A Mark In Time
Mark Knopfler Discussion => Mark Knopfler Discussion Forum => Topic started by: Love Expresso on March 17, 2011, 11:30:09 AM
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Hi, this is going around in my head for a while, so I dare to open a new thread about it. I was thinking about wether MK has improved as a songwriter or not - and I mean the lyrical side in the first place. As English is not my mother tounge it might be difficult to describe what I mean so I will bring up some examples:
Border Reiver is just a text about a lorry driver and his lorry.
So Far From The Clyde is just a text about a ship crashing into the shore.
After going deeper into the lyrics AND reading some liner notes and interview stuff, I know of course that there are some other meanings. Mark compared BR with Southbound Again and the time he remembered hitchhiking to London in his teens. BUT there is no link in the lyrics to it, and that is what disturbs me in a certain way. The same with SFFTC: Where is the idea behind it, I mean, there are different interpretations possible, Mark is from the Clyde himself, he might think about how far he has come since then, but WHERE is that single word, the sentence that opens other dimensions?
Hope this is not too weird.
Another example might show what I mean:
Brothers In Arms, Ride Across The River, The Fish And The Bird, 5:15 am, all those songs have some special idea that IS illustrated with words and meaning in the lyrics. But on (the album) Get Lucky, the only line I find comparable to this quality is "tell it to the bread line" to be honest, because it is just that single word that puts you into the right time and place and gives you the deeper meaning of the lyrics.
Come on, beat me! ;D
LE
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So Far From The Clyde is just a text about a ship crashing into the shore.
No it isn't. ;)
It's about an old ship that was beautifuuly crafted on the Clyde being taken to India to be dismantled because nobody has any use for it anymore.
It's not one of my favourite songs, possibly because I can't relate to the music side as much as some of the other songs, but lyrically I think it's very good. There are lots of interesting ideas, religious references and the like.
From the last album I find the lyrics to Hard Shoulder and Piper to the End particularly poignant. And I don't want to offend anyone, but I often wonder whether non-native English speakers pick up on all the little nuances in the lyrics.
For example, you mention" Tell it the bread line", but to me the line before is more interesting - "Talk about happiness and money" or whatever it is. He's referring to a saying we have in English that "Money can't buy you happiness". Does everyone pick up on that?
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[ There are lots of interesting ideas, religious references...
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And no, I do not feel offended the slightest, otherwise I could quit being on this forum overall. God knows how many little "nuances" I missed around here in the last years... :-*
(I hope it was clear that I do not think that SFFTC is really only about a ship going into the shore. It was just a little bit provocative to show what I was talking about. And I like that song very much, too. The same with Border Reiver btw.)
LE
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They had a last supper
The shallow sea washes their hands
Personally I think it's easy to nitpick. There are good and not so good lyrics on all his albums, even back to DS. Is Angel of Mercy a great lyric? No. Does it matter? No.
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I was very interested in learning English in my teens, and one of the things that really increased my vocabulary was studying Mark's lyrics. Today I understand a lot more of his songs, but his songwriting can be pretty cryptic at times, very introverted.
I think his songs range from close to literary masterpieces to downright schmaltz. Telegraph Road being an example of the former, Hand in hand of the latter (man that one is terrible. Musically too.).
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TR is a masterpiece, no doubt. But Hand in Hand is a small gem ;)
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Agree with Jackal, Hand in Hand has to be up there with One World as one of the worst songs MK has ever released.
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Agree with Jackal, Hand in Hand has to be up there with One World as one of the worst songs MK has ever released.
As you said, it is easy to nitpick...
LE
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I am so happy not to read deep into Mark lyrics, or their meaning, I don't have to wonder if they are good or not, just if they sound right when sung. Always had great pleasure to sing the MNF or BIA tune.
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So far from the Clyde is a fantastic song.
When I listen to the song I imagine myself with the captain taking the ship on its last trip...
I can feel the captains sorrow and sadness..Fantastic story!
MK is a fantastic songwriter!!
And dont remember; when MK is being asked about the meaning of his songs he always says that its up to everyone who is listening to it to decide what the song is about ;D
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So far from the Clyde is a fantastic song.
Nobody doubts that.
