Song of the Week: The Long Way Home
Money's just something you throw off the back of a train
“I just can’t get past the voice.”
I’ve heard it said. You’ve heard it. Maybe you’ve said it yourself. I know I have.
[My personal list of Voices I (Irrationally) Can’t Get Past includes some widely beloved names like Morrissey1, Future Islands2, Chrissie Hynde (Pretenders)3, John Mayer4, among others. But I’m not here to bash anyone; so let’s get on with the subject…]
A lot of the time, when someone can’t get past the voice, the obstacle is that the voice is rough5 (to say the least) around the edges or too nasal or a little pitchy or just under polished? I’ve heard “I just can’t get past the voice” the most about the following voices, all of which I unreservedly love:
TIER ONE
Bob Dylan
Tom Waits6
Leonard Cohen
Lucinda Williams
Randy Newman
Vic Chesnutt
Robert Smith (The Cure)
Neil Young
TIER TWO
Tom Petty7
Joni Mitchell8
Lyle Lovett
Iris Dement
David Byrne (Talking Heads)
Ron Sexsmith
Liz Phair
Peter Garrett (Midnight Oil)
Richard Thompson
Elvis Costello
Coincidentally, that list could practically double as a pretty good Best Songwriters of the 20th Century9 list. It’s a little like fate put a stumbling block there for us, just so you have to earn it if you wanna get to some of the greatest songs ever written.
There’s a history of objectively-great singers boosting the signal of objectively-great songwriters by covering their songs, thus removing the perceived “I just can’t get past the voice” barrier. To wit:
Judy Collins famously introduced the world to a then-unknown Leonard Cohen when she recorded his song “Suzanne”10 for her 1967 album Wildflowers.
Harry Nilsson recorded an entire album of Randy Newman songs, the most-streamed of which is, curiously, “The Beehive State.”
The Byrds and Peter, Paul, & Mary both took Bob Dylan songs to the top of the charts. The Byrds’s first album was TITLED Mr. Tambourine Man (four of the eleven songs were written by Dylan11). Peter, Paul, & Mary’s takes on “Blowin’ In The Wind” and “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” were their first big hits12.
Joe Cocker frequently put his spin on Beatles songs (not that they needed his help). “With A Little Help From My Friends” is the most famous, but “She Came In Through The Bathroom”13 is worth a listen too.
Tom Waits, one of the more polarizing voices around (I love it), has seen his songs get “softened: by Springsteen (“Jersey Girl”, of course), Rod Stewart (turning “Downtown Train” into a gargantuan hit), and The Eagles (smoothing out “Ol’ 55.”)
I think my favorite Tom Waits cover, though, is “The Long Way Home14” by Norah Jones. Granted, Jones has the type of voice people say “she could sing the phone book and I’d start crying.” And that’s not untrue. But it is a little unfair. It diminishes, first, Jones’s impeccable taste in songs to cover and, second, her supernal gift for interpreting15, in the vein of the Sarah Vaughns and Billie Holidays16 of the world. Jones is subtle, tasteful, doesn’t over-sing but still puts her unique stamp on everything she sings.
I’ll leave you with my favorite couplet in the song:
Got a head full of lightning
A hat full of rain
Sub out Morrissey for nearly any singer of any band from that era and I would listen to The Smiths all the time. As is, I’m content with an occasional listen to “How Soon Is Now?”
And I know I’m in the vast majority and Morrissey is a beloved voice to so many, both sonically and in his dry melodramatic witty lyrics.
I am one of two Gen X-ers that I’ve ever met who weren’t utterly enthralled by Future Islands’s performance on Letterman. Me and the other Gen X-er both went the other way and were actively turned off by said “legendary” performance.
Different folks, different strokes.
I know this one is my bad and I’ll repent of it someday. But for some reason I just don’t connect with Chrissie Hynde’s vocal (weird because I love Aimee Mann’s voice, who I think has some common sonority to her voice), though I love their song “Back on the Chain Gang” and like “Brass In Pocket” on the right day.
Unbelievable guitarist, though. And his voice has grown less grating over the years. Or I’ve grown less grumpy? (Doubtful.)
