In Nick Drake's lyric
they found their band name, and their
true identity
I've written before that my husband and I, when we first met online, bonded largely over music, including our shared love for rather obscure (in the U.S.) bands such as Dead Can Dance and Tangerine Dream.
I've also mentioned that, thanks to his having owned and operated a music store in Brooklyn, NY, for eleven years, and specializing in European music, he introduced me to whole host of bands I had never even heard of, much less been aware of musically.
And then there were the bands I knew by name, but couldn't have named a single one of their songs, of which there were many. One of those bands was The Cure, who were huge on both sides of the pond, so . . . did I simply sleep through the eighties?
Not exactly, though one of the ironies is that my older sister Carol was an early fan of The Cure.
I moved from the greater Los Angeles area to Tampa, Florida, in November 1983, and was a tad dismayed at the radio stations at the time which were . . . putting it kindly . . . a tad behind the times, by L.A. standards.
Not that this was my first experience with this . . . when I visited my grandparents in the summers as a kid, they lived in Gallup, New Mexico, and the "rock" stations at the time were playing music from the fifties. In the late sixties and seventies.
So, literally, they were twenty years behind the times, and again, that is putting it kindly. Very kindly.
I used to listen to the Navajo stations out of self-defense, despite not understanding the language, because they were usually more interesting than the music being played on the "rock" stations in Gallup. By far.
But all was not lost. I got a lot of reading done, and from age ten, I practiced a lot on my guitar. A lot.
In fact, I've always loved the song "The Summer of '69," by John Cougar Mellencamp for that reason, because he was describing the best part of my own childhood:
I got my first real six string
bought it at the five and dime
played it 'till my fingers bled
it was the summer of sixty-nine
In my case, the guitar was an off brand three-quarter sized steel string, and it was a present from my parents, though I don't recall if it was for my birthday or for Christmas.
In either case, I was ten years old, and absolutely loved it. Being musicians themselves, they made certain to give me a guitar that had excellent tone, as they weren't willing to listen day in and day out to a piece of crap, and frankly I wouldn't have played a guitar that sounded bad.
The irony is that I wanted to become a classical guitarist, so a steel string was the wrong guitar to give me for that purpose, but it had a narrow neck, so with my tiny hands, it was far easier for me to play. In the end, it was more pleasurable to play, and thus the perfect gift.
In later years, when I tried to make the switch to playing an actual classical guitar, I found that I absolutely hated it, and couldn't stand how the nylon strings felt against my fingers. And, being an animal lover, I was completely unwilling to go the traditional route of cat gut, and so I realized that I was destined to stick with the steel string, for better or for worse.
The following summer, "The Summer of '69," as they were in the process of splitting up, I was inexplicably (to me) held captive in New Mexico, or so it seemed, as I was not allowed to come home.
The only thing that saved my sanity was that guitar. It became my best friend, and I played it for hours every single day. And for many years to come.
In my junior year in high school, I decided to make an upgrade, and with my parents' help, I purchased a Gibson Dove Custom, though it was very nearly edged out by an outstanding Washburn.
The Washburn was by far the more beautiful guitar, with a heavily grained wood with a darker finish, whereas the Dove had a godawful cherry red finish that I couldn't stand . . . but it had better tone.
In the end, the Gibson's superior tone won out over the Washburn's physical beauty, and six months later, when I was still playing pretty much constantly, my dad surprised me by paying it off as my present when I graduated from high school early.
Fast forward a number of years, when I first visited my father in Tampa in late 1982, as my own first marriage was disintegrating, and fell in love with the thunderstorms. I was hooked.
I went home to L.A., only to spend the following year saving enough money to make the move, much to the surprise of most of my friends and family. I've always been a sucker for electrical storms.
Growing up, I had always listened to as much jazz and classical music as I did rock, and since the local rock stations were seriously lacking, I simply listened to mostly jazz. This wasn't surprising, as my dad was a jazz pianist, and we spent a lot of time together.
It was during this initial visit in 1982 that I met the son of one of my dad's friends, Rosemary, who co-owned the building in which the restaurant where he was playing piano was located, and we hit it off immediately.
At the time, Rod was going for his masters degree in American history at USF, I've always been a history buff, and we were both recovering from recently failed relationships. With a lot of additional common ground, we hung out on a regular basis, often with his friends, and also bonded over music.
Rod knew that my dad had decent recording equipment, and one day he asked if I would make him cassette copies of his Nick Drake LPs, as he no longer had a turntable.
He had the original three LP "Fruit Tree" box set, which consisted of all three of Nick Drake's albums released commercially during his lifetime, plus four songs from the album he was working on when he died, unexpectedly at age 26.
Rod was almost apologetic when admitting that "Bryter Layter" was his favorite, which he acknowledged was the most commercial of the three albums, and I duly agreed to record it first, which I did.
And as the album opened, I remember thinking, this is the musical genius he's been telling me about? Really?
The first two songs I initially found unimpressive, to put it mildly, but then the third track started: "The Chime of the City Clock," which was excellent, and I started taking the music more seriously. By the end of the first album I was eager for more.
The second album I recorded was "Five Leaves Left," his first album, which instantly became my favorite. Initially I thought that the title referred to autumn, but in the booklet of the box set I discovered my mistake, as the phrase was actually originally printed on a brand of British rolling papers, to alert the user that there were only five leaves left, and it was time to buy a new pack.
