Songwriter's Dreams

On Reimaginings, Meaning & Getting Nashville High

Ever since I started writing songs, I dreamed of other people singing them. Sometimes I even wrote them imagining them in someone else’s voice, like George Jones, or Etta James. Removing my own vocal limitations from the equation gave the songs permission to soar. I dedicated some years to trying to learn how to be a Nashville songwriter, practising writing songs to order, or for a particular singer to sing. I still feel like that would be the ultimate job for me. I would love to toil away every day in the factory of song! But only if I could do it my way, and unfortunately for me, that’s not how that world works. So really, I have been the only singer of my own songs for the most part.

This is why I was especially thrilled when Mick Harvey, who I was a fan of long before I met him, told me a while ago that he was going to record a version of ‘Nashville High’, a song I wrote together with my musical collaborators Jed Kurzel and Sam Worrad for our 2007 album Rock’n’Roll Tears, for his new album Five Ways To Say Goodbye, which was just released this Friday on Mute Records.

People often ask me what getting Nashville High means. I don’t really have an answer that can be put into words, it’s more a feeling that has to be sung that I’m trying to capture inside the words.

‘The higher the hair, the closer to God’ is a saying I’d heard attributed to Dolly Parton, who was obviously trying to get very close, and I also loved the notorious stories of George Jones riding his lawnmower to the nearest bar when he was determined to get crazy and the car keys had been hidden from him. So to me, it’s a kind of mental mashup of these images, with words about aching to throw off your bonds and get as loose and free as you possibly can be, into a magical, don’t care about anything except whatever it is you’re doing kind of place.

But for you, it might mean something entirely else, and that’s ok, because that’s the beauty of songs. They all hold their own meaning according to the listener, or to the performer. A new performer can unearth nuances and secrets that were not always evident in the original version of a song. Songs don’t ‘mean’ one particular thing, even if they were inspired by something in particular.

Dolly Parton & George Jones getting Nashville High

Alongside his own songs, including moving eulogies for the late great beloved Louis Tillet and Mick Geyer, Mick Harvey also puts his own definitive stamp on songs written by Neil Young, Lee Hazelwood, Ed Kuepper, Chris Bailey and David McComb.

“What I am doing is not, for the most part, a copy of the original. To my mind it’s more in the traditional of how songs used to be, where they would mutate and you’d end up with lots of different versions. One is really just passing the music on and sharing the songs further.”

Mick Harvey

As Brooklyn Vegan states ‘Long a master interpreter of other people’s work, Harvey makes it all his own’. It’s a stunning reimagining of the song, with lyrics gently tweaked and sung with 60s balladeer style and swagger, swoon-worthy string section action and the album title perfectly weaved into the crescendo-reaching outro. I am unable to wipe the smile from my face when I listen to it, and honestly feel very emotional and overwhelmed. It really is the ultimate songwriter’s dream.

It must be an extraordinary feeling to be a songwriter with a body of work that performers turn to when looking for a great song to cover; the Leonard Cohens, Tom Waits, Dolly Partons and Bob Dylans of the world.

Leonard Cohen has said “I’ve never gotten over the pleasure of somebody covering one of my songs… Somehow my critical faculties go into a state of suspended animation when I hear someone’s covered one of my tunes. I’m not there to judge it, just to say thank you.”

When Leonard first released the deadpan ‘Hallelujah’ on his album Various Positions in 1984, on a small European label, after it had been rejected by Columbus Records, it received little attention. Bob Dylan covered it in concert in 1988. In 1991 John Cale reimagined the tune for the movie Shrek, and in 1994 Jeff Buckley posthumously released his haunting version on his album Grace ( he interpreted it as as ‘a hallelujah to the orgasm… an ode to life and love’), which became a enduring classic hit in turn spawned a relentless barrage of overwrought cover versions. In 2016, after Leonard’s death, Leonard’s original version of the song hit the Billboard charts. The ‘meaning’ of the song, according to its writer “This world is full of conflicts and full of things that cannot be reconciled. But there are moments when we can reconcile and embrace the whole mess, and that's what I mean by 'Hallelujah’.” I find it interesting that if you Google ‘Hallelujah’ and ‘Jeff Buckley’ the first results that appear ask ‘who wrote Hallelujah originally?’.

