I'd Like to Be

This slight cha-cha is a song of the sort I call simply a "list song." The songwriter comes up with an idea, and then just extends it for the length of a song, listing as many permutations as he can rhyme.

Examples abound. Take the song this one presages, "The Way You Do The Things You Do." In that Temptations classic, the speaker compares his lover to a list of various objects that are known for performing certain functions very well. Her smile is so she's so smart, she "could have been a schoolbook"; and she's so pretty, she "could have been a flower." The whole song is a list of such things she "could have" been.

Here, the speaker lists the things he would like to be. And all of them are in contact with the body of his beloved.

These include her clothes ("high-heeled shoes," "coat around your shoulder")... her accessories and jewelry ("ribbon in your hair," "belt around your tiny waist," "your bracelet and your glove").... even her cosmetics.

In fact, the first such items he mentions that he'd "like to be" are: "The lipstick on [her] your lovely lips... the polish on [her] fingertips."

The most intimate object he'd like to be is... well, no, this was still the 1950s! It's not a clothing item at all, but "the chocolate candy that [she] tastes."

And, in case you were in total suspense about what he rhymes with "glove," the last line is the payoff: "But most of all/ I'd like to be the one you love."

This implies she has not returned his affections yet. It remains to be seen if she is interested in returning the affections of one so very, very interested in touching her-- nay, enveloping her.

While most of these things encircle and embrace her, the way "tender" or "loving"-- to borrow terms from other such songs-- arms might, the "chocolate candy that you taste" is an unmistakeable metaphor.

One way of looking at this is that he wants things to be equal. He wants to envelope her, but is equally willing to be enveloped by her. But that, in today's lingo, is almost definitive co-dependency.

Now, there is nothing necessarily wrong with erotic images expressed by one who is already intimate with his listener. But there are two "red flags" here. One, the images are erotic too soon, before intimacy or even familiarity. The other is the smothering nature of the images.

While we can argue that the Temptations song has its faults-- it literally objectifies the woman by comparing her to objects, for one-- at least there is only one image of "holding you so tight." Here, almost every object the speaker conjures is one of surrounding her or buffering her from the outside world. Surely, irrational jealousy cannot be far behind.

Also, the Temptations song is upbeat and airy. Our song is smoky and  sultry. The emotion meant to be conveyed is seduction, but he knows she doesn't even love him yet.

So while, structurally, the song presages "The Way You Do the Things You Do," on an emotional level, it foreshadows a more shadowy one: The Police's "I'll Be Watching You."


Next Song: Just a Boy

Lighthouse Point #1 & #2

This is a fun dance number about the other thing hormonal teens like to do when they are not dancing: i.e., "making out," "necking," or-- if it's done in a parked car-- "parking."

There are two recorded versions of this song; #2 is slightly faster than #1, but the tracks are otherwise identical. The melody is not far from "At the Hop." But the song is notable in the Tom and Jerry catalog for the use of backup singers. Lyrically, almost every line contains an internal rhyme.

Now, when teens park, they need a good place to do so. One is the drive-in movie, at which the sound of the film covers over any suspicious sounds they may be making. Another is simply somewhere far away from civilization, the darker the better.

Well, the teens near Lighthouse Point have hit the jackpot. This spot, presumably at the end of Lovers' Lane, is "way down by the water." So, naturally, "It's so nice to park when it's dark down at Lighthouse Point." One may associate a lighthouse with brightness, but a lighthouse sends its lantern's light far at sea, while in its shadow it is dark.

Lighthouses are also equipped with sound-makers like foghorns, in case it is too foggy for the light itself to be seen by sailors. The one at Lighthouse Point, instead, has a bell, which for the teens serves the same purpose as the soundtrack of the drive-in movie: "You kiss-kiss-kiss while the bell in the beacon goes 'bong bong ba-bong-bong-bong.'"

Not they they are looking at it for long, but "There's a beautiful view for two at Lighthouse Point." And isn't is supposed to be too "dark" to see the view? Nevertheless, one can hear "the waves pound, pound all around." One need never have read a romance novel to know what the pounding rhythm of the waves is meant to represent.

But Simon makes an excellent point. Without such places, how and where would young couples... couple? There must be a garden for love to blossom in: "Let's go, I know/ That 'bong bong' bell will bring wedding bells in the Spring."

Still, he the speaker is using generalities: "There is" this place, "where it is" nice to park, and "there is" a view for two-- any old two... hint, hint...

