© 2015
"There are very few ways to get to know someone that are as deep and meaningful as listening to the music they would choose for their own funeral." (the quote is mine)
It's no great secret that I'm not that crazy about my name. My parents tell me that I was very nearly named Douglas, which I often think I would have been much happier with, but at the last minute they went with Duane, and for a reason that turned out to be incredibly prescient; they found the name in a name book which indicated that it meant "song."
It would be impossible to overstate the importance of music in my life. People who know me know that I have one of the most diverse and eclectic tastes in music possible. I cook to music (on Saturday mornings, family and assorted sleepover guests are usually treated to my "Big Band" playlist (heavy doses of Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller et al) while I cook ... evening meals are more likely to be cooked to Blues (John Lee Hooker) or Classical (Mozart) playlists). I somewhat famously write software to music (as you'll read below my Jeff Lynne playlist works wonders for solving database design issues). I listen to it when I walk, when I drive, when I work out, when I write, when I read, when I sit, etc. etc. The fact is that you can't have a significant conversation about my life as a whole without talking about music, so it makes sense that when my life is over, if you want to remember me, you'll need music.
I have been to many memorial services where the music that person loved was a key element. It's a great idea, and I can't imagine a memorial service for me that didn't have music, but I often wonder at those services if that person would have actually chosen *that* specific piece. And so partly to relieve my family members (who will someday have to arrange for my memorial) of the responsibility, and partly to make sure they get it right, several years ago I pre-prepared the playlist for my memorial service. It's something of a living document, but surprisingly, it hasn't changed that much since I started it.
But the music itself doesn't tell the whole story does it? Just as interesting as the songs we choose are the reasons WHY we choose them; those stories say things about us that are at least as important as the songs themselves. So this week I'm going to share the songs AND the reasons I have selected them ... and in those songs and stories, you will know me a bit better.
(note: many of the below notes are written by me in the past tense because I want these notes used at my service as well ... so nobody panic, I have nearly a dozen more blog essays already in progress and maybe a hundred more in my head ... fear not friends, I have no plans to go anywhere for a while ... but if I do, this is what I will want you to know about the music that helped define me).
Duane's Requiem Playlist
1. All You Need Is Love (The Beatles)
If push came to shove, I suppose my (reluctant) favorite Beatles song is actually Lady Madonna (it's an upbeat, bouncy, "Paul" song with piano, what's not to love) but my Requiem playlist leads off with All You Need Is Love because at the heart of this song is the heart of The Beatles' primary message to mankind, and as almost everyone knows, their music meant so much to me and it gave me, and millions and millions of people, a lot of love.
Incidentally, while I maintain that the "best" Beatles album is Sgt. Peppers, the fact is that my "favorite" Beatles album (and I put quotes around these words because let's face it, choosing bests and favorites with The Beatles is *really* hard) is Abbey Road, and the reason why has to do with the message of this song. When they came together (no pun intended ... oh who am I kidding?) to make Abbey Road, The Beatles had just finished a highly contentious studio session (the remnants of which would later be cobbled together as the "Let It Be" album) and there was a lot of frustration, exhaustion, acrimony, aggravation etc. amongst them ... and yet, in the midst of that, they found a way to set all of that mental and emotional baggage aside one last time, to forget all of the negative stuff around them for a few moments and remember and reflect the purity and beauty of what they were doing and why, and the results show through in every moment of Abbey Road.
Finally, I chose All You Need Is Love because no Beatles song carries more completely or accurately the message I most want to leave the world.
2. Jet (Paul McCartney & Wings)
This was, without question, the first song I ever *loved* ... and I mean LOVED. Even at ages 7-8, I would crank the song up every time it came on the radio and I sang it at the *top* of my lungs. This was the song which got me to find my parents tape recorder and stick it by the radio speaker and record it so I could play it over and over. It was the first record I played until it warped. It would be hard to overstate the impact this song had on me. For the rest of my life, every time I would hear it, I would stop and listen and appreciate it, and the little boy in me would scream out the lyrics.
