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I’m not giving in an inch to fear

Posted on October 25, 2024 by brucehhackett

Fear — the emotional belief that something or someone is dangerous or threatening — can be crippling. It can be healthy when it warns us to keep our distance from people or situations that are likely harmful, but it can also be irrational, especially when manipulated by someone with a hidden agenda.

*“The Scream” (1893) by Norwegian painter Edvard Munch*

Most people suffer from at least one of a wide variety of fears — enclosed spaces, crowds, darkness, heights, the unknown, financial insecurity, abandonment, public ridicule, things that go bump in the night, DYING — all of which are ripe material for authors, screenwriters and songwriters. Horror movies and murder mysteries capitalize on common fears, and rock music has many dozens of examples of song lyrics that explore the things that scare us.

Just in time for Halloween week, I have gathered 15 songs, mostly from the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s, with lyrical themes that address our deep-seated fears. Some of these tunes should be familiar; most will be new to you. There’s a Spotify playlist at the end so you can check them out as you read about them.

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“Scared,” John Lennon, 1974

From mid-1973 to late-1974, Lennon went through a conflicted period he later called his “lost weekend,” when he was living in Los Angeles separated from Yoko Ono. “I loved the freedom, but ultimately, it wasn’t good for me, and I drank too much,” he recalled. “I missed her, and it showed up in the songs on ‘Walls and Bridges.'” One of the more intriguing tracks on the album is the haunting “Scared,” which explores Lennon’s fears of aging, loneliness and the emptiness of success: “I’m scared, I’m scared, I’m scared, /As the years roll away, and the price that I paid, and the straws slip away…, /Every day of my life, I just manage to survive, /I just wanna stay alive…, /Hatred and jealousy, gonna be the death of me, I guess I knew it right from the start…”

“Fear,” Sade, 1985

Nigerian-born British chanteuse Sade Adu burst on the musical scene in 1984 with her “Diamond Life” LP and big single “Smooth Operator.” Joining forces with guitarist/saxophonist Stuart Matthewman, Sade wrote most of the tracks on her hugely successful follow-up, “Promise,” which reached #1 on the U.S. album chart and included “The Sweetest Taboo,” “Is It a Crime?” and “Never As Good as the First Time.” Also found on this LP is a darkly lovely piece called “Fear” that addresses the anxiety the wife of a matador feels whenever he heads out to his death-defying pursuit at a bullfight. “Blue is the color of the red sky, /Will he, will he come home tonight?, /Blue is the color that she feels inside, Matador, I can’t hide my fear anymore…”

“Girl Afraid,” The Smiths, 1984

Hugely influential in British rock of the ’90s and beyond, The Smiths produced some of the most memorable post-punk rock and pop of the ’80s, led by singer Morrissey and guitarist Johnny Marr. One critic called their songs “intoxicatingly melancholic, dangerously thoughtful, and seductively funny.” Their first Top Ten hit in the U.K., “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now,” included “Girl Afraid” as its B-side, and both songs appeared on the compilation LP “Hatful of Hollow” in 1984: “Girl afraid, /Where do his intentions lay? Or does he even have any? /She says, ‘He never really looks at me, I give him every opportunity’… /Boy afraid, /Prudence never pays, and everything she wants costs money, /But she doesn’t even like me, and I know because she said so…”

“Baby I’m Scared of You,” Womack and Womack, 1983

Cecil Womack, younger brother of his more famous brother Bobby, had sung in gospel groups and behind soul greats Sam Cooke and James Brown in the early ’60s. While working as a songwriter, he met Cooke’s daughter Linda, also a songwriter, and the two married in 1978, debuting as a recording group known as Womack and Womack in 1983. Their debut LP “Love Wars” spawned three R&B hits, one of which, “Baby, I’m Scared of You,” was a catchy, call-and-response duet about a girl who’s wary of a boy’s truthfulness: “Come, if you got real love for me, /Stay away, if got games and tricks for me, /I want a man that means everything he say, /Not a boy full of play, pulling rabbits out of his hat every day, /Oh, baby, I’m scared of you…”

“Don’t Fear the Reaper,” Blue Oyster Cult, 1976

BOC’s lead guitarist and singer Donald “Buck Dharma” Roeser was frustrated when “(Don’t Fear) the Reaper” was interpreted as encouraging suicide, or even murder-suicide (the “Romeo and Juliet” reference). “My intent was ‘Don’t be afraid of death. It’s inevitable.’ It’s basically a love song where the love transcends the actual physical existence of the partners.” It became a hugely popular slab of melodic hard rock in the middle of the disco era, reaching #12 in 1976: “Came the last night of sadness, and it was clear she couldn’t go on, /Then the door was open and the wind appeared, the candles blew and then disappeared, /The curtains flew and then he appeared, saying ‘Don’t be afraid,’ /Come on baby, and she had no fear…”

