Having completed the survey I was pondering on the question about how the site could be improved. I’m not saying this is an improvement, but one thing I thought could be interesting would be to break down favourite songs and work out why they hit the spot. Then I thought, nah, what hits that spot for one person doesn’t for another, so where’s the value? I mean, we could choose the most successful songs in terms of sales / air-play / time in the charts or whatever, but again that then restrict the exercise to popular songs. For those of us who aren’t into pop it would offer limited interest. But then I thought I’m over-thinking it. If there’s a song that you love, then why? What is it about that song that makes it work for you?
For example, for many years Tom Waits’s “(Looking For) The Heart of Saturday Night” was one of my favourite songs. Favourite songs come and go, of course. But many stay with us, as did this one.
**Edited by Boydie to add YouTube link to song**
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=f7UHd7NVegE So what is it about “The Heart of Saturday Night”?
Here are the lyrics:
Well you gassed her up
Behind the wheel
With your arm around your sweet one
In your Oldsmobile
Barrelin' down the boulevard
You're looking for the heart of Saturday night
And you got paid on Friday
And your pockets are jinglin'
And you see the lights
You get all tinglin' cause you're cruisin' with a 6
And you're looking for the heart of Saturday night
Then you comb your hair
Shave your face
Tryin' to wipe out ev'ry trace
All the other days
In the week you know that this'll be the Saturday
You're reachin' your peak
Stoppin' on the red
You're goin' on the green
'Cause tonight'll be like nothin'
You've ever seen
And you're barrelin' down the boulevard
Lookin' for the heart of Saturday night
Tell me is the crack of the poolballs, neon buzzin?
Telephone's ringin'; it's your second cousin
Is it the barmaid that's smilin' from the corner of her eye?
Magic of the melancholy tear in your eye.
Makes it kind of quiver down in the core
'Cause you're dreamin' of them Saturdays that came before
And now you're stumblin'
You're stumblin' onto the heart of Saturday night
So what is about the lyrics, firstly?
For me – and all of this is for me, because I know plenty of people who leave the room when I play Tom Waits’s songs! – the lyrics evoke a delightful sense of melancholy. Not that they are melancholy whatsoever (albeit the word does get a mention) – but they
elicit melancholy. They take me back to a time that never was, a time that only existed in my imagination - but a time I wished was real. The more I think about this, isn’t this what all great stories do? I think of the movie America Graffiti when I read these lyrics. I like that film a lot – it evokes the same events in a way. Yet they never happened, either. At least not to me. Saturday nights for me, at an age when my pockets were jinglin’ was drinking lager down the pub with the boys in the band, either playing a gig, or watching a gig, and wondering why on earth anyone in the world would want to go to a disco, for goodness sake. There was no barrellin’ down a boulevard and no pool balls (all though there was a bar billiards table in one pub, and I did play in the snooker team).
So, like all great stories, it’s all about a time that never was but that we wished was. But yet like all great stories it’s steeped in reality – there are enough touch-points with reality that it works and good solid connections are made. We did shave our face and comb our hair and head out on a Saturday night (albeit on the bus, not in an Oldsmobile) and we did like the barmaid’s smile and we did have that sense of hope that this night, the night we worked all week for, could be the one, the special one, the one we find the heart of it all.
So we have a story that is pure fantasy but that has the right connections to make us identify with it. Maybe there are a few people in this world who actually lived these Saturday nights, or the Saturday nights of American Graffiti, and assuming so that makes the connection even stronger. It’s no longer fantasy – it’s real. It’s Hollywood stuff, probably starring a young Mickey Rourke.
But why this song? Why not any one of the other countless hit songs about Saturday night? I just called up the lyrics to Kool and the Gang’s “Ladies’ Night”. I could have chosen a hundred Saturday night songs. I quite like the funky sound and groove of Ladies’ Night. But it never touched me the way Waits’s song did. It’s not just the lyrics, but the lyrics are important – Wait’s digs down several levels and makes those connections, sets up the images and the emotions. It doesn’t happen here:
Oh yes it's ladies night and the feeling's right
Oh yes it's ladies night, oh what a night, oh what a night!
Oh yes it's ladies night and the feeling's right
Oh yes it's ladies night, oh what a night
Girls, y'all got one
A night that's special everywhere
From New York to Hollywood
It's ladies night and girl the feeling's good
Oh yes it's ladies night and the feeling's right
Oh yes it's ladies night, oh what a night, oh what a night!
Oh yes it's ladies night and the feeling's right
Oh yes it's ladies night, oh what a night
On disco lights your name will be seen
You can fulfill all your dreams
Party here, party there, everywhere
This is your night, baby, you've got to be there
Not knocking that song at all - I know many millions prefer it to the one I'm discussing. But I don't get the same emotional connections. But I know many who do - and that's the key here. If we can write a song that connects to just 0.001 % of people that's an awful lot of people!
Then there’s the music too. The soundtrack to a Saturday night is different for everyone. Some people go out to discos and clubs and want that funky groove, some will be at rock’n’roll clubs, some jazz clubs. You pays your money… But for me, I’m always going to be moved by the sound of a bar band playing laid back jazzy grooves, rather than a disco song, a boy band, or something manufactured and unreal (to me). And Wait’s nails this groove – the bass line and the guitar just intertwine to make his perfect melancholy moment come to life. It’s beautiful and yet sad, it’s stripped down, and it just rolls along like that car cruising along the boulevard that never was. It’s easy music (the best kind!). I’m not having to struggle to understand it. Just a handful of chords, but the right chords. And here’s another thing – on a different song then the music would need to be more complicated. Going back to story-telling, I’m a believer that every story has a certain word count that it can support. Some stories might need a massive trilogy in the telling. Some might need a single novel. Some a short story. Some are best told in a limerick. Get this bit wrong and you end up dissatisfying the audience. And musically the same thing applies – some songs need a concept album, some need a sophisticated orchestrated arrangement, some need one old bloke from Gloucester with and acoustic guitar and a thumb-pick. Again, you have to get it right or there’s something unspoken that doesn’t hold up. Here Waits nails it – the perfect chords, the perfect melody, the perfect arrangement, to support the lyrics and the story.
The arrangement proof is in the listening pudding. I’ve heard many versions of this song and none come close to the original – because folks are always trying to add more to it, when it doesn’t need it. It’s been stripped down as far as it needs be, like a custom car or motorcycle, and then it’s send out into the world.
So, I’m just rambling, trying to make sense of a single song and why it works for me. I conclude that lyrically it hits the spot because it’s working on the same level as all great story-telling and tells a story that I relate to and connect to. That bit will be different for everyone. Musically – chords and melody – there’s a simplicity that matches the story
just so. An epic story – the kind we used to get on albums back in the seventies – would have required much different, much more complicated music. And the arrangement nails the emotions - the perfect balance of simplicity and groove to take us on a journey. A stop-start arrangement would have broken up that drive along the boulevard (and this is worth thinking about - what stops and starts do to a listener) whereas here the arrangement lopes along as we go cruising.
Hey ho. This isn’t getting the lawn mowed.
D