A Classics Rock! Exposé: Highway 61 Revisited Revisited

WHY ARE VETERAN ROCK STARS RETHINKING, REWRITING, 

OR RENOUNCING THEIR CLASSIC SONGS?

One night not long ago Elton John awoke in a cold sweat, shaken from slumber by an alarming revelation: his 1976 song Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word got it all wrong. In a moment of crystalline insight, Elton realized that the hardest word is, in fact, "pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis." He vowed to correct the lyrics and record a new version of Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis Seems to Be the Hardest Word later this year (for a free download, visit www. pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.com).

A few days later, Paul McCartney heard Live and Let Die on his car radio and was "stunned" by the lyrics. "All this time I thought it was 'Live and Let Live,'" said McCartney, who has been performing the song for the last 39 years. "'Live and let die' is not the kind of message I want to send to young people today," he told friends, who assured him that young people don't listen to his music. But he was dumbfounded when pressed about the Beatles song Happiness Is a Warm Gun. "You sure about that?" he said.

Meawhile, Paul Simon was at work updating his 1973 hit Kodachrome. "The advent of the digital camera has rendered it an anachronism," Simon said. "I'm changing the title to 'Mem'ry Card,' so now the fade-out goes:

Mama don't take my mem'ry card 

Mama don't take my mem'ry card 

Mama don't take my mem'ry card awa-a-a-ay 

"I'm still stuck for a rhyme for 'pixel,' though."

These incidents, seemingly unrelated, proved to be harbingers of an inexplicable and disturbing trend that has shaken the music industry to its core, as growing numbers of veteran rock stars rethink, rewrite, or renounce their classic songs.

Gene Simmons, lead singer of Kiss, was next. Simmons was studying his tongue in a mirror when it occurred to him that the band should stop performing their signature tune Rock and Roll All Night (and Party Every Day). "Such a schedule is unrealistic," he said. "It doesn't allow for sufficient sleep, an essential part of a healthy lifestyle. Nor does it leave time for other rewarding activities, such as reading, gardening, and spending time with friends."

Bob Dylan came forward to reveal that his classic album Highway 61 Revisited is a lie. "I've never even been on Highway 61. It's all been a sham," Dylan told Rolling Stone. The magazine, being inanimate, just lay there on the coffee table and didn't respond.

Considered individually, these incidents don't amount to much. When viewed as part of a larger pattern, it becomes clear that the cumulative effect is potentially devastating for rock and roll.

"This type of second-guessing is typical of artists in middle-age," said Dr. John, Counselor in Residence at the Mr. Mojo Risin Center for Getting Your Head on Straight, Man at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio. "It reflects an unconscious desire to remain relevant--to be what Freud called 'hep' and what Jung referred to as 'with it.' B.F. Skinner preferred 'fly,' but these are merely clinical terms for what you and I would call 'cool.' Underlying this desire, of course, is a repressed fear of mortality."

This last theory was borne out by a panel of aging rock stars who appeared on "Piers Morgan Tonight" to discuss why musical icons would disavow their own work.

•  • Blue Oyster Cult's Eric Bloom told Morgan why he no longer performs Don't Fear the Reaper: "I'm a lot older now. Man, I'm terrified." 
•  • Roger Daltrey expressed similar sentiments about the Who standard My Generation: "I never really wanted to die before I got old. Also, I don't stutter." 
•  • Bruce Springsteen admitted he had second thoughts about his iconic hit Born to Run: "I get winded pretty easily these days, so I’m reworking it as 'Born to Mall Walk.'" 

The program offered no easy answers, and concluded on an ominous note when Robert Plant explained his decision to retire Led Zepplin's The Song Remains the Same: "Obviously, it doesn't."

Girls in Their Summer Clothes/Bruce Springsteen

There's a lot of conjecture out there that Bruce Springsteen's Girls In Their Summer Clothes, from his 2007 album Magic, was inspired by Irwin Shaw's celebrated 1939 short story The Girls in Their Summer Dresses (found in the collection Short Stories: Five Decades).

