Its been a week of northerly travel up the Atlantic coast but the tunes keep coming. Enjoy!
On The Road Again – Willie Nelson (1980)
So after a week of being camped in one location it was time to pack up the van and, in the words of the legendary Willie Nelson, get on the road again. It was inevitable that this record made the playlist one week during the tour as every time we turn the van out of the gates of a campsite and head off for somewhere new, Lynn starts singing the words: “On the road again/Goin’ places that I’ve never been/Seein’ things that I may never see again/And I can’t wait to get on the road again”.
In 1980, Nelson got his first lead acting role in the movie Honeysuckle Rose playing an a country singer struggling to find national fame as he juggles his music career with his responsibilities to his wife and son. It wasn’t a great movie apparently but the story goes that the director asked Nelson to write a song for the movie when they were talking on a plane journey. Nelson grabbed a pen and scribbled his thoughts down on the only piece of paper he had to hand – an airline sick bag. The tune has all the Nelson hallmarks – shuffling train rhythm, some lovely picked guitar, a harmonica solo and even some handclaps on the last bridge. Nothing stellar but just what Willie does well.
It appeared on the movie soundtrack (which probably explains the dubbed audience response at the end) and was released as a single. It went to No 1 in the C&W chart but crossed over to the mainstream and made No 20 in the Billboard 100. It also picked up the Grammy for the Best Country Song the next year.
Johanna and Clara Soderberg from First Aid Kit know a good tune when they hear one and covered Nelson’s song in 2020 for a single. The proceeds from the sales were donated to Crew Nation in order to support roadies and other stage crews who were forced off the road and out of work due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Nice touch.
Waterfront – Simple Minds (1983)
If anyone is travelling on the west coast of France I would strongly recommend a stopover at Bordeaux, the self-styled world capital of wine. It’s a port city with a historic centre but with a modern edge to it. Although a major trade centre from its early days, things really took off when of Eléonore, Duchess of Aquitaine married Henry Plantagenêt, who succeeded to the English crown months after their wedding bringing the city under English control for 250 years. To noise the French up, trade taxes were abolished and Bordeaux began to export its wine to the world. The centre is full of beautiful buildings all focussed on the River Garonne which is tidal and navigable although the city is nearly 100km from the sea. The city fathers have managed to retain much of the cultural heritage while modernising the waterfront area – old city gates, grand facades, locks and quay walls sit cheek-by-jowl with tram tracks, lifting bridges and trendy medium-rise apartment blocks. I worked on many of the incomplete Edinburgh waterfront development plans in my time but Bordeaux has really delivered on theirs.
There was only one song pounding away in my head during my time in the city. I wrote about Simple Minds last summer when I playlisted Chelsea Girl from their debut LP Life in A Day which had a very different sound to what I described last year as the “stadium rock behemoth” they became. Waterfront was released as a single in November 1983 and it was the last Minds record I bought, having purchased nearly every LP and single all the way through their Euro-rock phase of Empires and Dance and then Sons and Fascination (plus Sister Feelings Call, of course) and then into the glory that was 1982’s New Gold Dream (81-82-83-84). By the time Sparkle In The Rain appeared in 1984, they had started to follow the U2 approach, becoming huge in everything – sound, gigs, sales, egos, everything. And, in my opinion, the music began to falter such that Waterfront was their last great record. Although four of the five original band members were still present (drummer Brian McGee left in 1981), Derek Forbes would leave within a year. He was still around to play the single repeated D that forms the entire bassline for Waterfront. Maybe he just got a bit bored?
Summer Wine – Nancy Sinatra & Lee Hazelwood (1967)
During our day in the city of Bordeaux, we visited their shiny new modernist temple to their raison d’être, the Cité du Vin museum. With a crazy facade designed to look like wine swirling around a glass, it is located at the historic Quai de Bacalan adjacent to another amazing modern structure, the Pont Jacques Chaban-Delmas, Europe’s longest span lifting bridge allowing cruise vessels to access the main port area of Bordeaux’s waterfront. The museum is one of those immersive experience types which uses every kind of digital technology. It is huge and amazing but all a bit overwhelming. We needed the ‘free’ rooftop glass of wine afterwards to recuperate.
