The word­less cho­rus has become a gim­mick in sing-along bal­ladry and throw­away pop. Done bad­ly, it sounds like lazy song­writ­ing or — to take a phrase from Som­er­set Maugh­am — “unearned emo­tion.” At its best, a word­less cho­rus is a moment of sub­lim­i­ty, express­ing beau­ty or tragedy before which lan­guage fails. Either way, it usu­al­ly starts as a place­hold­er, in brack­ets. (As in, “we’ll put some­thing bet­ter here when we get around to it.”) Only lat­er in the song­writ­ing process does it become a choice.

In what may be one of the great­est choic­es of word­less cho­rus­es on record, Simon and Gar­funkel’s “The Box­er” chan­nels its raw pow­er in only two repeat­ed syl­la­bles (and pos­si­bly a word?): “Lie-la-lie, Lie-la-lie-lie-lie-lie-lie.…” The cho­rus of Paul Simon’s hit from 1970’s Bridge Over Trou­bled Water needs no more elab­o­ra­tion than the “arrest­ing whipcrack of a snare drum” (played by wreck­ing crew drum­mer Hal Blaine), Dan Einav writes at Finan­cial Times:

[The Box­er] was the result of a painstak­ing and pro­tract­ed record­ing process that took more than 100 hours, used numer­ous back­ing musi­cians and even spanned a num­ber of loca­tions — from Nashville, to St Paul’s Chapel at Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty, to the some­what less ethe­re­al set­ting of a hall­way abut­ting an echoey ele­va­tor shaft at one of Colum­bia Records’ New York stu­dios.

Simon’s epic nar­ra­tive song was hard­ly like “the unvar­nished, home­spun records that were per­haps more close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with folk music at the time,” and that was exact­ly the idea.

Some saw the “lie-la-lie” as a dig at Bob Dylan’s inau­then­tic pre­sen­ta­tion as a Woody Guthrie-like fig­ure. Simon debunked the the­o­ry in a 1984 inter­view quot­ed in the Poly­phon­ic video at the top. “I think the song was about me: every­body’s beat­ing me up.” He explained the theme of the beat­en but unbowed con­tender as com­ing out of the fig­u­ra­tive drub­bing he and Art Gar­funkel had tak­en from the crit­ics:

For the first few years, it was just praise. It took two or three years for peo­ple to real­ize that we weren’t strange crea­tures that emerged from Eng­land but just two guys from Queens who used to sing rock ‘n’ roll. And maybe we weren’t real folkies at all! May we weren’t even hip­pies!”

He wise­ly steered the song away from a nar­ra­tive about a guy who wasn’t even a hip­pie. And being a guy from Queens, he could tell a New York Sto­ry like few oth­ers could. Simon ref­er­ences his frus­tra­tion at being mis­un­der­stood, but his pro­tag­o­nist’s strug­gle to make it in the big city is far more uni­ver­sal than a song­writer’s angst.

The box­er is an “arche­typ­al char­ac­ter rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the strug­gle and lone­li­ness that can come with work­ing class life,” notes Poly­phon­ic. “The sec­ond verse is a care­ful por­trait of this exis­tence, depict­ing the box­er as a young man try­ing to find his foot­ing in a harsh world.”

When I left my home and my fam­i­ly
I was no more than a boy
In the com­pa­ny of strangers
In the qui­et of the rail­way sta­tion
Run­ning scared
Lay­ing low, seek­ing out the poor­er quar­ters
Where the ragged peo­ple go
Look­ing for the places
Only they would know

The mid­dle-class Simon did­n’t live this char­ac­ter’s life, nor did he pur­sue a box­ing career. But his abil­i­ty to imag­ine the lives of oth­ers through sto­ry-songs like “The Box­er” has been one of his great­est strengths as a writer. Simon’s nar­ra­tive gift served him well over and over in his career, and has served his fans. We can feel the feel­ings of Simon’s school­yard delin­quent, his frus­trat­ed lover look­ing for a way out, and his bit­ter, down-and-out trag­ic hero try­ing to make it in the big city, whether or not we’ve been there our­selves.

In the videos above, you can learn more about the writ­ing of this clas­sic cry of des­per­a­tion and strug­gle from Poly­phon­ic; and, learn about the record­ing from musi­cians who played on it, includ­ing drum­mer Hal Blaine. Then, see Simon and Gar­funkel fill out the song’s melody with their time­less har­monies live in Cen­tral Park, and, just above, see Simon by him­self in 2020, play­ing a solo ver­sion ded­i­cat­ed to his fel­low New York­ers com­bat­ing the fear and suf­fer­ing of COVID dur­ing lock­down.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Watch Simon & Gar­funkel Sing “The Sound of Silence” 45 Years After Its Release, and Just Get Haunt­ing­ly Bet­ter with Time

Paul Simon Tells the Sto­ry of How He Wrote “Bridge Over Trou­bled Water” (1970)

Paul Simon Decon­structs “Mrs. Robin­son” (1970)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

Joni Mitchell almost quit the music indus­try in 1996, two years after releas­ing what crit­ics called her best album since the 70s, 1994’s Tur­bu­lent Indi­go. “I was in a los­ing fight with a busi­ness that basi­cal­ly, you know, was treat­ing me like an also-ran or a has-been, even though I was still doing good work,” she told an inter­view­er at the time. “Every­thing about the busi­ness dis­gust­ed me.”

