I originally published this post 7 years ago. I have no recollection of the specific failures referred to in the first paragraphs here. But I’ve been going through a major rough patch lately, walking out of the big musical enterprise I created and which has consumed me in recent years. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. I believe we each carry with us a propensity for optimism/pessimism, to a great extent regardless of circumstances.
I’ve been having a pretty lousy week. It’s included two rejections in creative enterprises where I thought I was in a position to succeed. The first one was a shock and an insult, connected to a project for which I’m overqualified and underappreciated, but which was very convenient and fun for me; the second was the culmination of a long process of positioning myself to succeed at the highest level in a field I care about deeply. The rejection there hits deep and long-range, although the door wasn’t closed for the future.
I’m called a creative guy. I’m always getting involved in Projects, usually of an artistic nature. Joining an existing group, often impacting it strongly, sometimes inventing my own gig, either solo or joint venture. I do this regularly and energetically. The people close to me say, “Oh, you’ll pick yourself up and invent something new.” Well, judging me by my record I probably will.
But this week is a low point, one of those times when you walk around muttering
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
Or drinking a little too much scotch. Or reading Ecclesiastes. Or being short-tempered with those near and dear to you. Or listening to early James Taylor.
Which is where I was this week, back in James’ first album. James is half a year older than me. At twenty, I was a confused and rebellious budding hippie from a good Jewish home, studying (well, kind of) in college. He was a disturbed junkie from a patrician home.
James’ father was dean of the medical school at the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill, an alcoholic. At 18, James was sleeping 20 hours a day. At 19 he was institutionalized for 9 months. At 20 he had formed a band in NYC and was addicted to heroin. At 21 he was dropping acid in London; became the first artist signed to the Beatles’ Apple label; and recorded his first album, which went unnoticed commercially. At 22, in California, he recorded the seminal “Sweet Baby James”, which included the title song and ‘Fire and Rain’, and single-handedly created a genre still thriving half a century later.
But it’s the neglected, overlooked first album that has been such an intimate friend to me all these years, the one I still go back to on days like I’ve been having this week. It’s there that young James first engages the world, and expresses all the bewilderment, the profound disappointment, the discouragement, about this world we live in. I’m no longer 20. But it’s weeks like this where 40 years of experience, inurement, calluses, cynicism, just don’t help. Weeks where the pain cuts right to the bone. James’ first album is the eloquent soundtrack for that pain. So you put on the headphones, and you put on the album. “Something’s wrong, that restless feeling keeps preying on your mind. Roadmaps in a well-cracked ceiling, the signs aren’t hard to find.” Or “It does you no good to pretend, you’ve made a hole much too big to mend. And it looks like you’ll lose again, my friend, so call on your rainy day man.” And you feel, if you’ll pardon the expression, that you’ve got a friend.
The Apple album was highly (many say over-) produced by Peter Asher, formerly of Peter & Gordon (‘World Without Love’, ‘Woman’, both written by McCartney), brother of McCartney paramour Jane, just a couple of years later the producer of the iconic West Coast albums of James Taylor, Linda Ronstadt and others. Paul McCartney played bass on ‘Carolina In My Mind’ (as far as I remember, the first time a Beatle had guested on another artist’s album; it was akin to a god descending from Olympus). ‘Something in the Way She Moves’, one of the most affective love songs I know, clearly inspired George Harrison’s ‘Something’.
Listening to the Apple album today, as I have been for 40 years now, I find that the sound really has gotten a bit brittle. The strings aren’t bad, but don’t approach the profundity that the solo singer-songwriter-strummer displays. James’ resilient, warm, resonant baritone that two generations have been so drawn to, is not flattered in the Apple recording. It’s a bit thin, a bit reedy.
That being said, the songs are masterpieces of introspection. ‘Something’s Wrong’, ‘Sunshine, Sunshine’, ‘Something in the Way She Moves’, ‘Rainy Day Man’, ‘Carolina in My Mind’ – you can put me on a desert island with those five songs. I might hang myself from the one palm tree. But I’d do it with a smile on my face.