We could find no statement from Mr. Springsteen to either confirm or dispel this rumor (even after an exhaustive 6-minute search), but we found an essay by critic Armond White that links the song and the story.

"The notion of the Great American Novel died the moment Hollywood was invented and though the idea was briefly resurrected in the mid-20th century, it died again with the birth of rock and roll," White wrote in the journal First of the Month. He argues that Springsteen's 2002 album The Rising was "an honorable attempt at a kind of novelistic national vision—a high cultural concept translated to a pop medium," but concludes that "Magic perfects the Great American Novel concept into an Album-of-the-Moment urgency." He continues:

Springsteen faces the same fundamental questions as the post-WWII American novelists. His sexual and social response is essential to the rich feeling of a song like "Girls in Their Summer Clothes" which was inspired by Depression-era writer Irwin Shaw's career-defining short story "The Girls in Their Summer Dresses," where an entwined dilemma of marital fidelity and urban stress concentrates attention on a lost faith.

We're not sure we agree with White that the Boss was inspired by Shaw. Springsteen's hopeful song about persevering through hard times to a better future (Things been a little tight/But I know they're gonna turn my way) has little in common thematically with Shaw's story, in which a couple strolling in New York confront deep fault-lines in their marriage as a result of the husband's wandering eye. But when White calls the song "my favorite track on the album," we're in complete agreement.

Shaw's story seems to have inspired some other musicians though:
• Brian Hobbs features an instrumental called Girls in Their Summer Dresses on his 2010 album Second Glances.
• Texas musician David Fahl's song The Girls in Their Summer Dresses appears on his 2008 album Life Is Good. "I wrote this at the request of my wife in honor of the Irwin Shaw short story of the same name," Fahl says.

Also notable is The Girls In Their Summer Dresses by The Airborne Toxic Event, which can be found on the deluxe edition of their eponymous album, released in 2008. The band's Mikel Jollett discussed the song with Radio Free Silver Lake:

"The Girls in Their Summer Dresses" is a story by Irwin Shaw. It's about a man and a woman walking down the street in New York city in the summer. The man keeps staring at these beautiful women as they walk by. The woman, who is his wife, is not happy about this. They fight. He reasons that he's been a good husband, supportive, faithful, etc... but just must stare at these woman. He can't help it. It's a very compelling argument he gives, but she simply can't accept it, won't accept it. The song is basically their argument -- his reasoning and her response to it.

I didn't actually read the story until I saw that Woody Allen movie Celebrity. There's a writer in that movie who says about the story that the title alone is better than most short stories. I thought so too. Such a compelling image the words inspire, kind of a nostalgia for innocence, youth: who are these girls? Why are they wearing dresses? Will I ever know such things again? Have I lost something? Am I dying?

The story's pretty good, too.

You can sample the song here. Jollett himself is at work on a novel and--in a touch that warms our Classics Rock! heart--the band's name comes from a section of Don DeLillo's 1985 novel White Noise.

The Ghost of Tom Joad/Bruce Springsteen

This song, from Bruce Springsteen's 1995 album of the same name, has a contemporary (mid-1990s) setting but depicts financial hardships that parallel those of the Great Depression as depicted in John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. Springsteen makes the connection between the two eras by alluding to Tom Joad, the main character of the novel. In particular, the later verses paraphrase a speech by Tom that appears near the end of the book (Now Tom said "Mom, wherever there's a cop beatin' a guy/Wherever a hungry newborn baby cries/Where there's a fight 'gainst the blood and hatred in the air/Look for me Mom I'll be there..."). Springsteen was also inspired by an earlier Woody Guthrie ballad, Tom Joad, as well as by the 1940 film version of The Grapes of Wrath, directed by John Ford and starring Henry Fonda as Tom. Bruce captures the character of Tom Joad in a five-minute song almost as well as Ford and Fonda did in a two-hour movie.

Submitted by Bob Davison