Townes Van Zandt
Song-writing:
Van Zandt has been referred to as "a songwriter's songwriter."
Reception:
“By all accounts the life of Townes Van Zandt was high southern gothic made real. The briefest of biographies on this musician puts you in mind of the fractured lives imagined by Tennessee Williams. It's a narrative rife with confounded expectations and hounding demons from which, by dint of talent and endurance, astonishing beauty was extracted.”
One of the few musicians in history to treat songs like art. As he mentioned in an interview, comparing songs to birds, he described how they; "fly away," going some way to explaining why he kept assuring people that he never wrote his songs.
From a personal point of view his music has given me a sense of faith in both life and music, that, as long as you want to, anyone can write a song with a guitar in their arms.
His lyrics are the most powerful ever written, even more so than Bob Dylan's:
Day dreams,
Aloft on dark wings,
Soft as the sun streams,
At day's decline
(At My Window)
As much as his music is uplifting, his life story is a sad, poignant one. He was an alcoholic, chronic depressive who fell from a four story apartment balcony to; "see what it would feel like." He had three wives throughout his 50 year life span and was horrible to his family, however forgiving he was to them. But, as he also said; "to live the life of a musician, you have to blow it all off." And it's true, you can't be tied down by anything, constantly on the road, epitomized by Townes' song; Highway Kind; "My days they are the Highway Kind, they only come to leave..."
Song examples:
To Lives to Fly
Style:
Melody begins on a G7th chord instead of the tonic D, ending on this chord after a slow lumbering with the A and G chords. This unexpected opening chord imbues the song with a sense of hope and awakening.
Soft vocal delivery
Themes:
Chorus - “To Live’s to Fly, awe low and high” – A metaphor for life
Flight – All it’s connotations of freedom, continuation no matter what the weather, how low or high. “Some dive into the sea, some toil upon the stone” like birds, humans as winged creatures: “Shake the dust off of your wings and the tears out of your eyes.”
1st Verse – Love: “Won’t say I love you babe, won’t say I need you babe, but I’m going to get you babe and I will not do you wrong.” However ambiguous love is, I’m still going to get you no matter what.
2nd Verse – Valuing Life: “Don’t turn none away” “all you keep is the getting there”
3rd Verse – Living in the Moment, not the past: “It don’t pay to think too much on things you leave behind.”
4th Verse – Responsibility never disappears: “We all got holes to fill and those holes are all that’s real, and some fall on you like a storm, sometimes you dig your own.” Hope in the challenges and adversity we have to face in life.
Mr Mudd and Mr Gold
Style: Texan, complex bass-picking melody, fast in vocal delivery as well as overall tempo. Gives the illusion of excitement and anticipation in a game of Five-Card Stud Poker
Themes:
Story: The unexpected underdog wins the game of poker of the evil tyrant. “Now here’s what this story told if you feel like Mudd you’ll end up gold, if you feel like lost you’ll end up found so amigo lay them raises down.”
Poker/ Gambling references: You an explanation to understand the poetic metaphors around the different card/techniques in the game, where the Jacks, Queens and Kings are characters in this story too, coming to life to create a dazzling, gambling tale. It’s no wonder Townes would’ve performed in Texan bars where gambling was commonplace and probably happening as he played this song. Here’s an explanation:
The song is about a game of five card stud. In five card stud, each player is dealt one card face down, and then four cards face up. The early part of the song describes how Gold won many hands ("Flushes fell on Gold like water.."), but no one has been dealt the jack of diamonds. The song personifies Mudd's feeling of losing when the diamond queen prays to her "long lost son" (the diamond jack). In the next hand, Mudd is first dealt an ace of diamonds (angel = ace) and Gold is dealt the king of clubs face down. Gold is then dealt three kings face up ("on the streets" means three of the four cards visible to the other player, though the fourth card has not been dealt yet), giving him four kings, and Mudd is dealt three aces (fireballs = aces). "The outlaw in the heavenly hall" refers to the last card for Mudd, the jack of diamonds, he's an outlaw, being a jack, in the heavenly hall because every other card in Mudd's hand is an ace, or angel.
Thus, the last hand is, Gold = 4 kings + queen of clubs, Mudd = 4 aces + jack of diamonds.
Luck/Fortune: Intertwines a story about poker with a deeper moral message about the nature of luck, how “If you feel like Mudd you’ll end up Gold.” And in sense gives the listener a sense of hope.
Lungs
Style: Texan, deep, complex bass-picking minor melody
Themes:
Approaching Death “Bitterly breath up the time that’s passing”
Loneliness “Stand amongst the ones that live in lonely indecision”
Ephemeral Breath/Hopelessness “We’ll tell the world that we tried”
Nothin, At My Window, Tecumseh Valley, For the Sake of the Song, Our Mother the Mountain, Flying Shoes, No Place to fall, Pancho and Lefty, Two Girls, If I Needed You, She came and she touched Me, Kathleen, Who do you Love, Tower Song, Waiting Around to Die, Collorado Girl
Why She’s Acting This way
Lyrics: References to nature and her emotions: “Mockingbirds can’t make her cry.”