Like any well-balanced adult, I try to steer clear of the state of mind where you’re looking deep into the abyss of the meaninglessness of existence. But this week it caught up with me. So while I was wallowing in self-pity, I put on not the Apple album, but an old bootleg cassette I had of a live performance in Syracuse, NY, from February 1970. James had just finished recording the album; I’m not sure if it had even been released. When he introduces the song ‘Sweet Baby James’, no one claps. He was still reveling in relative obscurity. But it wouldn’t last long.
The Syracuse recording is quite remarkable. The sound is problematic, but who cares? Everything else is perfect. It includes some fine humor (a Ray Charles Coke commercial and his ‘Hallelujah I Love Her So’, a snuff commercial), some old folk standards, most of the songs from the Apple album in definitive unadorned versions, a couple from the second. It also has a moving treatment of The Impressions’ ‘People Get Ready’, and his reading of George Harrison’s ‘If I Needed Someone’. If it doesn’t move you, someone ought to put a mirror underneath your nostrils.
And there’s another song you’ve heard several million times called ‘Yesterday’. It was written by Paul McCartney of the Beatles. He woke up one morning with the tune fully formed in his head, and assumed that he had heard it somewhere. He went to John, George, George Martin – none of them recognized it, but they all thought it was great. Paul wrote tentative lyrics for it just to give it some form. ‘Scrambled Eggs’ was what he called it (“Scrambled Eggs/Oh, my baby how I love your legs”).
Way back in SoTW 018, I wrote about a little-known Paul song that I dearly love, ‘Distractions’. I maintained that it was an exceptional song in his oeuvre.
Paul’s musicality is legendary, at times divine. “All My Loving”, “And I Love Her”, “Another Girl”. And that’s just the A’s up through 1965. But honesty, depth, soul-searching, have never been his fortes, to put it mildly. At his worst, the Prince of Plastic, the Sheikh of Shallow. At his best, a modern-day Mozart. Even the brilliant “Penny Lane”, a nostalgic trip back to childhood, leaves your heartstrings unplucked (compare it to the flip side of the single, “Strawberry Fields”). It’s just not what Paul does.
I caught a lot of flack back then. But when you listen to our Song of The Week, James Taylor’s version of that song, you might just see what I mean. It’s been performed an estimated 7 million times, was voted the best song of the 20th century in a 1999 BBC Radio 2 poll of music experts and listeners, and chosen as the #1 pop song of all time by MTV and Rolling Stone magazine.
Yawn. You listen to James’ treatment of the song. You tell me which version touches you more deeply. You tell me if you don’t feel like you’re hearing the song for the first time since 1965.
The one good thing that happened to me this week was that I sent James’ version of ‘Yesterday’ and ‘If I Needed Someone’ to a few choice friends of refined musical taste. They generated reactions such as “humbled and touched, that was beautiful” and “I have to admit, it’s a lovely touching rendition.” And “I seem to have been missing something in James Taylor”. That’s one of my missions in life, to spread the gospel of great music. I was frustrated in a couple of my endeavors this week, big-time. But I’ve still got James, and I still have some friends on whom I can foist him, so things can’t be all that bad. Can they?
Happy birthday to us, happy birthday to us, happy birthday dear Israel, happy birthday to us.
It’s our 70thtoday, and the few millions of us here are mostly out on the roads, visiting air force bases, national parks, waving flags and fanning the grill with our families and friends. But not far below the surface there’s a sincerity in it all, a true recognition and celebration of our very existence, something we don’t take for granted.
The Center of the Universe
Did you know that Israel is the only country in the world whose national anthem is in a minor key? Could be because after 2000 years of persecution it was built on the ashes of a near genocide. Israel has fought three existential wars in its 67 years, and hence lives with an acute sense of fragility. It’s the only country in history recreated by a miraculous act of will out of a tribal imagination, the only nation to return to its homeland from dispersion, reviving a dead language on the way. It’s also the only democracy in this part of the world, a bizarre mix of refugees from every corner of the world stuck in the middle of the Levant, hence a sharp sense of irony regarding our still-evolving national identity. People run around like crazy trying to be normal in the most abnormal of societies.
Kaveret
In the wake of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, in which the country barely survived obliteration, a bunch of army buddies formed a band called Kaveret (‘beehive’), sometimes also known as Poogy (after the name of their first album, “Poogy Stories”). The leader and chief songwriter was Danny Sanderson, an Israeli who grew up in the US on rock and roll. In three years they recorded three albums as out of place and ahead of their time in the Israeli musical landscape as the country is in the Middle East – sophisticated in music, production, performance and content.