For me, sometimes it’s the opposite. They can get too slick (Michael Bolton, Celine Dion) or try-hard dramatic (Foreigner, Toto, Styx, Survivor, Meat Loaf, Michael MacDonald, Darius Rucker, Lewis Capaldi) for my tastes.
If you didn’t like his mumbly piano-guy early stuff, don’t even think about trying the stuff from about 1983’s Swordfishtrombones on.
There was a time in my life where I heard more than a few people joking about how the Petty/Dylan tandem “Everybody….needs somebody…to leeeeeeeean on” part of The Traveling Wilburys’s song “Handle With Care” was amazing because it was, quote, “the two worst singers in rock music singing a duet.”
A music-loving friend blew my mind a couple years ago when he revealed that he couldn’t stand the early Joni stuff where she frequently leapt up to a high soprano voice but preferred her later-era lower register voice. I’m not the opposite, but, man, when she makes the jump on the line “you know it SURE IS HARD TO LEAVE YA” on the song “Carey”, I get the chills every single leaping time.
Interesting that I’ve never heard anyone say it about Paul Simon, whose voice is less polarizing but not exactly a WOW! voice. A lot of character but maybe fewer of the “idiosyncratic” off-putting hallmarks—nasal, gruff, monotone, etc.
The album also featured Cohen’s songs Sisters of Mercy, Priests, and Hey That’s No Way To Say Goodbye.
Her next album, Who Knows Where The Times Goes included Cohen’s Story of Isaac and Bird on the Wire.
She was a huge advocate of Cohen’s, using her voice (physical and figurative) to amplify his artistry, to create an easy gateway to the rest of his music. She also recorded Joan of Arc, Famous Blue Raincoat, Take This Longing, Democracy, A Thousand Kisses Deep, Dress Rehearsal Rag, Night Comes On, Song of Bernadette….
What a gift to have a folk icon like Judy Collins as a believer in your corner.
The Byrds’s second album toned it down, with a more-reasonable ratio of 2 of the 11 songs being Dylan-penned.
By their fourth album, Younger Than Yesterday, they’d reduced it down to just one Dylan cover, (My Back Pages) which ended up being the band’s last Top 40 hit.
Four of their top 10 most-streamed songs were written by Bob.
Roger McGuinn & co. were clearly talented and have some great songs of their own. The relationship with Dylan’s songs was symbiotic; some Byrds versions—Mr. Tambourine Man, My Back Pages, You Ain’t Goin Nowhere—became the de facto standard version of the particular song.
Peter, Paul, & Mary were likewise advocates for up-and-comer John Denver, recording “Leaving on A Jet Plane” and “For Baby (For Bobbie).”
I have always loved this song. We tried covering it in high school. But it’s still surprising to me that there are covers by Cocker, Ike & Tina Turner, Ray Stevens, and…Los Lonely Boys?
written with his partner Kathleen Brennan
Some artists look at covers as a way to radically interpret a song.
“I’m gonna make ‘Hit Me, Baby, One More Time’ a haunting piano ballad!”
“Let’s do ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ as a breakneck-speed thrash punk song!”
And, in the process, more than a few of them discard the elements—melody, phrasing, harmonic sensibility—that make the song great in the first place. It’s a delicate dance, in my opinion, making a song your own while, first, recognizing and, second, preserving what is critical DNA. I don’t need to hear your version of “Yesterday” where you abandon the melody.
Norah does that really well, in my opinion. She has a respect for the song. With “Long Way Home” she actually is almost (ALMOST, I said) too faithful to Waits’s own arrangement. She nails it.
She’s underrated, I say, as a songwriter, yes, but for today’s purposes we’re talking as an inspired interpreter of great songs:
Strangers / The Kinks
Jesus Etc / Wilco
Cold Cold Heart / Hank Williams
Long Time Gone / Everly Brothers (the whole album is really, really fantastic)
Jolene / Dolly Parton
Christmas Don’t Be Late / THE CHIPMUNKS!
Black Hole Sun / Soundgarden (she keeps Chris’s Tin Pan Alley melody right there)
Don’t Be Denied / Neil Young
Unchained Melody / The Righteous Brothers
Angel Dream / Tom Petty
This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody) / Talking Heads
Blasphemy? Not in my book.