Sunday, July 28, 2013

Fresh Listen: "Child of Nature" vs. "Jealous Guy"

When I first listend to the 1968 demo that would become the supreme self-assessment via song ("Jealous Guy," from John Lennon's 1971 album Imagine), I could hardly believe how fully formed the composition was.

Orginally intended for the double album The Beatles (better known as The White Album), "Child of Nature," the basic chord structure and melody of "Jealous Guy," is classic Lennon in the vein of "Strawberry Fields Forever," where in one couplet he can evoke breathless wonder while self-consciously minimizing what it might mean to him. When he sings "On the road to Rishikesh / I was dreaming, more or less," I hear the same kind of interior subversion that exists in lines like "I think er no, I mean er yes, but it's all wrong / that is I think I disagree" (from "Strawberry Fields Forever") or "If you talk about destruction / don't you know that you can count me out--in" (from Revolution 1). Aside from the first line, the rest of "Child of Nature" is more straightforward, in awe of the idyllic surroundings fusing to his spirit, undoubtedly inspired by his his studying of Transcendental Meditation in India with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. But when casually recording the song with his bandmates, Lennon can't help but deflate his deep musings with silly vocal phrasing, another means to mask a sincere yearning for meaning with a joke.

In the end, Lennon chose not to include "Child of Nature" as a track on the overstuffed White Album. One reason: Paul McCartney had a jauntier tune with the same sentiment ("Mother Nature's Son") which, despite an unremarkable middle section with a fair amount of "doo-doo-doo's," had a captivatingly strummed guitar and a simpler, more elemental set of lyrics. "Sit beside a mountain stream / see her waters rise" comes across as more honest to an experience than the more mystical "Underneath the mountain ranges / where the wind that never changes / touched the windows of my soul" (an outstanding lyric for, say, Buffalo Springfield, but only middling for the Beatles).  Another reason for the song's exclusion from the album could be the weak chorus of "Child of Nature:" "I'm just a child of nature / I don't need much to set me free / I'm just a child of nature / I'm one of nature's children." Something tells me Lennon couldn't imagine himself singing those words beyond the mountain ranges that may have inspired them.

The primary reason, I think, is that between the period when he began writing for the White Album and when the Beatles began recording, Lennon matured as a songwriter. Eventually, he grew to disfavor this "mystical" kind of songwriting altogether, growing closer to a more basic mode of expression that could express a sometimes painful truth, but without all the sarcasm and self-mockery. Disavowing the made up scenarios of "No Reply" and "I Don't Want to Spoil the Party," Lennon would go on to write, quite affectingly, about the difficulty of maintaining a romantic relationship as the most famous person in the world in "Isolation." Rather than continue to run on the In His Own Write-style wordplay for which he was independently famous (an "elementary penguin singing Hare Krishna" kind of thing), he began to grasp straight for the throat: "One thing you can't hide / is when you're crippled inside." He stopped singing "I once had a girl / or should I say / she once had me" and sang instead "In the middle of the night I call your name." If we think of "Child of Nature" as a culmination of Lennon's early and mid-period songwriting, "Jealous Guy"--what ultimately came of "Child of Nature's" underheard demo--is a farewell to that old way of expression.

Despite addressing one of the most negative characteristics of human nature, "Jealous Guy" is exceedingly beautiful. The tender, almost tentative piano in the beginning (offset by ambient, slowly building strings) is a never-overdoing it, never-underdoing it Nicky Hopkins, earning his day's pay with one of the most distinctive keyboard parts in modern song (added to a list that includes "She's a Rainbow," Sympathy for the Devil" and that brief middle bit in "Revolution"). But in most cases, Lennon qualifies his airy pieces, infusing them with an earthy quality that made him an ideal foil for Paul McCartney. Just as "I'm Only Sleeping" was saved from blissful somnambulance by George Harrison's backward guitar, "Jealous Guy" is firmly grounded by the simple, elegantly stated rhythm section of Alan White and Klaus Voormann. Not only do they keep the time, they also set an even-keeled groove over which the violins and keyboard arpeggios can soar.

And then there is John Lennon's voice. While many admire Lennon for his pop songs with Paul McCartney and the Beatles (and maybe a handful of songs after 1970), and many admire him for his outsized public personality, his sense of humor, and especially his outspokenness as it concerned politics and human rights, and many admire him they same way they admire Che Guevara and Marilyn Monroe, as an icon who symbolizes a romance for which their lives have no context, I have always admired John Lennon for his singing voice, first and foremost, his way of implying four or five different things in one line ("I read the news today, oh boy"). I consider it an instrument with qualities similar to John Fogerty's lead guitar--not exactly virtuosic, but stripped of all affect, naked, calibrated perfectly in tone and progressively intense. Even in fluff like "Eight Days a Week" Lennon could imbue with a kind of vocal gravitas--listen to how, through the verses, his singing grows manic, almost orgasmic.

On "Jealous Guy" Lennon sings it straight, for which he is most appreciated. Though the song is confessional, there is no unnecessary drama. Yet, you can hear in his voice the struggle of a man attempting to come to grips with a very destructive side of his personality. "I didn't want to hurt you," he sings again and again, each time hopefully coming closer to a painful wisdom that will allow him to grow.

If you've ever watched the Eighties documentary Imagine: John Lennon, or have seen a video of the song performed as part of the Imagine sessions, you've seen Lennon retreating into comedian mode as soon as he finishes the song, going off on some weird riff into the microphone. It's a startling insight into the man's philosophy, which seems to say: "you can only go so deep, and then you just got to laugh at shit." On "Jealous Guy," Lennon goes as deep as possible, coming closer to a universal truth than "Child of Nature" ever could.

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