Patriotic symbol
Many of their songs have become cultural icons, still sung today by teenagers and recycled by rock stars. I’d like to share one with you, sort of a mock anthem, a modest little song that captures the spirit and ethos and self-image of this noisy, neurotic little country better than anything else I know of – ‘Little Country’.
We Israelis get pretty tired of seeing ourselves on the front page of the NY Times every day. On the other hand, we also see ourselves as the center of the universe. Go explain it. Well, Sanderson’s lyrics do it best – our wry perception of our very existence, our precariousness, our homey patriotism better expressed in self-effacing humor than in pompous parades.
Happy birthday, Israel. Here’s SoTW’s official nomination for our unofficial anthem.
מדינה קטנה
במקום די רחוק, קרוב לכאן
אספנו את עצמנו
הבאנו חברינו
ולא אמרנו מי ומה
In a pretty remote place near here,
We gathered ourselves up,
Brought all our friends,
Didn’t say anything.
בדרום בצפון או במרכז
שכרנו קצת שמים
דמעות הביאו מים
פתחנו ארץ חדשה
In the north, in the south, or in the center
We rented some sky,
Tears brought the water,
We opened a new land.
מדינה קטנה מתחמקת מצרה
את הכתובת לא תמצא
היא שמורה בתוך קופסה
בעולם כל כך קשה
להתבלט זה לא יפה
נתחבא כאן ולנצח לא נצא
A little country avoiding trouble
You can’t find the address,
It’s kept in a box,
In such a hard world
Sticking out isn’t nice,
We’ll just hide here and never leave.
שני בתים, שני סוסים ,שלושה עצים
נוסעים תמיד ברגל
שרים שירים בלי דגל
נושמים שנים ללא סיבה
Two houses, two horses, three trees
Travelling by foot
Singing songs without flags,
Breathing for years with no reason.
מלחמות אסונות חולפים בצד
אנחנו בתוכנו
וכל מה שאצלנו
תמיד ניתן למחיקה
Wars, tragedies, pass on by,
We inside ourselves
And all we have
Are always erasable.
יום אחד אם כדאי אולי נצא
כל עוד נעמוד לאורך
אני לא מרגיש ת’צורך
נחיה נמות ואז נראה
One day, if we should, maybe we’ll go out.
As long as we stand up straight
I won’t feel the need.
We’ll live, we’ll die, then we’ll see.
Today we’re going to track the evolution of the first two measures of ‘Luckie’, the ebullient opening track on Laura Nyro’s masterpiece. “Eli & the 13th Confession”. I can’t promise that next week we’ll track the next two bars, although the entire album does deserve such reverential attention.
Once upon a time, there was a gospel singer named Curtis Mayfield, who snuck out the back door of his Chicago church and formed The Impressions (‘People Get Ready’, ‘It’s All Right’). Curtis wrote and arranged all the songs, a veritable one-man Motown. He had such a surplus of talent that he wrote and produced hits for his Impressions bandmate Jerry Butler, (‘For Your Precious Love’, ‘He Will Break Your Heart’) and for a two-hit wonder, Major Lance. ‘Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um’ (1964) was a charmer, but it was ‘The Monkey Time’ (1963) that made Major’s name and Curtis a pile of dough. I can’t think of a more infectious Top 40 song.
Curtis Mayfield
Here’s an instructional video about how to do The Monkey (as opposed to The Jerk), should you be so moved. (After locking the door) I just tried it together with Major Lance and the Shindig dancers, and it went pretty well. Maybe not as well as in this gambol of that other great Monkey hit, ‘Mickey’s Monkey’ by Smokey Robinson and the Miracles. Chalk it up to my pigmental predilections. At least the Monkey’s off my back.
Listen again to the end of each verse of ‘The Monkey Time’: ‘…and then the music begins to play/You’re automatically on your way./Are you ready? (Are you ready?)/Well, you get yours, ‘cause I’ve got mine/It’s the Monkey Time!’Stop dancing for a minute, and bookmark that phrase!