The next day we continued to focus on the real thing and went on an organised wine-tasting trip to two vineyards in the Saint-Émilion area on the ‘rive gauche’ of the Garonne River. It is one of the principal red wine areas of Bordeaux and like the other appellations on the right bank, the primary grape varieties used are the Merlot and Cabernet Franc. On a searingly hot day we visted two small family-owned and run châteaux Cadet Bon and Clos des Abbesses and tasted, as the old Three Dog Night song said, some mighty fine wine.
Rather than playlist that track, I’m going to go for Summer Wine by Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazelwood released in 1967. Producer and writer Hazelwood had worked with Sinatra on her 1966 global hit These Boots Are Made For Walking and their collaboration continued with the single Summer Wine which was also written by Hazelwood. This one is sung as a duet and the horn-driven 60s pop of Boots is replaced with something a little more orchestrated and slightly off-kilter. Hazelwood’s cowboy baritone purrs his part in contrast to Sinatra’s crystal clear pop sheen in hers – truly her father’s daughter. It’s a dark psychedelic tale of a chance encounter which leads to excessive drinking and the consequences thereof: “When I woke up the sun was shining in my eyes/My silver spurs were gone, my head felt twice its size”
The twist in the tale is that despite this outcome, the victim is left with a craving for more of that summer wine. You have been warned!
Rockaway Beach – The Ramones (1977)
It was inevitable that beach songs might appear in these ‘carte postales’ at some point once we hit the Atlantic Coast. The week in Saint-Jean-de-Luz should have been one spent, as Neil Young might have had it, “on the beach” but weather, waves and beach conditions (not that sandy!) worked against us. Now we have moved north to the beautiful Île de Ré just off the coast at La Rochelle, the beach thinking has kicked back in big-style and, scratching the fine sand out of my ears even after a shower, I am reaching for the first beach song. Having grown up on the Fife coast of the Forth Estuary and traveled as a youngster to France and Spain in her family Vauxhall Victor, Lynn is a beach fanatic – she is never happier than having the sand between her toes and a swim in the sea. I’m less keen on the whole beach experience, probably due to my upbringing of traveling from Paisley to various east coast Scottish towns in our family Morris 1100 meant windbreaks, haar and sand in your sandwiches.
For the first of the beach songs this week, I’m going for a personal favourite of mine and one that might not be on everyone’s list for a beach party – but it should be! I’ve written of my love for The Ramones on several occasions and this might just be about my favourite tune of theirs – but that changes all the time. Rockaway Beach is the neighbourhood in Queens where Joey grew up but the track was written by Dee Dee as he spent a lot of his youth hanging out there having escaped life with an abusive father. He was looking to capture that nostalgiac surf-rock feel of carefree days in the sunshine of a hot New York summer with a great opening lyric: “Chewing out a rhythm on my bubble gum/The sun is out and I want some/It’s not hard, not far to reach/We can hitch a ride to Rockaway Beach”. Many will say its a stretch but when those harmonies come in on the chorus and the ‘ooohs’ on the bridge, I hear the Beach Boys! Released as a single from Rocket To Russia, their third LP in 18 months, the UK cover was graphic design genius – that must be Joey’s long, lanky leg in torn jeans and sneakers.
The studio version is only 2:06 long into which they squeeze four verses (two repeated), four choruses, a bridge and two instrumental breaks, the second with a great drop to Tommy’s snare beat. They played it even faster live and the crowd noise and intro on the recording of their performance at the 1977 New Year shows at the London Rainbow is one of my favourite pieces of audio – for some reason, it’s just so damn exciting.
