The power of songs

 

A member of a telecoms maintenance team sits precariously atop a roadside post in a flat, empty landscape, for what feels like eternity. The test apparatus beeps rhythmically, sounding like telegraphs of old, and the engineer hears the voice of a desperately missed loved one in the wind whistling through the cables. The wistful longing and loneliness are conveyed in a haunting song. While written in the key of F Major, it never reaches a chord of the home key, weaving around but never arriving, expertly echoing the lyrics. The song ends with the protagonist still hanging on.

The expert pen belongs, of course, to Jimmy Webb, in his song Wichita Lineman (1968), written for Glen Campbell and sung by many others, the composer included. I’ve never been to Wichita, but I immediately imagine the wide open plains of the state of Kansas. His songs are full of longing, “hiraeth” even, uncovering deeper meanings in the mundane. By the time I get to Phoenix (who else could get away with rhyming “working” with Albuquerque?) and MacArthur Park are just two other examples of his craft, the latter not quite as arcane as it first sounds. I once read a book wholly devoted to its composition, and learned that, once you get it, it is simply about a lost love. Webb’s background crossed genres, and his songs as harmonically complex as any of them. In interviews he is as likely to discuss the influences of Wagner or Vaughan Williams as other “country music” luminaries.

The broad spaces of prairies and deserts is something Aaron Copland (1900-1990) also tries to convey, but while feted as the creator of the “American Sound”, I find his music too simple or trite in comparison with the above country/pop examples. His Variations on a Shaker Melody (1967), for example, has all the beautiful simplicity of Shaker furniture, but just doesn't challenge the ear. For a “classical” composer with more edge in the same landscape, his near contemporary (1908-1992) Olivier Messiaen’s monumental Des canyons aux étoiles ("from the canyons to the stars", 1974) has so much more incomparable richness of texture and colour. He was known to experience synaesthesia.

Many places in the USA are celebrated in musical soundscapes that I hardly need to mention. Roads too, particularly Route 66. This side of the Atlantic has its celebrated routes too. The A470  is Cymru’s equivalent, and has inspired its fair share of poems and songs in its mere 186 miles (compared with the 2,400 of the former) from north to south Cymru. In England, I have yet to find a song about the M25, but old, often ribald songs about Margate or Blackpool aside, there are plenty about London.

In their compilation CD London Conversations (2003), band St Etienne celebrated London in psychogeographic terms as having many alternative layers of meaning, metaphorically as Finisterre [edge of the land = a place on the edge], and as a cosmopolitan nexus. But the London classic for me is in Waterloo Sunset (The Kinks, 1967), its meaningful heritage outlined in the links below. Visiting over many years, crossing the bridges, en route for a late train home, always brought the song to mind. It's not just about London; it exemplifies how a song evokes a place and a place evokes a song.

A similar song, and of the same vintage, this is one from Lerpwl (Liverpool), once the “de facto'' capital of north Cymru, just as Llundain (London) had been the “de facto” capital of the south. I mention that because the concept of "Scouse" is much wider than many imagine. Ferry across the Mersey (Gerry Marsden, 1964) is still a huge cultural icon. A tourist “experience” takes place on the actual ferry itself, on its usual commuter crossings, and makes the whole thing more real by sharing the crossing with workers, their push bikes, briefcases and on-line meetings. It's impossible not to be moved by hearing the song played repeatedly on the Tannoy. The song may be 60 years old, but the ferry has been there for over 800 years. There is something timeless about both Thames and Mersey, perhaps reflected in the lyrics.

Curiously I have chosen these songs from the 1960s. I may be making up for a lost era, a decade in which most of my listening had been confined to “light classical”, until the discovery of a mono earpiece attached to a cheap bedside “trannie”. After all those years, the songs still seem transformational and transcendental. Music represents something bigger than itself if we care to listen.

LINKS

Wichita Lineman: Talking with Tunesmith Jimmy Webb (youtube.com)

https://sandraheyersongs.com/wichita-lineman-the-story-behind-the-song/

Wichita Lineman - Wikipedia

Copland and the American Sound: Keeping Score | PBS

List of compositions by Olivier Messiaen - Wikipedia

Bilingual poetry book about A470 sets Welsh hearts racing | Wales | The Guardian

A47dim - Fflur Dafydd (geiriau / lyrics) (youtube.com)

London Conversations: The Best of Saint Etienne - Wikipedia

Waterloo Sunset - Wikipedia

Mersey Ferry - Wikipedia

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2008/jun/06/filmandmusic1.filmandmusic77

https://www.tbsnews.net/splash/a