Now let’s hop ahead to 1965 to Barbara Mason, a lass of 18 from Philadelphia: “I was a huge Curtis Mayfield fan, and I heard a record he had produced, Major Lance’s ‘The Monkey Time’ and he sings, ‘Are you ready?’ and I just thought, there’s my record. It only took me 10 minutes to write, and then we recorded it live in one take.”
Whoa, Laura! Not too much ambiguity there, is there folks? Ready for what? Well, mister, you just name it. You have to remember this was written in 1968. Girls didn’t talk like that in 1968. They certainly didn’t shout such things.
And that’s just the first two measures. In the rest of the song, she wrestled with the Devil and won. Jacob did that and got appointed a forefather! Here, let me show you.
Yes, I’m ready, so come on, Luckie Well, there’s an avenue of Devil who believe in stone You can meet the captain at the dead-end zone What Devil doesn’t know is that Devil can’t stay Doesn’t know he’s seen his day
Oh, Luckie’s taking over and his clover shows Devil can’t get out of hand ‘Cause Luckie’s taking over And what Luckie says goes
Laura Nyro Fighting the Devil
Dig them potatoes If you’ve never dug your girl before Poor little Devil, he’s a backseat man To Luckie forever more
It’s a wrestling match, Good Vibrations vs Sympathy for the Devil. And this 21-year old banshee takes her grand piano and bashes old Lucifer on the noggin. You ain’t bringing me down, mister! It’s not luck, it’s an act of will. My friend MB from Back Then: “I took my first LSD trip alone in my parents’ house in the middle of the night, and was scared shitless. I put on “Eli & the 13th Confession”. Laura walked me through that night, and I’ve never let go of her hand since.” Laura got me through a missile attack with a similar act of no-holds-barred optimism. You gonna get in my face? Yes, I’m ready.
Laura Nyro Fan
I’m starting to feel like The Ancient Mariner – accosting unsuspecting revelers, grabbing them by the lapel, sticking my nose right up in their face, my feverish eyes gaping unblinking into theirs, to force upon them The Question: “Do you adequately appreciate Laura Nyro’s musical accomplishments?” I have no idea why, but I sometimes feel people shrinking back from this sort of engagement. With Laura, I mean. If she’s that good, why isn’t she famous?
One reason is that she effectively removed herself from the music business at 24. Others? She was quirky, personally and musically. She was seriously intense, intensely joyous. Demanding, over-the-top. She was divine, spiritual, fearless, unblinking in the face of any and every passion. An ancient mariner for our times.
I really am getting tired of quoting the litany of her praises, of quoting how Elton John and Elvis Costello and Bette Midler and Bonnie Raitt and Rickie Lee Jones and Susan Vega all recognize her as a major voice in the days when rock music was asserting itself as the torchbearer of popular culture. Even Joni Mitchell, a person known to be stingy in crediting her peers, said “Laura Nyro you can lump me in with, because Laura exerted an influence on me. I looked to her and took some direction from her.”
Joni Mitchell (l), Laura Nyro
A revolution in women’s self-image began in the 1960s. Today it’s easy to relegate The Music to the status of soundtrack. Those of us who were there know it was the inspiration. With all due credit to Aretha Franklin, Diana Ross, and even Janis Joplin and Grace Slick, there were two women who forged this new awareness – Laura and Joni. Carol King came along a few years later.
Laura Nyro
I grant that Joni is the more compleat artist. She had a long, variegated, accomplished career. She was a mistress of craft par excellence, a singularly soulful voice, musically courageous, a trailblazer of unparalleled achievement. It diminishes her not one whit to point out that where Joni was an artisan, Laura was wild. Joni was analytical, Laura was spontaneous. Joni was in control of her material, her voice, her compositions. Laura was an unfettered inspiration in all. Joni dismounted walls brick by brick. Laura detonated them. It was she who inspired rock musicians, male and female, to heed no boundaries of tempo, genre, or superego. She was the natural snow, the unstudied sea, a cameo, born for the loom’s desire. She still ornaments the earth. For me.