Clearly, he hasn't been persuasive enough to his girlfriend about the charms of this spot in general, because the speaker now goes in for the hard sell: "Tonight when the moon shines bright at Lighthouse Point/ Hey, baby, come a-hold me tight at Lighthouse Point/ And we'll kiss-kiss-kiss..." et cetera.

Perhaps it is good that adults make it hard for teens to find places to canoodle. It makes them wily and resourceful. Which are good skills for them to develop, because after the "wedding bells in the spring" come, well, baby rattles. And parents need all the cleverness they can get. Especially parents of teens.

Next song: Up and Down the Stairs

Wahzinak's Duet/ My Only Defense (Killer Wants to Go to College II).

Wahzinak, you will recall, was the Native American woman who began to write to Salvador while Sal was in jail. Here, we see that their relationship has developed to an intense, intimate level.

Salvador writes at night, for privacy's sake. This is understandable, as he writes "I part your lips... I feel you in your letters." One would have to write such delicate thoughts in private, even if they did not carry the burden of potential bigotry. Salvador already is a lightning rod for daring to dream of college, and now to be in an inter-racial relationship...

Wahzinak replies that she "understands" Salvador's "anger," but for now... "I take your hand/ And guide it through my thighs." The rest of that verse continues this erotic imagery, in a physical vein.

Then, the next verse eroticizes and santifices their ethnicities: "Puerto Rican blood blending with Indian/ In a sacred flame of burning lust." 

But here is also an invitation: "You'll love the colors of the desert." This seemingly throwaway line will have severe consequences down the road.

Together, the two share only love, longing... and the moon. So together, they sing: "The quarter moon stares down through my window/ And reads your letters on my bed." (Where else would one read such material?) "I know they open all the mail I send you/ But love can't be censored." 

We expect a warden to read his prisoner's mail. But is Wahzinak a prisoner, too? In a sense. She lives on a reservation. "We share a history," Wahzinak elaborates, of oppression by "the white man." "The barrio is just another reservation," a ghetto to which non-whites are relegated. (We learn later who is reading his incoming mail; it is not "the white man.")

These lovers are both imprisoned. Both in space, both by prejudice and repression, and both by the several-times-over illicit nature of their ardor. As if to rub salt in their wounds, others enjoy freedom all around them. Even animals: "I saw wild horses mating in the sunrise," laments Wahzinak. And why not? These animals have no rules, no laws, no shame... and yet we feel that we are superior? Why do we humans make life so hard for ourselves?

"I dreamed of freedom," she writes. "The day of revolution is coming fast." (These words were written in the late 1970s. Wild horses are still freer than we allow ourselves to be.)

The next song is, inexplicably, called "Killer Wants to Go to College II" on the Songs from The Campeman soundtrack CD. The Lyrics book gives it a better title "My Only Defense." It is another letter, from Salvador this time.

It is a short but powerful song. In it, he tells Wahzinak that he appreciates her and her wisdom: "I know you're trying to protect me... with your... poetry... from my ignorance... I only wish I could hug you/ You're my only defense."

While by this time we think of him as quite literate, Salvador pleads, "I don't understand your writing/ I can barely sign my name." Perhaps he still feels the sting of having been illiterate for so much of his life, and that he feels himself so beside her felicity with words.

He closes by remembering the violence of his barrio, and perhaps even the pain the nuns caused him in his homeland. "All I ever learned was fighting/ But I'm not the only one to blame." And now, even in jail, he is still a "stranger."

In Puerto Rico as a child, he was fatherless and homeless. In New York, a teen; he was an immigrant, plus an annoyance, then a shame, for his stepfather. The gang members who befriended him led him into a life of killing. In jail, he becomes a man, still an outcast among his fellow inmates because of his intellect, and ambition. "The hatred never ends," he concludes.

And the next song shows yet another source of this all-encompassing hatred.

Next Song: Virgil and the Warden

Spiral Highway

This song, unreleased until recently-- when it appeared as a bonus track on the re-release of the One-Trick Pony soundtrack-- is a rough draft for "How the Heart Approaches."

The end of this song makes it clear, as it includes the entire chorus "After the rain on the interstate," here used as a verse. And then this: "Then I think it’s strange/ The way the body turns/ And how my heart approaches what it yearns."