LE
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Good good!! ;D
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Personally I relate more to the music he has written during his solo career, and to my ears his writing gets better. I really enjoy the storytelling aspect in the way he writes. It's like short movies of people and their lives that are made up in my head when I hear the songs. Personally I believe those songs are the most difficult to write. The songs where you tell a good story with only a few words. Take Prairie Wedding. It's a love song, but not like a clich
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Right, Mark was always a great storyteller, from day one. Take Lions, or, SULTANS, these songs are also "just" stories. But maybe I can make my original point clearer: While Sultans was a song about going into a pub and listen to a jazz band, it was a song about the love to simple music and devotion to it at the same time. The line that illustrates the resilience of good music for me is "...and the Sultans played creole"
SFFTC (which was only one example) is great storytelling, too, but I was looking for the relevance of it. The relevance of the story of a ship got driven into the shore. It is a tragedy of course that the work of good people and the energy and the pride is going without leaving any scrap but "only a stain in the sand", but my original question was searching for the "link" word/sentence as I said. Dusty made a good point about some stuff. Maybe the word I should have stressed more is "improved" as a songwriter...
In The Sky is really a masterpiece in my opinion, it is pure art from the heart so to say. The same with 5.15 am, really great lyrics, lyrics you could give to any literature course and fill at least two hours of discussion with it. ;)
LE
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I think his songs range from close to literary masterpieces to downright schmaltz. Telegraph Road being an example of the former
Hehe, not strange at all, because those lyrics were written by Knut Hamsun, and he recieved the Nobel Prize in litterature for them :)
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Les Boys is just a rewrite basically, lyrically anyway of Sultans. A bad cabaret act against a bad jazz band, setting moved from London to Munich but still mentioned in the lyrics. Setting of a bar, both recalling a situation - very similar.
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I think his songs range from close to literary masterpieces to downright schmaltz. Telegraph Road being an example of the former
Hehe, not strange at all, because those lyrics were written by Knut Hamsun, and he recieved the Nobel Prize in litterature for them :)
Well ... There's not much of 'Growth of the Soil' in Telegraph Road, except the theme is the similar. The book and its theme inspired Mark, but to say that Hamsun "wrote" the lyrics is a bit of stretch. I haven't read Thomas Pynchon's 'Mason & Dixon', but I'd suspect Sailing to Philadelphia to be much closer to that book than Telegraph Road is to 'Growth of the Soil'.
One reason I like Telegraph Road a lot is that it is both cinematic and it makes real so amazingly well the feeling of being unemployed and living in a society where everything is going down the drains (for instance Detroit these days - car factories closed and whole residential areas just abandoned). These days I feel Mark is telling really good stories, but they are more difficult to connect or relate to (Border Reiver and So Far from the Clyde for instance).
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Read this on Guy's page:
http://straitjacketmusic.co.uk/
Had to look to see if it's April 1st! ;D
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Read this on Guy's page:
http://straitjacketmusic.co.uk/
Had to look to see if it's April 1st! ;D
Yes I saw that too! Hilarious. He really needs one (a straightjacket!)
Please friends, let's resist the urge to comment on his blog, that's all he wants (I even suspect he's the one who posted the link on Guy's forum). We should ignore him!
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"walking thirty miles with a sack on his back..." A bad blemish on an otherwise faultless song.
I've always been fascinated by Marks references to common themes - knives, sailors... And I don't see what's so bad about angel of mercy, the opening lines are pure gold.
How about this for pure poetry?
"she don't care about your window box,
Or your garden gnomes..."
Is it really, button holes????? Seems wrong.
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Does anyone know what became of the Sucker for Punishment lyrics? As read in the arena doco. They're terrific!
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"walking thirty miles with a sack on his back..." A bad blemish on an otherwise faultless song.
I think this line is really great, because it sounds naive and "simple", like from a tale from time out of mind, so I am sure MK had a certain intension: The story starts in a very optimistic, innocent way of storytelling. Also the narrator marks the change in the mood/spirit when he comes in with the line "and my radio says tonight it's gonna freeze...". From this point on everything goes down the toilet, sort of. :) Just my two cents.
