Folk Tales 3 - After the Gold Rush
By the early 70’s, the folk movement had broken in two. The Titans had relocated to California, most of them to Laurel Canyon in the hills above LA. Joni Mitchell lived with Graham Nash there for a time, with the scene inspiring Nash’s song “Our House”. Cass Elliott hosted parties which, like the participants, were legendary. Everyone who was anyone was there, and, Vanity Fair reports, none of them “remember it quite the same way.” Mitchell called her third album - the last one we might dare to call “folk” - Ladies of the Canyon. In 1971 she and Carol King recorded, concurrently, King’s Tapestry and Mitchell’s Blue, two of the greatest albums of all time. They sang backup for each other, and shared pianos, along with the considerable talents of James Taylor. Mitchell and the other folkies did not exactly live happily ever after, but the folk era was largely behind them, and the their wealth and celebrity status were assured.
Nick Drake
For the rest of the folk world, things were a little different. The fine people at Paste see 1972 as the turning point, and single out Nick Drake’s Pink Moon as the beginning of a new genre they call indie folk; their list of the 100 best indie folk albums is linked below. Pink Moon is the first entry.
The album is just 28 minutes of Drake and his guitar, with a little accompanying piano on the first track. It’s celestial.
While the tone is chill, even soothing, the music is complex. Guitarists who try to play along will have to reach for the capo and puzzle out Drake’s idiosyncratic tunings. The lyrics are spare, but they’re not simple. There are lively debates on message boards about what the title track is all about:
Saw it written and I saw it say
Pink moon is on its way
And none of you stand so tall
Pink moon gonna get ye all
Is it celebrating the pink moon, as in the Volkswagen ad that employed the tune many years later?
Or does the pink moon represent death, the fate that awaits us all? Some say that it is symbolic of the apocalypse in the Catholic tradition, and that the song is directed at priests who arrogantly forget that they will face the ultimate judgement. It’s also just possible that we’re overthinking this. I’ve been through this many times with Steely Dan, and find I tend to like their songs best when I don’t know exactly what they’re about.
In a now familiar story, despite its evident brilliance, the album sold only a few thousand copies. Two years later, Drake - who suffered from severe depression - died from an overdose of medication. Possibly intentional, possibly not. After his passing, his reputation gathered pace. He is now considered an icon, with dozens of successful artists citing him as a formative influence. In 2018 Radio 2 inducted him into its Folk Hall of Fame.
“But,” said the Devil, “is it folk?” It has been argued that Drake, with his middle class upbringing and Cambridge education, was not really a part of the British folk world. His work is different in any case: elevated, complex, perhaps closer to jazz or classical music than what we think of as the folk tradition. Producer Joe Boyd wrote:
There was that whole genre of complex, fingerpicked guitar playing in Britain, Davey Graham being the grandfather of all of them. You could hear that Nick’s playing was related to that, but it was so different. It didn’t really have a folksiness about it. It was much more urbane and sophisticated. The main thing that impressed me about Nick, was his perfection.”
Folk or not, it is with us still. I hesitate to comment further, but this little phrase, from “Things Behind the Sun”, could be recommended to anyone pursuing a creative life:
Open up the broken cup
Let goodly sin and sunshine in
Yes that’s today
And open wide the hymns you hide
You’ll find renown while people frown
At things that you say
But say what you’ll say
Vashti Bunyan met Drake once or twice, as Boyd sought to bring them together for some kind of collaboration. Perhaps Boyd saw them as kindred spirits, but they were both essentially solitary artists, and nothing came of it. “It is interesting to ponder on why this kind of music has at last found an audience and why it didn’t in the first place,” Bunyan told an interviewer in 2013. “I have no fixed ideas for why – especially Nick’s beautiful music…. Nick was a genius and I’m sure knew it – and that must have caused so much of his pain.”
Bill Morrissey
Paste’s staff struggles to find indy folk albums of the 1980s, so let me nominate one: North, by Bill Morrissey. I admit I discounted it at first. Morrissey was a limited vocalist, and at the time I missed the proficiency of his guitar accompaniment. But there was something in his tone and the nature of his observations that resonated with me, and I stuck with it. I know now that he and I crossed paths twice, at least geographically. He spent some time in Wasilla, Alaska, where I spent some time in my childhood. I returned the favor by living for a few years near Acton, Massachusetts, where he went to high school. I don’t know if it’s the place or the men, but we see a lot of things alike.