Again, the song does not appear in the film or on the original release of the soundtrack; this is fine, since it not only repeats lines that ended up in a stronger song, but it also is another bemoaning of the travails of the road musician. Still, it contains an interesting idea or two, it shows another way a song could have gone, and it is a pretty number in its own right.

The most famous road that bears the name "Spiral Highway" is in Idaho. It winds around a hill, from the base to the summit, wrapping itself up and up-- or, I suppose, down and down, if you went in the other direction. Here, however, it serves as a metaphor.

In "Jonah," the speaker refers to "traveling around this circuit." This song takes that image to its logical extreme, and imagines the entire highway system as one endlessly looping Mobius strip: "Ride the spiral highway one more round," goes the chorus.

Then it gets specific: "Every bar and grill/ Every greasy spoon/ Anywhere a quarter buys a tune," the last phrase being a reference to jukeboxes. The repeated starting word "every" (employing a rhetorical device called "anaphora") recalls "Homeward Bound": "Every stop is neatly planned... And each town looks the same to me... and every stranger's face I see..."

Here, however, the thing that is repeated, aside from the music, is also another kind of performance. The idea of a "local call," and a "pink motel," Well... who are we calling, locally? Not the family, not the wife back home. Probably a groupie who was friendly last time through. And the motel is "pink" because is a not a business motel or family-friendly place, but one reserved for a rendezvous.

But even this repetition becomes meaningless: "Any time the strain begins to tell." The constant moving, setting up, breaking down, playing the same songs in the same kinds of places-- even the exact same places-- eventually takes its toll. And now even the after-show entertainment leaves a sense of "been there, done that."

Then we meet the "bone-weary traveler" watching "headlights slide past the Moon." But here, there is no longing passion to balance that image ("I dream we are lying on top of a hill..." Rather than the absent but desired lover in "How the Heart Approaches," we have a lover who is there, but no passion between them. Here, she is very "locally" ensconced in a "pink-"sheeted bed, with the exact opposite effect. Yes, here is a live a person... but no passion.

At this point, the lines "Then I think it’s strange/ The way the body turns/ And how my heart approaches what it yearns" come in. Oh, has he learned his lesson? Has the traveler answered the question "Where's he going?" with the word "Home"? Has he "turned" his "body" and started to finally "approach" what his "heart... yearns" for?

Um... Not exactly. The song concludes: "Ride that spiral highway one more round/ Ride that spiral highway one more round." He is "turning," he is "approaching" but he is not aimed anywhere. He is not yet finished with literally going around in circles.

Next song: All Because of You

Have a Good Time

Looking back over the last three songs, we find somewhat of a trilogy. In "Gone at Last," we find a sad person whose spirit was lifted when his "burden" was "shared" by another. In "Some Folks' Lives," we have a sad person who seeks solace from God.

In this song, the speaker is not sad, but by his own admission, he "should be depressed." Was his burden shared? Did he find religion? Nope.

He's just decided to have a good time.

There is a line in the movie (I know, again with the movie quotes) Spinal Tap that informs. Viv, the keyboardist, is asked by the interviewer, "What is your philosophy of life?" Viv responds, inserting a dramatic pause, "Have a good time... all the time." Rather than be seen as a call to hedonism (which it probably was), it could also be taken in reverse: "All the time, regardless of what is happening, try to enjoy the situation and find the fun in it."

We begin with an idea one seldom hears in a song. Rather than a song about a birthday, it's a song about a day after a birthday. Whether the ongoing sex our speaker has been "exhausted" by was in celebration of the occasion or has been going on for some time now is immaterial. The point is, he has neglected his health and his need for sleep in pursuit of immediate gratification. His body is begging him to take a break... "But a voice in [his] head says, "Oh, what the Hell-- have a good time."

In the previous number, the speaker began by speaking in general terms ("some folks") and moved to the personal ("Here I am") and back. In this song, the speaker starts with personal information and now moves to commentary on the State of the World.

He derides Midwestern puritanism as mindless, phobic "paranoia," and shrugs that the press is less interested in informing him than seducing him for his "dime." He is neither, he concludes, "worrying" about the news or his soul, nor "scurrying" along with the rat race up the corporate ladder (that is not a mixed metaphor-- rats can race up ladders if they want to, so there).

He does ponder that he might be imprudent in his unwillingness to care for himself, plan for the future, or consider his fellow man. His conclusion again is a shrug: "What can be done?" Nothing he is willing to do, certainly.