The album it appears on, Band On The Run, is, (in my opinion) without question, McCartney's post Beatles high point, which might be a little depressing to Mr. McCartney since it came only 3 years after the breakup. This is not to say that he didn't write, sing and produce some amazing stuff both before and after this album, only that, taken as a whole piece of work, this was a *special* moment where the stars aligned and he produced something that transcended even his incredible talent. I love the 25th Anniversary double CD version of the album (which finally brought "Helen Wheels" to American listeners ... a song whose "play on words" title is proof of the enduring impact that John and Paul had on each other) as well as lots of bonus content about the creation of the album (there are stories about the famous cover photo and a VERY interesting interview with Dustin Hoffman who was at the party where McCartney apparently wrote Picasso's Last Words).
3. Let It Run (Jeff Lynne)
Beyond The Beatles (both together and individually) there is no question that no musician had as significant an impact on my life as Jeff Lynne. This song is almost an interlude in his career in that it kind of stands alone in time (and in style ... it's kind of an unabashed, out there by itself, upbeat, fun, hard rocking festival of a song). He actually wrote it for a movie soundtrack (the movie was the underrated and under-appreciated "Electric Dreams" which incidentally starred fellow New Trier grad (and Oscar winner) Virginia Madsen). I can't really explain why it's so important to me, but everything about Lynne's style (which I flat out love) appeals to me, and this is about as frolicking and free as he gets (or as he makes me feel).
4. Mr. Blue Sky (Electric Light Orchestra)
Picking my favorite ELO song is only one step beneath the absurdity of picking a favorite Beatles song for me, but again, if push comes to shove, the fact is that Mr. Blue Sky is it. Seldom does Lynne reach an optimistic, upbeat, cheerful, bouncy high quite like this one. I also love the narrative of the song (and how he gets both happy and sad about the end of the day and the end of the song ... and there's a fitting message there regarding the end of my life. “Mr. Blue you did it right, but soon comes Mr. Night, creeping over, now his hand is on your shoulder, never mind, I'll remember you this way.” And then the song blends into a mind numbingly beautiful transition of heavy orchestration (again, part of Lynne's signature style and part of the incredible, elegant beauty of his music). Lynne's ability to blend the modern, the electric and the classical makes him completely unique in my life and in music, and my life was permanently changed by the influence he and his music had on me.
I also need to note that, later in life, when I began my career in software, I would regularly listen to Jeff's music while programming. In my first book (a User's Manual for my first software program), I credited Jeff Lynne for keeping me alive, happy and sane while I wrote the software. Whether his music actually helped me to be a better programmer or not is not something we'll ever be able to prove empirically, but this I do know for a fact; for the rest of my life, when I needed to get real work done, especially work that involved writing software, there was no playlist and no artist's music that was more effective at getting my brain focused, effective and productive than my "Jeff Lynne" playlist. It's possible that the fact that I programmed to his music so often when I was in my 20s created some kind of pavlovian like response, but for what it's worth, I think there was something about his music that literally stimulated that part of my brain in a way that made it easier for me to solve programming problems. And in any case, again, it would be impossible to overstate the effect that this man and his music had on my life.
5. Passion (The Flirts)
Yeah, I can't explain this one ... sometimes a song comes along in your life and lodges itself in the core of your soul and you can't really explain why because you don't really know or understand it yourself, but you can't deny it either ... that's where this song is to me. This was one of many "WNTH" based discoveries (a song I found or that found me because of my working at WNTH radio as a teenager) ... but this one is, without question, the one that stuck the hardest, went the deepest, and has stayed the longest. Unlike most songs in my life, it's not the lyrics or the message, it's purely the music. And the short 3 or 4 minute version we usually played on the air doesn't do nearly as much for me either. I called this the "Uberlong version" (I have no idea what the real title is), but it's the NINE minute version. Despite it's repetitive and simple nature (which never fails to grab hold of me), the beat, the effects and the sound flow through me and into some very odd place inside me that I can neither identify nor explain. You can't explain *everything* about yourself (God knows I try, but not this time).
6. I Gotta Feeling (Black Eyed Peas)
This is a "late edition" to the playlist of my life, and depending on how long I live, it may not make the "final cut", but it's here for now, and mostly because it again has a big sound and a really upbeat message ... and in that thought is probably the first time I'm starting to realize a recurring theme here. These songs so far are very upbeat and meant to convey a very specific message; I very much enjoyed my life overall, I'm glad I was here, and these songs convey the sense of joy I often had about life and want people to remember about me. Interestingly, this song is the end of that opening statement and from here the next few songs say something different and more profound.