Yes, I’m ready, so come on, Luckie
Well, there’s an avenue of Devil who believe in stone You can meet the captain at the dead-end zone What Devil doesn’t know is that Devil can’t stay Doesn’t know he’s seen his day
Oh, Luckie’s taking over and his clover shows
Devil can’t get out of hand
‘Cause Luckie’s taking over
And what Luckie says goes
Dig them potatoes
If you’ve never dug your girl before
Poor little Devil, he’s a backseat man
To Luckie forever more
Yes, I’m ready, so come on, Luckie
Luckie inside of me, inside of my mind, inside of my mind
Don’t go falling for Naughty
Don’t go falling for Naughty
He’s a dragon with his double bite
Sure can do his shortchanging out of sight
An artist of a sort but a little bit short of luck, this lucky night
Oh, Luckie’s taking over and his clover shows
Devil can’t get out of hand
‘Cause Luckie’s taking over
And what Luckie says goes
Dig them potatoes
If you’ve never dug your girl before
Poor little Naughty, he’s a backseat man
To Luckie forever, a backseat man
To Luckie, hey, hey, hey
It’s a real good day to go get Luckie, go get Luckie
Ásgeir Trausti (b. 1992) grew up in Laugarbakki, a hamlet of 40 residents (mostly retirees) in northwest Iceland. There weren’t any other kids, so he grew up playing guitar. By 12 he had formed a garage band in the nearby metropolis of Hvammstangi (pop. 580).
He’s now an ultra-cool, fully tattooed indie acoustic cum electronica singer/songwriter whose international career is taking off. But he spends every summer in Laugarbakki planting trees. “I like to go back home as often as possible,” he says. “I don’t like being in a series of big cities that I don’t know. There’s too much stress. I need the open air and the quiet.”
Ásgeir makes low-key, ghostly, introspective music with an expressive, tremelo falsetto. Think Justin Vernon of Bon Iver, think Jonsi of fellow Icelandic band Sigur Rós, think James Blake; think Antony Hegarty of Antony and the Johnsons. (I see s/he has changed hir name, and presumably some other identifying features, and is now called Anhoni.)
Ásgeir debut album has been bought by some 10% of the Icelandic public (that’s about 30,000 copies), and has charted around the world (#8 in Australia, #40 in the UK). It was nominated for Best Nordic Album of the Year. And there’s a lot of fine music coming out of Scandinavia.
For about a year now, I’ve found “In the Silence” (the English version) to be really fine music. The vocals are heart-rending. The songs are full of entrancing, mystical landscapes and trolls, buoyed by pop hooks that just don’t let go. And the production, the sound palette? Worth the price of admission.
His original career choice was the javelin, but when he hurt his back he started to spend more time on his hobby. He made a demo EP at home, and at 19 took it to a respected young musician/producer, Guðm. Kristinn Jónsson (aka Kiddi – unless I missed something in translation; it’s Icelandic, after all). The next day they started recording what would eventually become the album “Dýrð í dauðaþögn”. It was the first time Ásgeir was in a recording studio.
They didn’t set out to record an entire album. They were just re-recording songs from the demo. Ásgeir was fooling around, playing with new instruments and recording techniques. At one point, Kiddi brought in a dozen studio musicians. When he found out that Ásgeir plays all the instruments himself, he let them go.
So while Kiddi was mixing, Ásgeir would go into another room and write new songs. He’s not much into words. If you look at an interview (or acoustic performance) with him, you’ll see what an extreme introvert he is. Talking for him is akin to throwing a javelin for the rest of us (the Olympic ones are over 2.5 meters long). He likes quiet.
Son and Father
But his father is a respected poet and lyricist. So he has his father write his lyrics. “I like to have my father involved, like a family thing. I know that I won’t do as good a job. I trust him, and he’s really into it…I’ve always admired my father’s work, ever since I was a kid.”
Think about that. Do you know anyone who would talk about his father like that? Do you personally know any 21st century human being who would say “I’ve always admired my father’s work”? Can you imagine any budding rock star anywhere in the world who would prefer to spend his summers in a village of 40 old people, in the middle of a bleak and grey landscape, planting trees, rather than touring California with his band?
Ásgeir’s music reflects that kind of organic, peaceful, rooted mindset. While being totally young, cool, hip, relevant, au courant. Welcome to the internet, folks.
So Ásgeir came to Kiddi with these passionate, acoustic songs about Air and Home and Silence and Birds Singing. And together they produced a wonderful, engaging, beautiful album I’ve listened to many dozens of time. It was such a hit in Iceland that they rerecorded the vocals in English, the translation a collaboration of Ásgeir, his dad, Kiddi, and indie stalwart John Grant, who just happened to be living in Reykjavik and speaks Icelandic.
