Express Train

And with this number, we come to the end of Simon's brief run with Tico and the Triumphs. For now. If we have learned anything at this point, it is that "new" old material seems to keep being discovered!

T & the Ts seem to like vehicles, and we have already had a song about a "Motorcycle." This time, we get the sound effects of a train gathering speed, accompanied by these young men doing their best train whistle and brake: "Woo woo!" and "Tssh!"

Songs about trains are as old as trains themselves, and it is hard to find a genre, from folk and country to soul and hip-hop, that doesn't refer to them. Simon himself would (much) later have a song called "Train in the Distance"... in which he also sings "woo woo!"

Here, the Triumphs (with Simon on lead) sing "Clickety-clack, clickety-clack/ The train comes on the railroad track," and the listener thinks, "OK, but when does the 'love' part show up?" They do not disappoint; the next line is "I'm on my way and coming back to you."

While many train songs are about a ramblin' man who leaves, this is about one who is coming back: "I'm just a rolling stone/ But I've been missin' your sweet kissin'/ Now I'm coming home."

The expression "A rolling stone gathers no moss" is an old one, and it means that if you want to keep from atrophying, you have to keep moving. However, many in the rock-n-roll world take this to the extreme, understanding that staying put at all results in growing mold instantly. Instead of, say, it having a positive connotation like "settling down" or "putting down roots."

Instead, we have the Muddy Waters song "Rollin' Stone," the megastar band The Rolling Stones, the major rock magazine Rolling Stone, and the Bob Dylan epic track "Like a Rolling Stone."

Back in our song, the speaker expresses his urgency at coming home: "I'm on my way/ Taking the express train," meaning a non-stop trip. It costs more, usually, but he is in a hurry to get back to his love: "I'm gonna meet you at the station/ What a celebration!"

And now, we wait for the other shoe to drop. He's a "rolling stone," after all, and will soon be on his restless way again.

Except, instead, not. "I'm gonna give up all my traveling," he vows. "Didn't like it, anyhow," he admits. He closes with another expression of urgency to arrive home: "No more waiting, hesitating/ Nothing stops me now/ I'm on my way." Well, that's refreshing. A song about a ramblin' man who's done ramblin'!

Simon would later write, in a sense, a longer, deeper version of this song: "Homeward Bound." In that song, the singer (for the speaker is one) at a "railroad station" decries his wearisome traipsing about and longs to be taking the train he is waiting for "homeward" instead of yet another gig where he will "sing his songs again."

So many of Simon's songs, in fact, bemoan his loneliness and road-weariness, including some from the One Trick Pony soundtrack. He doesn't really have a song like "On the Road Again," saying that he likes constant touring. Even in "That's Where I Belong," he speaks of longing to be on a "dirt road"... but with a destination in mind.

And yet... he is constantly touring. Simon is in his 70s, and still out promoting his latest album; he was recently in the farthest points of the Far East and down Down Under way.

There is a PhD thesis waiting to be written about singers who leave home to sing songs about wanting to be home. Maybe in Literature... maybe in Psychology.


Next song: Get Up and Do the Wobble

Sal's Last Song/ Esmerelda's Dream

Sal (and the book and song title say that the young Sal sings these lines, not the older Salvador-- to a mother, a son is always "her baby" regardless of his age) finally arrives home, to his mother's house. His first words to her are to beg forgiveness, and his words reflect Lady Macbeth's: "If I could cleanse these hands, maybe then/ I could start my life again."

His mother responds that he has "come to the end of the Santa Cruz Road." "Cruz" is the Spanish word for "cross"; perhaps she means that he has come down from the cross and that his penance is complete.

But then Salvador says the thing that he has had to say all this time: He owns his guilt. "I and I alone," he repeats four times. "I and I alone must bear the blame/ For the madness that was done/ For the shame." He even absolves the santero (fortune-teller) and his shells. "When the summer night was torn/ By the dagger of the moon/ It was I and I alone."

Esmerelda responds that she "dreamed" of his homecoming, of his face "in the light." "Let me kiss your hands, no more talk about madness." And then, like a good mama, she says, "I've been cooking since morning/ I wanted your first meal at home to be right."

Salvador hands her something: "This is my book. I've written my life story... All the things I did, for which I am sorry." And then his mother says, "It is repentance that makes good from evil." Even if no one else does, or can, she forgives him.

The last song in The Capeman is hers. In it, she tells of a detailed dream. She was sitting in "an outer room of Heaven." She was wearing her usual house dress and watching two angels-- male, soft-spoken, and blonde-- at a distance. She sees a pulpit, a chair, and transparent marble doors. There is a book on which the angels were chronicling Sal's birth. They carried a broken chain, she says, "laid it at my feet and they were gone."

What does it mean? Well, she interrupts the dream recount to ask Sal; "Do you remember [your] first communion?/ All the children with their candles dressed in white/ And once in prison, you asked me for a ribbon/ To mark the pages that you wrote each night/ Do you remember when we went to the santero/ and he said that you would suffer/ He was right." So these are the images from life that she feels are symbolized in the dream.

