Cigar Box Banjo (16 page)
Some songs possess the ability, almost unerringly, to make people weep. Certainly “Danny Boy” is such a song, and it has caused many, many alcoholic beverages to become diluted with salty tears. If a song’s purpose is to thrum people’s fundaments, “Danny Boy” succeeds. Some of this is Pavlovian, I suppose, in that people tend to start weeping as soon as they recognize the song, which happens with the first three words of the lyrics (or several moments afterward, in establishments like the Brunswick House). Also, there’s something exhilarating in hearing someone accomplish, or even vaguely attempt, the vocal vault (“For I’ll be THERE. . .”) that moistens the eyes. But at the heart of that song, of course, is the unadorned voicing of emotion. “Oh, Danny Boy, oh Danny Boy, I love you so.” My own opinion is that people are dying to give voice to that particular emotion, and they don’t mind addressing it to this guy “Dan,” who lives over in Scotland or something and isn’t even there in any tangible fashion. “Danny Boy” doesn’t provoke weeping so much as
allow
it.
“I Believe” was less overtly a tear-jerker, but that wasn’t Donny Sinclair’s fault. It is one of those songs that seems to have been written by committee: Ervin Drake, Irvin Graham, Jimmy Shirl, and Al Stillman. I’ve reconstructed its creation as follows. Irvin Graham was a lyricist and a television writer (he worked on
Your Show of Shows
), and one day his then-employer, singer Jane Froman, suggested that what the general population needed was some cheering up. (This is in the early fifties, and Ms. Froman was concerned about the U.S. involvement in Korea, so soon after World War II.) I’m supposing the others were friends of Graham’s. I don’t know anything about Jimmy Shirl, but Ervin Drake had been established since he was a kid (he wrote “Those Were the Days”), and Al Stillman was a newspaperman and a staff writer at Radio City Music Hall. Jane Froman first recorded “I Believe,” although Frankie Laine had the biggest hit with it. Other covers included renditions by the Righteous Brothers, the Young Rascals, Mahalia Jackson, and Elvis Presley.
I think Donny Sinclair was most influenced by the King. Not that he did any pelvic thrusting, but he sang with his voice deep in his throat, with a kind of humble sincerity, which is how Elvis addressed each of the many gospel songs he recorded. Toward the end of “I Believe,” Donny would motion somewhat irritably in the direction of the organist, as if silencing a full string and woodwind section. In the resulting hush, he would press the microphone to his lips and pronounce: “You know, ladies and gentleman, every so often I make the mistake of feeling sorry for myself. I think that everyone else is out having a good time, and I’m not. But you know what? They’re not all having a good time. There’s a lot of lonely people out there! That’s why
Every time I hear a newborn baby cry
. . .”
At the end of the song, I would weep and applaud very loudly.
Over time, my applause convinced Donny Sinclair— “The Little Man with the Big Voice”—that I, and by association Martin, held profound religious beliefs. He had heard us singing harmony, sitting at our table and bellowing with inebriated dedication, and one night he invited us up onstage to sing the glorious spiritual “Amazing Grace.” There was only one microphone, which Donny wielded, so Marty and I crouched beside him as he waved the thing in the air, trying to effect a compromise among the various mouth levels.
I don’t actually hold profound religious beliefs, as you may have deduced. I wasn’t applauding “I Believe” because of its religious overtones. After all, it’s not especially Christian to cheer oneself up, as Donny urged in his little speech, by thinking about all the unfortunates who are worse off. (It’s very human, of course; I do it all the time.) I applauded the song precisely because it was
non
-religious, at least non-biblical, non-churchgoing. This fact likely has its roots in the committee who wrote it. Not only were some members Jewish, but a committee will naturally have a problem giving precise voice to spiritual matters, because everyone has a slightly different idea of what might go on in what the song refers to as “the great somewhere.”
What I liked about the song was that it makes miraculous the mundane. It may have been mathematical precision that Donny and the committee were stressing, each drop of rain accounting for a single bud. Martin and I tried out that idea in the chorus to a song we wrote called “A Mansion of the Wind”:
God ain’t dead, he’s not to blame.
But He has to spend all his time making snowflakes not the same.
But really, I’ve never needed to imagine His Great Hand behind the scenes to appreciate that the growth of a flower is a remarkable thing. And if there is a God overseeing all these snowflakes and flowers, He must be way too busy to worry about us.
