The following is an entry I made to the Christmas gift I received last year from my daughters. Each week, I am sent a question to answer. At the end of the year, all my responses are put into bound volumes which will go to them. So my writing is specifically using them as the target audience---It is almost like an O'Henry story. I encourage you to explore the StoryWorth.com website and see if this might be a present you could give someone, if not indulge in it for yourself.
DID YOU HAVE A FAVORITE SONG IN HIGH SCHOOL?
1) From the first Album by the Doors: Last song, second side:
This is the end, beautiful friend
This is the end, my only friend, the end
Of our elaborate plans, the end
Of everything that stands, the end
No safety or surprise, the end
I'll never look into your eyes, again
Can you picture what will be, so limitless and free
Desperately in need, of some, stranger's hand
In a desperate land
Lost in a Roman wilderness of pain
And all the children are insane
All the children are insane
Waiting for the summer rain, yeah
There's danger on the edge of town
Ride the king's highway, baby
Weird scenes inside the gold mine
Ride the highway west, baby
Ride the snake, ride the snake
To the lake, the ancient lake, baby
The snake, he's long, seven miles
Ride the snake, he's old, and his skin is cold
The west is the best, the west is the best
Get here, and we'll do the rest
The blue bus is callin' us, the blue bus is callin' us
Driver, where you takin' us?
The killer awoke before dawn, he put his boots on
He took a face from the ancient gallery
And he walked on down the hall
He went into the room where his sister lived, and, then he
Paid a visit to his brother, and then he
He walked on down the hall, and
And he came to a door, and he looked inside
Father, yes son, I want to kill you
Mother, I want to fuck you
Come on, baby
Come on, baby, take a chance with us
Come on, baby, take a chance with us
Come on, baby, take a chance with us
And meet me at the back of the blue bus
Doin' a blue rock, on a blue bus
Doin' a blue rock, come on, yeah
Fuck, fuck, ah, yeah
Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, yeah
Come on, baby, come on
Fuck me, baby, fuck, yeah
Fuck, fuck, fuck, yeah
Fuck, yeah, come on, baby
Fuck me, baby, fuck, fuck
Yeah, fuck me, do, yeah
Come on, yeah, yeah, alright
Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill
This is the end, beautiful friend
This is the end, my only friend, the end
It hurts to set you free
But you'll never follow me
The end of laughter and soft lies
The end of nights we tried to die
This is the end……………….
Now that’s the way to start a memory! Disclosure: albums pressed in the mid 1960’s as this one was did not record clearly heard, “fuck” words. They were implied and undoubtedly heard in concert (as a matter of fact, I went to a Doors concert and yes, “fuck” was heard), but as I read this and recall the melody, I don’t remember the words but a lot of screaming which was appropriate as I was a barely pubescent teenager and this was fucking cool! This was a 12 minutes song which in 1966 was unheard of in rock music. If it is unfamiliar to you, it is worth a listen to set the mood.
My brother Chip gave me my first four rock albums I ever owned for Christmas; my father was thrilled as the only record player was in the living room (a “Magnavox” which was a corner-filling piece of furniture). The four albums were, Surrealistic Pillow by the Jefferson Airplane, the Magical Mystery Tour, by the Beatles (the only Beatles album I ever owned and probably the worse of their discography), and the first two Doors albums. All of us were listening to as much music as possible, either on the radio or on our parent’s players. I was mostly a guy who liked to get the melody for whistling but sometimes the lyrics grabbed me as in this song. Jim Morrison, the lead singer famously lived for awhile in Coronado as his father was a navy admiral. I believe he really did want to kill his father.
My friendship with Bruce evolved late in my Freshman year of high school and we often brought albums and listened in his living room for hours. A number of groups were in vogue and his brother Rob was in a band which broadened some of our horizons to music we would otherwise not be in contact with. Bruce and I would sing the above song with Jim, word for word without benefit of alcohol or drugs and could conjure it up later in High School on demand if weird lyrical beat/rock poetry was to be used for our attempted spells. I am a little uncomfortable with the hold Jim Morrison had on me—he was a drug abusing alcoholic narcissist so far as I can figure out. His presentation in teen magazines was not especially engaging for me. But the timbre of his voice, his poetry and images, his defiance to just about everything aligned with whatever was going in my little mind.
I never owned a pair of leather pants.
I went to a concert featuring the Doors and had second row seats and was glad to have them as he spit at the people in the front row. While I loved seeing them and listening to the music live, his personality found me not enraptured by the cult of the famous. He was not a nice man on stage.
I thought he had a fat face, much as I had, and eventually followed his lead with the beard. I would later come to associate his facial look with that I saw in alcoholics. Happily, not my problem.
