What About the Lyrics?

I belong to a Facebook group for fans of Billy Franks and the Faith Brothers. Recently, on the occasion of the fourth anniversary of Billy's death, someone posed the question as to which of Billy's fine lyrics might be our personal favourite. It's a tough question and I might answer in various ways depending on my mood, although I regularly come back to:

The true are free, the corrupt are lonely

That's my belief

(Whistling in the Dark)

Billy never quite takes you in the direction you expect. Seeing lonely as the opposite of free and corrupt as the flip-side of true is a fine piece of poetry. In Billy's hands 'Dressed to kill one cool spring morning' is not about a relationship but an anti-war song.

But to broaden this out a bit, I remind myself that I never engage with rock/pop initially via the lyrics. It always starts with feel. Bob Dylan may have won the Nobel Prize for literature but very few of his songs engaged me by feel alone. In the early weeks of lock-down I made a concerted effort to get to grips with Dylan. I found it possible to make a playlist of a dozen songs I enjoyed but most of his albums didn't invite me in far enough to want to investigate the lyrics.

What am I looking for when I get beyond 'feel'. If it feels good I listen to the instrumentation. Who is doing what? I am a keyboard player so I am usually attracted to those parts early. The lyrics come third, often because they are not clear on first listen and, these days of music-streaming, have to be investigated online rather than on-sleeve. For me a great lyricist is one who leaves me with some work to do. Songs that tell stories (particularly those from the English folk tradition) are great to hear once but I never usually want to hear them again. I know the story. Why re-read? Unless the tune is a banger.

It's why, controversially, Easter Parade, so many Billy fans' favourite, is not mine. I get it. The lyrics are good but the tune is pretty simple. I don't need to hear it very often. I often wondered if he had heard Eric Bogle's Gallipoli song 'The Band Sang Waltzing Matilda':

And as our ship pulled into Circular Quay,
I looked at the place where me legs used to be
And thank Christ there was nobody waiting for me
To grieve, to mourn, and to pity.

Billy said:

I came home maimed

So was kept away

From the Easter Parade

Difford and Tilbrook were a fine song-writing partnership in Squeeze but it's my assumption I have heard Up the Junction enough times now, whereas Hourglass still delivers plenty to ponder:

Take it to the bridge throw it over board
See if it can swim back up to the shore
No-one's in the house all the lights are on
And the blinds are down

I'm sorry, what?

I have spent 35 years as a priest and mine songwriters for seams of sermon illustration. As I do so I have to take it on the chin from time to time.

10CC

Two thousand years and he ain't shown yet

We kept the seat warm and the table set

(The Second Sitting for the Last Supper)

Elton John (probably Bernie Taupin)

If there's a God in heaven what's he waiting for

If he don't hear the children then he must see the war

But it seems to me that he leads his lambs

To the slaughter-house not the promised land

(If there's a God in heaven (What's he waiting for))

And even the beloved Billy:

In an old place for the first time,

I heard the fed talk about hunger,

Telling tales of loaves and fishes,

I heard the wealthy read the Book of Common Prayer
(You Can't Go Home Again)

Ouch. A great Christian leader of the 1980s, Mark Ashton, complained that since the 1960s there had been no great protest song writers. I responded that there were but they didn't get so much publicity those days, especially as the establishment was what was being protested. But what did he think punk was? And when Tom Robinson wrote Power in the Darkness he wasn't pulling legs he was calling to arms. 'Stand up and fight for your rights.'

My favourite current lyricist is James Mercer of the Shins. What are we to make of:

Since then it's been a book you read in reverse so you understand less as the pages turn or a movie so crass and awkwardly cast that even I could be the star
(Pink Bullets)

The lyric sheets tend not to have any pointing. I listen to that again and again, it's one of my desert island eight, and it still delivers. The joy of pondering what on earth it means. Iron and Wine offer a similar experience.

The ability to put things metaphorically, to require of the listener some working engagement whilst being able to enjoy little punchlines along the way, is the skill of the songsmith wordsmith. Convoluting the truth enables it to have slow-fuse impact. Leave the shallow and the blunt for the pop-charts to handle without care. I like my lyrics vague.

The prophet understood a world where trees clapped their hands and mountains did the joyful thing (Isaiah 55:12). But the psalmist accepted that there were times when you just wanted to take the Babylonian babies and beat their heads against rocks (Psalm 137:8,9). Violent not vague.

John Peel's favourite lyric of all time was The Who's 'I was born with a plastic spoon in my mouth' (Substitute). And that's funny. Pete Townswend hoped he'd die before he got old and he was 75 in May. Good thing he's chewed the words many times. They're kinda hard to swallow now. Meanwhile Billy dances with Peter Pan's shadow. I like that.