Bittersweet: “Take your worthless denials, they’re all you got left to lose.”
“He’ll come break your fall with a bed full of nails.”
Self-depreciating: “There ain’t nothing to see, except this drunken old man and my lover and me”
“I can make it alone, I got no place to be and I ain’t far from home.” I’ve got my own, individual life, even though I don’t know why you’re acting this way.
Harmonises the painful mystery behind women.
Music: Simple melody, elusive mixture of finger-picking and slight strumming up and down the bass-line
John Martyn
Song-Writing
He has been described by The Times as "an electrifying guitarist and singer whose music blurred the boundaries between folk, jazz, rock and blues".
With his lyrics that, as he sang them, slipped and sled into one another, Johnny gave a wholeness to songs that couldn’t be seen in any other English folk music.
Reception
One World
Lyrics:
Contentment for the everyman, social class aside:
“Some of us live like princes, some of us live like queens, some of us live just like me and don’t know what it means.
“One World, like it or not”
Pain: “There’s no use crying, it’s just the way the wind blows”
Becoming, fitting in: “To take our place in one world”
Style and Music: Relaxing, soft piano, major, slow tempo, thick, melting texture. Long vocal delivery on “wooorrrllld…..” which fades out
Don’t Want to Know
Style: Smooth, catchy repetition of spine-tingling chord transition.
Themes:
Love vs. Evil: “I don’t want to know about evil, only want to know about love.”
Weather: “The cold… making sure it keeps us down to size”
Small Hours
Style: Slow, soft, some electrical instrument creates a landscape that grates against you and sense a tingle down your spine, so you imagine you are somewhere else, at this desolate, moonlit lake.
Vocally, one lyric slips and slides into the other, gives the song wholeness.
Lyrics: Short, simple.
Hope, perserverance – “Gonna get on up for another day, get on out for another day and a new day’s dawn, gonna carry on”
Endless nature of Love – “Keep on loving ‘till your love is gone, keep on loving till your love is strong, All the way”
Relentless, careless, reckless nature of love – “You’re very very lovely gonna take you home, say you’ll be my ruin but I just don’t care, ‘cos I love you so”
Solid Air
Style: Jazz, Minor bluesy melody and bridge. Jazz, catchy, smooth beat, fades out.
Lyrics and themes:
Depression – “You’ve been taking your time you’ve been living on solid air…” “I don’t know what’s going on inside but I can tell you that it’s hard to hide when your living on solid air”
Insomnia – “You’ve been missing your sleep you’ve been living through solid air”
Care- “I don’t know… but I can tell you…” A tribute to the singer-songwriter Nick Drake, a close friend and label-mate, who died in 1974 from an overdose of antidepressants.
Stormbringer
Over the Hill
Style: Fast tempo, loud, confident vocal delivery: “Over the hill, hey,hey, hey over the hill!”
Themes:
Moving On – “Going away to leave ya, going to leave ya in disgrace”
Go Down Easy
Style: Jazzy, smooth chord transitions
Guitar interlude switching between chords and strumming
Themes:
Surrendering to Love: “We can go down easy, oh my lover we can go down easy”
Couldn’t Love you More
Style: Begins each phrase with rugged vocal delivery “If yaaaaa love me” Repetition of “Just couldn’t love you more” to emphasise point.
Themes:
Desperation in love: “Couldn’t love you more” “If you gave me all the things I never asked of you, If you showed me all the ways you have to cry, If you lay all night in the rain for me” – Love doesn’t ask for these great lengths, great gestures aren’t needed, only simple ones.
Head and Heart
A song of contentment: “I won’t be fancy but I will free”
Neil Young
Young's work is characterized by his distinctive guitar work, deeply personal lyrics and signature alto or high tenor singing voice. Although he accompanies himself on several different instruments, including piano and harmonica, his idiosyncratic electric and clawhammer acoustic guitar playing are the defining characteristics of a varyingly ragged and melodic sound.
While Young has experimented with differing music styles, including swing and electronic music throughout a varied career, his best known work usually falls into two primary styles: acoustic (folk and country rock) and electric (amplified hard rock, very often in collaboration with the band Crazy Horse). Young has also adopted elements from newer styles such as alternative rock and grunge. His influence on the latter caused some to dub him the "Godfather of Grunge".
Paolo Nutini
Terry Reid
Gabriel Yared
Black Sabbath
Led Zeppelin
Tom Waits
Warren Zevon
Jackson Browne
Bettye LaVette
Angus and Julia Stone
Young the Giant
Scott Matthews
Rodriguez
Bob Dylan
Oasis
Scoundrels
The Duke and the King
The Stone Roses
Israel Nash Gripka
The War on Drugs
Santana
Los Lobos
Kings of Leon
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
Jake Bugg
Elliot Smith
Keane
Natalie Duncan
Carole King
Oscar Peterson
David Bowie
Fleetwood Mac
Dreams:
"In the stillness of remembering what you had and what you lost" -This lyric repeats itself in a mesmerising way, that it spins the song round your head, like a catchy dance record.
The F7 chord gives it that lovely blues touch which allows you to get lost in this song, and you want to, since it is in itself a dream.
Young the Giant
