Pophistory: music, movies, history, and life.
The 74-year-old Merle Haggard has a new CD coming out on October 4. The CD includes some new Haggard originals, a couple of Johnny Cash classics, and a new recording of Haggard’s song “Working Man’s Blues,” featuring Willie Nelson and Hag’s son Ben Haggard.
You may listen to the stream of the album, Working in Tennessee
What are your favorite Merle Haggard songs? Leave a comment.
As far as fast food commercials go, you probably cannot do better than Willie Nelson singing a Coldplay song with an important message about the source for much of our food. That is the combination put together, along with cool animation by Johnny Kelly, for a short promotional film by Chipolte.
The short film raises questions about how the nation’s meat is raised and treated, but in a soft-sell sort of way without images of real suffering animals that people try to avoid seeing, lest it spoil our dinners. Chipotle is not trying to turn us all into vegetarians. But the short film, which Chipotle plans to show in theaters around the country, is part of Chipotle’s “Food With Integrity” program where it supports using naturally raised meat and local produce. If you buy the recording of “The Scientist” off of iTunes, 60 cents from each sale goes to Chipotle Cultivate Foundation.
Taking a cynical view, one may see Chipotle’s incentive in putting together the short film because it allows them to distinguish their practices from other restaurants, thereby getting more customers. But still, it is a commendable way for a restaurant to distinguish itself. And it is a cool song and a great cover by Nelson, combined with interesting animation. Three chords and the truth. What more can you ask for from a song commissioned by a fast food company?
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Martin Scorsese made deliberate choices in the music for “Taxi Driver,” including Kris Kristofferson’s “The Pilgrim, Chapter 33.”
In a recent post, we discussed the link between Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks and the movie Taxi Driver (1976). In this post, we consider a musical connection between the movie and another song: Kris Kristofferson’s “The Pilgrim, Chapter 33.”
In Taxi Driver, perhaps the one moment a viewer might think that there is a slight bit of hope for Travis Bickle (Robert DeNiro) is when he first courts Betsy (Cybill Shepherd). After he charms her into going to a diner for a bite to eat, she quotes a song: “He’s a prophet, he’s a pusher… partly truth and partly fiction… a walking contradiction.” Bickle focuses on the “pusher part,” saying he has never been a pusher, but she explains she brought it up for the “walking contradiction” part. Bickle is amused, and a later scene shows him at a record store, apparently buying the album, which he later gives to her on their next date. And then he ruins the date by taking her to see a pornographic film.
Although we do not hear the song or the name of the song in those scenes, the quote is from Kris Kristofferson’s song “The Pilgrim, Chapter 33,” which was off of his second album, The Silver Tongued Devil and I (1971). The album’s biggest hit was “Loving Her Was Easier (Than Anything I’ll Ever Do Again),” and the album also included Kristofferson’s version of “Jody and the Kid.”
“The Pilgrim, Chapter 33,” which was not a hit for Kristofferson, has held up well through the years. A number of artists have covered the song, including Emmylou Harris, Willie Nelson, and Jerry Lee Lewis (with Kristofferson).
When a tribute CD was put together for Kristofferson, they took the song for the title of the CD, The Pilgrim: A Celebration Of Kris Kristofferson
It is a beautiful song, and while like Astral Weeks it is not completely in sync with the story of Travis Bickle, you can see where Martin Scorsese got a little inspiration from the song. Like “Madame George,” the song “The Pilgrim, Chapter 33” also contains some of the themes of isolation and loneliness that Martin Scorsese tried to capture in Taxi Driver.
He has tasted good and evil in your bedrooms and your bars,
And he’s traded in tomorrow for today;
Runnin’ from his devils, Lord, and reachin’ for the stars,
And losin’ all he’s loved along the way;
But if this world keeps right on turnin’ for the better or the worse,
And all he ever gets is older and around,
From the rockin’ of the cradle to the rollin’ of the hearse,
The goin’ up was worth the comin’ down.
Like many of Kristofferson’s songs, it works as pure poetry. His lyrics in “The Pilgrim, Chapter 33,” describe a man of contradictions, leaving much room for interpretation.
I have never read an explanation for the “Chapter 33” in the title, but I suspect it is a reference to a man being near the end of his life, just as Chapter 33 will fall near the end of a book. Perhaps that is why the song seems to describe so many of the brilliant artists mentioned by Kristofferson in the introduction mentioned above.
May we all be so lucky that the going up is worth the coming down.
In another performance, Kristofferson interprets the song with a more upbeat version of the song with a full band.
In addition to all of his other musical accomplishments, the Northern-Ireland-born Van Morrison is one of the greatest living interpreters of American music, be it blues, jazz, or R&B. One of his best albums in recent years is Pay the Devil (2006), where the entire CD is devoted to country music. And a standout track on the album is Rodney Crowell’s “Til I Gain Control Again,” which first appeared on Crowell’s 1981 self-titled album.