LE
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I'm always fascinated by the songwriter's journey. You see it time and time again that great songwriters in their early career create lyrics that talk about the human condition in a way that we can all understand and yet which says something new to us.
As their careers progress, they come to live in a bubble of stardom that is so far removed from the day-to-day experiences of everyday people that they can no longer draw from the well of common experience in their lyrics and either start to directly write about being a rock star (Lynyrd Skynyrd, Pink Floyd etc) or try to latch onto big issues that they think will give them some common ground with ordinary people (U2, Sting etc). Ultimately, they end up sounding detached and unreal and there are no songwriters who improve once they leave the human race and become stars.
What I admire about MK is that he has accepted this and is open about writing "story" lyrics rather than personal lyrics. He builds with the words of other writers (Telegraph Road, Sailing to Philidelphia etc) or creates situation songs which are about the simple narrative rather than anything more profound. He's essentially positioned himself as the modern equivalent of a medieval minstrel - telling other people's stories or relating the news in song.
He's not as good a songwriter as he was when he was writing stuff like Tunnel of Love or Romeo and Juliet - but he's also not being a sad old bugger like Bono or David Gilmour still trying to be contemporary rock stars when they look like Jeremy Clarkson, and write lyrics like him too.
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I'm always fascinated by the songwriter's journey. You see it time and time again that great songwriters in their early career create lyrics that talk about the human condition in a way that we can all understand and yet which says something new to us.
As their careers progress, they come to live in a bubble of stardom that is so far removed from the day-to-day experiences of everyday people that they can no longer draw from the well of common experience in their lyrics and either start to directly write about being a rock star (Lynyrd Skynyrd, Pink Floyd etc) or try to latch onto big issues that they think will give them some common ground with ordinary people (U2, Sting etc). Ultimately, they end up sounding detached and unreal and there are no songwriters who improve once they leave the human race and become stars.
What I admire about MK is that he has accepted this and is open about writing "story" lyrics rather than personal lyrics. He builds with the words of other writers (Telegraph Road, Sailing to Philidelphia etc) or creates situation songs which are about the simple narrative rather than anything more profound. He's essentially positioned himself as the modern equivalent of a medieval minstrel - telling other people's stories or relating the news in song.
He's not as good a songwriter as he was when he was writing stuff like Tunnel of Love or Romeo and Juliet - but he's also not being a sad old bugger like Bono or David Gilmour still trying to be contemporary rock stars when they look like Jeremy Clarkson, and write lyrics like him too.
Great post! Thanks for that. Your conclusion comes very close to the question I had in mind when starting this thread, only the right words were missing... :) I like the "equivalent of a medieval minstrel" very much. As I read in one of your other posts you are a journalist, so thanks for your professional rating. And a big welcome also from me by the way!
LE
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Welcome to this forum, Jakehadlee! I'm really enjoying your posts! :D
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I'm always fascinated by the songwriter's journey. You see it time and time again that great songwriters in their early career create lyrics that talk about the human condition in a way that we can all understand and yet which says something new to us.
As their careers progress, they come to live in a bubble of stardom that is so far removed from the day-to-day experiences of everyday people that they can no longer draw from the well of common experience in their lyrics and either start to directly write about being a rock star
What I admire about MK is that he has accepted this and is open about writing "story" lyrics rather than personal lyrics. He builds with the words of other writers (Telegraph Road, Sailing to Philidelphia etc) or creates situation songs which are about the simple narrative rather than anything more profound.
I like this analysis. As I wrote earlier, I don't feel that connected with Mark's songs these days as they indeed are story songs, nice ones as such, and very much from an observer's viewpoint, whereas the earlier songs were more heartfelt and personal. Never considered the fact that stardom do indeed, or at least can, limit the topics to write about without sounding hypocritical, but of course this is right. For Mark to write about struggling financially, being unemployed, and what have you, wouldn't ring very true ... However, even though life is more comfortable for him than for most of us, he still is a human being, he's a father, husband, he's involved in charity, etc. Being the great writer he is, I'd love for him to get a bit more personal, to get beyond that which is merely interesting and into the stuff that is a bit painful maybe.
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Thanks for the welcome everyone - can't believe I hadn't found this forum before!
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lol, they keep saying that....
thanks, and yes, a warm welcome indeed!
