July 22, 2002

Just a bit more on

Just a bit more on Steve Earle-gate   
    
Matt Welch has broken his vow of silence to deliver this persuasive defense of the "fat socialist hillbilly". (He also has this great post about Ari Fleischer and TV graphics reform-- is Matt "back?" Hope so...)

I have no idea what Earle's motivation was in writing "John Walker's Blues," though I could make an obvious guess or two, like anyone else. The talk-radio reaction is predictable, but writing a song about John Walker Lindh is perfectly legitimate. In fact, it's a great idea. I'm as pro-American as they come (notoriously so, in my circles-- "grossly patriotic" as one earnest young correspondent put it.) But I've had the idea of a sort of "ballad of John Walker" kicking around in my head ever since I first saw the guy on TV. If I hadn't been beaten to it by a more talented, more prominent, crazier dude, I probably would have gone through with it. Maybe I still will.

(I must pause now to drift into a reverie about what it would be like to be a famous, best-selling recording artist who could turn modest controversy into a means of support for himself and his family, instead of trying to scrape together enough pennies and nickels for another humiliating purchase of a 12-pack of Hamm's.... I know, but it relaxes me... Okay, I'm done...)

In fact, judging from the published lyrics of Earle's song, my song probably would have covered many of the same angles. You could, I suppose, read these lyrics as glorification of treason, but you could just as easily read them as emphasizing the vapidity of popular culture and the irrationality of political fervor and/or religious fervor, or pointing to the pathos of a true believer in an unjust and evil cause. There are all sorts of ways to see it. The point is, to write a good character-study or story-song, you have to approach it from the narrator's point of view. The more sincere and consistent you are about doing this, the better the song will be. If you step out of character during the writing or the performing, you've failed. If you include a line that says "hey folks, I hope you realize that a nice guy like me wouldn't really mean it," you've ruined the effect before you even record the vocal. Whatever you think of his politics (and I don't think much of 'em) Earle is really good at this songwriting racket. Would my as-yet-unwritten song, coming from a notoriously "gross" patriot like me, be vilified unheard by everyone who learned of it? I don't know the answer, though I believe every song I've written, even the most innocuous of them, has been vilified for some reason or another at some point by somebody. (That's the time-honored role of the rock and roll audience: dance, get autograph on album, vilify, ask for free stuff, excoriate, repeat...)

Anyway, this whole Steve Earle thing got me thinking about songs, the characters in them and the relationship of these characters to the songwriter or singer. A surprising number of extremely bright people seem to have a great deal of difficulty coming to terms with the idea that the singer of a song isn't always necessarily identical to the song's narrator. I'm not sure why this is, unless it's the fact that some character-study songs are so well-conceived and emotionally effective that the singer's identity is effectively dwarfed by that of the character for many listeners, even the smart ones. And an authentic, sincere performance of a good song often means that the singer has, for the duration of the song, really taken on the narrator's identity. After about three minutes are up, though, it's time to move on. The singer-songwriter steps into the shoes of a different character (though admittedly, for most of us the new character ends up being extremely similar to the previous one-- maybe that's partly a cause of the confusion.) Like I said, it's astonishing how often even the most sophisticated audience doesn't seem to be able to follow the transition. I guess they're confused by the use of the first person. And maybe some of them have had one too many at the bar as well.

Anyway, it sounds like a trivial, obvious point, but when you're a singer-songwriter it comes up all the time, often from those from whom you least expect it. They don't realize they're doing it, and they deny that they are doing it even as they continue to do it. I've done many an interview where the interviewer asks what I was "trying to say" with this or that song. My honest answer is usually along the lines of "I suppose what that guy (the character) thinks he's saying is..." To my surprise, this is treated as cop-out. "Come on, what do you really think?" Even people who write about music for a living and who have interviewed hundreds of writers can't seem to get it through their heads that what I think is at times only distantly related to what the narrator thinks: they're two separate questions. Sometimes I don't know what I think, even when the character has it all figured out. Sometimes I agree completely with the narrator, though I wouldn't put it in exactly the same terms; and even when I might put it in the same terms, the narrator's words may not accurately sum up all my thoughts on the subject. That's the way songwriting (or much of it at any rate) works. It's a joy when it's done well, even when you don't much care for the character, and even when you don't much care for the singer.

On the other hand, the relationship between singer-songwriter and character can be pretty complicated, the line between them hard to pin down. If you're making a serious attempt to tell a story from a character's point of view, you have to attempt to understand where he's coming from, to be able "try on" his outlook. That requires a degree of sympathy, by definition. Add to all of this the fact that many songwriters are themselves a little unstable to begin with, and you can get into some murky, and occasionally scary, territory. And it's true that some songs really are a direct expression of the singer's true sentiments (that is, sometimes the "I" in the song really is the singer-- though the process of casting your sentiments into a form that rhymes and has a good beat turns them into something other than the straightforward "diary entry" that some people seem to imagine they ought to be. )

So it's not entirely straightforward. Nevertheless, I still don't get why there is such a tendency to treat a song's lyrics as though they constitute official "position papers" on this or that issue. As Matt Welch says, a song isn't the same as an op-ed. But quite a number of people seem unable to tell the difference. Maybe it's just how it looks from where I sit, but novelists, playwrights, film directors, etc. aren't often held responsible for the actions of their characters: I guarantee you, though, that every guy who ever wrote a murder ballad has had at least one conversation where he had to explain that he wasn't actually a murderer. That attests to the power of the medium, I guess.

As for Earle, for all I know his song may indeed, as some have said, be an attempt to glorify treason and aid the cause of those who wish to destroy us. It's hard to tell much about it without hearing it. Fat, socialist hillbilly though he may be, I doubt it very much, but if so, I, along with most everyone, will disagree and perhaps also disapprove.

Still sounds like a hell of a song, though.

Posted by Dr. Frank at July 22, 2002 07:01 PM | TrackBack