7. Imagine (John Lennon)
It’s hard to think of another song in my life that had a deeper, more emotional effect on me than Imagine. I had heard this song many times before the night of December 8, 1980, but I don't know that I had actually *really* heard it before. It wasn't until he was gone that it really penetrated my soul and I immediately felt a sense of *profound* sadness and loss. When I listen to John's music, it often makes me sad (and I've even been known to shed a tear) because it's hard for me not to think about all the songs he didn't get the chance to write and share. When he was killed he had just been through a terribly difficult time in his life, and yet he emerged from it, happier in every way, and ready to make music again. And we were all there, ready to go with him to wherever his talents would take us, and just like that, he was gone.
Later in life I would finally find the sheet music to Imagine. I learned to play the song, start to finish, in an hour. That's the first and last time in my life that anything like that has ever happened to me (those who have seen me play the piano know that, while I can read sheet music, I read it *slowly*, and I learn to play by repetition and memorization ... so to pick up a song completely, that fast, even if it is a relatively simple song to learn how to play (as several of his piano ballads are), was still meaningful to me). It is without question the most meaningful song he ever wrote, and, in its way, is a hopeful song about a better world, and I like that.
I never met John Lennon, but I miss him in away that hurts, that brings tears to my eyes literally every time I think about it. My youngest daughter, Jordan Lauren (JL) Burghard, shares Lennon's birthday, October 9th. I've never seen that as an accident or random coincidence, but rather more like his winking at me and smiling.
8. The Way It Is (Bruce Hornsby)
I don’t think my politics are much of a surprise to anyone who knows me, and most people also know that I played the piano, so the fact that I am kind of a sucker for a really great piano piece shouldn’t be that surprising. Add to that knowledge the fact that, like me, Bruce Hornsby was raised as a Christian Scientist, is someone I admire AND was privileged in life to meet THREE times (all when I was on active duty in the Norfolk area; once in church, once in a piano store at a mall in Virginia Beach and once at the Boathouse when performing with Huey Lewis (see #14 below)) and my placing this anthem of his on my Requiem list hopefully becomes understandable. I love the song because it features Hornsby’s beautiful music while delivering a powerful message about the importance of railing against injustice. I share his anger in knowing that it’s so hard to fight against the “that’s just the way it is” attitude, but what I really LOVE about the song is his immediate, insistent, emotional, defiant rebuke of that attitude when he quickly responds with “don’t you believe it.” The song reminds me to NEVER give up the fight for what is good and right. NEVER.
9. Goodbye Stranger (Supertramp)
I was blessed in my life by having the privilege of having a number of "perfect moments" (if you've not had one, I can't describe it). I have a very powerful memory, and always have, but within that skill, there are some, well, basically "super memories," moments so powerful that if I simply close my eyes and concentrate, I can recreate the sights, sounds, tastes, smells and feelings of a moment so realistically that it's as close to reliving a moment as I can imagine. This song is inextricably linked with one of the strongest and most powerful of these super memories in my life.
It was the fall of 1979. For a brief time in my first fall at New Trier (Freshman year) I worked out with the varsity swim team in the mornings. This didn't last, not because I wasn't talented enough as a swimmer (despite my lack of faith in my own athletic abilities, I was actually good enough), but because I was more interested in Performing Arts than I was in swimming, and as I was getting up at 5am to be at school and in the pool by 5:45am, then attending school all day, then immediately going to rehearsals that were frequently lasting until after 8pm in the evening, it wasn't long before my grades began to suffer and obviously *something* had to give, and it was swimming because I could see myself as a professional actor someday (in fact that was what I wanted to be at the time) but I couldn't see myself as a professional swimmer ... it's odd how economically pragmatic I was as a child and young man). But before that, on a Friday morning, I heard this song. Friday mornings were special at swim practice. If the coaches thought we had all done a good job that morning, they would allow the seniors to play music through the natatorium's sound system during our last 800 yards of swimming. And this particular morning, someone whose name I never knew and whose face I never saw, chose this album and this song and *blasted* it through the pool as we swam. To complete the surreal effect, most of the lights in the pool area were turned off, and the lights in the pool turned on. The sensory effect was *powerful*, and for the rest of my life, *every* time I hear this song, I can simply close my eyes and suddenly I'm swimming up and back, up and back, in the New Trier pool to the incredible sound of this song.