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Good discussions here.
Does anyone know of a comprehensive listing of MK songs that were inspired by literary works? It would be nice to have all the references in one place. I searched this forum but don't see one thread that contains what I'm after. Anyone have a lead on where this information might be available?
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No, I haven't, although I remember it was a topic now and then. There are some obvious books of course, like Mason & Dixon for STP, I am sure you are aware of that. But sometimes it is just a line that inspired the song: Heavy Fuel for instance contains the line "You gotta run on heavy fuel" which is from the novel "Money" by Martin Amis. Reading the lyrics again you can surely say that this song is inspired by the book. The Fish and The Bird is from a line in the book "The Time of your singing" by Richard Powers, the line is "The bird and the fish can fall in love, but where can they make their nest?"
Another one is True Love Will Never Fade, inspired by The Electric Michelangelo by Sarah Hall as Mark told us on the Hay On Wye festival in 2007...
In the liner notes of Shangri La Mark tells us which title inspired him to write "Song For Sonny Liston", I think it was "The Devil and Sonny Liston" from Nick Tosches. The same with Boom, Like That: Kroc himself wrote a biography called "Grinding It Out". I think MK had a lot of time to read during his convalescence after his motorbike addident, time to read and time to google a bit, I sometimes have the feeling a lot of "Shangri-La" comes from Googling... Great, nevertheless!
He also mentioned the Patrick O'Brian novels as an example for a lot of historical novels that he read and that got him the idea for Done With Bonaparte.
Interesting enough, he says in the STP press-kit that Junkie Doll was inspired by a book being part of a trilogy by "Edward Snorburn", which is an author I was not able to clarify...
So these are only the book-song-relations I am aware of, I think there are many more. And who knows, sometimes it might not be so obvious so we cannot be sure about it. Maybe somebody else around here can add some more stuff?
Or maybe we should open a new thread about books and Knopfler songs? I thought there was one already but I am too lazy to do the research...
LE
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Hi all :)
Romeo And Juliet --- William Shakespeare:
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The theme of "The Fish And The Bird" is exactly the same as the 1966 song "Un petit poisson, un petit oiseau" from Juliette Gr
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Apart from it being about a fish and a bird, who love eachother, I don't really see too much similarity in either the lyric or the musical theme. :-\
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My French isn't good enough to read the lyrics above (in fact I have NO French at all :lol ), but however this song is from 1966, and Richard Powers' novel is from 2003. And it is very clear that MK related to the story of the book, and that the fish and the bird were only meant as a picture for different "life domains". In the book it goes about coloured persons and jewish persons in the 1960's, and about the difficulties to get a life together in a world full of anti-semitism, racism and hatred.
Great list, Robbie! Funnily enough I know Edward St. Aubyn of course, but did not have the idea that he was meant with "Edward Snorburn". Snorburn is the way it is written in every single released and online version of the STP press kit, so maybe the interview was done by ear, or the interviewer was not brave enough to ask MK after the correct spelling of the author's name! :lol
LE
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Here s the lyric, courtesy of Google! Not translated by me! ;D
A small fish, a little bird
Loved each other tender
But how
When you're in the water
A small fish, a little bird
Loved each other tender
But how
When you're up there
When you're up there
Lost in the hollows of the clouds
You look down to see
His love swimming
And we would like to change
During the journey
Its wings into flippers
Trees in diving
The sky in bathtub
Refrain
A small fish, a little bird
Loved each other tender
But how
When you're up there
A small fish, a little bird
Loved each other tender
But how
When you're in the water
When you're in the water
We want the coming storm
Who would make the sky
Much more than a message
That could at once
Change during the trip
Feathers Scale
Wings in sweater
Algae straw.
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Hey, Thank you very much, Val! :)
Now everything is totally clear to me! ;D :lol :lol :P
LE
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Although it was inspired by the Richard Powers book, I think, perhaps, it was a bit personal too. MK's mother, a Geordie, marrying his father, a Hungarian Jew. :)
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Wow, some great responses. Thanks
Some others:
If This Is Goodbye - Only Love And Then Oblivion - Ian McEwan
The Car Was The One - The Unfair Advantage - Mark Donohue
I'm also sure there are other examples out there. Anyone?