He’s On The Beach – Kirsty MacColl (1985)
So when is an island not an island? The Île de Ré has been an island just off the west coast of France since the last ice age. It’s only 30km long and 5km wide and no higher than 20m above sea level at any point. With its small towns and beautiful beaches, it was a popular tourist destination although constrained by the ferry connection from the mainland. In a parallel to the Isle of Skye in Scotland, the island was connected to the mainland by a bridge back in the late 80s – arguably meaning it’s not an island anymore! With better weather than Skye, the Île de Ré has seen a huge growth in tourism and real estate prices have rocketed. However, very tight planning restrictions on what can be built have kept it looking ‘undeveloped’ and the beaches are stunning.
Lynn told me a story about her friend Linda who, like her, is keen on a dip in the sea. She and her partner David had crossed the bridge to the Île de Réin in their van, presumably like us balking at the exorbitant 16 euro toll – another difference with Skye where the exorbitant tolls were abolished soon after that bridge opened. David began the drive to their campsite but Linda insisted that they stop at the first beach they came to so that she could get out the van and into the water! Lynn was slightly more patient, allowing me to get parked up at our campsite before she headed for the beach for a swim in the sea.
The second beach song is another non-standard one this time by the wonderful and much-missed Kirsty MacColl who featured in WIS last year. She was one of my favourite singers and I was thrilled when her excellent cover of Billy Bragg’s A New England was a hit for her in early 1985. He’s On The Beach was the follow-up which got loads of airplay and critical support but just didn’t sell enough to chart. Co-written by MacColl and, like A New England, produced by her husband Steve Lillywhite, it has strong musical overtones of her previous hit but maybe lacks the lyrical bite. MacColl had written the song about a friend who had emigrated to Australia and sent her postcards. In interviews, she was unapologetic about it being simply a feel-good summer single with no hidden depths. The jangly guitars are wonderful, the chorus melody is great and the layers and layers of MacColl’s voice are like a towel being wrapped around you as you get out the sea.
Shining Light – Ash (2001)
Right – the last tune this week is not even tenuously related to anything we’ve done this week which I’m sure you’re all grateful for. This is another one of those tunes that has popped up on a playlist when we’ve been driving and made me think, you know what? I’ve never had an Ash song on the blog. I must sort that right way!
To old punk rock fans like me, who spent the 1990s getting married and having kids, Ash were an… erm… shining light in the darkness. The first single I heard was the buzz-saw blast of Kung Fu which was actually their fourth single. Full of Jackie Chan and Ramones references it jumped out the radio at me. The brilliant Girl From Mars came bundling out the speakers and into the lower reaches of the charts before sixth single Angel Interceptor appealed to the Captain Scarlet fan in all of us. Naming their 1996 debut LP 1977 made complete sense to me and it was an immediate purchase, sitting comfortably on my shelves near my Buzzcocks records.
The LP got to No1 in the UK chart and the band headlined one of the Glastonbury stages in 1997. But the commercial and critical success of 1977 gave the three-piece band from Northern Ireland a challenge to follow it up and 1998’s Nu-Clear Sounds was a bit hit and miss, to be honest. Sales were poor and the pressures of their rapid rise began to tell and money problems led to near bankruptcy at the turn of the millennium. Retreating to the garage of band leader Tim Wheeler’s house where they began, they wrote the music for what they thought would be their last record. The melodic Shining Light was released in January 2001 and went into the top ten in the UK, paving the way for the Free All Angels album and the hit singles Burn Baby Burn and Sometimes.
Shining Light is a tour de force and shows the band’s music maturing from those quick-fire early singles. It is built on layers of guitars which burst into the hook-filled chorus which boasts the lyric:“A constellation once seen/Over Royal David’s city/An epiphany, you burn so pretty/Yeah you are a Shining Light”. No Jackie Chan here!
Last Word
So the fourth week of doing this on the hoof saw me thinking I had plenty of time and writing loads of stuff then running out of time towards the end. Aiming for a more balanced approach (ie less words!!) next week as we head into the north west of France before swinging round to the east again for the journey home.
Picture of the week has to be this view of the amazing Cité du Vin museum in Bordeaux.
And yes, by the time you are reading this, I should have hopefully remembered to include these latest tracks on the WeekInSoundMaster. Fingers crossed!
AR
Week In Sound 
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