I wanna tell you a story

I love songs that tell stories; granted they tend to be very linear, but I don't have a problem with that. A story told in three minutes, with a couple of verses and a chorus, is brevity writ large. Ron Sexsmith is a master of the art form. Michael and his Dad from Long Player Late Bloomer is the tale of a father and his son coming to terms with the death of their wife & mother whilst at the same time not having a pot to piss in. I often say this about truly great songwriters (and Sexsmith truly is), but if I could write a song half as good as - fill in the gaps - I would die a happy man.

Ron Sexsmith - Michael and his Dad (2011)

Another beautiful story is recanted here by Neil Sedaka on his early 70s Emergence album. A young boy yearns to fly (don't all young boys yearn to fly?) and then many years later, when tucking in his own kids at bedtime, remembers that feeling. Sedaka released it as a single but, alas, it was a flop. There's probably a metaphor in there somewhere.

Neil Sedaka - Superbird (1971)

This will be our last song together, words will only make us cry

This week two people very close to me called time on their relationship. And the fallout has, predictably, reached Medd Towers. My role in all of this – that of Agony Aunt (a role, by the way, for which I have no training whatsoever) – involved lots of listening and a few pastoral words to them both based on my own, not unimpeachable, track record. Unrprisingly, it soon became apparent that I wasn’t equipped with the tools needed for the job and to help get their relationship back on to the track from which it had, only recently, been derailed. It’s all very sad.

Not for the first time, pieces of music come into my mind and, like all pesky earworms, refuse to budge. As one who has observed this purely from the sidelines I can’t help but be moved by this 1973 song from Neil Sedaka.

They're gonna crucify me

In April 1973 John Lennon was fighting for his life: his American life. On 23 March he'd been served papers by the US Immigration Service giving him 60 days notice to leave the country. Or face deportation. His appeal was filed 3 April, but it would be another three years 'til Lennon got his Green Card.

His friend Neil Sedaka (pictured far right) wrote The Immigrant based on Lennon's lamentable
dealings with the authorities. 

It was a frenetic time for the Lennons: April was also the month John and Yoko moved out of their apartment in Greenwich Village to the Dakota Building in Manhattan's Upper West Side. And we all know what horrors unfolded there in December 1980.