A few days back there was the birthday of Harry Nilsson (the
15th to be exact) and he’s one who should not be passed over. Nilsson was an
incredibly musical person with an amazing vocal range. I always admire anyone who has such gifts. Nilsson, admittedly, may have squandered his
a bit, but those were the times.
His career really got started with the two albums he
released on RCA in the Sixties: Pandemonium Shadow Show (1967) and Aerial
Ballet (1968)—Nilsson’s grandparents were actually circus performers so he
comes by that carnivalesque air legitimately. Today’s song is from the second
album. I first heard most of the Nilsson songs I know best on a Best of Harry
compilation I picked up used at Cutler’s not too long after first moving to New
Haven. I always associate it, and today’s song in particular, with that first
blast of solo time. And I've recently picked up the re-issued mono vinyl versions of both LPs.
“Good Old Desk”—Nilsson has pointed out that the initials
spell “god”—is a little ditty that commemorates what was certainly my strongest
relationship at the time and, it seems, Nilsson’s as well. His early employment
was as a computer geek for a bank, so I would imagine the song is meant to
acknowledge the peaceful serenity of getting to work at the desk. I know this
is often not the perception of working in offices. But. The song, in its very
vintage sound—like doo-wop crossed with vaudeville—takes a different tack. All
the world may be going to hell (this song was released in 1968, mind you), but
you can still get things done at your good old desk.
As to the “god” idea, that’s picked up best in the lines: “It’s
always there / It’s the one friend I’ve got / My good old desk.” Elsewhere it just seems to be praised for being
that one dependable thing in life: “My old desk never needs a rest / And I’ve
never once heard it cry.” What a trooper. “It’s always there to please me
between nine and five”—the bounds of the work day are the bounds of the
relationship. An office romance!
The song also has a few nice little surrealist touches.
First of all, I’ll insist, pace every lyrics page I’ve seen online, that the
first line is “My old desk / Does an arabesque / In the morning when I first
arrive.” Everyone seems to think it’s “doesn’t arabesque.” Admittedly, it’s
very hard to hear the difference between “doesn’t” and “does an” (when the
latter is slurred a bit), but that’s not even the point. The point is that the
song opens with the charming image of the desk doing a ballet dance move (check
out the name of the album) to greet its employer/master. It’s like a dog
wagging its tail, but it’s also a fun image of the desk assuming a ballet
position to begin the pas de deux that will be working at the desk. And, even
if that’s hard to visualize for you, it certainly is how it feels sometimes. If
you truly love your good old desk.
I’m very fond of mine and was never fonder of it than when I
first became acquainted with this song, and a number of other Nilsson tunes, in
1999. I already knew his Grammy winning “Without You” (one of the great pop
vocals of its day) and of course “Everybody’s Talkin’” (ditto). Also “Coconut”
and “Jump into the Fire”—I could’ve chosen either of those, from Nilsson
Schmilsson (1971), but wanted to get this early Nilsson on here because of its
charm and its personal associations. And because the Nilsson of the Seventies,
a buddy of John Lennon and Ringo Starr, was a bit dissolute, most notably during Lennon’s “lost weekend” binges during the separation from
Yoko. I remember all that making the rock rags in the day. Nilsson’s Shadow
Show album has two Beatles tributes, one a cover of “You Can’t Do That” with
other Beatles’ tunes/lines interlineated, and the other a cover of “She’s
Leaving Home”—his version of the song was released at the end of the year that
saw the release of Sgt. Pepper. Nilsson was quite in tune with The Beatles and
would’ve been a great collaborator for Lennon after the break-up with
McCartney, as Nilsson has many of McCartney’s qualities of a love for music
hall tunes and an unending knack for great harmonies. But Lennon and Nilsson
didn’t work that well together, and when they did it—on Pussy Cats (1974)—it was
mainly to cover others.
Anyway, this week is the week of the harmony and melody men.
McCartney’s birthday is tomorrow, and Brian Wilson’s and Ray Davies’ are soon
to follow. It’s a Sixties songster’s hat-trick!
Arrangement-wise, Nilsson is always worthwhile too. The strings on this
song have a wonderful “interpretive” feel, giving the whole thing a kind of
grandeur even though it’s kept very simple. And the other “surrealist” touch
(though the technique predates surrealism in the visual arts) is the conclusion: the
speaker, “when his heart’s on the floor,” just opens a drawer—“And what do I
see / But a picture of me / Working at my good old desk.” It’s a nice mise en
abyme touch that lets us savor the representations of work at the desk—the song
is one, the picture is another—and then there’s the one the two form in our
minds. That, my friends, is an arabesque.
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