Fellas, fellas! (As James Brown would say) We had been on the #1 after this, Al Green's "Let's Stay Together." His recording of which is and remains definitive. As with most such records, it is the one that has been burnt into my brain lo these many years - and shuts off all else. Including, with all due respect, the redo a dozen years later by Tina Turner that was the prelude to her big '80's comeback.
No agnostic is not someone who doubts there is a god. That is atheist you refer to, they actually know there is no such thing. Agnostic is a different belief and I won't bother with it in this thread. Just stating there is a difference in the two beliefs.
Tina really did do a splendid job on "Let's Stay Together". How ironic that we might have never heard it if she hadn't gotten a divorce.
I think we are pretty much on the same page. Here's my last word on this, because we could literally go on and on! It's fun talking about the particular stuff in this song and trying to make it all coherent, but as I've thought about it some more, I've come to the conclusion that a lot of the images/lines in the song are basically there just as window dressing and not meant to be parsed (ie, pretty much what you said above). Or they function solely to present individual images referring to events of the times, like 'Helter Skelter', or 'dirges in the dark' - which might be about Eve of Destruction during the 65 Power outage?? - but have no meaning beyond that. It's sort of like We Didn't Start the Fire, rewarding you for recognizing the individual lines and what they refer to. So the whole bit about the King and Queen basically means: Dylan became the new symbol of non-conformity, replacing Elvis. There was no literal performance for the King, no Queen, he wasn't like James Dean except that they were both 'rebels', etc. The sergeants on the field means: Beatles during Sgt. Pepper was not simple dance music, ie, rock had morphed into something un-rock like. The Satan verse comes down to, the Rolling Stones' brand of rebellion was bad for kids, and Altamont sucked. Jagger wasn't literally the devil (he just played one on record), etc. My other comment is that the whole thrust of the song - if one thing is clear about it it's this - is that Music, and youth culture the narrator thought worthwhile, 'died' with Buddy Holly in 1959. You don't call it The Day the Music Died if you think that the Beatles produced pretty nifty music years later. Before, it was sock hops, simple love songs (I know that you're in love with him), good old boys in their Chevies, the Bible, etc. After, it was music you couldn't dance to (we all got up to dance/but we never got the chance), God catching the train for the coast, the narrator's fists clenched in rage, and Satan laughing with delight. I think that it is inherently a sour look at the sixties where the narrator assumes a morally dismissive stance. Again, your McLean quote above seems to jibe with that. In sum, I like the interesting images, the attempt at something like this in the first place, and the drive of the song. But I wish it hung together better (he seems to want it to but doesn't pull it off), and I'm just not on the same page with his thesis, so yeah, I do find it somewhat priggish. Just my opinion, of course!
Agreed. I got a bit into the weeds trying to actually parse what he was saying. It's best to look at it from a less detailed perspective; we know basically what he's trying to do.
Since each verse of "American Pie" concludes with "the day the music died", I've always assumed Don was presenting multiple contenders for that designation.
One theory holds that the Queen was Jackie Kennedy (with "the King" representing both Elvis and JFK), since the Kennedy administration was nicknamed "Camelot". I always interpreted that line as referring to campus unrest in 1968. There was plenty of music you could dance to, but you'd be a lot less likely to try if you couldn't even walk across campus without the very real possibility of getting swept up in a riot. Of course, he could have intended both that and your interpretation, which would be particularly brilliant.
So, a weird thing has happened. Ever since I wrote this post, I've started to really like this song. It was always one of her numbers I would purposely skip or avoid, probably because I thought it was kind of silly. But listening to it again for the first time in years, I'm appreciating several things about it. The lyrics really are pretty good, and I like the way she sings it. It's one of her few big songs where she doesn't resort to her shouting voice, making it kind of unique among her hits. So I changed my mind. Go figure!
Let's face it, there's a lot more to unpack in American Pie than Let's Stay Together. That's no value judgement about either song; I just can't see a lot of interpretative discussions about Mr. Green's song, good though it is.
I enjoy the American Pie discussions. The song turned out to be far more controversial and even polarizing than I ever thought it would be on first hearing it in the early 70s.
I've changed my mind about dozens of songs (and dozens of artists-for instance I used to hate the Monkees, now they are favorites!) Brand New Key has a lot of undertones that I certainly didn't appreciate at the time. I was 15 when it came out and I sure didn't pick up on the "double-entendre" aspect of it back then. Given a little time and distance, I certainly appreciate the song much more now.
You make a very good point. But, at some point, we will have to move on. As much as I love the Al Green song, there isn't much there to discuss about the song itself. On the other Billboard thread, there was more discussion about Al's recording of it, and the songs that were later reissued by Bell Records. (Or, was that on this thread? I'm soooo confused!) Since both threads are discussing the same record, i'm going to post the next R&B song after the next pop song is posted.
On the other hand, this is SHF, where everything is dissected ten ways to Sunday, and members never fail to come up with a new opinion.
I agree with pretty much everything you said in that post, except that I don't think the song is criticizing the music of the 60s so much as the violence and changes in culture, morality, etc. McLean has said in interviews that he is a big fan of Dylan, Brian Wilson, and the Beatles, so he certainly doesn't literally think music "died" in terms of quality in 1959. I remember once reading an interview with Marty Lacker, one of Elvis' friends. He was asked what Elvis thought of the Beatles, and he said that Elvis really liked their music, but came to believe that they were encouraging drug use and anti-American subversion, and he didn't like those things. I suspect McLean's attitudes were a more moderate version of that kind of attitude.
If you were born after "Let's Stay Together" was released, odds are good that this is where you first heard it: Ain't gonna post the scene it plays under, as it's most definitely NSFW.
So will we still be discussing the song for the next song too? I understand there's a lot to discuss but we can't discuss it forever. I understand it means Alo to a lot of you though.
I can't remember hearing Let's Stay Together on the radio but lots of kids at school had the 45 (it came out on London here). I don't think American Top 40 was syndicated here just yet so where they heard it I have no idea.
We're a year or two away from properly discussing this group but I would feel remiss in not spotlighting one of their most iconic tunes in context with where we're at in the timeline. In fact, this actually came out in 1970 but better late than even later. Up until '71 or so, my musical focus was basically Pop/Rock/Soul that could be heard on the AM airwaves with the odd outlier popping up here and there. Grand Funk Railroad was not a musical act or style I was really ready for in those days. Hard rock was....well, too hard for my Pop lovin' heart so anything in that style that I was exposed to came from my older brothers. I'm Your Captain/Closer To Home is one of the earliest such songs that opened my ears and mind to more than just 3 minutes of Pop bliss. There will be more such songs in the year we're now discussing but in the meantime, if you're not familiar, give a listen to the full 10 minute version of IYC/CTH and imagine what impact it must have had on impressionable young minds in those first few years of the new decade. Here's a shorter live performance from '71.
And here's the 45 edit of "Closer To Home," which has one of the oddest time signatures thanks to clunky editing:
Written by Pete Ham and Tom Evans, Badfinger originally recorded it as an album track, but never released it as a single.
