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Stories in songs

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Winter is drawing in. Today it rained and rained. COVID is keeping us under our roofs. It’s time to hunker down around our hearths, be they fireplaces or flatscreens, kitchen stoves, turntables or tablets.

Hearths are places for stories, the oral tradition, passed on tales. And nothing conveys a story more than a bed of music – prompting the next verse, stirring and prompting reaction, locking down inevitable conclusions with half-expected rhyme.

I got to thinking – there must be a lot of story songs that have a special place in Afterworders’ hearts – be they folk ballads, rap battles, ponderous prog rock pottering or snappy punk flick of the wrist. Can I unlock a flow of recollection and anecdotage?

Ground rules
What I want are posts with connections, a little scattering of descriptive context. This ain’t the place for scattershot spraying of countless URls. Less is more. We’re tellin’ stories, here, not selling encyclopaedias. Please one clip max per post, and wait your turn.

Come at me with your best!

7

Comments

  1. The first place I turned for research threw top song stories in my directions – many modern classics. And I chose Famous Blue Raincoat.

    Doubtless familiar to so many of you cartographers of the musical hinterland, it was new to me. I like sincere L. Cohen, but he has got a big back catalogue (something for Kim Kardashian to get mighty jealous of).

    So I dived in, to this clip you see below. Late period Lenny with quality back up crew and smooth as silk BVs. What was it like? Overwhelming! Just so much to take in. It took me the 6 Tig listens to understand the basic song, the characters. Three verses, each painting such pictures, sparsely, but so rich, carefully selected words echoing off into the subconscious in search of connection, bit by bit building to a structure that makes sense, that solidly underpins a narrative, till the last conundrums unveil themselves with their understated fragile sharp emotional truths, almost hidden in the melody.

    All that detective work, and I’m now left with Len, plucking away on his 6 string, and his sing songy, “Jane came by with a lock of your hair”. The easy listening husks of the song. But still, an ear opens and he thrusts in a “She sends her regards”.

    I think I love this song now. What story songs do you love?

    • “I hope you’re keeping some kind of record”

      The economy of this is prime Len. So much held back, unexplained, because – somehow – he doesn’t think we need it explained. It’s like he’s a real writer instead of a song and dance man or summink…

      • That, paired with the ‘Did you ever get clear?’ is the soft pummelling he gives his adversary – inscrutable koans – time bombs that explode, long after they’ve nestled velvetly in your gut.

        • One time Lennie backing singer, Jennifer Warnes, made it the title track of her “Jenny sings Lenny” tribute. Fabulous album it is, too – in the unlikely event you’ve not heard it.

          • I listened to it last night, while preparing the FBR post above, along with other LC renditions and versions by Glen Hansard and Damien Rice. Nothing cameclose to the lush version I posted, but the Ride version is worth listening to, because he explains why the song means so much to him – giving him a new way of looking at love.

            He picks out the key line in the song.

          • Eerily this was the last song I’ve listened to before alighting on this thread. I love the Jennifer version and have just added it to my Women Sing Out Spotify playlist. The lines
            “And you treated my woman to a flake of your life
            And when she came back she was nobody’s wife”
            are pretty chilling. And of course the line about “going clear” hints at Scientology practices as that is a phrase of theirs.

            • I do like those sort of coincidences, they seems ghostly trails through life – accidental chains of significance.

              I’ll listen to the Jennifer Warnes version again. I’ve always enjoyed her accompaniment to Leonard, particularly on I’m Your Man. That rich sound adds cream to his dark coffee.

              Lyrics are so important to his songs, so choice of words can tilt or change the meaning of the while piece. I thought she sang “some woman” – putting her as an observer, not a protagonist. Perspective is everything. It’s interesting you find that quote chilling. For me, the deadliest line is
              “Yes, and thanks, for the trouble you took from her eyes
              I thought it was there for good so I never tried”

              “Gong clear” – the idea that the unnamed person being addressed managed to absolve himself of all bad memories, to end up living for nothing. More reference, more illusive clues for the listeners to build up their own image of what had happened – as Moose said, above. It’s a masterpiece.

              One more thing about her version. How she ends it.
              Sincerely, a friend. Leonard takes that for the live version in the clip I posted. A tip of the hat? Who knows?

              • Yes you’re right about “some woman”. I wonder if Leonard sings “a friend” as it is more clearly understood than “LCohen” which when sung may sound like a imaginary word, and perhaps he wanted to distance himself a bit later on.

  2. The Jam – Down In The Tube Station At Midnight.
    One of Weller’s finest, put The Jam back in the Top 20, and then 4 more years of success.
    A story/social commentary of 1978. Just one question: what does a right wing meeting smell of. Does it have a distinct odour?