“Til I Gain Control Again” is a beautiful song about love and heartbreak, where the singer realizes that it is too late to plead for reconciliation but is not yet able to let go. So the singer’s request is not for promises or for a future, but merely “I only hope that you can hold me now /Til I can gain control again.” Crowell has explained that the line, “There are some turns where I will spin,” means that the despair will happen again (“I’ll always pass this way again”). There may not be a sadder song about love’s end.
Crowell wrote the song not long after he first arrived in Nashville, and has explained he wrote it in sort of a “three-day trance” where it was like the song came to him from another dimension. He also noted that one of the reasons he wrote the song was to get the attention of another great songwriter, Townes Van Zandt. An article from the New York Observer has a good interview with Crowell, where the article’s author concludes that “Til I Gain Control Again” is “one of those songs that are strong enough to change your life.”
Crowell’s version is fantastic, and there are several excellent covers by other great artists. Emmylou Harris was the first to record the song, which appeared on her 1975 album, Elite Hotel. Other artists who have covered the song include Waylon Jennings, Raul Malo, Albert Lee, and Willie Nelson.
Interestingly, in an interview on Texas Monthly‘s One By Willie podcast, Crowell explained how his favorite version is a studio recording by Willie Nelson where Crowell sang background. Unfortunately, that version is not widely available, appearing only on an out-of-print album sold as a bonus when people ordered by mail Nelson’s IRS Tapes. Instead, Nelson has released several live versions of the “Til I Gain Control Again.”
This live version below has both Willie and Emmylou. Check it out.
Crystal Gayle had the biggest hit with “Til I Gain Control Again,” taking it to number one in 1982. If you want something different, This Mortal Coil does an interesting sort of Goth Emo version.
It is hard to pick a favorite version, but Van Morrison’s voice and interpretation give a soulful spin on “Til I Gain Control Again.” Although most of the artists who have recorded the song come from the country genre, Morrison does something a little different with the song, taking a brilliant song with so many excellent covers and making it his own.
What is your favorite version of “Til I Gain Control Again”? Leave a comment.
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Happy Fourth of July weekend for our readers in the U.S. In a recent post, we considered Willie Nelson’s recording of “Graceland” on his album, Across the Borderline (1993). That CD also featured another classic song written by Paul Simon, “American Tune.” The beautiful music in the song, though, was not original to Simon.
The music we know from “American Tune” appears in the chorale from “St. Matthew Passion,” BWV 244, written by Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) about the crucifixion of Christ. You may hear “American Tune” in that composition in No. 21 (Chorale – “Acknowledge Me My Keeper”), No. 23 (Chorale – “Near Thee I Would Be Staying,” and No. 53 (Chorale – “Wha’ever may vex or grieve thee”). But Bach did not create the theme.
Bach’s composition reworked “Mein Gmüth ist mir verwirret,” composed by Hans Hassler (1564-1612), a German composer who wrote the tune around a century before Bach was born. Hassler’s song was a secular love song known in English as “My Heart is Distracted by a Gentle Maid.” Hymnist Paul Gerhardt (1607-1676) also borrowed Hassler’s tune in one of his compositions. We might call Hassler the “Father of Recycling.” Through Gerhardt and Bach, Hassler’s love song became a religious hymn (“O sacred Head, now wounded, with grief and shame weighed down,/ Now scornfully surrounded with thorns, Thine only crown.”). Here’s the Bach version:
Paul Simon took the beautiful music and transformed it with new meaning in “American Tune,” which appeared on There Goes Rhymin’ Simon (1973), released as Simon’s second album after his breakup with Art Garfunkel and as America was tangled in Viet Nam and Watergate. As columnist Anne Hill explained, the song “captures perfectly all the complexity of an idealism that died but still lives; the bitter disappointment and deeper hope which are intertwined in the soul of this country.” The lyrics are vague enough to allow for various interpretations, but the music conveys the melancholy of the song while still maintaining the beauty.
But it’s all right, it’s all right;
You can’t be forever blessed.
Still, tomorrow’s going to be another working day;
And I’m trying to get some rest;
That’s all I’m trying to get some rest.
Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel performed Simon’s song, “American Tune,” at their famous free concert in Central Park on September 19, 1981. The performance appears on the CD, Concert in Central Park.
Here is Willie Nelson and Simon performing “American Tune” from Nelson’s CD, Across the Borderline. On the album version, Paul Simon produced the recording and backed up Nelson. Check it out below (YouTube also has a live version of the song performed by Nelson and Simon.)
Eva Cassidy does a beautiful version of the song too. Among others, Peter, Paul and Mary recorded a folk song, “Because All Men Are Brothers,” which was written by Tom Glazer and is based upon the same Bach music. The song’s lyrics include: “My brother’s fears are my fears, yellow, white, or brown; / My brother’s tears are my tears, the whole wide world around.”
Thus, Hassler’s tune written in 1601 has functioned as a song of brotherhood, a love song, a hymn of faith, and an American tune about dreams surviving a time of lost innocence. That’s a pretty good record, and a nice theme for Independence Day.
Photo of flag and barn via woodleywonderworks.
What do you think “American Tune” means? Which version of the music do you prefer? Leave a comment.
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