10. I Will (The Beatles)
These next two songs are for my children. I think I chose this song for Taylor even before she was born, but when she was very small I used to sing her to sleep every night, and this was her favorite "nigh nigh" song. I thought it delivered an important message that I wanted her to hear every day from me (“I’ll love you forever, and forever, love you with all my heart, love you whenever we're together, love you when we're apart” ... I found that message calming and reassuring and I hoped that her hearing it over and over would allow her to grow up feeling safer and more secure as a person). I chose a Beatles song for each of them, and knew Jordan's song would be "Good Night" long before she was born as well (one song by Paul, one by John, both from the White album). The next song isn't "Good Night" though.
11. Till Kingdom Come (Coldplay)
I chose this song instead of the song I most often sang to Jordan because this song actually sang to me *about* Jordan, or at least part of it seemed to perfectly encapsulate my feelings for her. I've always felt like Jordan would always be the child who, as an adult, would live closer to me and be more part of my life in my late years (if I ever had them). This isn't a slight on Taylor in any way, but where Mara and Jordan have similar personalities, Taylor and I do as well, and the fact is that, given the chance to go out into the world, it’s always been my impression that Taylor would do it without hesitation, even if she knew in the back of her mind that it meant not coming home (or not coming home as often) … and because we would both know that was her way, her path, she and I would be OK with that.
But not Jordan. And the message of this song is that, for Jordan I would wait forever, until my life ended, until the world stopped and the sun ran out of energy. There's a dedication to her that I feel as our youngest child that no non-parent will ever have the ability to comprehend ... and all I require to wait until Kingdom Come is the knowledge that she’d be there with me at the end ... and there was never a day in my life that I doubted that for a second.
12. Soon As I Get Paid (Keb Mo)
I don't know when I discovered the blues, and by that I mean when it, as a musical style, really penetrated my inner being and tickled my music bone in a really deep way, but I'm going to say it was somewhere around 2000. This song is associated with a super memory. The Palmer House Hilton in downtown Chicago was the site for an Ingram SMB Conference somewhere around 2007. At the conference was a gentleman named Ryan Morris, a Harvard Grad from a company called IPED (a *very* insightful man and one of my favorite speakers ... in fact, subsequent to hearing him speak at this conference I would actually travel to conferences just to hear his data driven presentations on the channel, the trends that were affecting it and where he saw it going). This was the first time I'd heard him, and I couldn't type or write fast enough, couldn't believe how valuable everything he was saying was to me and my business (frankly this just isn't that true of a lot of content at these conferences, so when you hit the motherload like this, it's exciting). Also, the Palmer House is an incredible venue for a conference ... an incredibly stately location with ballrooms (including the one we were in that morning) with gigantic, vaulted, intricate ceilings that were stories above our heads. It had an old world elegance that you can't fake. Anyway, as I was catching up (still typing furiously a couple of minutes after his speech had ended), I became increasingly aware of the "bumper" music being played by the conference staff between Ryan's presentation and the next one ... and it included what had to be the coolest blues riff I'd ever heard in my life. I was so taken by the song that I walked to the back of the room and asked the guys what I was listening to. I think it was the third time they said "Keb Mo" that I finally understood (it was such an odd name), but I knew I had to get the song immediately. I enjoy a lot of blues music, most especially John Lee Hooker ... but the fact is that, hands down, this is my favorite blues song EVER.
13. Come Sail Away (Styx)
Anyone who knew me from age 12 to age 18 knew this song was coming ... and there's some argument to be made that the only reason it's here is in tribute to this part of my life. But I shouldn't and don't mean to be dismissive of it. There's no question that I was a BIG fan of the music of Styx as a teenager, and even though I had already discovered them as a band before this song and The Grand Illusion album came out, it was this song which cemented their place in my life. As with many other pieces on this list, there's something happy, positive and upbeat about it that I can't and frankly don't want to shake. I have a sense of flying when I listen to it, soaring.