1
I don’t think I would be so glib today. After all, if we disregard the huge and nebulous thing called “love”—hey, there’s a song title!—there are probably more songs written about Christmas than about anything else. An enduring Christmas song is the Holy Grail for songwriters. For example, aside from all his other talents and accomplishments, Mel Tormé’s most lucrative artistic achievement was no doubt co-writing “The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire).” It is akin to winning the lottery, writing a popular Yuletide ditty, and subject to the same whimsical winds of fate. Take the music teacher, Don Gardner, who noticed that his charges, seven- and eight-year-old children, could not say certain words without issuing little whistling sounds. He went home and wrote “All I Want for Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth.”
2
I had a paper route for many years as a boy, which required a weekly collection of monies. One of my customers was Lloyd Percival, the great hockey genius. Great hockey genius, perhaps, but too often not at home. Even when he was home, Per-cival usually claimed to have no cash, that such matters were the purview of his wife, although there was never any evidence of such a creature. Anyway, one afternoon I found the universe in perfect harmony. Lloyd was at home, his wallet was stuffed, he agreed to pay up. Thus I believe was my guitar acquired.
3
He was called “Izzy” from birth, and by the time he got around to wondering what his real name was, his parents had forgotten. He thenceforth assumed it was Isadore—it was, in fact, Israel—but he settled the issue by going with Ira.
4
I will ignore—it’s outside the scope of my little book—the miracle of George’s excursions into the realm of “serious” music with his creation of such marvels as
Rhapsody in Blue
, still a staple in the concert hall.
5
Here’s something not many people know: on the original recording of “On Broadway,” performed by the Drifters in 1963, the guitar that can be heard squalling away in echo-land is played by Phil Spector. I’ve another little suchlike tidbit. Leiber & Stoller were also responsible for Peggy Lee’s hit “Is That All There Is?” The tune’s orchestration was unlike anything heard on radio at the time. It is large, capricious, emotive, as though written to accompany a movie filmed in Technicolor. The parts were scored and conducted by a very young Randy Newman.
6
Including “Who Put the Bomp.” Apparently Mann can be a little bristly, feeling that he has never gotten the credit he’s due, and from time to time bemoans the fact that he never had a big hit under his own name. Except he did: “Who Put the Bomp?”
7
I currently live on Toronto’s island archipelago; at least, I spend much of the summer there, living on a houseboat.
M
ARTY AND I decided we’d make a demo tape.
That’s how things worked in the olden days. One would go into a small studio and record three or four songs as a demonstration (demo=demonstration) to the big record companies of how brilliant those songs were, how they would (with the proper production and arrangement) become big, boffo number-one hits! Nowadays, the practice is little seen, being as digital technology has driven the little recording studios out of business and is currently taking aim at the big ones. Simply put, anyone now has the capability to make a professional-sounding recording. Indeed, fairly advanced software is on many people’s computers without their even knowing it. This machine I’m currently pounding on, for example, comes out of the shop with Garage Band, a reasonably sophisticated program, already installed. But back then we were dealing with magnetic tape, and sounds had to be scratched upon that tape in some fashion only a few wizards understood. Quar-rington/ Worthy got a couple of friends to back us up (the bass was played by our old friend Stephen Tulk), and we went into a recording studio.
Mike Burke located the studio. You recall Mickle Burkle from pages previous, I trust, the bearded, sweat-shirted computer nerd who these days owns a record company and lives in a house so large and fabulous I don’t think he’d notice if I moved in. (That, in a nutshell, used to be my retirement plan. But I don’t need a retirement plan no more.) Burkie didn’t have a lot of money back then, when we were all in our twenties, but he had a real job, a good one, and accordingly had a lot more money than the rest of us. He was searching for some attachment to the arts, and seeing as Martin and I were both old friends of his (he and Marty have known each other since the age of six), he decided to become our angel. We didn’t use that terminology, of course. We may even have referred to Burkle as our “manager,” although we needed little management— it’s not hard to book free gigs, and Marty and I drank so much beer that we were eagerly welcomed by club owners at open mics—and would not brook the little management that was attempted. Mickle was our patron, really, owing to his having, as I say, more money than we had.