Drake was given a lot of creative leeway by his producer, Joe Boyd, and opted to engage a close friend of his from Trinity College at Cambridge, which they attended together, to arrange the strings, which are a lush and gorgeous accompaniment to his vocals and guitar.
And the first verse of the first song is where Robert Smith found inspiration, and the name of his new band, some years later:
Time has told me
you're a rare, rare find
a troubled cure
for a troubled mind
The album was off to an excellent start, and only got better from there.
Being a guitar nerd, and loving classical and counterpoint guitar, it was the third song on the album, "Three Hours," that made me stand up and take notice.
As I was recording, I went ahead and allowed the album to continue, but later that day, and in the intervening years, I've no doubt played it hundreds, if not thousands of times. This remains hands down my favorite Nick Drake song. Great tune, outstanding lyrics, and possibly the best folk guitar performance I've ever heard, certainly among the very best.
Even more amazingly, according to Joe Boyd, who produced Drake's first two albums, though other musicians might flub their parts from time to time, Drake almost never did. He practiced so rigorously, and knew his songs so well, that he played them flawlessly every take. He really was that good.
Drake, whose albums did not sell well during his life, had recurring bouts of depression, and a tendency as Boyd put it, of "sitting alone in his room smoking a joint."
He dropped off his last album, "Pink Moon," to Island Records, leaving the tapes with a receptionist on his way out. Only after he left did she inform Island's press officer, David Sandison, that he had left behind the master tapes for his new album.
Interestingly, Joe Boyd said that he was initially "horrified" to hear Drake's music stripped down to its barest essentials of vocal and guitar, saying "I thought, 'This is the end of Nick’s chances of being recognized.' He’s done this very stark, very simple record at a time when it was the opposite of what everybody was doing."
I found this quite interesting, as Drake's contemporary, Cat Stevens, who traveled in the same musical circles and had chosen his producer based upon a recommendation by Joe Boyd, had done precisely the same thing with his 1970 albums "Mona Bone Jakon" and "Tea for the Tillerman," two years prior to the release of "Pink Moon," to great reviews and notable commercial success.
Boyd later admitted that the music of "Pink Moon" had grown on him, saying "I didn’t really like listening to it for a long time, and now, of course, I’m like everybody else – I think it’s brilliant and I love listening to it."
As do I.
Robert Smith of The Cure is only one among a growing number of successful musicians that count Nick Drake among their primary influences, and frankly, when I learned that he did, it made me respect him even more as a musician and songwriter.
As I respected and liked No-Man more, Steven Wilson's art rock duo with Tim Bowness, when I learned that early on they covered Drake's song "Road".
The first song by The Cure that I really fell in love with was "Just Like Heaven," from their 1987 album "Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me," the song I opened this post with, because Marek used to sing it to me when we first started dating. Excellent dating album, by the way. ;-)
Another of my favorite songs by The Cure, not to mention the song that Marek and I consider to be "our song," is "Lovesong", from their 1989 album "Disintegration," arguably the best album in their catalogue.
Certainly the guys from South Park thought so, as they somehow managed to conjure the real Robert Smith to combat an evil Mecha Barbra Streisand robot, as can be seen in this clip.
Even funnier than the episode itself, Smith said that he was only given the lines he was supposed to say, and not an entire script, and so he had no idea of the actual plot of the episode, which came as a bit of a shock to him when it aired.
But at the end, when Kyle calls after him, "Disintegration is the best album ever," he said that was his happiest moment. ;-)
My other favorite song from the album, which may be my favorite song by The Cure, is "Untitled," which closes out the album. It has absolutely beautiful lyrics, and may well be their saddest song, but it's gorgeous and I love it:
___Never quite said what I wanted to say to you
never quite managed the words to explain to you
never quite knew how to make them believable
and now the time has gone
another time undone
Hopelessly fighting the devil Futility
feeling the monster climb deeper inside of me
feeling him gnawing my heart away hungrily
I'll never lose this pain
never dream of you again___
So what has any of this got to do with natural medicine? Only everything. Music has long been known as curative, and speaking personally, if I find myself in a real funk, there are certain albums I can grab or songs I can listen to and immediately feel better, no matter what else is going on in my life.
"Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me" is one of those albums, as are "Tchokola" or "Individual Choice" by Jean-Luc Ponty, as are any number of other albums by a great number of artists I could name, but won't, because this post is already ridiculously longwinded.
Suffice it to say that, as most of us already know, music can not only fit our moods, but alter them, and music can easily be used to our advantage when we are feeling low for any reason.
After losing three people close to me in rapid succession, it was music that was my most healing balm, and I might literally not be here had it not been for my ability to use it to continue putting one foot in front of the other. Music and journaling were my twin saving graces.
Wishing everyone wonderful and meaningful music to inform and enrich the soundtrack of our lives.
I am dedicating this post to #tarc, and in the hopes of furthering this initiative, half the liquid proceeds earned from my post will be awarded their account.
The songs and video clips were sourced from YouTube and all rights remain the property of the artists and producers who created them. I am offering them here solely to introduce people to my favorite artists and music.
And, of course, one of the funniest episodes of South Park.
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