    • Thanks, Rigid. I must confess I have never given the Jam the time of day before – apart from Eton Rifles, I just thought of them as 3 minute fast-paced mosh-inducing Mods.

      But I listened to that with the lyrics (sorry, Jarvis!). For the first time, it was more than the title, whoo-ooh-ooh-ooh and then a lot of unintelligible words. I think I could smell the rank smell of underground corridors and see the damp tiles.

    • A pearl of a song. The cocksure protagonist reduced to a sobbing wreck by the end of the song.
      “Pure herringbone. This is a suit you will never own.”

      Here’s a heartwarming bit of surrealist storytelling.

      • This is the sort of song that, when I used to get stoned, would completely absorb me. The same melody and chorus, repeated over and over again, while a gentle voice narrates a bizarre narrative would make for a perfect soundtrack to a hash trip.

        ‘Who is this Marvin Pontiac?’ I googled. Turns out it’s none other then John Lurie, leader of the Lounge Lizards, one of my current favourite bands, and sharer of screen space with Tom Waits in Down By Law, a great Jim Jarmusch film.

        Thanks, Mike!

        • The concept behind the album is that it’s supposedly recordings by a reclusive mental patient, who died after being run over by a bus. In reality it was Lurie finding an excuse to release a vocal album, when he didn’t really think his voice was good enough.
          An all-star cast in the studio for it and impeccably played and recorded.
          I first heard this song when it was played by a guest (can’t remember who) on Charlie Gillett’s BBC Radio London show around 18 years ago. He had a feature in his show called Radio Ping-Pong, where he and his guest would play each other tracks and try to link each one to the previous one.
          Another story song that I first heard on Charlie Gillett’s show was this one. A great twist to this tale.

  5. Of course, there is Lilly, Rosemary, and the Jack of Hearts, a Western heist movie as imagined by Dylan. Or Isaac Hayes’s By the Time I get to Phoenix – an 18 mins epic exposition on amour fou, And A Very Cellular song by ISB holds up a fractured prism to the whole of existence through the eyes of an amoeba. But I like the story in Let Me watch. in which MF Doom in his Victor Vaughn persona get taken down a peg by Apani B.

    • Yay! It really ought to be corny, but Ike’s intro always immerses me in BTTIGTP.
      Makes me think he missed a trick by not doing a late career box set of covers with explanatory Ike-ins
      “They were just standin’ there in that window
      Seven times they thought about breakin’ that glass
      And seven times they changed their minds
      But a shop window mannequin can only take so much…”

  7. I want to say “Matty Groves” or “Tam Lin” from “Liege and Lief”. Sandy singing “the better a kiss from dead Matty’s lips then you in your finery” buckles my swash. But in these troubled times we need some light relief so I give you the magnificent “Dixie Chicken”. I defy you not to smile when “all the guys at the bar began to sing along”.

  9. Fans of Fairport’s ‘Matty Groves’ will be familair with the story told here by Planxty, with a little more embelishment and the charaters names changed – illicit inter-class shenanigans with tragic retribution.

    *Edit – I see Twang beat me to it with the mention of Matty Groves above.

    • From what I could tell, it doesn’t start well, either. Anything else after that seems like just grisly embellishment. Great guitar/fiddle interplay, by the way. As is to be expected from those two.

    • Larry Jon Wilson had such a deep, mellifluous voice. A real pleasure to listen to. Sapelo was the song that I know – on a compilation of 40 songs for my 40th birthday 12 years ago from a good university friend. It’s slowly seeped into my consciousness over the years. It starts off as something of a laid back Georgian equivalent to Coney Island, though without the potted herrings…

    • Very true, RD. The lines “Do you find it very lonely, or have you found someone to laugh with?
      Oh, and by the way, are you laughing now?
      ‘Cause I’m not,” have always struck me a bit sinister when he sings them. Wonderful song though and Rumer does a fabulous version of it.

    • How is Worcestershire? A question that often comes to my mind, as I remember the county of my birth. Thanks for introducing me to another mmusician from the saucy place, alongside Led Zep and Traffic.

    • He looks like Eminem – which leads to the story in his song Stan, which is pretty grim.

      As with the Jam song up there, I let Stan pass me by while it was in the charts. It was basically Dido singing a nice chorus and Eminem talking really fast.

    • The ground rules were set with KFD (and Chiz’s recent commrnts) in mind, I have to admit. But I can see they’ve already been broken. Context, guys! Tell us something about the clip.

      But I don’t want to be ungrateful. I will listen carefully to everything posted. Thanks for sharing!