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Apart from it being about a fish and a bird, who love eachother,
well, that's quite enough to call the themes similar me thinks?!
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I may be too late to this discussion, but found it via google and registered so I could leave a response.
So Far From The Clyde is a very emotional song for me. I had never even heard of the river Clyde or the great shipyards that once thrived there. The music itself drew me in. And the beauty of MKs poetry is how skillfully he suggests a thing without actually saying it. Anthropomorphism is giving human attributes to things not human, and he accomplishes this at a high level in this song. I sense what the writer wanted me to sense when hearing it. The ship itself cannot speak. Her builders were paid for their skillful work long ago, and those shipyards no longer even offer their sons the same opportunity to use their hands like they did back then. The captain's #1 job for the life of this ship was to keep her hull from touching ground. Now he must give the wheel over to the man who will intentionally direct her to shore at high tide, never to go to sea again. Not even a proper dry dock. The workers who will finish her off are not capable of sensing what a pity this unceremonious end actually is. They earn 44 cents per hour. I feel foolish for feeling what I feel for a big steel machine, and for the men who built her. But feel it I do. THAT is the genius of Mark Knopfler.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrTOeje9Rhs
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Thanks for posting cheetahpilot and welcome to AMIT :)
And thank you for resurrecting this thread; I hadn't read it before, and enjoyed reading everyone's earlier posts. I really love the various interpretations of Mark's songwriting, and truly welcome this discussion. For my own part, I noticed that Mark, in his later work, tends to write songs that appear "simpler" at first blush, often with more repetition and typically fewer words; yet they still convey deep, multi-dimensional stories. He has become more efficient is in his writing style, so to say.
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Well, am I glad I was browsing and found this thread! Like Lis said, cheetahpilot, thank you for posting on this thread. To me, this is the important stuff - I'm so glad Mr. Knopfler's fans like to discuss his work, because that's what it's really all about, isn't it (although, OK, I do envy those of you guys that have actually met him!). Cheetahpilot, that was a wonderful post about "So Far from the Clyde" - I had just mentioned in another post that that one brings tears to my eyes. The first time I listened to it, I hadn't realized what it was going to be about, and the lyrics just snuck up on me. It's so clear that these songs are carefully crafted by a man with great powers of observation, a deep sense of history and a love of language (which isn't surprising, given his early days as a reporter and a teacher). I rather like that he prefers not to expound on the songs' meanings very much, purposely wanting to leave it to the listener to find the meaning - which, like Lis said, can be multi-layered. All that and a singing guitar, too ...
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For me as a German, translating the MK songs (especially the solo work, because I
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Not to worry, Mona Dee - as an American, I'm sometimes stopped by the British vernacular. (You might have heard someone once said, "The United States and Great Britain are two countries separated by a common language.") I'm liking "Hard Shoulder" more every time I listen to it - but I had to look up what a "slip road" was! Turns out it's what we would call an on-ramp or off-ramp to a freeway. "Hard shoulder" itself is a play on words: the shoulder of the road (the bit off the paved part) is where you would pull off in an emergency, such as your vehicle breaking down - in this case, a man who seems to be a general contractor or handyman who is starting to break down, himself, pulls over because he's about to cry. There's also the phrase in both American and British English about crying on someone's shoulder - so this is a lovely play on words: The man's crying on a shoulder - but it's the shoulder of the road, not a friend's shoulder. The beginning of the song, where the mops are, is mainly just a list of the stuff he's got on his truck: the tools of the trade. Don't know if that answers any of your questions, but it's so fun to discuss the lyrics!
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Thank you McDeb, your explanation helps alot to understand it better. Sometimes it is really difficult for me as a German to understand all his plays on words. I love the song, too, just because of the melody, but it is much better with understanding the lyrics ;) !
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Mona, the list of stuff for me has the meaning that he thought he was prepared for everything - he had the right tool for every case - but now she maybe left him and he has no "tool" to repair it (no pun intended). About the slip road, he is not able to find the right way to her, ... something like that..
LE
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LE, thank you for the explanation, now we have two slightly different ones. IMO a lyrics thread would be interesting!