God is interjected here, but not in a prayerful way as in "Some Folks." Here, God is just another commodity, another convenience. The same way a carpet cleaner might be called to deal with a stain on the rug, God Himself is told to bless our things --"the goods we was given"-- and to bless "our standard of livin'." In between is the usual "God bless America" we hear at the end of presidential speeches.

Usually, it is Randy Newman giving us cynical songs about careless Americans whose attitude is that the world is a paper cup-- there for their convenience and disposal-- with songs like "It's Money That Matters" and "My Life is Good." Here, it is Simon taking the voice of a heedless, feckless boor.

Who is, nevertheless, having a good time. Until he truly runs that body down.

Musical note:
The sax solo is by jazz bebop virtuoso Phil Woods, who has recorded with everyone from Dizzy Gillespie to Thelonius Monk. But you most likely know his solo from Billy Joel's song "Just the Way You Are."

Valerie Simpson, of Ashford and Simpson fame, does the backup vocals on this track, too.

Next Song: You're Kind

Duncan

In this song, Simon revisits the down-and-out character type portrayed in "The Boxer" and sets his story to the Andean wood-flute music of "El Condor Pasa." The same ensemble, in fact.

However, this song is about, well, sex. It starts with the singer apologizing for the "couple in the next room" who have been "going at it" for a while. Now, he has given up waiting for them to finish and will proceed with his story, and the listener is just going to have to put up with the background noise.

He has an unusual name. Both his given name, "Lincoln," and his surname "Duncan," are those of famous assassination victims. Lincoln, of course, was assassinated by the fanatic John Wilkes Booth... and King Duncan by the treacherous Macbeth. Our speaker's name, therefore, is steeped in tragic death.

He is from Canada, he explains, from the Atlantic coastal region called the Maritimes. His father was a fisherman... and his mother, a "fisherman's friend." It is unclear what this means. A "fisherman's friend" is a flower, although I was unable determine why a land-based plant would help a fisherman. (It is also, incidentally, the brand name of a throat lozenge, presumably one that fishermen prefer. Perhaps the lozenge contains an extract of the flower..?)

Taken in the context of the song, however, it seems to either mean that his mother was very supportive of his father's sea-going, often-absent lifestyle... or that she kept other fishermen company while he was at sea. Possibly, she played at one while acting out the other.

None of this seems to have affected our speaker, however, who left home for New England fleeing simple "boredom." His destination is vague, but hopeful, if only in that he seeks a place whose name has "New" in it.

Like his compatriot the Boxer, who went "looking for a job but [got] no offers," Duncan is broke. We get an entire verse about this "destitution" and its affect on his sense of self. There are "holes" in both his jeans and his "confidence."

And then he sees her. We do not learn the name of the "young girl," but that seems beside the point. She is less a person than a symbol. She is "young," parallel to the "New" in his chosen place. She is a "girl," and fertile. This is key; it might just as well have been an older person, or a man, preaching.

He hears her songs and stories and is enchanted. After her sermon, he approaches her and tells her he is "lost." So she speaks-- this time, not to a "crowd" but directly to him-- of the Pentecost. This is the revelation of the Holy Spirit to Jesus' core disciples after the Resurrection (50 days after, to be precise, thus the "pent-" prefix, as in "pentagon").

The Pentecost was taken as proof of Jesus' approval of the Apostles' mission; it is sometimes referred to as "the birthday of the Church." A startling contrast for a young man named for two historical figures who were, like Jesus, assassinated.

The result? "I seen that girl as the road to my survival." This last word Simon sings with several extra syllables, to emphasize the feeling of relief and ecstasy Duncan feels, or maybe a song sung at the prayer service.

This is followed by a curious lyric: "I know," repeated several times. It is as if Duncan is reacting to the reader's skepticism and concern. "I know what you are thinking," Duncan seems to say, "but please, let me finish."

Spellbound, he finds her tent in the dark, with is flashlight. He must see her again.

But what happens when he arrives at the tent of this pure, holy maiden who "just" earlier that day was so religious? What does she do? Read another passage of Scripture? Sing a hymn? Well, no. She takes him to the "woods," a primal place.

There, as Duncan puts it, "My long years of innocence ended." Why "long" years? At his age, his losing his virginity even in his late teens (he can drive; he speaks of himself as having "reached [his] prime," so we presume he was 17 or 18) must have felt like he had waited an eternity.

