Friday! Here at the Mansion of Wrong, Friday is when we are supposed to shut out the world’s cacophony and take a musical break. Let’s throw the switch:
We start with “Love has no Pride”, performed by Bonnie Raitt at the 25th Rock ’n Roll Hall of Fame Concert at Madison Square Garden in 2009. She is backed by Crosby, Stills and Nash. The song was written by Eric Katz and Libby Titus. Ms. Titus was Levon Helm’s partner for many years. She married Donald Fagen in 1993.
Despite Linda Ronstadt having the hit, this live performance by Ms. Raitt is the definitive version of this song:
We close with Jackson Browne’s “These Days”. Here is a little snippet of the lyric:
Now if I seem to be afraid
To live the life I have made in song
Well it’s just that I’ve been losing so long…Don’t confront me with my failures
I had not forgotten them
This live version was performed at the 28th Annual Claremont Folk Music Festival on May 3rd 2008:
“These Days” was first recorded by Nico, the Velvet Underground singer and Andy Warhol muse, for her 1967 solo album, Chelsea Girl. But Browne had written an early version of the song several years earlier, when he was 16, in 1964. Davis Inman, writing in the American Songwriter, says that Browne actually first cut “These Days” under the title “I’ve Been Out Walking,” for a 1967 demo tape for Elektra’s Nina Music publishing arm, while working for them as a young staff writer in New York.
Browne plays guitar on Nico’s version. He was prompted by Warhol to play an electric instead of an acoustic guitar to “sound more modern”.
Gregg Allman used the song on his 1973 solo album, Laid Back, which was released in October 1973, the same time as Browne’s own version of the song appeared on his album, For Everyman. Browne actually based his own arrangement of “These Days” on Allman’s, crediting him on the original For Everyman album sleeve.
The Nico recording was included in a scene in the 2001 Wes Anderson film, The Royal Tenenbaums. On Browne’s Solo Acoustic I album, Browne says that he had forgotten that he had licensed the song to Anderson:
You’re sitting in the movie theater and there’s this great moment when Gwyneth Paltrow is coming out of a bus or something like that. I’m thinking to myself, I used to play the guitar just like that. And then the voice comes on and it’s Nico singing ‘These Days’, which I played on.
As Katherine Henson has said: “Having a soft heart in a cruel world is courage, not weakness.”
See you on Sunday.