    • Bless you, Cheshire! You understand me so very well! I appreciate that a lor.

      It’s a great question you’ve asked, Sal.

      But which song shall I choose??

      Not so easy! I think I’ll have to sleep on it,

  19. This was written by Boo Hewerdine in a flat above a Cambridge butcher’s shop when his baby daughter (she’s now 32) would not sleep and the top deck of the number 8 bus could see into the flat. Pals as we are, I can never quite forget he’s a genius and I am just dull.

    There’s a story about the song, too, involving the writer singing it to the performer down a transatlantic telephone line, dressed only in his undercrackers, as the postman came knocking.

    A few years ago, there was a half-hour BBC Radio 4 documentary about it.

    • Thanks, FS. It’s a song I know well, but I didn’t know the backstor(y/ies) behind it.

      There’s a lot of self-deprecation going on in this thread. Don’t put yourself down. You’re not dull. You have lot of useful knowledge and you explain it well to laypeople. I’ve never found that song anything but flat and pedestrian, the melody is enervating and the words say nothing to me. However, your concise opening sentence eloquently gave it some substance. You have a clarity and honesty in writing that is appealing.

      I used to live in a flat in Crouch End, where buses did go past our frontroom window and we could look into the top deck (and vice-versa). It was a moving tableau to entertain us over our breakfast table. Fortunately, young children were years into the future.

      At that time I loved (and played endlessly,) First of A Million Kisses, and have eagerly listened to Eddi Reader’s releases since then, hoping for a song that is a suitable carriage for the wild energy and joy she brought to that Fairground Attraction album. Nothing ever came close.

      But I’m glad this hits home for you.

      • I don’t think anyone has ever captured the electricity of Eddi Reader singing live. Her Robert Burns album probably comes closest, probably because it is the least ‘produced’ (even with the massive orchestra).

          • I went in chase of Eddi singing live, and ignoring the rather staid TED performances, found the 2019 Shrewsbury Folk Festival set – 1.5 hours of her, Boo and others. The first song song me over, and three second, may not have pangolin or bats, but is called Pangur Bán, strangely enough.

  21. The two that immediately come to mind are Dylan’ sbest song, Lily, Rosemary etc and the wonder of Matty G. But both done. So a shout for Robert Earl Keen, who does a lot of this. His version of this is good, but Dave Alvin does it better. Cheerful ditty called Sonora Death Row:

  22. “Go and tell Lord Grenville that the tide is on the turn …”
    With a quote from Tennyson, the tale starts, and you’re hooked. The music complements the mood.
    “Go and tell Lord Grenville that our dreams have run aground …”
    Gorgeous chord changes, like the swelling of waves.
    “And comes a day I’ll hear them saying, they’re throwing it all away.”
    Al Stewart’s finest historical narrative song.
    “In 1591, [Grenville] sailed for the Azores in pursuit of Spanish treasure but found himself outnumbered when his ship the Revenge became separated from the rest of the fleet. After fighting fifteen Spanish ships all evening and night, the Revenge was surrendered by his crew against his wishes. Mortally wounded, Grenville was taken prisoner and died aboard one of the enemy ships aged only 49.”

    Stewart has the generosity and craft to give us a superb middle eight – but here it nearly closes out the song. Brilliance.

      • Lord Grenville tells just enough of the story – from an unidentified POV – to hold the listener without the kind of exposition that would break the spell (eg “In the year of 1591 it was, that the Revenge she did set sail, bound for Spanish treasure, and sadly doomed to fail.”) Stewart, as well as being a fine first-person songwriter in the “confessional” mode, could also express himself through songs that were absolutely not about him.

        • Al Stewart is one of those artists of whom I am aware, without knowing any more than the obvious singles. I suspect there are treasures there awaiting me, but where to start? ( Strangely, I am one of those rare people who can get hooked on an artist’s difficult albums. )

          • Year Of The Cat is one of the best albums of all time ever. Perfect, flawless, not a duff track. I got into exploring his other albums last year, but nothing came close to that perfection, imho.

            • Al Stewart has passed through a few phases, from his acoustic folk troubadour years through an unprecedented run of success with albums produced by Alan Parsons, then experimenting with a rockier approach before going back to acoustic-based music drawing from various styles, including jazz, so recommending a typical and representative album is impossible, but from his first period I’d go for Orange, from the superstar years Year Of The Cat, and then perhaps give Last Days Of The Century a whirl. This was widely dismissed on release, owing nothing to his folk roots and having that eighties production sound, but it has more hooks than a fisherman’s hat – a genuine up-beat pop album from the man better known for his bedsitter intrigues. I love it, but it’s perhaps not for those who expect an introspective singer-songwriter album.