14. Naturally (Huey Lewis & The News)
The National Anthem of the United States is, frankly, a very difficult song to sing well (and I'm hardly unique in noting this fact), but every now and then someone does it so well that it people stop and can't help tearing up listening to it. Perhaps the most famous example of this would be Whitney Houston's rendition at the Superbowl in 1991, but for me the best ever was Huey Lewis and The News at the 1984 Baseball All-Star Game (the audio on the YouTube versions do NOT do it justice). Huey Lewis and his band of friends still travel and play today just for fun, and that perhaps is one of the best reasons to love them so much, another is that they're good, they're very VERY good. Listening to them perform the National Anthem in 6 part harmony was amazing. It was such an amazing sound that they opened their concerts with it that year (whether they did it because of the All Star reaction or whether they had been doing it anyway and that was why they got the gig, I don't know). There are lots of songs they did that I truly love, but for some reason, this is the one that sticks. I love it's simplicity, it's "throwback" sound, and, once again of course, its message.
I also need to note that one of the great music memories of my life was seeing them at a place called the Boathouse in Norfolk, VA in late 1989/early 1990. They toured as "The Sports Section" when they played little places like that (the Boathouse is an oversized bar). They were amazing, but I'll remember it forever because local Bruce Hornsby (who I had by that point seen twice before, once in my church and once at a piano store in Lynnhaven Mall) came up on stage and played with them ... but more incredibly, about 20 minutes after their set, Huey and the guys (including Bruce) came *back* on stage. Huey had his shirt unbuttoned, a towel around his neck and a drink in his hand. He picked up a mic and said, "hey, if you all don't mind, we're just gonna play for a while." Well, everyone who hadn't left *immediately* turned around and crowded back towards the stage. They played for an *hour* ... starting and stopping songs randomly, goofing off, talking to each other like we weren't even there, "hey I'm working on something like this ..." playing songs for a bit and then just stopping, "yeah, I don't want to do that one right now." I'll never forget it, them, or their music.
15. Home for the Holidays (Perry Como)
People who know me as an adult know that one of the kind of goofy things about me is that I like to play Christmas music randomly throughout the year (I go through phases, usually in late spring and early fall). My logic for this is that I really enjoy the Christmas spirit and season, but I rarely get to enjoy it at the time because it's the biggest and busiest time of year for our business and I'm usually working so hard that I simply never get the time to take so much as a moment, relax, appreciate and soak in the ethos of the season at the time. To make up for this, I have Christmas randomly throughout the year. Now within my extensive Christmas playlist, this song stands out because it feels to me like a really happy, upbeat song that's got a legendary crooner (Perry Como) and seems just drenched in everything that's good, wholesome, beautiful, nostalgic, etc. about the holidays.
16. Let It Snow Let It Snow Let It Snow (Frank Sinatra)
Funnily enough, I'm not a giant Frank Sinatra fan. In fact, excepting this song and Fly Me To The Moon, I don't think I have any of his songs in my library (I certainly don't *dislike* him at all, I'm just not as big a fan as so many other people are). But this song for some reason gets me. The fact is, like most people, I secretly love snow ... under certain circumstances ... circumstances that have sadly rarely existed in my life. I love snow when I know I can be inside and warm and listening to this song while I sit, wearing a sweater, in front of a fire, looking at the Christmas tree drinking some egg nog and staring out the window while the snow falls quietly and beautifully outside ... safe in the knowledge that I don't have to go to work the next day and that my business won't have sales that will be hurt by the weather ... you know, stuff that never happens except in some imaginary, ideal place. I guess this song takes me to that ideal place for a couple minutes.
17. Silent Night (Sinéad O'Connor)
Given how important strong female voices have been to me in my life, it's shocking and odd that this is the first and only female singer on this list. To be clear, the girls of the 80s (Debbie Harry of Blondie, Pat Benatar, Quarterflash, the Gogos, Bangles, the incomparable Annie Lennox who is, in my opinion the Streisand of our generation) ALL had a sound I loved. Additionally, there are a lot of females in the 21st Century whose work I really like (e.g. KT Tunstall, Adele, Kara (Shiny Toy Guns), Régine Chassagne (Arcade Fire), Goldfrapp, Gwen Stefani, Chantal Claret (Morningwood ... man you can *feel* how much that girl wants to be successful as a singer when she sings!), Rihanna, etc.) ... yet none of the songs from any of them made it here, and I'm kind of at a loss to explain why except to say that, as amazing and wonderful as they all were, as much joy as their talents brought to my life, they didn't deliver a message to me that was *about* my life or that had that deeper meaning to me.
