Miscellaneous - F-Fathers and Sons

  by Andy Cassidy

published: 13 / 3 / 2012

intro

In letter 'F' of his 'AC's A-Z of Music', Andy Cassidy reflects upon the sometimes sentimental, but yet often volatile relationships between fathers and sons in music

I’m going to let you into a little secret: British men are a sentimental bunch. Sure, it’s all bluster and stiff upper lips when we’re in public, but leave us home alone with a record player and a bottle of something nice and it won’t be long before the melancholy sets in. I had a strange case of this melancholy recently, strange in that no alcohol was involved and that it was brought on by the simplest of statements, albeit a statement by Cat Stevens. I was listening to 'Tea for the Tillerman' (never the best idea when one is alone – great album though it is, it’s hardly a booster) and I got as far as 'Father and Son', a great song but an undeniable weepy (or “trigger track” as my good friend Alan used to call them). Now, I must have heard that song a thousand times – two thousand if you count 'Fight Test' by the Flaming Lips – but this time it got to the line, “I was once like you are now,” and I just melted. The song is a conversation between a father and his son, and the line in question is spoken by the father. I immediately thought of my dad, and imagined him saying something similar to me. So my mind is wandering down this path of bittersweet imaginings as I’m trying to select what to listen to next. I’m flipping through my LPs and I come to my dad’s 1967 copy of Bob Dylan’s 'Greatest Hits'. It’s in absolutely pristine condition and the back of the cover is stamped with the logo of Lewis’s, the late lamented department store in Glasgow, and the price my dad paid for it: 32s 7½d. I smiled, and tried hard to imagine my dad as a sixteen or seventeen year-old, heading into town and buying himself a frankly, pretty hip record. Good for him, I thought. Rather than listening to the LP – with hindsight, I wish I had – I started racking my brains for other “father and son” songs. I came up with quite a few, and, let me tell you, if you want your heart breaking, you could do worse than work through this lot. The first one I came to was Loudon Wainwright’s 'A Father and a Son'. It’s a really sad song, a father’s plea for reconciliation with his estranged son. It has one of the saddest lyrics I’ve ever heard – beautiful, but tragic: "You're starting up and I'm winding down; Ain't it big enough for us both in this town?" The song is particularly sad when taken in the context of Wainwright’s life. When his son, Rufus (yes, that Rufus Wainwright) was nursing, his arrival was celebrated with the lively 'Rufus is a Tit Man'. Sadly, the bliss was not to last, as Loudon Wainwright and his then wife (the late Kate McGarrigle – yes, that Kate McGarrigle) soon separated, a situation poignantly explained by Wainwright to his children in the song 'Your Mother and I' (which includes the wonderful line, “Your parents are people and that’s all they can be.”). Don’t imagine, though, that situations like these are exclusive to the admittedly vast Wainwright clan. The last album John Lennon released in his lifetime, 'Double Fantasy', included the gorgeous 'Beautiful Boy' written for his son Sean. The melancholic male pounces on these cruel twists of fate, and imagines the weight of sadness behind the song knowing that Lennon passed away so soon after recording it. It’s pathetic, but we can’t help ourselves. Sometimes, though, the father/son song can go too far even for a serial miserabilist like me. After the tragic death of his son, Eric Clapton released one of the most revolting songs ever recorded. I refer of course to 'Tears in Heaven'. Even typing the title has me forcing back waves of bile. Now don’t get me wrong, what happened to Eric Clapton’s son was a tragedy in the truest sense of the word and clearly left Clapton devastated. Nonetheless, it’s an unforgivable song. Also falling into the saccharine bucket is Harry Chapin’s atrocious 'Cat’s in the Cradl'e. I once spent an evening in a hotel in Manchester and, when I switched on the TV in the room, I discovered the “comedian” Jim Davidson singing this. Disgusting? As an adjective, it doesn’t even come close. There are a few nice examples, though, which leave one with neither the wish to weep nor vomit. One of the highlights of the Crosby Stills Nash and Young album 'Looking Forward' was David Crosby’s fabulous 'Dream for Him' where he asks how he can explain the evils that men do to his young son. As a political statement, and a declaration of love for his son, it’s tremendously affecting. Equally inoffensive is Brian May’s 'Good Company' from 'Queen’s A Night at the Opera' in which a young craftsman receives advice from his father, ignores it and ends up alone. Sad story, yes, but it’s never laid on too thick. The thing about these songs is that the father/son relationship is one that is, like the melancholy I’ve described, something of a mystery. There are things I have never – would never – say to my dad because they lie somewhere in that ambiguous area of touchy-feeliness that us “manly men” abhor. My dad has spent the last forty years working hard with some pretty contemptuous people (that is to say the criminal element of the public – he works with the Police), and for twenty or so of those years the primary drain on his income was me. His sweat and blisters kept me fed and clothed and warm. Even after all of that, I’d almost certainly never walk up to him, hug him and say thank-you. What I did do recently though was go to a gig with my dad. We went to a local venue and saw BettySoo and Doug Cox – and we had a fantastic evening. We were more like peers than father and son, and the music was exactly to my dad’s taste – and therefore mine, as I seem to have inherited his likes and dislikes along with his LP collection. To both our shame it was the first gig we had been to together, but I intend to make sure that it isn’t the last. After all, he gave me my love for music, so it’s only fair that we get together to celebrate it. So enough of the melancholy and sentimentality for now. I’m off to listen to a forty-five year old LP of Dylan’s greatest hits. Oh, and Dad: on the off-chance that you happen to be reading, thank-you for, well, you know...