightfully bitter and cynical:
“Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees
Pastoral scene of the gallant south
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth”.

His second was made famous by Bing Crosby and was the first one to be thought representative of the plight of so many workers after the 1929 U.S. Stock-Market Crash. It was written in 1932 by E.Y. Harburg whose firm went bankrupt shortly after the Great Depression began and was called ‘Buddie Can You Spare a Dime?’ Four of the most memorable lines were:
“Once I built a railroad, I made it run, made it race against time
Once I built a railroad; now it’s done. Brother can you spare a dime?
Once I built a tower up to the sun, brick and rivet and lime.
Once I built a tower, now its done. Brother can you spare a dime?”

Suzanne gave us the lyrics to George Harrison’s sole contribution to the Beatles’ ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’ compilation ‘Within You, Without You’. She quoted from an Independent Newspaper article from 2007
“A pioneering fusion of Indian Classical music and Western Pop; exploring themes of spiritual enlightenment; the illusion of self and universal oneness.” Harrison sums all this up in his last lines:
“And the time will come when you see
we’re all one, and life flows on within yourself
and without you”

Her second song was ‘My Funny Valentine,’ romantic lyrics by Lorenz Hart and the “hauntingly bittersweet melody” by Richard Rogers. She told us that the song has appeared on over 1300 albums performed by more than 600 artists. We aren’t quite sure why it has become ‘our’ song but maybe the first lines do it for both of us?
“My funny valentine
Sweet comic valentine
You make me smile with my heart”

Beti first chose ‘The Hedgehog Song’ which was performed by The Incredible String Band. The lyrics were by Mike Heron and in it he bemoans the fact that each time he is about to find a long-term partner “a funny little hedgehog” would pop up and sing a song that inferred that he was inept. The hedgehog said that he might:
“...know all the words
But you never quite learned the song.” This refrain  starts the lyrics and then occurs after each two stanzas until it closes the song at stanza twelve. Heron then adds a plaintive “I’m not the kind to complain” It nicely rounds off the song as it repeats the first line.

Beti’s second piece was by the gravel-voiced Tom Waites and is called ‘Well I hope I don’t fall in love with you’. This song is an early one of Waites’ but reflects his preoccupation with story-telling and with society’s underworld. In this song we are invited to imagine the feelings of a lone man who has been drinking alone and whose nerves are on edge caused by “These old tomcat feelings you don’t understand” for a nearby woman who appears to be lonely and ‘available’ like him. “The guy you’re with, he’s up and split, the chair next to you’s free.” everything seems to be set for the two to meet and although he says “...I hope that you don’t fall in love with me” as well as expressing the same sentiments with respect to himself we know that the opposite is probably true. When the object of his desire leaves without him noticing he admits to us that “... I think that I just fell in love with you” we are left wondering what might have happened had courage allowed him to make contact with her.

Beti’s third choice was a sixteenth century lullaby-carol translated from Martin Luther’s German into medieval Scottish. It’s been set by various composers including Herbert Howells and Benjamin Britton under the name ‘Balulalow’ (Lullaby). Clerk of Oxford states: “These two verses are an extract from the longer ‘Ane Sang of the birth of Christ’ from the wonderfully-named Ane Compendious Buik of Godly and Spirituall Sangis, compiled in 1567 by the brothers James, John and Robert Wedderburn.” Here is the first verse to ponder on and enjoy:
O my deir hert, young Jesus sweit,
Prepare thy creddill in my spreit,
And I sall rocke thee in my hert,
And neuer mair from thee depart.

And so endeth my report on our very interesting and varied session on lyrics. We may well return to this abundant literary source in the future.

All that was left for us to do was to indulge ourselves in Diana’s delicious tea, coffee and cakes. Thank you Diana.

Our next meeting will be on the 8th April at Beti’s house. I will forward her address to you nearer that time as it will be our first visit there.