So why *this* song by *this* artist? Sinéad O'Connor is, without question, a controversial and troubled figure in music, but her rendition of this song transcends her life and her music. The deep base line vibrates every fiber of my being, and her voice is so beautiful, so incredibly haunting, that you listen to it and don't care who sang it ... you don't care about anything except how incredibly amazingly beautiful the experience of simply listening to it is. If you can listen to this song without crying, you're not human, and it is easily one of the most beautiful and peaceful songs I've ever heard.
18. Why Worry (Dire Straits)
It's doubtful that this song would make a playlist of my "favorite" songs of all time, but for my funeral, it's perfect. I very much liked Dire Straits as a band, and "Brothers In Arms" was, start to finish, unquestionably their best album (also, a cool factoid for trivia buffs like me; "Brothers In Arms" was the first CD to sell a million copies, indicative of how great it was as well as the timing of its release (in that moment when albums and tapes were giving way to CDs)).
I've also always thought that Mark Knopfler was one of the great guitarists of all time (shortly after this album, he did the soundtrack for The Princess Bride ... and you can tell) ... and this song is basically a ballad played on guitar. But ultimately it's on the list because of its message. I love the reassurance, the "life goes on" and "everything is going to be OK" feeling I get when I listen to it. “There will be laughter after pain, there will be sunshine after rain.” I assume that when I die there will be some people who will mourn my passing, and that's a message I want them to hear.
19. It's The End of The World As We Know It (R.E.M.)
This song is on the list for one reason only, it occupies a space in the single most pivotal moment of my life, the moment where I took a hopeful step towards immortality; I became a parent. The entire day that Taylor was born, August 31, 1998, as I frequently walked with Mara up and down the hall waiting for her labor to really get going, I couldn't get this song out of my head. I'm not an R.E.M. fan (again, don't dislike them, but this is probably their only song I can even name) but this song was in my head, over and over and over and I couldn't shake it and I couldn't figure out why. Finally, in the mid-afternoon, I let it full in and basically let it "play through" in my head ... and in that moment I laughed out loud because my conscious mind finally heard loud and clear the message that my sub-conscious had been screaming at me all day, "it's the end of the world as we know it, but I feel fine." Truer words .....
20. If I Ever Leave This World Alive (Flogging Molly)
Like "Why Worry" above, this song wouldn't make a list of my favorite songs, but for my memorial service, how could I not include it? Like basically everyone else, I heard it as part of the soundtrack in the tearjerker "P.S. I Love You," but there's probably no other message I want to leave more strongly. In it, hear all of the triumphant defiance that I feel when I think about not being alive. I hear the "not without one hell of a fight" and my refusal to leave the side of the people I love. Never. My insistence that, if there's ANY way possible, I will be there, right by all of you, in every moment, doing whatever I can to help. There may be sadness and madness in my absence, but I will be there, I will make it alright. Perhaps just thinking that will help make it so. I certainly hope so.
21. To Be A Lover (Billy Idol)
This song was a *very* late addition to this list. Despite the comparatively small size of his contribution to the music of my life, the raw emotional energy and power of Billy Idol should not be discounted or dismissed. Everyone in my generation remembers White Wedding and Dancing With Myself, and I have an incredibly vivid memory of a dance party in my college dorm (attended by basically everyone in the building) all dancing to Rebel Yell, jumping up and down and screaming “more, more MORE!” along with the lyrics … but for some reason this song got past me until, well until 2014. That’s not terribly odd in that its message didn’t apply to me at all as a young man, but years later, as someone who spent SO many days and nights working SO hard to achieve what I did, it now seems especially meaningful (plus, it’s just an awesome song that, like his other work, is emotionally *loaded* and literally begs to be played *loudly* ... just try listening to it without at least wanting to crank it up ... can't be done). The lyrics don’t quite match our reality in that I have in fact made it a point to tell my wife Mara how much I love her as often as possible, but they’re also appropriate in that you can’t ever say that enough. Idol is helping me beg her for forgiveness and for her to have mercy, something I know she would say wasn’t necessary, but there were a LOT of nights when I wasn’t spending time with her because I was instead making sure the business was successful. I don’t regret that to the extent that it was necessary to provide for our family, but in another way I certainly do regret every moment that we didn’t get to spend together. I’m so sorry to leave you, have mercy baby.
