Today is the birthday of the late (as of 2007) Lee Hazlewood.
Fitting, as this evening I’ll be attending a musical theater piece that will
feature his song “These Boots Are Made For Walking,” which was a hit for Nancy
Sinatra and which I talked about on her birthday. For Lee’s birthday, I’ve selected one of the
three great duets he did with Nancy, but couldn’t make up my mind which one: “Some
Velvet Morning”; the best known, or “Sand,” or “Summer Wine.”
Hazlewood has been called a “psychedelic cowboy,” and I
guess that fits as well as anything. In “Summer Wine,” his silver spurs
jingle-jangle, and he finds himself in some kind of “la belle dame sans merci”
situation, which is probably why I like it so much. It tells a story of
seduction by “summer wine” and the woman gives it to him and leaves him craving
it. Nancy’s vocal is yearning and lyrical, and she even giggles at one point.
“Some Velvet Morning” is more mysterious. Lee keeps intoning
that “some velvet morning when I’m straight” he may open up the gate (of some
woman) and tell her about Phaedra, “and how she gave me life / And how she made
it end.” He’s a bit like the Ancient Mariner, perhaps, looking for an occasion
to divulge the nature of that adventure. Nancy’s part is trippy in an eerie way.
She sounds like she could be an extraterrestrial, or maybe just the most
disaffected of flower children, dwelling in some distant aerie: “Flowers are the
things we know / Secrets are the things we grow / Learn from us, very much /
Look at us but do not touch / Phaedra is my name.” The two parts remain
distinct, with Nancy’s part, like it is in “Summer Wine,” the terms of the
seduction, though this time the voice of the past is still present,
unshakeable. In the video, from a Nancy Sinatra TV special, Lee rides a horse on the beach at Big Sur, while Nancy disports in some caves nearby.
“Sand” I find the most amusing, and not to be missed for Lee’s
spoken line: “She called me . . . Sand.” In this one, the man is the more
enigmatic figure, a “wandering man,” a “stranger in your land.” He requests: “young
woman, share your fire with me / My heart is cold, my soul is free.” She
protests that her fire will not warm him. Then dreams that her fire is high, and
offers, “taste these lips, sir, if you can.” Then comes the trippy guitar break—played
backwards. Now her fire really is high; “and if it should stop, sir, I would
die.” Then Lee lets us know that “Young woman shared her fire with me / Now
warms herself with memory.” Lee loves her and leaves her, and she is left to
remember. Nancy’s lines are very courtly with “thee” and “thy” used for
distancing effect. Such medieval trappings were all the rage in those trippy
Sixties.
The great thing about all three tracks is that Hazlewood
combines a psychedelic sensibility with an arrangement (by the one and only Billy Strange) that
seems like it should be standard for any romantic chanteuse (the opening strings of “Velvet Morning” sounds like it could be a song by Nancy's old man, Frank), and then gives the whole a kind of Sergio Leone "spaghetti Western" atmosphere. It’s a unique approach—particularly
I like the way the drums boom with a “march of fate” feel.
Hazlewood’s voice is deep, very masculine, but also a bit laconic, not given to much feeling or variation. He seems able to create, in these duets, a backdrop for the contrast between his manly intoning and her girlish delivery—slightly torchy in “Summer Wine,” virginal in “Sand,” some fractured muse in “Some Velvet Morning.” There’s maybe a touch of Leonard Cohen in Hazlewood’s air of courtly, tragic, haunted love that all three songs dally with, though Hazlewood, in other songs, often indulges a corniness, a tongue-in-cheek jibing.
Hazlewood’s voice is deep, very masculine, but also a bit laconic, not given to much feeling or variation. He seems able to create, in these duets, a backdrop for the contrast between his manly intoning and her girlish delivery—slightly torchy in “Summer Wine,” virginal in “Sand,” some fractured muse in “Some Velvet Morning.” There’s maybe a touch of Leonard Cohen in Hazlewood’s air of courtly, tragic, haunted love that all three songs dally with, though Hazlewood, in other songs, often indulges a corniness, a tongue-in-cheek jibing.
And maybe that’s why I don’t fully trust any of the three as
actual “statements.” “Summer Wine” is the most satisfying, as a story, “Sand” I
see as the most personal—if only because the choice of the name “Sand” evokes
the feeling of the fleeting and the innumerable, the common as dirt. Sand on
the shore, sand in the hourglass. “Some Velvet Morning” is the most
accomplished and haunting. Having heard it, you aren’t likely to forget it, and
it’s particularly memorable because this vision of the flower children suggests—in
Nancy’s detached vocal—a certain psychosis. The notion of having to be “straight”
to tell the story of Phaedra implies that the speaker hasn’t yet managed to
face it in that condition. And the lines “and how she gave me life / And how
she made it end” puts all the agency on this mysterious figure, a mother and a
destroyer—obviously not of life itself, but of a certain kind of life, the life
in love.
I suppose it’s the ongoing state of being haunted by what
you can look at but not touch that makes me choose “Some Velvet Morning,”
finally as the song of the day.
Dragonflies and daffodils.
[Later note: happy to say I picked up a used copy of Nancy and Lee at The Electric Fetus in Duluth, MN, 7/18/14]
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