“Stage Fright,” The Band, 1970

The Band’s first two LPs had been rapturously received and the third one, 1970’s “Stage Fright,” continued their musical journey but with songs that took a darker turn. As the name implies, the title track is about “the terror of performing,” according to drummer/singer Levon Helm, and was written by Robbie Robertson’s anxiety about The Band’s first live show under that name in 1969: “See the man with the stage fright, just standin’ up there to give it all his might, /He got caught in the spotlight, but when we get to the end, he wants to start all over again, /Now if he says that he’s afraid, take him at his word…” In a more general sense, the lyrics also allude to the pitfalls of fortune and fame, which profoundly affected The Band in terms of interpersonal relationships and substance abuse.

“Running Scared,” Roy Orbison, 1962

Known primarily for his distinctive, powerful voice, Orbison wrote and recorded some of rock’s most operatic, darkly emotional ballads, many of which reached the Top Ten on US pop charts in the 1960-1964 period. While other rockers of that era projected macho images, Orbison embraced a more vulnerable persona, wearing his heart on his sleeve on hits like “Only the Lonely,” “Crying,” and “Dream Baby (How Long Must I Dream).” One of his biggest singles came in 1962 with “Running Scared,” a bolero-style song that reveals the narrator’s insecurity of losing his woman to another man: “Just runnin’ scared each place we go, so afraid that he might show, /Yeah, runnin’ scared, what would I do if he came back and wanted you?…”

“Fear For Your Future,” Ronnie Wood, 1992

First with the Jeff Beck Group, then with Faces and eventually with The Rolling Stones, Wood has amassed an enviable legacy as an accomplished guitarist on some of rock music’s best classic albums (“Truth,” “Ooh La La,” “Some Girls”). He has managed to release six solo albums as well, although only 1979’s “Gimme Some Neck” made much impact. On his 1992 LP “Slide On This,” his funk tune “Fear For Your Future” warns his ex-lover that her dishonesty will be her eventual downfall: “It’s too late to cry, move your sorry butt aside, /I don’t care what you say ’cause your truths are nothing but lies, /I see the time coming soon to cross you off my list, /I’ll drink to the good time we had and send you off with a kiss, /I fear for your future, I fear for your life…”

“I’m Scared,” Burton Cummings, 1976

Cummings helped lead the Canadian band The Guess Who to multiple Top 40 success (“These Eyes,” “No Time,” “American Woman,” “Share the Land”) in the 1969-1974 period in their native country as well as in the U.S. In 1975, when a couple of his songs were rejected by the band, Cummings chose to go solo, having an immediate hit with “Stand Tall.” Although the follow-up single “I’m Scared” stalled at #61 in the U.S., it became a concert favorite, with lyrics about a fearful man crying out for divine intervention: “I’m scared, Lordy Lord, I’m shaking, I’m petrified, /Never been much on religion, but I sure enough just fell down on my knees, /Come on now, give me a sign you’re listening to me, /You hear me talking, you hear me crying, /It’s confusing to me, Lord, I’m terrified…”

“Afraid of Love,” Toto, 1983

The talented musicians who comprised the lineup of Toto had been active as studio session guys for years before forming their own band in 1978, making a splash with their first single, “Hold the Line.” Four years later, their “Toto IV” LP won the Album of the Year Grammy, thanks in part to the megahits “Rosanna” and “Africa.” Guitarist Steve Lukather, keyboardist David Paich and drummer Jeff Porcaro combined forces to write “Afraid of Love,” a solid deep track that focuses on the fear of falling in love with the wrong person: “I like the way you move and just the way you are, /I can’t take anymore, ’cause girl, you’re pushing too hard, /I gotta get away from you, girl, ’cause I’ve never been afraid of love ’til I met you, /Never thought a girl could make me feel the way you do…”

“Whatever I Fear,” Toad the Wet Sprocket, 1997

Ever since I was first exposed to Toad the Wet Sprocket in the mid-1990s, I’ve been a fan. “Walk On the Ocean,” “Something’s Always Wrong,” “All I Want,” “Nanci” and others showed the fine melodic sensibilities of chief singer-songwriter Glen Phillips, and I’ve seen the band in concert twice in the past few years. Their overlooked 1997 album “Coil” needs to be rediscovered, especially the irresistible lead track, “Whatever I Fear,” which focuses on the irrationality of fearing new things we’re exposed to in our daily lives: “Whatever I fear the most is whatever I see before me, /Whenever I let my guard down, whatever I was ignoring, /Whatever I fear the most is whatever I see before me, /Whatever I have been given, whatever I have been…”

