Today's The Day

I apologize for not being the most diligent blogger of late, but I’ve been extremely busy working on my book proposal for consideration in Continuum’s 33 1/3 series of books on significant rock albums of the past forty years. Note that I avoided using the term “classic,” using “significant” instead, although many of the albums written about so far in the series I would consider classic rock albums. Many of the albums that have been the basis of books in the series, while not necessarily considered “classic” by the rock establishment, have shown a continuous market value and a stubbornly persistent public presence, and albums that have shown such resilience have been favored by the series editors as well.

I am happy to announce that I’m now finished with the proposal—three weeks later than I’d intended, however—and that it has now been officially submitted to the editors. I happen to consider the album I chose to write a proposal for a classic—Neil Young’s TONIGHT’S THE NIGHT (1975). I noticed that neither Neil Young nor TONIGHT’S THE NIGHT was listed among the artists in the first hundred proposals received by series editor David Barker, although that isn’t the reason I chose to write a proposal on it; indeed, I’d already decided to write on the album some time ago, even before the latest call for proposals was announced in early November. Of course, just because Neil Young wasn’t among the musicians listed in the first hundred proposals doesn’t mean one hasn’t since been received on Young, nor does it mean in the weeks since the posting of that list that the editor hasn’t received a proposal (or two) on TONIGHT’S THE NIGHT (A proposal for a book on the album was not submitted during the last call for proposals since the editors were then enforcing the one artist/one album rule.) In fact, I would be surprised if he hasn’t.

Why did I choose to write on TONIGHT’S THE NIGHT? Not for the obvious reason that the album is acknowledged as a classic, but rather out of a desire to interrogate the very idea of what we mean by “classic” in the first place. While endorsed by the critical establishment—it is listed as #331 in Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, just above The Beatles’ HELP!—its total sales (this again according to Rolling Stone) are fewer than 500,000 in contrast to HARVEST’s 4.3 million copies sold. But the fact is, TONIGHT’S THE NIGHT speaks to me in a way that HARVEST does not, and as a sage old writer once remarked, you should write about what you know, so I chose to write about TONIGHT’S THE NIGHT.

What are my expectations? Hopeful . . . but realistic. As I mentioned in my earlier blog, odds for acceptance are about 1 in 25—not very good. But of course I assume I stand a chance or I wouldn’t have taken the time to submit a proposal. Please wish me luck! And if you’re that individual who submitted a book proposal on TONIGHT’S THE NIGHT and it is accepted rather than mine, then I can honestly say that I look forward to reading your book, because I'm very convinced the album merits such a focused discussion.

Orpheus And The Boys of Summer

Yesterday afternoon while running errands I happened to hear on the car radio Don Henley’s “The Boys of Summer,” a very compelling tune that I hadn’t heard in quite some time. Inevitably I began to think about its meaning. While the lyrics invite us to unpack the meaning of its repeated figure, “the boys of summer,” I’m convinced its underlying meaning resides (consciously or unconsciously, it makes no difference) in its invoking of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. First of all, here are the lyrics:

Nobody on the road, nobody on the beach
I feel it in the air, the summer’s out of reach
Empty lake, empty streets, the sun goes down alone
I’m drivin’ by your house though I know you’re not home

But I can see you, your brown skin shining in the sun
You got your hair combed back and your sunglasses on, baby
And I can tell you my love for you will still be strong
After the boys of summer have gone

I never will forget those nights
I wonder if it was a dream
Remember how you made me crazy?
Remember how I made you scream
Now I don’t understand what happened to our love
But babe, I’m gonna get you back
I’m gonna show you what I’m made of

I can see you, your brown skin shining in the sun
I see you walkin’ real slow and you’re smilin’ at everyone
I can tell you my love for you will still be strong
After the boys of summer have gone

Out on the road today I saw a Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac
A little voice inside my head said, “Don't look back. You can never look back”
I thought I knew what love was, what did I know
Those days are gone forever, I should just let them go

But I can see you, your brown skin shining in the sun
You got that top pulled down and radio on, baby
And I can tell you my love for you will still be strong
After the boys of summer have gone

I can see you, your brown skin shining in the sun
You got that hair slicked back and those Wayfarers on, baby
I can tell you my love for you will still be strong
After the boys of summer have gone

And here’s a version of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. For convenience I’ve taken the version of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth from the Encyclopedia of Greek Mythology (the full version can be found here):

Orpheus fell in love with a nymph named Eurydice and blissful was their life together until one day she was pursued by a son of Apollo, the minor deity Aristaeus. In her headlong eagerness to escape, she stepped on a poisonous snake, was bitten and died. Disconsolate, Orpheus found a cave which lead to Hades and followed Eurydice to the Underworld. Here his musical charms were so persuasive that the King of the Dead permitted the minstrel to take his sweetheart Home with him—on one condition.

This condition was so simple that it takes some explaining to account for Orpheus’s failure to heed it. Perhaps he could not bear to keep his eyes off their beloved object for a moment longer…. In any case, he did the one thing he had been forbidden. He turned around and looked at Eurydice, and she was lost to him forever.

The meaning of “The Boys of Summer” hinges, like the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, on seeing. “I can see you” is repeated five times; “I saw” is used once. And while the “I” insists on his vision (and vision incites his desire—his “love” for the object of desire), the “I”/eye fails both to control and grasp his desire—as in the Orpheus myth. He seeks it, possesses it, but ultimately loses it. Orpheus-like, the “I” vows “I’m gonna get you back,” but like Orpheus comes to the realization that he cannot “look back. You can never look back….Those days are gone forever,” a realization this is reiterated wherever he turns his gaze, for instance, “I saw a Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac.” Interpreted psychoanalytically, Jacques Lacan would say that the song enacts a “world of the Other” in which the subject (the “I”) has no place. The “I” is continually cast out from the very world constructed by his desire—the underlying meaning of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth:

Nobody on the road, nobody on the beach
I feel it in the air, the summer’s out of reach
Empty lake, empty streets, the sun goes down alone
I’m drivin’ by your house though I know you’re not home

A once vital and vibrant world is “empty,” drained of meaning. Interestingly, the “I” consistently remarks on the desired’s sunglasses (later referred to as “Wayfarers,” a brand of sunglasses). An inevitable association, it seems to me, is John Fred & His Playboy Band’s “Judy in Disguise (With Glasses)”—see my interpretation of the song here. In the context of “The Boys of Summer,” the meaning resides in the fact that he can’t see her eyes, only the (sun)glasses which cover them. He remembers her recurrent “look,” but not her actual reality.

And “the boys of summer”? His own lost youth, a figure for loss that becomes sentimentalized. Again, the “I” is alienated from his own desire: most certainly memories, strong memories, are constructed out of desire.

The award-winning video to the song can be found here and is worth watching.