Once you start listening to North closely, its virtues gradually become more apparent. William Ruhlmann at Allmusic says “Morrissey's New England country accent and self-deprecating humor make it easy to miss the bite in many of his songs, which have a Hemingwayesque understatement both in their sly, sidelong observations and their matter-of-fact presentation.” His narrator is approachable, even affable, but the stories are about real life. He explains himself in the title track:
Papa's been gone six years now
He got to choose the how and when and where he'd die
I think about him after work sometimes
Once I've passed the halfway point on a fifth of rye
Papa told me once a man must work if he's going to take care of his
And you've got to work the big woods when that's the only work there is
His lyrics can be compassionate, humorous, even loving. But they are always unsparing, and written with the discipline of a first-rate modern poet. Many of Morrissey’s songs are dramatic monologues in which he neither glamorizes nor vilifies the speaker, as in this story of a kind of person he knew all too well:
Scott Alarik, who wrote about folk music for The Boston Globe for a generation, said that with Morrissey “there are no fairytale endings, no tidy tying-up of the loose ends that flog his characters so painfully and heedlessly. Redemption, if it is glimpsed at all, comes through quiet acceptance of life’s shortcomings and minor blessings.”
Most Morrissey songs start off quiet, and, somewhere along the way - if you’re paying attention - hit you in the gut. He’s too good to tip the punch, and in live performances mastered the art of light patter before dropping the hammer.
All of this makes for challenging and beautiful works of art, which was good for Morrissey’s critical reputation, less so for his commercial prospects. North is not Abbey Road, not meant to be, but he found a loyal audience that gave him enough to stay in the game. It was a rough go, though, as he struggled with a lifelong addiction to alcohol, passing in 2011 at the age of 59.
Drinking is a constant theme in Morrissey’s work. The first two sentences from his first album:
Here comes Parks and he's found another bottle
He tips it up like a trumpet, he takes a drink and passes it on
Many of his songs are about social distance and isolation, and as he got older he started to make the connection, as in the opening verses of 2001’s “Harry’s Last Call”:
"Harry called while you were out," she said
He asked, "Was he drunk?"
She said, "No, but he'd been drinking
I could tell”
"What'd he want this time?"
"He wants to talk to you," she said
"All I know is he's somewhere in Nebraska, holed up in some motel"
He handed her the groceries and opened up a beer
He slapped the cold off his sleeve and said, "I'm glad I wasn't here"
"But he's your best friend," she said
He took a drink and said, "He was"
She said, "He's calling back, you know"
And he told her, "He always does"…
But Morrissey was not dramatizing his own situation. He was describing a rural experience that really existed, and continues to exist. One aspect of distance and isolation is that it can intensify what’s inside you. Around the time I first heard Morrissey’s music, I was working in a bookstore. There was a beautiful girl there who didn’t say much. I mentioned to her that she seemed cool, even mellow. She looked at me for a moment, and then, a few minutes later, handed me a note. “Quiet ≠ Mellow” it said. Morrissey understood this.
I can’t leave without mentioning that he did a song - almost a novelty tune - that has long been one of my favorites. It is not an iron law, but some of the best tragedians (Euripides, Shakespeare) also had great comic instincts. So let it be with Morrissey. Let’s honor him by imagining him standing next to a pretty girl who doesn’t understand him, looking out at the Bay of Fundy:
The Bay of Fundy is in Canada. (Source)
Jennah Bell
As we take our leave of the folk tradition, I highly recommend the Paste list mentioned above and linked below. It should keep me busy for at least a year or two.
But I also thought I should search about for a newer artist to recommend, someone young and great, a fresh voice with a bright future. Not The Next Joni Mitchell, we’re not putting that on anyone. But someone worth a listen who seems to be going in an interesting direction. How hard could it be?
Not that hard it, turns out. Meet Jennah Bell of Oakland, California -
Her 2019 album Anchors & Elephants is here. You take it from here, Jennah, we’re listening.
An Oral History of Laurel Canyon, the 60s and 70s Music Mecca - Vanity Fair (link)
The 100 Best Indie Folk Albums of All Time - Paste (link)
Dark Star: Forty years after his death, the songs of Nick Drake—flush with melancholy and mystique—continue to inspire guitarists - Acoustic Guitar (link)
In Tribute to Songwriter Bill Morrissey - Performing Songwriter (link)
Songs of Bill Morrissey: The Complete Songbook (link)
Singer/Songwriter Jennah Bell Capitivates with Tasteful Confessions on “Love is My Disease” - popmatters (link)
jennahbell.com (link)