The musician and the producer generously provide a fascinating (for me at least) track by track commentary on how this wonderful sound picture was composed. It’s a riveting (for us music nerds) peek into the collaborative work of an incredibly talented young songwriter from ‘out there’ and a gifted, sophisticated producer.
‘Higher’ – Based on an electronic loop, doubled with a grand piano. “I lift my mind to the sky/and I let it take flight./The wind carries to my ears/precious sounds of life./Soon I break all ties which bind me to this earth…/Higher, higher/Far away/And the glare of this world/is small and humbled.”
‘In the Silence’, the title track. Like the entire album, it began acoustically, and they consciously set out to add electronics “to make it cool.” They used three different bass players till they found the groove they wanted.
‘Torrent’ is for me the most intriguing cut on the album, hence our Song of The Week. I literally lost sleep trying to figure out the time signature of the verse. Ásgeir: “It’s kind of 7/8, but also 4/4. It’s kind of…all over the place.” Listen to the song. He’s a whole lot more eloquent playing it than describing it. He calls it “a drum song”. To my mind, it’s a whole lot more than that. It’s a rhythmic trip. Kiddi says they recorded the drum track in a stairwell, using “4 or 5 drum kits, to achieve that ‘wall of sound’ effect.” Phil Spector’s legacy popping up in Reykjavik. Phil should be smiling from his California cell.
‘Going Home’ – It’s a true story. We all know that you can’t go home again after you’ve left. But apparently there are still places in the world where one never really leaves home. “Long is the path ahead,/and though my body tires/and I have far to go,/ I know I’m going home,/know I’m going home.” The lyrics may not carry much weight alone. But they’re not meant to – they’re there to serve the whole. And the whole carries tremendous emotional weight.
‘On That Day’ is in a similar vein. What reached out and grabbed me so strongly is the repeated hook at the end, “You don’t get to call the shots that way.” It was an ear-worm for weeks, warm and affective and welcome. Yeah, just that phrase. “It’s so true.” All over life. You don’t get to call the shots that way. Ouch.
Laugarbakki
‘In Harmony’ faithful to the acoustic demo, embellished with a stunning, grandiose production.
‘King and Cross’, the closest thing to a hit, with a video full of authentic Norse elves and trolls.
Ásgeir’s second album, “Afterglow”, is quite a different trip. He’s following very much the same path as Bon Iver and James Blake, experimenting in distortion, testing the boundaries of sound. But that’s a whole ‘nother story.
Check out “In the Silence”. Take a couple of hours. Or days. Or weeks. I’ve found that Laugarbakki music to be both pastoral and hip, genuinely organic and convincingly innovative.
James Taylor – ‘Yesterday’ (1970, live)
Or drinking a little too much scotch. Or reading Ecclesiastes. Or being short-tempered with those near and dear to you. Or listening to early James Taylor.
But it’s the neglected, overlooked first album that has been such an intimate friend to me all these years, the one I still go back to on days like I’ve been having this week. It’s there that young James first engages the world, and expresses all the bewilderment, the profound disappointment, the discouragement, about this world we live in. I’m no longer 20. But it’s weeks like this where 40 years of experience, inurement, calluses, cynicism, just don’t help. Weeks where the pain cuts right to the bone. James’ first album is the eloquent soundtrack for that pain. So you put on the headphones, and you put on the album. “Something’s wrong, that restless feeling keeps preying on your mind. Roadmaps in a well-cracked ceiling, the signs aren’t hard to find.” Or “It does you no good to pretend, you’ve made a hole much too big to mend. And it looks like you’ll lose again, my friend, so call on your rainy day man.” And you feel, if you’ll pardon the expression, that you’ve got a friend.
Listening to the Apple album today, as I have been for 40 years now, I find that the sound really has gotten a bit brittle. The strings aren’t bad, but don’t approach the profundity that the solo singer-songwriter-strummer displays. James’ resilient, warm, resonant baritone that two generations have been so drawn to, is not flattered in the Apple recording. It’s a bit thin, a bit reedy.
Way back in SoTW 018, I wrote about a little-known Paul song that I dearly love, ‘Distractions’. I maintained that it was an exceptional song in his oeuvre.