              • Whatever you do, don’t miss out on ‘Past, Present And Future’, its his masterclass historical yarns album, even if Grenville’s appearance on ‘The Year Of The Cat’ maybe edges it for songwriterly craft.

                @thecheshirecat – There’s a large body of work for you to explore – almost all of which will repay investigation. He’s one of my most favourite artists.

                • For what it’s worth, I rate the albums from the Golden Age of Al Stewart as follows:

                  1967 Bedsitter Images 3 stars
                  1969 Love Chronicles 3½ stars
                  1970 Zero She Flies 4 stars
                  1972 Orange 5 stars
                  1973 Past, Present and Future 5 stars
                  1975 Modern Times 5 stars
                  1976 Year of the Cat 5 stars
                  1978 Time Passages 3 stars

                  Al is one of the greatest lyricists who ever lived, and his run of releases from 1972 to 1976 is one of sustained creative brilliance.

            • For all fans of “Year of the Cat”, I can recommend the BBC Scotland “Classic Scottish Albums” episode about that record. Al gives an interesting interview about the making of the album. He wrote 3 entirely different sets of lyrics for the music of the title track of “Year of the Cat”, before selecting the best one!

              https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06lhyj9

              • Agreed. Nearly all of the Classic Scottish Albums episodes are fantastic. Even the Glasvegas one (an album I don’t like) was interesting. The Emily Sandé one, not so much…

  23. Harry Chapin was on of the finest storytellers in song of the 1970’s. He was a genuinely nice guy who worked tirelessly in support of UNICEF donating a proportion of his concerts’ incomes to to the charity. Sadly missed.

    • Add as many as you like (within the guidelines, of course). I’d never heard of Helen Reddy until Mark Kermode gave her a biopic a complete rant earlier this month.

  25. This is the second part of a trilogy of songs written by Paul Simmonds that are loosely autobiographical and tells of a chaotic trip to the South of France when he was much younger. Released at a time when I was buying a lot of music on the strength of reviews in Q, it also reminds me of a work trip to Madrid where we drove down through France, stopping at random places along the way for the night, chancing on a small town’s annual fiesta, before we decided we had enough time to take the scenic route along the coast. The return journey was made solo on the 24 hour ferry from Santander to Plymouth. I was probably about 24 at the time and the idea that you would drive across Europe with no mobile phone and just credit cards, paper maps and travellers cheques seems mad now but we did it all the time, always arriving in one piece and on time.
    A Place In The Sun: TMTCH

    • There’s a real romance in young Brits heading south across the continent. From Byron to Waugh to Orwell to Nick Drake to the Stones, there’s a yearning for turning to warmer climes. Thanks for adding your story and that of TMTCH!

  26. After much deliberation, amidst much competition, it’s still the latter day ballad. I can see myself in the moshpit in this footage and recall it clearly.

    Love of the common people, initially unrequited (8 long years – that’s a balladlength of courting), humour (“Oh Billy, this is sudden” 8 years, lass, wake up!) and the ultimate happy ending. What more do you want? What has always marked this out for me is that Hugh Lupton’s lyrics barely mention appearances, yet my mind has always conjured images of Peggy Bateman and Billy Smith, even the chippie; I know exactly what they look like. And I can tell you, Peggy is indeed a stunner. Oh, and she has a pedigree folk surname to please the traditionalists.

    • Like radio, the pictures are better.

      When I started playing this, my daughter complained about the tuning up, saying proper musicians wouldn’t need to. Craving my attention, I had to put off a focused listen till just now, while I cook tonight’s Bolognese sauce and she plays with her sister upstairs.

      I was easily drawn into Chris Wood’s singing and playing. I knew what to expect from The Cottager’s Reply, which I first heard about 8 years ago and haven’t listened to since, though I meant to, impressed by the restrained force in delivery and referred knowledge in the lyrics.

      I followed the tale, was shocked by the quayside scene, leveled by the expression of human folly. Then the final scene made me realize I’d heard it before, or knew the story from some other source.

      Maybe it’s good to leave 8 years between listens, for the impact of the song to feel fresh and unheard all over again. Such earnestness and clear truths are best tasted in isolation and with due attention, like a good malt.

      Though I’ll be checking out A Lark Descending a bit sooner. It sounds like it ticks a lot of English cultural boxes that resonate strongly with me.

  27. Tom Waits is my favourite narrator in music. My favourite album of all time is Swordfishtrombones, in which every song tells a different story in a different way. Frank’s Wild Years doesn’t even pretend to be a song. It has no melody as such but its narration is very musical. The organ sets a somber backdrop. Every vocal gesture is essential to the piece, every cough, every pause. Every detail is carefully drawn out. In less than two minutes it achieves far more than the subsequent album named after the track.

