10 Songs That Changed Me – Song 1

Song 1: Vincent by Don McLean

I was seven years old when this song came out in the UK, and in retrospect it seems to be a very unusual song for a young child to become obsessed with. So what was it about this track that made it the first song that just made me stop, listen and think, ‘Wow!’? First and foremost, it is the ethereal, otherworldly sound that McLean conjures up from that first note. All you can hear is that unique voice, with no embellishments and no intros. It is pure, arresting and instantly recognisable, and instantly drew me in. Once you get into the song itself, the lyrics are designed to weave a story, sometimes factual, sometimes fantastical that makes you want to learn more about the person he is singing about. What is the Starry Night? Who is Vincent? Why did people not listen to him? I seem to remember that the Starry Night painting was used in an episode of Top of the Pops, although I might be confusing that with another programme. Just as this song immediately captivated me, so did the painting itself, the artist and the whole impressionist movement. I fell in love with the fire and passion of the painting before I had the slightest idea what it was about. It was many, many years afterwards that I finally saw Van Gogh’s work in the excellent Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, which I highly recommend, but Starry Night was very conspicuous by its absence. It is still a painting I would love to see close up. My Nana, who also loved this song, did tell me a little about the artist, and I got more information from my grandparents’ set of encyclopaedias. One of my clearest memories of this song is sitting at my grandparents’ kitchen table in their small cottage listening to it on their radio. Like many childhood memories, it may be a combination of more than one event, or a misremembered event which became the real memory, but I know for sure that this was a song I shared with my Nana who loved all kinds of music.

So, how did this song change me, and what other songs did this lead me to? Well, it gave me a lifelong focus on the lyrics of a song as my way in to the music. My wife, by contrast is initially attracted by the music itself. I can, of course be captivated by music that is wholly or largely instrumental, and although I love ‘story songs’ I can find one word or phrase that gives me an entry into the song. However, ever since I heard Vincent at the age of seven, I have found myself listening to the lyrics first and foremost.

The next ‘story song’ I remember very clearly came along a couple of years later, in May 1974 when Alan Price reached the Top 10 with another track based on real life, ‘The Jarrow Song’. Yet again, the lyrics sent me off to the encyclopaedia to find out when the march was, and what it was about. For those who have not come across it, the song is a retelling of the Jarrow March of 1936 which took place in October of that year, and involved 200 men from the town of Jarrow in the North East of England marching from there to Westminster to raise awareness of the dreadful situation in their town after the main employer, the Jarrow Shipyard was closed down. The poverty in that town was grinding even by the standards of the 1930s and the march was designed to spread the message to other communities that the time had come to protest to the highest in the land. Despite being brought up in a staunchly Conservative household, and attending a private junior school at the time, it fanned the ember of a social conscience that eventually burst into flames in my 20s and 30s.

Just over 6 months later came the song that, to a very small extent, opened my eyes to poverty in the here and now. December 1974 saw Ralph McTell’s Streets of London rise quickly up the charts to Number 2. The verses painted portraits of people at their lowest ebb, but it did so with compassion and respect. It made me wonder in my own immature way what had caused those people to end up on the streets, and I remember being more aware of people living on the streets on the odd occasion I visited the capital. Sadly, the lyrics are just as relevant today, nearly five decades on.

You can draw a fairly straight line from the gentle but pointed lyrics in Streets of London to the more strident social commentary of the early 80s. That line, I think is all about discomfiting the listener and making them aware of their own prejudices and blind spots. I was not sure which of the socially aware songs to include, but there were two that really spoke to me at the time. First of all was Ghost Town by The Specials which has been a constant reminder of ongoing social decay and the way that the youth of the country almost invariably get the worst deal in any situation. It has been endlessly analysed, so suffice to say my interest in this track has grown over the years and it is one that speaks to each new generation. Second was Paul Weller’s second group, The Style Council with the outstanding Walls Come Tumbling Down. The track was urgent, visceral and fist pumping, and what a tune! The targets were timely and the barbs well aimed. It was a protest song that had more in common with late punk/early new wave than 70s social commentary, but frustration at the plight of people that had no access to the levers of power underpinned both. However, where McTell wanted to change minds, Weller wanted nothing less than to change regimes! I suppose that reflects different generations and different times, with the 70s being more about incremental improvements and the 80s being more about instant results.

My final song is by another 80s singer/songwriter famous for protest songs, but this is not one of those. It is the most beautiful and sympathetic love song I have ever heard, and one that always brings me to the point of tears with its beautiful chorus. As an aside, it only got to Number 37 in the UK charts, proving once and for all that the record buying public cannot be trusted! I bought it on our fourth anniversary in September 1994, but it has become more relevant to me and my wife as we have aged and reached the time that the fantastic Paul Heaton wrote about in this song. I said at the beginning of this post that I use lyrics as my way in to a song, and I instantly saw our relationship in the early years where we were young and wrapped up in each other. Then, this young man, barely any older than we were moved forward to the same couple decades later where the memories were brought into sharp focus by the awareness of mortality. This song speaks to me as perhaps no other does with 32 years of marriage behind us. If Vincent was a song about thwarted love, Prettiest Eyes is a song about lasting and deepening love and it really cannot be bettered as a portrait of lifelong affection. It is the perfect finish to this travel through the song writing loves of my past.