Bob Dylan, quite possibly the world’s most covered artist, has shared some intriguing responses to various versions of his songs. Regarding Billy Joel’s interpretation of ‘Make You Feel My Love’ he said ‘he got something out of that song I would have never dreamed of myself. That’s what happens when you write a song, somebody can definitely interpret it a different way than the person who wrote it’.

Of Jimi Hendrix’s definitive take on ‘All Along the Watchtower’ Bob told The Florida Sun-Sentinel in a 1995 interview “It overwhelmed me, really. He had such talent, he could find things inside a song and vigorously develop them. He found things that other people wouldn’t think of finding in there. He probably improved upon it by the spaces he was using. I took license with the song from his version, actually, and continue to do it to this day.” He later contributed an essay to a 1988 Hendrix exhibition where he proclaimed “It’s not a wonder to me that he recorded my songs, but rather that he recorded so few of them because they were all his.”

In his 2015 MusiCares speech, Bob described crossing paths with Nina Simone in New York City in the Village Gate nightclub and said ‘She recorded some of my songs that she learned directly from me, sitting in a dressing room. …That she was recording my songs validated everything that I was about.”

As a sidenote, at this Royal Albert Hall performance in 1966, Bob gives a verbose, rambling explanation of the inspiration behind ‘Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues’ being about a wonderful, cosmic painter unknown to the universe, before turning it all on its head and summing up with “I’m just telling you this so you don’t think there’s anything you’re missing. I don’t want you to think that you’re out of it… I’m sick of having people say what does that mean? It just means nothing….It’s impossible to explain what this ‘means’…”.

He has said that Elvis releasing his song, the previously unrecorded ‘Tomorrow Is A Long Time’, was the highlight of his career, and the recording he treasures the most.

He has described writing ‘Shooting Star’ imagining Aaron Neville, one of his favourite singers, singing it. Neville later covered it.

In his book Chronicles (probably my favourite book) he said “Of all the versions of my recorded songs, the Johnny Rivers version of ‘Positively 4th Street’ was my favorite. It was obvious that we were from the same side of town, had been read the same citations, came from the same musical family and were cut from the same cloth. I liked his version better than mine. Most of the cover versions of my songs seem to take them out into left field somewhere, but Rivers’ version had the mandate down; the attitude and melodic sense to complete and surpass even the feeling that I had put into it… When I heard Johnny sing my song, it was obvious that life had the same external grip on him as it did me.”

Guns ‘n’ Roses didn’t fare so well with his reaction to their delivery of ‘Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door’, with Dylan telling Eduardo Bueno in a 1991 interview “Guns n’ Roses are OK. Slash is OK. But there’s something about their version of that song that reminds me of the movie Invasion Of The Body Snatchers. I always wonder who’s been transformed into some sort of a clone, and who’s stayed true to himself. And I never seem to have an answer.”

I’d love to hear him comment on Emma Swift’s utterly gorgeous album and brilliantly titled album of reworked Dylan covers, Blonde On The Tracks.

When the great songwriter Warren Zevon was close to death, he attended a Dylan concert, and went backstage to say hello before the show.

Dylan fixed a thoughtful gaze on Zevon. ''I hope you like what you hear,'' he said.

That night Dylan would sing three Zevon songs without introduction or comment: ''Mutineer,'' a love song that begins ''I was born to rock the boat''; ''Lawyers, Guns and Money''; and ''Accidentally Like a Martyr,'' in which, for a moment, he did an unerring impression of Zevon's voice. Zevon listened with concentration, soaking up the moment as his idol paid tribute to him. But fatigue set in; he had to slip out before the concert ended.

''There are levels past which things no longer connect,'' he told me afterward. ''There's nothing to relate them to; there's no way to really analyze them. To hear Dylan sing not just one song, but another. . . . It's a big thrill, but beyond the honor, it's just so strange, beyond even computing.'' (from this fantastic 2003 NYTimes article about Zevon by Jon Pareles).

There’s a rather beautiful series by Glamour Magazine on YouTube where famous artists watch and comment on fan covers, and then the fans respond, and damn, if you can not get choked up watching it you’re far stronger than I.

I could write endlessly about the interplay that occurs between different versions of the same song and the layers and subtleties that appear and disappear, but you’ve probably got other things to do with your day so I'll save it for later … actually it is Mother’s Day, so for those who celebrate, go do something nice for your mum! And if you want to do something nice for me, lets chat about covers in the comments!