  29. A good old, sad old Trad Arr. tragic death song, rocked up to the max, is what I have to offer.
    Barry Melton, who was “The Fish” in Country Joe And The Fish a lot of years ago, plays and sings a version of “The Butcher’s Boy”, an old American folk ballad believed to be an amalgam of several very old British folk ballads. A right old weepie.

    Whoever filmed it seems not to have realised that a second guitarist (Henry Kaiser) was present until about half way through the song. The video also gets very badly out of sync with the audio as it goes on, but the performance is a belter, in my opinion. Great solos by Melton and Kaiser, two of my favourite cult guitarists, and The Fish bellows it out with mucho gusto.
    I saw Barry Melton play a gig at Sutton Football Club when he and David & Linda LaFlamme (of It’s A Beautiful Day) were touring over here with a UK pickup band quite a few years ago. This was one of the songs in his set then and a highlight.

      • Barry Melton’s an interesting guy. He and “Country” Joe McDonald were a lefty radical folk duo prior to going electric (and very psychedelic) with Country Joe & The Fish. Melton proved to be an excellent electric guitarist, as evidenced on Porpoise Mouth from Electric Music For The Mind And Body. When that all came to an end, Melton went back to law school and, putting his money where his revolutionary mouth had been, became a public defender in the California criminal court system.

    • I do like a good long psychedelic jam, and this reminds me to go back to Electric Music…which I haven’t listened to in years. I couldn’t quite catch the lyrics, so I googled them:
      She went upstairs to make her bed
      And not one word to her mother said
      Her mother she went upstairs too
      Saying, “Daughter, oh daughter, what troubles you?”

      “Oh mother, oh mother, I cannot tell
      That butcher’s boy that I love so well
      He courted me my life away
      And now at home he will not stay”

      “There is a place in this here town
      Where that butcher’s boy goes and sits down
      He takes that strange girl on his knee
      And he tells to her what he won’t tell me”

      Her father he came home from work
      Saying, “Where is my daughter, she seems so hurt”
      He went upstairs to give her hope
      And found her hanging from a rope

      He took his knife and cut her down
      And in her bosom these words were found
      “Go dig my grave both wide and deep
      Place a marble slab at my head and feet
      And over my coffin, place a snow white dove
      To warn the world that I died of love

  30. This wonderful song tells the story of a guy whose future wife has run off with a handsome Spaniard and how he intends to track him down and extract his revenge. It brings back fond memories for me of my Aunt Bet who used to belt it out at family gatherings. Billy Merson – The Spaniard Who Blighted My Life.

    • Utterly splendid! Compact, solid and quick – like his blow to the bounder’s jaw. The sort of song that needs to be belted out. In our family circles, it was Rotten Rhymes for Heartless Homes, and My Baby’s Gone Down The Plughole, but I’m sure the stunning effect was the same.

  33. Jets To Brazil’s Conrad is a modern, and hopefully fictional, tragic story that is influenced by the dirty realism of Raymond Carver or Richard Ford (songwriter and frontman Blake Schwarzenbach has a degree in English Literature and creative writing, and is now a university lecturer). It’s a sad vignette of a woman who has suffered some kind of disfiguring trauma. As the song opens, she has reached the end, and is checking into a motel to kill herself. It’s not a barrel of laughs by any means, but it’s told with such compassion, tenderness and empathy. The verse “warming her wrists in promising water / somebody’s love, another one’s daughter / readies herself, apologising to the motel maids” gets me every time.

    (lyrics are in the video description)

    • Thanks, Kid.. I hear the compassion, tenderness and empathy in the song. Every stage of life, every event in human existence benefits from care and attention, even those born of desperation and marking termination, and this song accompanies someone on a painful last journey without judgement.

  34. Oh look, all sorts of people are breaking the rules now.

    I am just learning this song now, and when you learn a song, you appreciate it all the more. For me, structurally, it could be a folk song – episodic through the ages of man, seen through the eye of a craftsman. Brilliant.

    • I will* be sending stiff missives by DM to all offenders. Where is the discipline? Nowhere!

      People can make amends by adding notes to their posts. Mr Bellows, that mystery fellow’s led the way with a postscript to his slipped up post.

      To be honest, I’m just happy to have lots of posts, with new songs to explore. One can keep pushing for comments with clippage, but this an open venue – as much Early Doors as Algonquin Round Table.