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I think the two interpretations complement each other nicely, and don't have to be alternatives. To me it sounds like he's trying to hold it together emotionally by thinking of practical work matters, but the woman who's left him keeps coming back into his mind and he breaks down again.
Thanks for bringing this up, it's a song I'd never really listened to properly before - just let it wash over me.
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It's a great track! For some reason I really like the middle part ("give me a..."), it's what makes the song stand out IMHO.
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I didn't like it the first few months but fell in love with later. The drumming is excellent, although not right into your face but very nice and with some drive.. .also the orchestra part is phantastic. Nice little gem, great songwriting.
LE
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I love So Far from the clyde
I didn't understood all the lyrics until I read a french translation on Aurelien Brusset's blog :
http://aurelienbrusset.over-blog.com/article-traduction-so-far-from-the-clyde-mark-knopfler-59016037.html (http://aurelienbrusset.over-blog.com/article-traduction-so-far-from-the-clyde-mark-knopfler-59016037.html)
the music is gorgeous, and I love the choir part, I would have needed more chorus sung by the choir
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Mona, the list of stuff for me has the meaning that he thought he was prepared for everything - he had the right tool for every case - but now she maybe left him and he has no "tool" to repair it (no pun intended). About the slip road, he is not able to find the right way to her, ... something like that..
LE
Oh <slaps forehead>! You are so right, I think! That is a quite lovely interpretation of those lyrics. And this thought brings to mind one of the aspects of MK's lyrics that I love so much - he writes so well about how, well, gallant, men can be in relationships - if that's the word I want. Despite heartbreak, they pick up the pieces and carry on, try to do what's expected of them. (We all do, I guess, but I don't think I've heard it much about men in songs.) ... Also, does anyone else think "Hard Shoulder" has a similar feel to Jimmy Webb's "By the Time I Get to Phoenix"? Sort of in the same wistful, working-man genre?
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I like a lot LE
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"Hard Shoulder" has always been one of my favorites from GL. :)
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To me, the song is a quiet, understated beauty. To anyone who hasn't read the diaries, there is even a recording of slip road noise included.
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To me, the song is a quiet, understated beauty. To anyone who hasn't read the diaries, there is even a recording of slip road noise included.
In which moment of the song you can hear the slip road? I recall someone asked that to Guy and he answered the slip road noise was there.
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At first you hear it in the first seconds, before the horns come in. It pans from right to left and fades out. And then it comes back at 3:38 or something like that. Sorry can't give precise seconds right now. But try listening with headphones, then it is easily recognisable.
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So cool! Thanks Justme! The sound of cars going by (sounding much like waves crashing in) can be heard in the very beginning of the song, and again at about 3:18. Super-cool addition to the song. Love this song. (like so many other MK songs....)
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Yes, really great, now I can hear it, too :D thank you for telling us!
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Nothing beats proper London traffic noise ;-)
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I wonder what other sounds are hidden in MK tracks...
Slip road on Hard Shoulder
Submarine sounds on The Dream of the drwoned submariner...
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I wonder what other sounds are hidden in MK tracks...
these are not really "hidden" sounds, but at still not intrumental sounds :
- the "countryside-landscape" ambiance between end of Single Handed Sailor and beginning of Follow Me Home
- the storm at the start of Telegraph Road
- some footsteps and doors sounds in Private Investigations
- storm at the start of BIA
- cracking chair during wanderlust ;D
- "wind " (?) at the start of sands of nevada
- some "click-shaker" at the start of HFB
- backward piano at the end of heart full fo holes
- the foghorn at the start of radio city serenade. the difference with DTTW is that on DTTW it was made by Mark on guitar, while I believe it's a sound effect on radio city serenade
maybe there are more, mostly on soundtrcaks I believe...
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Mona, the list of stuff for me has the meaning that he thought he was prepared for everything - he had the right tool for every case - but now she maybe left him and he has no "tool" to repair it (no pun intended). About the slip road, he is not able to find the right way to her, ... something like that..