“Fearless,” Pink Floyd, 1971

Pink Floyd’s superstardom in the U.S. and around the world didn’t take hold until 1973’s seismic “Dark Side of the Moon” LP, but the first signs of the soundscapes that marked the band’s ’70s/’80s albums first surfaced on 1971’s “Meddle,” with tracks like “Echoes” and “One Of These Days.” Another memorable tune was “Fearless,” a hypnotic, acoustically driven piece which also made use of a soccer crowd chanting its team anthem “You’ll Never Walk Alone” (from Rodgers & Hammerstein’s “Carousel”). Its lyrics encourage us not to lose hope in the face of life’s challenges and adversities: “As you rise above the fear-lines in his brow, /You look down, hearing the sound of the faces in the crowd, /Walk on, walk on, with hope in your heart, and you’ll never walk alone…”

“Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark,” Robert Cray Band, 1988

Cutting his musical teeth on blues guitar greats like Albert Collins, Freddie King and Muddy Waters, Cray emerged in the 1980s as a key member of the next generation of blues musicians who earned mainstream appeal. His 1986 LP “Strong Persuader,” and its single “Smoking Gun,” brought him considerable recognition. On the title track from his follow-up album “Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark,” Cray tries to reassure his woman that he will remain a source of calm and comfort even if they’re cuddling in as dark bedroom: “You might tremble, you might shake, /Scream out loud, you may even pray, /I know which moves suit you right, /You’ll beg for more, you’ll forget about the night, /Don’t be afraid of the dark, baby, no no, /I’ll be there to hold you, don’t be afraid of the dark…”

“Fear (of the Unknown),” Siouxsie and The Banshees, 1991

British singer Susan Ballion, known by her stage name Siouxsie Sioux, emerged during the post-punk scene in 1978 and, with her band The Banshees, became “one of most audacious and uncompromising acts of that period,” as one critic put it. They scored nine consecutive Top 20 albums in the U.K., but didn’t make much of an impact in the U.S. until 1991’s “Superstition” LP. “Kiss Them For Me” reached #23 on pop charts here, and “Fear (of the Unknown),” which explores the anxiety known as xenophobia, received heavy airplay in dance clubs that year: “Imagine two complete strangers who suspect they were meant to be, /Both in need of love and affection, /Yet their suspicions prevent something heavenly, /Fear takes control, fear of the unknown…”

“I’m So Afraid,” Fleetwood Mac, 1975

When Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks joined Fleetwood Mac in early 1975, they each had three or four songs ready to go because they’d been anticipating making a second album as a duo following their 1973 “Buckingham Nicks” LP, but their contract wasn’t renewed. Buckingham had suffered a bout of mononucleosis that frightened him, and it surfaced in the lyrics to “I’m So bAfraid,” which one critic described as “a paranoid blues blowout.” It’s one of the hardest rocking songs in the group’s post-1974 catalog, with Buckingham performing a blistering guitar solo on record and on almost every tour since: “I’m so afraid the way I feel, /Days when the rain and the sun are gone, /Black as night, agony’s torn at my heart too long, /So afraid, slip and I fall and I die…”

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Honorable mention:

“Afraid,” David Bowie, 2002; “Fear of the Dark,” Iron Maiden, 1992; “Scared,” Tragically Hip, 1994; “Don’t Be Afraid,” Boston, 1978; “Frightened,” Toby Lightman, 2004; “The Fear of Being Alone,” Reba McEntire, 1996; “Afraid,” Mötley Crüe, 1997; “Fear of Sleep,” The Strokes, 2006.

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I’d trade all my tomorrows for a single yesterday

Posted on October 4, 2024 by brucehhackett

The popular music world is populated by many musicians who were brought up in musical households with parents who encouraged their interest in artistic expression.

But there are also hundreds of songwriters and musical artists whose parents had other plans for their children and strongly discouraged or even forbade them from pursuing a life in the musical arts.

If Kris Kristofferson‘s parents had had their way, we would have never experienced the pleasure of hearing his wondrous songs or viewing his compelling film performances.