      *possibly

  37. Gretchen Peters is a great story teller in the Springsteen mould – creating dramatic monologues in the voices of ordinary people doing their best to get through their lives; making mistakes along the way but surviving. Five minutes is a masterpiece, I think, in the economy with which it tells a whole life story in exactly the time conveyed by the title. It’s the time that our narrator, a middle aged single mother, takes a cigarette break from her waitressing job and reflects on history repeating itself as her daughter does the same things that she did as a teenager. It’s a perfect short story.

  39. SNM* Springsteen’s Nebraska album yet, which is as close to a collection of bare-bones short stories you’re going to find on an album.

    “I saw her standing on her front lawn just twirling her baton
    Me and her went for a ride, sir, and ten innocent people died
    From the town of Lincoln, Nebraska, with a sawed-off .410 on my lap
    Through to the badlands of Wyoming I killed everything in my path
    I can’t say that I’m sorry for the things that we done
    At least for a little while, sir, me and her we had us some fun
    The jury brought in a guilty verdict and the judge he sentenced me to death
    Midnight in a prison storeroom with leather straps across my chest
    Sheriff, when the man pulls that switch, sir, and snaps my poor head back
    You make sure my pretty baby is sittin right there on my lap
    They declared me unfit to live, said into that great void my soul’d be hurled
    They wanted to know why I did what I did
    Well, sir, I guess there’s just a meanness in this world”

    (*SNM – Surprised No-one’s Mentioned – proposed new Afterword TLA)

    Also SNM Western Stars, come to that.

  44. I saw this film about some people who lived in a dome…

    Part Kubla Khan, part the third act of The Time Machine, Dome didn’t initially make it onto The Church’s best album, probably because Priest=Aura already had its fair share of narcotic-induced hallucinations. Steve Kilbey immediately tells us that he fell asleep and ‘must have dreamt up the end’ of this tale of immortal, youthful dome-dwellers who perish when barbarians sack their home. Their wealth could not save them, but when a dreadful curse subsequently strikes the Barbarians, they discover their strength cannot save them either.

    Fire and flood consume both sides. “Destined to make the same old mistake,” Kilbey concludes, and then, as the guitars’ languid jangle consumes him, it all starts again: I saw this film about some people who lived in a dome…

  45. Has anyone mentioned Sparks yet? Rennie and Brett? The husband and wife team who make up The Handsome Family. The music is morbid Country with Brett singing lead in a morose baritone. Rennie studied to write novels but lost her way in the dusty corners and under the unturned stones in people’s lives. Most writers polish their phrases until they gleam. Rennie turns hers until they are pitch black. All their albums are wonderful, full of macabre stories. If you get a chance, go watch them live. If ever a couple were made for each other….

    Gold:

    • Maybe there’s another Handsome Family song out there for me? I liked elements, but not the whole. I like a good baritone voice, though I thought I heard a waver or two away from the tune when he tried too hard. The reverb-heavy guitar sounded very spaghetti western, which was an interesting contrast to the pedal steel. In the lyrics, the long black hair flowing down her back like a river made the first and most lasting impression, though I also liked the contrast between dollar bills flying and gold falling.

      Thanks for posting, Tig.

  46. Great thread, Sal – already twice as many views as the ‘Pomp and Circumstance’ list. While there’s room for both, it’s good to see quality rather than quantity winning the day for once. Have a hamper.

    • Thanks, Chiz. I think this place is better when we are curators and creators than just consumers, and there have been many, many thoughtful contributions and intriguing musical stories to delve into and enjoy. We have such richness among us and it’s a true delight to play host to its expression.

      Inevitably it will take a long time to pay appropriate attention to all, but there are many darkened days ahead in which to do so.

  47. Soul music rarely tells stories as such because the focus is on the complexities of feelings in relationships. Isaac Hayes has already been mentioned but the most celebrated Northern Soul story song is Al Wilson’s The Snake. It is a fable, warning women, in particular, that all men are predatory bastards. That’s my interpretation anyway. The amazing thing about it is that it’s one of Donald Trump’s favourites. Has he actually listened to the lyrics? Mind you, he famously relates to baddies in the Marvel Universe, so maybe he has. The crucial thing about it, the thing that made it a Northern Soul classic, is the fact it is brilliant to dance to. Up North, we judge people by the cut of their spin. You are welcome to join in even if you are a psychopath.

    • Now that’s more like it, Tig! A great story, told with relish and horns. In fact it’s very horny – take me in, indeed.

      I can understand why Trump likes it. I bet he identifies strongly with the snake. ‘You knew what I was like when you voted for me/went into business with me/married me – don’t expect me to be any different’ is how I imagine he thinks.

      For me the greatest story song in soul music would have to be Papa Was A Rolling Stone. A true epic, majestic – with such a wonderful prologue.