I remember what I was doing when word of his death came over the radio; I was painting a porch in Coronado for the wife of a Navy pilot who was deployed overseas. I had a crush on her and spent lots of time there, painting very slowly. I was depressed by the news even though his and my musical interests had expanded and moved on. When I am alone and bored, it not uncommon for a Doors song to fill the void and yes, this one is on that play list.
2) Mothers Of Invention
Absolutely Free
America Drinks & Goes Home: last song, second side.
I tired to find How my heart could be so blind,
Dear
How could I be fooled just like the rest
You came on strong with your
Fast car and your class ring
Sad eyes and your ... ...
I fell for the whole thing
I don't regret for having met
Up with a girl who Breaks hearts
Like they were nothing at all
I've done it too
Now I know just what it feels like
And just like I said I have no regrets
The first album I ever bought with my own money was in downtown San Diego, likely 1966, and it was Absolutely Free by the Mothers. I know that my introduction to them was through Bruce’s brother who would later sponsor us to get into a Mother’s concert early in San Diego where I would see Dweezle and Moon Unit as little children.
The appeal for Frank Zappa to me was, as with Morrison, the image of a man totally at odds with the world of my parents. Zappa would later say something to the effect of, “Parents, don’t try to get into the music of your kids—it will wreck it for them and I promise you, they will move on to something else if you do that.” He also said something like, “kids, you don’t think you mother understands you. She understands you; she cleans your sheets.”
Yep, soul searching truths and profundities was how I regarded these guys. The cleverness of their lyrics mixed with the inappropriate topics were mostly unexcelled. Jim Morrison was not funny and these guys were, so I hung with them a lot. The musicianship of Zappa would engage me for decades, long after the lyrics began to look in their own way, old and out dated. Mysogeny became somewhat unpopular (Jeesh—can’t you take a joke?) and my first sense of this in college was with the album “Overnight Sensation” which had images that put women down and my female roommate let me know she did not appreciate it when I played that album. I came to appreciate clever lyrics are one thing and expressing adolescent stupidity another. Zappa loved to exploit adolescent stupidity and with this, I could sometimes feel superior when in fact, I was not. Music has its own fashionistas that look totally clueless ten years later.
The song above is sung in a chaotic bar and I am sure it captures the feel of a place I have never experienced—a blue-collar bar in San Bernardino county I am sure. He takes requests at the end of the song and says, “Caravan with a drum solo? Sure, we do that…..” This became a clever bye-line that both Bruce and I used whenever someone asked if there was a request for a song. I actually know and like the melody to Caravan, if anyone is interested.
3) From Cream’s Disraeli Gears; second side, last song
A mother was washing her baby one night
The youngest of ten and a delicate mite
The mother was poor and the baby was thin
'Twas naught but an skeleton covered with skin
The mother turned 'round for a soap off the rack
She was only a moment but when she turned back
Her baby had gone, and in anguish she cried
"Oh, where has my baby gone?", the angels replied
(Plied)
Oh, your baby has gone down the plug hole
Oh, your baby has gone down the plug
The poor little thing was so skinny and thin
He should have been washed in a jug, in a jug
Your baby is perfectly happy
He won't need a bath anymore
He's a-muckin' about with the angels above
Not lost but gone before……….
There is a theme here: second side, last song. I think that has more to do with the production and the thought that went into it and less about me. Again, this is humorous and not serious or psychedelic as the album that carries it was thought to be. It is sung a capella with English accents recognizable as such. I memorized this and would sing it for people. My children will recognize this song.
When I read of Ireland or England in history books, the smells and sounds that are conjured sometimes find me considering the forebears of this song as it has the flavor and the meter of times long ago. And the expression, “Not lost but gone before……” is as Protestant as they come.
Rick Luiz introduced me to Cream (Fresh Cream) and I thought these guys were over-rated. This was undoubtedly because I am not a formally trained musicologist in that many years later, Michael Campbell would provide for me a collection of Robert Johnson’s music and I came to understand that many of the English Wave musicians were mining the Mississippi Delta for material. Who knew? Rolling Stone knew and I did not read the relevant articles……
To this day, the first artist to present me with a song is forever tied to it and subconsciously attributed authorship. So Paul McCartney gets credit for “There were bells, on a hill, but I never heard them ringing, no I never heard them at all, ‘till there was you……”. NOT. It was confusing when I watched Oklahoma, years later.
Bobby Darin gets credit for Mac the Knife which of course is a cover for a German Song sung in Three Penny Opera.
So………….I can be a bit simple (?thick as a brick?) but was a cork being tossed in a very big ocean, musically speaking.
I am still afloat and have lots of tunes in my head!
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