But show busi­ness has nev­er real­ly been about the show or the busi­ness for Mitchell. From her deeply per­son­al song­writ­ing to her vocal vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, she imbues her music with the deep­est parts of her­self. Then there’s her bril­liant­ly idio­syn­crat­ic gui­tar play­ing. “Her gui­tar does­n’t real­ly sound like a gui­tar,” Jef­frey Pep­per Rodgers writes at Acoustic Gui­tar. “The tre­ble strings become a cool-jazz horn sec­tion; the bass snaps out of syn­co­pa­tions like a snare drum; the notes ring out in clus­ters that sim­ply don’t come out of a nor­mal six-string.”

Mitchell “mas­tered the idea that she could tune the gui­tar any way she want­ed,” says David Cros­by. She tuned to “the num­bers in a date… a piece of music that I liked on the radio,” she says. “I’d tune to bird­songs and the land­scape I was sit­ting in.” Try­ing to dupli­cate Mitchel­l’s tun­ings is typ­i­cal­ly a fool’s errand; even she for­gets them. But “Joni’s weird chords,” as she says, are indis­pens­able to her sound. (She also says she’s only writ­ten two songs — one of them her first — in stan­dard tun­ing.)

In 1996, a dig­i­tal gui­tar ped­al that emu­lat­ed her tun­ings and allowed a greater range of sym­phon­ic tones brought her back to the stage. Or, to put it anoth­er way — what brought her back to music was the gui­tar, which is exact­ly what brought her back to the stage at this year’s New­port Folk Fes­ti­val — play­ing her first live set in 20 years after suf­fer­ing a brain aneurysm in 2015. (She last played New­port 53 years ago in 1969.) Noth­ing keeps Joni down for long.

In this case, how­ev­er, Mitchell did­n’t just for­get her tun­ings after her ill­ness. She for­got how to play the gui­tar alto­geth­er. She had to teach her­self again by watch­ing videos of her play­ing online. “I’m learn­ing,” she says in the CBS inter­view at the top. “I’m look­ing at videos that are on the net, to see where to put my fin­gers. It’s amaz­ing… when you have an aneurysm, you don’t know how to get into a chair. You don’t know how to get out of bed. You have to learn all these things again. You’re going back to infan­cy, almost.”

She’s come a long way since 2015, when she could nei­ther speak nor walk, “much less play the gui­tar,” notes NPR. “To be able to recov­er to the point of being able to per­form as a musi­cian is real­ly incred­i­ble,” says Dr. Antho­ny Wang, a neu­ro­sur­geon at Ronald Regan UCLA Hos­pi­tal. “Play­ing an instru­ment and vocal cord coor­di­na­tion, those sort of things are real­ly, super com­plex fine move­ments that would take a long time to relearn.” Mitchel­l’s com­mit­ment to mas­ter­ing her instru­ment again was unflag­ging.

See her above pluck out “Joni’s weird chords” on one of her Park­er Fly gui­tars in a solo sec­tion from the song “Just Like This Train” from Court & Spark. As we not­ed in an ear­li­er post, she was joined at New­port by a host of celebri­ty friends, includ­ing Bran­di Carlile, who sits with her in the CBS inter­view and con­firms the amount of “will and grit” she applied to her recov­ery. She’s sur­vived polio, per­son­al tragedy, the 60s, chain smok­ing, and a debil­i­tat­ing aneurysm: the 78-year-old liv­ing leg­end won’t be with us for­ev­er, but we might expect she’ll have a gui­tar in her hand when she final­ly makes her exit from the music busi­ness for the last time.

via NPR

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Joni Mitchell Sings “Both Sides Now” at the New­port Folk Fes­ti­val: Watch Clips from Her First Full Con­cert Since 2002

Hear Demos & Out­takes of Joni Mitchell’s Blue on the 50th Anniver­sary of the Clas­sic Album

How Joni Mitchell Wrote “Wood­stock,” the Song that Defined the Leg­endary Music Fes­ti­val, Even Though She Wasn’t There (1969)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

This week­end, the New­port Folk Fes­ti­val made head­lines when it brought out of retire­ment two music leg­ends. Paul Simon returned to the stage and per­formed “Grace­land,” “The Box­er” and “oth­er clas­sics.” But Joni Mitchell stole the show when she per­formed (with a lit­tle help from Bran­di Carlile) “Both Sides Now,” “Big Yel­low Taxi,” “Just Like This Train” and 10 oth­er songs. Mitchell suf­fered a brain aneurysm in 2015, and had­n’t per­formed a full con­cert since 2002. Hence why the show was a big deal.