  49. Two compelling, vaguely contemporaneous and strangely symbiotic opening lines. Won’t post the clips because it’s against the rules but both of these are short-stories-in-song worthy of an award. An Ivor Novello for either novella, I say.

    She unscrews the top from her new whiskey bottle
    Shuffles about in her candle lit hovel

    With the money from her accident
    She bought herself a mobile home
    So at least she could get some enjoyment
    Out of being alone

    • The second mention of Labeled With Love in this thread. I’d always put Squeeze in a box somewhere between Madness and Chas’n’Dave as comedy cockneys with songs for round the old Joanna with a pint and some scratchings. More fool me. The lyrics to that song are dense and descriptive. My favourite:
      “He ate himself older, drunk himself dizzy
      Proud of her features, she kept herself pretty”.

      Incidentally, the second half of the first verse has an example of subject I’m getting material together for a future thread – ambiguous lines:
      “She smells like the cat and the neighbours she sickens”

      Levi Stubbs Tears is one of Billy Bragg’s masterpieces. So good I quoted from it for an earlier thread title. I absolutely love it, though I enjoy overspending and misquoting lines from it:
      “Holland and Holland and Holland and Barrett too…”

      By the way, I think the guidelines would allow a bit of url posting leeway, when connection is being drawn between two songs, but fair play to you for following them to the letter. Commentary is the main focus of the guidelines, and you’ve done that admirably.

    • Reminiscent of the opening of Lydia by Karen Poston, another great story song, which I am not permitted to post.

      “Lydie lit a cigarette today
      Empty fumbling fingers in her way
      From a forty year old coffee cup she sipped a bit of gin
      Closed her eyes and let the memories in”

      Spoiler alert – there’s a double mining disaster and a bodycount of at least a dozen.

      • Sorry if I wasn’t clear. You can post as many as you like. As long as you give a bit of info on what you’re posting, and wait until at least other other person has posted before you go again.

          • I so glad you posted that, cheshire – along with the Chris Wood song it’s one of my favourites tracks posted on this long thread of songs. Masterful musical story telling with beautiful singing and well-judged accompanying instrumentation.

            Two out of three ain’t bad. I couldn’t stand the Family track. Godawful voice.

            • Ha! The wonder of diversity of taste. For my money, Roger Chapman has one of the most arresting, distinctive, remarkable voices in the trade, and technically he is brilliant too. Maybe you’ll prefer my version once I’ve learnt the song.

              • I was hoping you would come out in defence of the family man. Usually when I have a strong reaction to music that others really praise, it’s because I haven’t listened to it with the right ears, and a bit of stewarding helps me hear what I’ve been missing.

                I love new music, but only if it’s familiar. Does that make sense?

  51. I have loved Black Diamond Bay by Dylan for years (from Desire in the unlikely event that no one knows it).
    Apparently he has never played it live.

    I wonder how they can tell?
    (ooh, I’ll get back in the knife drawer)

  54. Jason Isbell has done a number of excellent story songs, generally in the country noir category where the magnificent “Decoration Day” is a classic tale from his family history of a pointless feud with another family which leaves everyone still alive wondering what it was all for.

    But I turn to “Yvette”, as noir as it gets. When I first listened to it I thought it was about teenage lost love… then I wondered what a Wetherby is and googled it … then I reread the lyrics… then my blood ran a few in degrees colder.

    https://youtu.be/cDO9FhLFcaE

  56. I don’t think we’ve had Powderfinger yet, have we? A marvellously evocative story of hard life and death on the American frontier. It’s one of the best examples of Neil Young’s trick of making something feel concrete and real out of very vague lyrics. I don’t know where this happens, I don’t know when it takes place, but it’s so immediate and vivid I feel I know the whole story. There are a host of Americana-y versions (Jeffrey Foucault, Cowboy Junkies et al), but for the real thing you need the Crazy Horse crunch

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8CPc4MAL1c

      • Ooh, I love Trans Am. The whole album is one of my favourites, but that is such a sleek truck of a song, massive, solid with harmonies, and so long. Really great.

    • I like little more than a good Crazy Horse ruck, loose and sloppy, with guitars firing at each other for hours, but there’s no better version of Powderfinger for me than the Cowboy Junkies version. It was the first I heard, before I knew it was by Neil, which may explain it, but the fragility and fear, yet resolute courage in Margo Timmin’s voice just makes the song for me. I can see the mist on the river, as she grips her gun, and waits with foreboding for the figures on the boat to coalesce into solid shapes as they approach. I can feel her icy isolation.

  57. This thread has brought to light so many fine songs. It is going to take several days to browse my way through them all

    My contribution is The Oil Rigs at Night by the Delines. Low-key, understated, unflamboyant yet full of feeling. An extraordinary song about ordinary people and the choices they make in life and the pain that can result.

    It’s country music as it used to be. The joys and sorrows of the sort of folks you and I might meet in Walmart, Willys or Waitrose.

    I saw The Delines last year at the Nalen Club and they were magnificent. This was their final encore and an audience request. Sublime!

    In the comments for this song on YT I wrote:

    “It cannot be easy to be an American band on tour these days when there is such a numpty in the White House. But Willy Vlautin and his wonderful band are ambassadors from another vision of America and I love them dearly. ”

    And The Delines have a back story and a half. Vocalist Amy Boone was involved in an horrific car accident and suffered such serious injuries that she was pretty much out of action for three years.

    https://www.13thfloor.co.nz/interview-the-delines-amy-boone-on-bouncing-back-from-tragedy/

    But the band waited for her to recover,

    And then just when they are up and running again and getting rave reviews, Covid 19 kicks in…

    • For many years, I imagined that the real-life sinking described in the Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald had taken place decades or even centuries before the song was written. But no. It turns out that Gordon Lightfoot recorded his song about the maritime tragedy on Lake Superior in December 1975, only about 5 weeks after the event itself.

  59. Christmas brings out a story in all of us, usually the horror of seldom seen relies. In the US Thanksgiving brings out similar tales. This guy tell ‘em good. James McMurtrey.

  61. Steely Dan are known to do a good sleazy story song.
    Loosely based on the rise and fall of the San Francisco acid-taking/manufacturing scene of the late ’60s and sound engineer/illicit chemist Owsley, here’s Kid Charlemagne.

    “Clear this mess up or we’ll all end up in jail
    The test tubes and the scales
    Get it all out of here.
    Is there gas in the car?
    Yes there’s gas in the car.
    I think the people down the hall know who you are.
    Careful what you carry ’cause the man is wise.
    You are still an outlaw in their eyes.
    Get along
    Get along Kid Charlemagne
    Get along Kid Charlemagne.”

    Augustus Owsley Stanley III, believing that the Northern Hemisphere would eventually become uninhabitable due to an ecological catastrophe, moved to Queensland, Australia in the ’80s, where he died in a car crash in 2011.

  62. I am fond of Skater Boi by Avril Lavigne but have been thinking about two similar yet very different story songs – Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree by Tony Orlando & Dawn and Down River by David Ackles. Both are about a convict having served 3 years, now released and talking to their previous sweetheart, wondering if they can start again where they left off. Tie a Yellow Ribbon is that jaunty sing-along that was No 1 forever when I was about 8 and has a joyful pay-off ending with hundreds of yellow ribbons tied round trees greeting the prisoner on his homecoming. So the romance is definitely on again. Down River is a masterpiece, a classy and subtler piece of songwriting, very emotionally charged, told only from the prisoner’s side of the conversation, meeting up with his love Rosie, leaving you to fill in the gaps of what she is saying. We learn she never wrote to him once, and has taken up with a schoolfriend. Song ends with his crushed hopes, him trying to sound nonchalant whilst being desperately heartbroken.

    Times change, times change I know
    But it sure moves slow
    Down river when you’re locked away

    I am sure everyone will know the Dawn one, but if you haven’t heard the David Ackles song, do give it a listen.

  63. A nice jaunty Tex-Mex polka, with added death and mayhem. A cautionary tale from Ry Cooder & pals.

    “She said baby, I’ll give you the clothes from my back,
    You can have everything that I’ve got in my shack.
    But if you ever try to leave, they’ll take you out in a sack
    ‘Cause me and my razor will see to that.”

    Don’t mess with those Texas gals!

  64. to help @Salwarpe on his way to a double hamper, reading about the Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald being written soon after the tragedy reminded me that Dylan based Talkin Bear Mountain Picnic Massacre Blues on an event he’d read in the New York Herald Tribune which ran a story about a Father’s Day cruise on the Hudson River to Bear Mountain which went wrong because a lot of counterfeit tickets had been sold, resulting in overcrowding and ultimately the sinking of the boat.

    Although ‘based’ on a true event the story was somewhat embellished by Dylan for comedic effect.

  65. I look up at this thread and I see a veritable tower of song, constructed from the top to the foundation. And what better way to ground your magnificent contributions than another gravelly-voiced classic from Leonard Cohen. OK, it’s not exactly a story song, but it is autobiographical, which is the most personal form of story.

    It is so heartwarming to see Laughing Len actually laughing. Thank you to him and thank you to all of you.

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