Duncan remembers that the girl took charge, once he approached her. She takes him to the woods, she is the one who speaks during the encounter. For his part, he was decidedly subservient and simply grateful: "Just like a dog, I was befriended."

Still, Duncan recalls the event as an entirely positive one and remarks, "What a garden of delight," perhaps referring to the Garden of Eden.

In the afterglow, he offers a prayer of his own: "I was playing my guitar... thanking the Lord for my fingers." His prayer relates to a physical part of himself, but also to what music his body can achieve, both with his guitar and... otherwise.

This is not the last time Simon links religious ecstasy with the more physical kind. In the Graceland song "That Was Your Mother," we meet another "young girl" who is "pretty as a prayerbook." His reaction? "If that's my prayerbook-- 'Lord, let us pray!'"

Here, Simon's point is somewhat more serious. Duncan has learned a lesson about sex and its power of transcendence. Now we can understand today's more mature Duncan, the one who tells us his "first time" story, and his withering assessment of the "couple in the next room." They seem to be after some earthly "prize" and are confusing quantity with quality.

As for his mother, well, he seems to have made his peace with her activities. She was just keeping company with "friends," after a fashion, lonely for his absentee father.

Duncan himself seems to see spiritual and physical transcendence as two sides of the same coin. The same person who taught him the ways of Heaven also taught him the ways of the world. She didn't have a problem with being overtly rapturous about both the Bible and the bed, so why should he? Why is one sort of revelation worth more than the other?

When he saw her as "the road to [his] survival," he had no idea how right he would prove to be.

Still, he concludes with another round of "I know, I know, I know." He knows that this is all, to a point, theory, and not always viable in practice. He knows that this girl is one in a million, perhaps rarer. He knows that she might well have been delusional herself... or even predatory. And he knows that he might well be fooling himself, and that his listener probably thinks that he is.

"I know I shouldn't believe," he seems to say, "but it is so nice to... and really, what's the harm?

Musical Note: The flutes here are played by an ensemble called Urubamba, after a river near Machu Picchu; Simon produced an album for them. Under their early name, Los Incas, they performed the flutes heard in "El Condor Pasa."

Next song: Everything Put Together Falls Apart

Baby Driver

This song reads like a playground hand-jive, but sounds like a Beach Boys track. There is a great deal of childhood imagery... and then a whole lot of car-racing imagery. The title itself is, in fact, the two words "baby" and "driver."

The jump-rope sing-song element is the "my daddy"/"my mama" part. The information about the parents is adult, however, and at least somewhat autobiographical. Simon's father was a very successful session bass-player, for instance. In one interview, Simon recalls a song coming on the radio and his father off-handedly remarking, "I think I played on that." (I admit I have no idea if any of the military information has any basis in fact.)

Another childhood element is the phrase "once upon," as "once upon a time." Yet another is the invitation "come to my room and play."

(The speaker does mention the circumstances of his birth, but that can hardly be counted as childhood imagery. Many songs have lyrics like "born in the USA" or "born to be wild.")

As for racing imagery, there is the chorus, which mentions "wheels," the "road," an "engine," and the line "what's my number," as all racecars have numbers.

Whether childhood imagery or car imagery, by the end of the song, they both seem to be metaphors for sex. "I wonder how your engine feels" refers to the same thing as the line in Springsteen's "Born to Run": "strap your hands 'cross my engines."

And then there is the blatant line: "Yes we can play/ I'm not talkin' 'bout your pigtails/ I was talkin' 'bout your sex appeal."

My theory? It's about a guy trying to lose his virginity. Put together, the song seems to be one giant come-on. He is young, still a "baby," with no accomplishments to his name, so he brags about his parents as a way of strutting.

Further, he "wonders how [the girl's] engine feels", and wants to "play," but has as much intention of staying around as Dion's Wanderer: "I hit the road and I'm gone... scoot down the road..." (The Wanderer explains, "When I find myself falling for some girl/ I hop right into my car and I drive around the world.")

The line "What's my number?" could then mean "You don't even know my phone number or address, do you? I'm gone before you can find out."

The virginity theory also explains the line about carrying a "gun," but not yet getting a chance to "serve"-- i.e. use his "gun" to serve anyone else.

He is a "baby driver," with temporary tags and a learner's permit, but still no license. This would explain his ridiculous attempts at seduction... and his likelihood of crashing instead of making it all the way around the track.


Next Song: The Only Living Boy in New York