It's a great song, and one of the many things I like about it is that it slyly makes reference to its own chord progression -- "I'll take a melody and see what I can do about it / I'll take a simple C to G and feel brand new about it" -- a small testament to Toussaint's cleverness as a songwriter. My discographically sensitive brain is drawing a blank on other song lyrics that refer to their own chords [edit: got one! "Hallelujah" by Leonard Cohen], but it's not exactly a common songwriting device. Given that, it was always a tad disappointing to me that the chords aren't actually C or G: the verse and chorus are an A, D, E. Just now, however, I noticed that the Frankie Miller version has the line: "I'll take a simple D to E and feel brand new about it." Hmm. Given that Garcia was singing the lyric and playing the chords, you would think he'd have noticed. I wonder what was up with that? Maybe his poet's ear was pleased more by the consonance of "see what I can do ... simple C to G" than the clunkier sounding "simple D to E"?
The other slight lyric change that I'd never noticed before was that Garcia sings "I understand why the old fisherman sail along, sail along [etc] / someday he'll be gone," while Miller sings it, "someday you'll be gone." I'm not sure which one I like more, but both are appealingly opaque.
Hey there!
ReplyDeleteAnother thing about the "C to G" lyric: singing "D to E and" creates two problems for a singer. The double consonants ("D t") are tough to sing and articulate cleanly, especially since singers in this tradition aren't specifying "toooo" but rather use a "tuh" sound.
Those sounds blur the entire line and lead right into a diphthong ("E a") which is also hard to sing clearly. In contrast, the sharp "C" and tail end sound of the "G" come out clean and set up the flowing sounds of the second half of the line. Garcia was always concerned with the line's rhythm, and since he'd sung so much by this point, he had a sense (intuitive or conscious) that changing the text to reflect the harmony wouldn't work.
I prefer the "he'll be gone" version. That way, the entire couplet is about the fisherman (and associated imagery), while the other changes subjects mid-line in a way I hear as clunky.
I always thought it was "I understand why the old fishermen sail alone, sail alone, sail aloooone / someday he'll be gone" Seems more poetic that way.
ReplyDeleteIt has to be, "sail alone." (Notably, it is also the old fishermAn (not fishermEn). He sails alone, b/c then he has the freedom, one day, to just be gone.
ReplyDeleteReviving an old an beautiful thread here.... I love this song. I just found a live performance of it by none other than Allen Toussaint. He sang it as, "C to D," while playing a single note C and D. So it could be taking those and feeling brand new about them as a I-ii progression, C to Dm, one of the greats.... He also signs that the old fisherman "sails alone" and that "someday you'll be gone," but I hear it as a royal "you" rather than preaching at the listener, more that the narrator is musing about us all, including themself. But I get it that "C to G" sounds a bit better, as Garcia sings it, and "he'll be gone" keeps the image on the fisherman but can't help but getting a listener thinking about all of us. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZJNiaCKo8s
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