22. End Of The Line (Traveling Wilburys)
So what if you could take some of the sounds from my two most favorite bands in my life (The Beatles and ELO), throw in one of the greatest vocalists ever (Roy Orbison), one of the great lyricists of our time (Bob Dylan), and then top it off with a little Tom Petty for that honest, gritty American feel ... oh wait, they did that! Few things are more special to me in music than the all too brief and special moment occupied by the Traveling Wilburys. There was a part of me that felt like George Harrison put this band together as something of a "see, so there" way of saying that he could manage a band better than John and Paul managed The Beatles (which is probably not at all fair or true, but the fact is that The Beatles had an ultimately tumultuous ride together and it was obviously important to George that the Wilburys have a better experience while still making amazing music, and to his great credit, that's exactly what he did).
Also in the file titled "Duane thinks this just because he does and has no empirical evidence to back this up" (a file I try to keep as small as possible, but still, stuff like this creeps in there), I find it HARD to believe that, at the time they made this album, George was unaware of the cancer that would eventually kill him. If you listen to this whole album, but most especially "Heading for the Light" and this song, it's kind of hard to accept that, at least at some level, he didn't already know that his days had a lower number than any of us would have liked.
As brilliant as George was, this song, this album and this group wouldn't have been nearly as good without any one of its constituent members (including their drummer, Jim Keltner), but most especially the deep, super produced sound that Jeff Lynne brought to it. George and Jeff were the original core of the idea that became the Wilburys, having already worked together on my favorite album of George's, Cloud Nine. In fact, you can argue (and be clear, I do) that if George doesn't meld his post-Beatles sound with Jeff's on Cloud Nine, then there is no Wilburys (less than two years later). With no Cloud Nine and no Wilburys, Tom Petty never works with Jeff Lynne on his subsequent (and in my opinion, best) albums. Also, without George and Jeff together, Paul never discovers and works with Jeff, Jeff never gets invited in to be the "5th Beatle" in the Anthology sessions (producing the two "new" Beatles songs from tapes that Yoko gives them of John) ... SO much would be different. Basically, this was an incredibly important moment relative to the music of my life.
Why this song? You're kidding right, it's a song about the end of life, which is why you're here today. And, as with most of the songs, it has a VERY optimistic and upbeat message. It delivers a message that George clearly wanted to leave, and one I wish to echo; I'm really grateful to have been here, I had a great time, it was great fun, Just as Douglas Adams would check out with a dolphin doing a double flip to say "so long, and thanks for all the fish", this song sends the message from me to you that says, "thanks for the ride, I had a great time."
23. The End (from Anthology 3) (The Beatles)
I thought of ending with End of The Line, really I did. Maybe it just wasn't rockin' enough ... no that's not it. This song maybe says goodbye just a teeny bit better to me. I love "Abbey Road" for reasons I mentioned when we started, and this is how they ended it. To me, this is how The Beatles themselves wanted to sign off and say goodbye to the world, and I can't think of a better way. This particular version is longer than the one on Abbey Road, and we have it thanks to the aforementioned Anthology. It contains what is essentially a joyous and fun little guitar duel at the beginning between John, Paul and George (and if you know their styles as I do, it's very obvious who's who as they play). I also find this to be one of Ringo's best moments with the band, almost as if all of them had been giving it their all to make the entire album a last statement about what was best and most beautiful about their time together, and this song was that last piece of that puzzle ... FWIW, I also think Ringo is often under-recognized for his contribution to The Beatles, which isn't fair (though, to be completely honest, on George Martin's In My Life, there's a version of this song with Phil Collins doing a drum solo that's, well, even better than Ringo's).
But once again, I chose this song and placed it where I did more for what it says than anything else, "and in the end, the love you take, is equal to the love you make."
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