The two, taken together, seem to refer to the ideas of new chances and new beginnings: a birth, a first communion, a broken chain. 

The angels might symbolize the white-garbed children-- their halos, the candles. She remarks that the angels' hair is "lightened by the sea and sun." This echoes the people, and heavenly sensation, Salvador recalled at the seaside resort of El Malecon.

Their book likely is Sal's book. The empty pulpit might refer to her ex-husband, the fiery preacher. The empty chair may have been the one Salvador has been vacating. 

But she is in the "outer room" of Heaven because she is not dying and so has no reason to enter Heaven itself. The doors are marble and so impenetrable, but clear so that she can see that there is another side. There is hope.

The last things Sal sings are lines from earlier songs. One is, "I believe in the power of Saint Lazarus," who has fulfilled his promise. Now that Sal's soul has thirsted, quenching rains have been provided.

The other is (and the title of the song is the last three words of the line): "Don't tear apart this satin summer night." This was the prayer he expressed when he was young and in love, before all of the trouble started. Lazarus swore that Salvador would be alone until he repented, and he did lose Wahzinak because he had not. Now that he atoned, maybe he will find someone again.

In the previous song (above), he claims that he was responsible "when the summer night was torn." Now he says "Don't tear apart this... summer night." So who is he begging this of now? His mother? St. Lazarus? Or himself-- his own self-destructive nature? Things are finally hopeful again, he says to himself, so don't screw it up!

All of this is captured in the name "Sal," which is not in either of these songs (although it may be in the dialogue). He is not the burdened Salvador or the dreaded Capeman. He is simply, once again, Sal. As in his mother's dream, which re-recorded his birth 40-some years on, he is born again.

[Note to readers: This concludes the songs of The Capeman. Starting with the next post, we will resume discussing the songs from standard albums, starting with the songs from You're the One. Therefore, we will be resuming the usual schedule of one song per week.]

Next Song: That's Where I Belong

Wahzinak's Last Letter/ Puerto Rican Day Parade/ El Coqui (Reprise)

"Wahzinak's Last Letter" is only one verse long, but it is very sad. In it, she says that the elders of her tribe forced her to "bury" the letters he sent her "in the blowing desert sand." Of course, this is a loss to her, but also to us, as those letters were likely not only very well-written but also would help us immeasurably in understanding our complicated Mr. Agron.

"Puerto Rican Day Parade" is about that-- a parade that, according to the organizer's website: "takes place along 5th Avenue on the second Sunday in June, in honor of the millions of inhabitants of Puerto Rico and (those) of Puerto Rican heritage in the U.S." The first verse, performed by a "singer," just tells us that the celebration is citywide.

The next verse lists several Spanish words that might be images on a parade float-- canoes and flags-- and also mini-coconuts and beer. What's a celebration without snacks and drinks?

"Because I am a Puerto Rican," the Spanish lyrics continue, explaining why he is celebrating today. "I was born a Puerto Rican (using a slang term for a native.) This line hearkens back to the earlier song "I Was Born in Puerto Rico," while the next line, "I am a brother of the coqui (a local tree frog)," recalls the children's chant the musical began with. (In America, an equivalent expression might be "I'm so American, my brother is a bald eagle."). "I'm as Puerto Rican as you like," the song concludes.

The purpose of this song is unclear. It may be to show that the community has moved on from the damage the Capeman case caused it. Or it may serve as an upbeat break in the heart-rending tale... or simply to contrast with the next song, which is about not the entire community but one man returning to it.

Offstage, the children-- this time in New York-- sing the nursery rhyme about the coqui the musical opened with. This serves to signal that our story is about to come full circle, that another generation of children is being taught the old ways in a new land, and maybe their lives will be better than his was.

Then it shifts to Salvador, on a pay phone (this was long before cell phones!) calling Yolanda to tell her he is on his way home, and that her husband Carlos (we assume they are married by now, if not living the country life they had planned) should know to get his things out of storage.

He hangs up, first telling Yolanda. "Don't tell my mother I'm home yet." Evidently, he wants to surprise her himself.

Salvador also doesn't ask for, or about Bernadette. Perhaps he assumes she has moved on by now. It is unclear, in this short verse, if he is going to stay with his mother or try to reconnect with Wahzinak.

Also there is a confusion of place that is more likely made clear by the action onstage. We have Salvador jumping parole to be with Wahzinak in Arizona ("Trailways Bus"), then being captured and sent back to prison. ("El Malecon," it is clear, is a flashback). Then the song "You Fucked Up My Life" takes place in the barrio, which implies he had been set free. Then "Lazarus/ Last Drop of Blood" seems to take place back in the Arizona desert. "Wahzinak's Last Letter," then, was addressed to him... where? And now he is back in the barrio, walking past the "Puerto Rican Day Parade" on his way home to his mother in this one-verse song, which implies that he had only just now been let out of jail.

In any case, the last four songs are set in New York. They will give us the final impressions of Salvador, Hernandez the Umbrella Man, Carlos and Yolanda, and lastly, Salvador's mother, Esmerelda.

Next Songs: Tony Hernandez/ Carlos & Yolanda