Oh, he also had a car, which is significant, as the studio he located was in Ancaster, Ontario, just the other side (from Toronto) of Hamilton. It was very affordable, this studio, because it was new and small. Two brothers had built it in the basement of their mother’s home. We drove out there one day and were greeted by the elder brother, who shook our hands solemnly as he introduced himself. “Hello, I’m Bob Lanois,” he said, dipping his head in a gracious manner. “Welcome to our studio.” He turned and spread his hands expansively, indicating the grandeur of the enterprise.
It really was not all that grand. There was a little enclosed studio—the actual recording floor—and there was the control console, a machine for running two-track magnetic tape and a four-track mixing board. Busily sticking patch cords into the appropriate bays was another young man. “That’s my brother Danny,” said Bob. Brother Danny glanced up and produced a small grunt by way of acknowledging our presence before re-busying himself.
We recorded four songs that day: “Winter Weather Bound,” “Mary Cargill,” “Welcome,” and “Poor Man’s Art Gallery.” But you don’t really care, do you? You’re wondering if I was just talking about Dan Lanois,
the
Dan Lanois, he of international fame, hobnobber with the great and fabled. Sure. Bob’s brother Danny.
Yes, it’s true, we did know Dan Lanois early in his career. Actually, we were somewhat influential in shaping that career. After Martin and I made our first four-song demo, we continued to record at Bob and Danny’s mother’s place. Whenever we had a new group of songs, we’d head out there. We recommended the place to other musicians. My brother Tony went to their studio to record some of his novelty tunes. Soon many, many artists from around southern Ontario were recording there, and the Lanois brothers needed to find a bigger space. They located the ideal place in downtown Hamilton, on Grant Avenue, and then were faced with a cash flow problem, needing to come up with a fair chunk of change quickly. Bob and Danny approached Mike Burke and offered to sell him a lot of time in the new space—X number of hours—for a greatly reduced rate, the caveat being that he had to pay for those hours up front. Well, Mike knows a deal when he sees one, and it was in this manner that the Quarrington/Worthy album, and my brother’s album,
Top 10 Written All Over It
, came to be recorded at the now world-famous Grant Avenue Studio.
All of this predates Brian Eno’s somewhat glassy-eyed entrance onto the scene. Eno went to Grant Avenue Studio to record some of his ambient music. From what I understand, Dan wasn’t all that taken with the music to begin with, but he found himself increasingly attracted to the atmospheric effects, Eno’s emphasis on sound rather than pitch and/or metre. And Eno was impressed with young Danny, so much so that he invited him to join him, as co-producer, on the U2 album
The Unforgettable Fire
. Bono was impressed with young Danny, so much so that he recommended him to Bob Dylan.
All this was a little surprising, I guess. For one thing, whenever anyone achieves world fame, it’s surprising. Talent only buys you a ticket in the lottery, after all. We knew Danny was talented. Not only could he patch cords into the appropriate bays (which is nowhere near as simple as it may sound), he proved himself to be an astoundingly good musician. Dan played guitar on our album, along with pedal steel, that complicated Rube Goldberg machine that informs the most classic and traditional country and western. He was skilled in the studio, tasteful in the sounds he created, thoughtful in his arrangements. But this approach—always putting the music first, never thinking to imprint a distinctive Lanois stamp on it for its own sake—didn’t exactly presage a dramatic ascension to the high vault of musical fame. Mind you, he was given to what we perceived as eccentricities. For instance, in those days, faders had to be ridden.
I’ll try to explain without sounding pedantic or saying something completely bone-headed and wrong. On the mixing board, each track (as in twenty-four track, sixty-four track, etcetera) has various knobs and buttons and levers, but the volume is controlled by sliding a piece of plastic up and down along a straight line. That’s a fader. During the final mixes, these faders came into play, as you’d expect. When the guitar solo came, the fader on the guitar track had to be shoved up slightly. A wonky background vocal note might have to be slipped into the background, and thus the appropriate fader would be slid closer to the bottom of the board. These days, this stuff is pre-programmed, and the computer in charge of the final mixes knows all the tasks that it must execute: at 2:03:11, track four must be dipped, like that. But when we first recorded, faders had to be manipulated manually. That was usually the job of the producer, or maybe the producer in conjunction with a trusted engineer, but Danny liked to have everyone in the booth lay a finger on some fader or another. He might assign specific tasks—at 2:03, when the singer goes “Woohoo!” track four must be dipped—but he encouraged everyone to get into the music, to feel the rises and falls and work the faders accordingly. These were probably among Lanois’s first experiments in inspiriting the recording studio with some of the energy that informs live performance.