LE
Oh <slaps forehead>! You are so right, I think! That is a quite lovely interpretation of those lyrics. And this thought brings to mind one of the aspects of MK's lyrics that I love so much - he writes so well about how, well, gallant, men can be in relationships - if that's the word I want. Despite heartbreak, they pick up the pieces and carry on, try to do what's expected of them. (We all do, I guess, but I don't think I've heard it much about men in songs.) ... Also, does anyone else think "Hard Shoulder" has a similar feel to Jimmy Webb's "By the Time I Get to Phoenix"? Sort of in the same wistful, working-man genre?
I asked Guy about this in 2009, although I was thinking about Witchita Lineman :)
Dear Guy, my fave GL track can change from day to day, but Hard Shoulder is always near the top. Lyrically, I couldn't help thinking it shared something with the Glenn Campbell/Jimmy Webb classic "Witchita lineman", ie a tale of an ordinary workingman who misses a loved one. Musically I thought it shared some themes too, the strings, baritone guitar (Richard?), and the 60s style guitar "stabs" (sorry, I don't have a better term for them). Coincidence or was it a conscious influence while recording?
No coincidence at all I methinks. One of Mark's (and mine) favorite recordings.
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I asked Guy about this in 2009, although I was thinking about Witchita Lineman :)
Dear Guy, my fave GL track can change from day to day, but Hard Shoulder is always near the top. Lyrically, I couldn't help thinking it shared something with the Glenn Campbell/Jimmy Webb classic "Witchita lineman", ie a tale of an ordinary workingman who misses a loved one. Musically I thought it shared some themes too, the strings, baritone guitar (Richard?), and the 60s style guitar "stabs" (sorry, I don't have a better term for them). Coincidence or was it a conscious influence while recording?
No coincidence at all I methinks. One of Mark's (and mine) favorite recordings.
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I think you're right - "Wichita Lineman" is actually closer. Just listened to it online to revisit. I loved that song and album - I remember playing that one over and over again when it was new! (Still have it on vinyl.)
That reminded me that I had found this collaboration between MK and Jimmy Webb, "The Highwayman":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrKdspxlHs0
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Mcdeb,
Thanks so much for posting the link. I LOVE the song very very much. Was that the only song that Mark collaborated with Jimmy Webb or are there more ? Beautiful song !!!! :thumbsup :thumbsup :clap :clap :clap
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Mk played in other song with Jimmy Webb "by the time we get to phoenix" or something like that. Just twang guitar solo.
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never heard this version. always loved that song. thnx for the link. think it was a typical mk collaboration where he does his part and then mails it of to the artist?
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I do only know this version. And Mark's singing in this one gives me really goosebumps every time... "I fly a starship..." "And when I reach the other side.."
Wow. Really such a distinctive voice, so much expression... Wow
LE
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I do only know this version. And Mark's singing in this one gives me really goosebumps every time... "I fly a starship..." "And when I reach the other side.."
Wow. Really such a distinctive voice, so much expression... Wow
LE
Glen Campbell does a fantastic live version in the 90s with full orchestra and I thought it couldnt be beaten. MK's collaboration doesnt beat it but it comes close to it. From my small understanding about Glen Campbell and Jimmy Webb songs it was GC that always turned then into bigger louder and faster songs. So MK and JW version is probably as it was intended by the songwriter.
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The Highwayman is an awesome song indeed made famous by the country supergroup The Highwaymen (pun intended) consisting of Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofersson, Waylon Jennings and Johny Cash. Always when I am listening to this version I can easily imagine Mark's guitar playing (and singing) in there, therefore I was really excited when I heard about the collaboration between Jimmy Webb and MK on this particular song. Their version is good of course but I still consider the Johny Cash and Co. version the ultimate one. Maybe if MK played on the song 20 years earlier...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlgYxbtJb1Y
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err made famous by Glen Campbell...on his 70s album called highwayman.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaeGfMeSKX0
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A bit late, I know, but a further explanation for McDeb (#43, above):
I'm not sure if this is necessary or, indeed, whether it will add anything at all but, while the "hard shoulder" does run alongside the road, allowing one to pull over in an emergency and stop without blocking the main highway, it has to be a paved strip. If not paved, it should be called a "soft verge", though this phrase seems to be in less common usage these days. Nevertheless, one of the Liverpool Poets of the 1960s had a brief poem that went something like this:
I wanted her soft verges
But she gave me her hard shoulder
It is so long ago that I may have got that slightly wrong.