Get the full back­sto­ry on the New­port per­for­mance over at NPR.

Just Like This Train

Sum­mer­time

Cir­cle Game

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Relat­ed Con­tent 

Joni Mitchell Pub­lish­es a Book of Her Rarely Seen Paint­ings & Poet­ry

Joni Mitchell Sings an Aching­ly Pret­ty Ver­sion of “Both Sides Now” on the Mama Cass TV Show (1969)

See Clas­sic Per­for­mances of Joni Mitchell from the Very Ear­ly Years–Before She Was Even Named Joni Mitchell (1965/66)

How Joni Mitchell Wrote “Wood­stock,” the Song that Defined the Leg­endary Music Fes­ti­val, Even Though She Wasn’t There (1969)

Songs by Joni Mitchell Re-Imag­ined as Pulp Fic­tion Book Cov­ers & Vin­tage Movie Posters

For Gen X’ers who spent their twen­ties scout­ing the cities young peo­ple go to retire, and Mil­len­ni­als who spent their youth danc­ing to N’Sync, TLC, and the Spice Girls, nos­tal­gia for sim­pler times just makes psy­cho­log­i­cal sense. The 1990s was the last decade in which we had a shared set of ref­er­ences, “before the inter­net splin­tered mass cul­ture,” Sadie Dingfelder writes at The Wash­ing­ton Post. “In the 90s, every­one lis­tened to the same one or two radio sta­tions in their city that played all the Top 40 hits, span­ning all kinds of gen­res,” says DJ Matt Bail­er.

This means that every­one who heard “No Scrubs” enough times to sing each note also heard the Smash­ing Pump­kins’ biggest hits, and learned to love them equal­ly. It means that we could love the music of Bil­ly Cor­gan with­out being sub­ject­ed to the ter­ri­ble opin­ions of Bil­ly Cor­gan. As the baby-faced singer/songwriter aged, he has become, in his own words, a “bit­ter con­trar­i­an,” “car­ni­val bark­er,” and “class‑A heel,” he says, ref­er­enc­ing his lat­er career in pro­fes­sion­al wrestling.

The assess­ment may seem mild con­sid­er­ing Cor­gan’s appear­ances on Alex Jones’ Infowars and his embrace of con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries. Behav­ior he calls schtick has actu­al con­se­quences in the world. Has it hurt his career? “If I kept my mouth shut,” he admits in dis­cussing the band’s 2018 reunion, “we’d be play­ing a lot big­ger venues and we would be a lot more suc­cess­ful, and we’d be in some­body’s Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.” Love or hate Cor­gan, Smash­ing Pump­kins as a unit earned their place in rock and roll his­to­ry.

The Pump­kins exud­ed mys­tery from the start, with their sub­lime, fuzzed-out psy­che­del­ic melodies and huge, dis­tort­ed cho­rus­es. Lat­er came the dream­like videos and opaque, impas­sive rock star egos. They did­n’t just make it big in the 90s, they were essen­tial to its sound, one they invent­ed even before the decade dawned. See a young, cheru­bic Cor­gan and band debut above on The Pulse, a Chica­go pub­lic access music show, in 1988, in a video and audio upscal­ing and remas­ter.

It was their first tele­vised appear­ance, drum­mer Jim­my Cham­ber­lain had just joined, and they were booked for a seg­ment for local bands called “The Base­ment Jam” after send­ing in their demo tape. The show’s pro­duc­er Lou Hinkhouse intro­duces the TV gig, sum­ming up his feel­ings at that time: “None of us that day real­ly knew for sure, but we knew they were on to some­thing.… they’re about to define a new sound for a new gen­er­a­tion.” How right he was. See the track­list for the most­ly-unfa­mil­iar songs in the set just below.

1. There lt Goes 1:54 2. She-7:37 3. Under Your Spell -11:47 4. My Eter­ni­ty -17:06 5. Bleed 26:44 6. Noth­ing And Every­thing — 32:10 7. Jen­nifer Ever 42:14 8. Death Of A Mind (Sun) — 49:03 9. Spite­face — 55:44

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Watch Nir­vana Per­form as an Open­ing Band, Two Years Before Their Break­out Album Nev­er­mind (1989)

Bil­ly Cor­gan Per­forms an 8+ Hour Ambi­ent Inter­pre­ta­tion of Her­man Hesse’s Sid­dhartha

The 120 Min­utes Archive Com­piles Clips & Playlists from 956 Episodes of MTV’s Alter­na­tive Music Show (1986–2013)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness