“All art aspires to the condition of music,” wrote the aesthete Walter Pater. You might grok a favourite painting, poem or book a few times, but it’s not likely you’ll return to it over and over again, as you might with a favourite song. (For example, I loved Terry Gilliam’s The Fisher King starring Robin Williams and Jeff Bridges, but I have no desire to watch it a fourth time. In contrast, I’ve heard Here Come The Sun by The Beatles dozens if not hundreds of times without tiring of it.)
Music has the power to resonate and strike us to our core. Only at their very best do other forms of art rise to this condition. That’s one thing inspiring the Sunday Songbook series (though I’ll continue doing the usual stuff too). I hope some of these musical choices work as well for you as they have for me.
Today’s theme: childhood.
Devendra Banhart, “I Feel Just Like a Child”
“From my daddy’s sperm / to being packed in an urn / I’m a child.” American-Venezuelan performer Devendra Banhart’s 2005 refusal to grow up could be read as either comic or anthemic. A toe-tappet either way.
The Moody Blues, “Eyes of a Child”
In popular music, childish topics and concerns were once limited to nursery rhymes - up until the sixties, when both the psychedelic movement and transpersonal psychology rekindled a mass interest in formative stages of awareness. This 1969 song, from from The Moody Blues fifth studio album, To Our Children's Children's Children, beautifully evokes a dimly remembered past as a visceral present.
Crosby, Stills and Nash, “Teach Your Children Well”
“Teach your children well / Their father's hell did slowly go by.” Many children of the fifties, raised by fathers wounded physically or psychologically as soldiers, became peace activists in the sixties. After this song was released, singer-songwriter Graham Nash connected it with the famous 1962 photo by Diane Arbus of a boy in New York’s Central Park holding toy hand grenades. “Teach Your Children Well” is about the reciprocal, though not mirrored, responsibilities of adults and their offspring.
Mike Scott, “Sensitive Children”
“Strange little alien / Acting like she don't belong / Strange little alien / Dancing to a different song / You can't control her / Just love her hard and strong.” We’ve all known such a child, and some of us may have once felt like one. Just one of many memorable tracks on the Waterboys singer Mike Scott’s first solo album, in 1995.
Yusuf/Cat Stevens, “Where Do The Children Play?’
Yusuf’s retelling of his classic song as Cat Stevens, even more relevant now than in 1970.
Kate Bush, “The Man With the Child in His Eyes”
An incredible, one-off talent with a multi-octave voice, Kate Bush began writing songs at the age of 11. Signed to EMI Records after Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour helped produce a demo tape, she exploded onto the global music scene in 1978 with the debut album The Kick Inside, which featured this song.
Van Morrison, “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child”
For me, this famously irate Irish musician is one of the few truly convincing white singers of the blues. In a lesser known track from his 1987 album Poetic Champions Compose, Morrison reworked a negro spiritual from the slavery era into something contemporary-sounding, without losing the pain and longing at its core.
Sarabeth Tucek, “13th St. #2”
“So I called up my mother and she said, ‘Sarah, what can you do? / Everything you say hello to you have to say goodbye to, too.’” I admire singer-songwriters who can draw the listener in with a sharp riff and a well-told tale. From SBT’s 2023 album, Joan of All.
Ian Hunter, “Irene Wilde”
“Smile through your shock as you hear your name out loud.” In a 1980 performance, Ian Hunter recalls his experience as a sixteen year-old boy with a mad crush on a girl whose real name was Irene Wilde.
“Puppy love” is a diminishing term used to describe youthful feelings so overwhelming they can alter the course of a life, as was the case for this artist. Many years later, Hunter heard through hometown connections that Irene did indeed recognize herself in the song.
(The version with guitarist Mick Ronson on Hunter’s 1979 live album, Welcome To The Club, is even better, though it’s marred by a screaming female fan in the background.)
Tom Rush/Murray MacLaughlan, “Child’s Song”
Another poignant song about a boy on the precipice of manhood, in this case preparing to leap from a home that’s fractured but not loveless.
Manic Street Preachers, “If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next”
From a performance by The Manic Street Preachers at Glastonbury in 2023. The lyrics were inspired by The Spanish Civil War and those who joined the left-wing International Brigade fighting against General Franco’s fascist forces.
According to Wikipedia, “the song takes its name from a Republican propaganda poster of the time written in English and displaying a photograph of a child killed by the Nationalists, under a sky filled with bomber aircraft, with the song's titular warning written at the bottom.”
For me, the events of the past few years has given this 1998 song a new, terrifying twist.
BONUS SONG
Shriekback, “Cradle Song”
A father’s lullaby of blessing to his newborn child, from Shriekback’s stellar 1986 album, Big Night Music. Incredible.
Sing a cradle-song now, as the light fades around us
And you breathe like the ocean, lying small in my arms
See it all in a moment - you so young and unclouded
Shining bright as a lion - feel the motion of time
As the world rolls away from the sun.
I can feel your life burning - unlived moments within you
Further than I can see...
May the fire be your friend and the sea rock you gently,
May the moon light your way - till the wind sets you free
I remember your face as you cried for the first time
The cold air of the world and the fierce light of day
And the cruel separation in a world washed with tears;
Numbed with pain to unfeeling - May you hold to your truth
As you walk the dark night of unreason
The stone walls which surround us - may your spirit fly round them
Like the wind from the sea...
May the fire be your friend and the sea rock you gently,
May the moon light your way - till the wind sets you free
May you never know hunger: may you love with a full heart -
The light stay in your eyes...
May the fire be your friend and the sea rock you gently,
May the moon light your way - till the wind sets you free
May the fire be your friend and the sea rock you gently,
May the moon light your way - till the wind sets you free.
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What a feast of song. Thank you Geoff! ....And for comments from your readers. Appreciate all of you so much.
Just an important correction- Van Morrison is Irish not Welsh! A very important point to be made.