Kristofferson’s father Lars was a major general in the US Air Force, and he wanted his son to follow his footsteps into a lifelong career in the military. For a while, it looked like that might happen when, at age 24, Kristofferson accepted a commission as a lieutenant in the Army and became a helicopter pilot, eventually reaching the rank of captain in 1965. Also a gifted writer, Kristofferson was slated to teach English at West Point, but he declined and instead traded that life to pursue his dream to become a country songwriter in Nashville. His parents were scandalized and disowned him for a while.

“Not many cats I knew bailed out like I did,” Mr. Kristofferson said in a 1970 interview. “When I made the break, I didn’t realize how much I was shocking my folks, because I always thought they knew I was going to be a writer. But I think they thought a writer was a guy in tweeds with a pipe. So I quit and didn’t hear from them for a while. I sure wouldn’t want to go through it again, but it’s part of who I am.”

Kristofferson, who died September 28 at age 88, didn’t experience a seamless transition from military man to songwriter, but he had the innate talent and a lot of perseverance. He had graduated with honors with a degree in literature from Pomona College, and had prizewinning entries in a collegiate short-story contest sponsored by The Atlantic magazine before being awarded a Rhodes scholarship to study English literature at Oxford.

All that formal training didn’t translate at first in the world of country music. His early songs read like classic poetry with perfect grammar, and he had to learn to adapt, using more conversational vocabulary with vernacular terms and real-life experiences. During his time as a janitor at Columbia Records, he absorbed a lot by sneaking into the recording sessions of major artists like Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash. “I had to get better,” Kristofferson said. “I was spending every second I could hanging out and writing and bouncing off the heads of other writers.”

He developed, as a New York Times writer put it, “a keen melodic sensibility and a languid expressiveness that bore little resemblance to the straightforward Hank Williams-derived shuffles he was turning out when he first arrived in Nashville.” He continued evolving over the next few years until he garnered the attention of publishers and artists in town who were impressed with songs like “Sunday Morning Comin’ Down,” perhaps the most poignant hangover song ever written: “Well, I woke up Sunday morning with no way to hold my head that didn’t hurt, /And the beer I had for breakfast wasn’t bad, so I had one more for dessert…”

His diligence paid off. Between 1970 and 1972, the name Kristofferson seemed to be everywhere. Singer Ray Price took his ballad “For the Good Times” to #1 on the country charts and #11 on the Top 40 pop charts, and soul legend Al Green made it a staple of his shows after recording his own version. Cash registered a Country #1 with “Sunday Morning Comin’ Down” a couple months later.

Most significantly, his iconic composition “Me and Bobby McGee” (first recorded by Roger Miller in 1969 and Gordon Lightfoot in 1970) became an international #1 hit when Janis Joplin’s recording of it was released posthumously in 1971. Years later, Kristofferson said, “I remember one of my songwriter friends said, ‘You’ve got such a good song going on there. Why do you have to put that philosophy in there?’ He was referring to the line ‘Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.’ It turned out to be one of the most memorable lines I ever wrote. So you’d best take your friends’ advice with a grain of salt.”

Concurrently, Kristofferson’s song “Help Me Make It Through the Night” topped country charts and reached #8 on pop charts with singer Sammi Smith’s delicate rendition, which won a Country Song of the Year Grammy for the songwriter.

All four of these songs appeared on “Kristofferson,” the songwriter’s own recording debut in 1970, but his gruff, uncultured singing voice wasn’t exactly embraced by critics or the public (one writer described it as “pitch-indifferent”). Kristofferson often knocked his own voice. “I don’t think I’m that good a singer,” he said in a 2016 interview. “I can’t think of a song that I’ve written that I don’t like the way somebody else sings it better.” Indeed, although he released more than 15 albums of his own, five of which charted reasonably well on country and pop charts, he had only one successful single, the country gospel tune “Why Me,” which peaked at #16 in 1973.

It turned out to be a fortuitous time to be a songwriter in Nashville, where Kristofferson found himself huddling with with like-minded writers such as Willie Nelson and Roger Miller. “We took it seriously enough to think that our work was important, to think that what we were creating would mean something in the big picture,” he said in a 2006 interview. “Looking back on it, I feel like it was kind of our Paris in the ’20s — real creative and real exciting, and intense.”

Kyle Young, the CEO of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, had this to say this past week: “Kris Kristofferson believed to his core that creativity is God-given, and that those who ignore or deflect such a holy gift are doomed to failure and unhappiness. He preached that a life of the mind gives voice to the soul, and then he created a body of work that gave voice not only to his soul but to ours. Kris’s heroes included the prize fighter Muhammad Ali, the great poet William Blake, and the ‘Hillbilly Shakespeare,’ Hank Williams. He lived his life in a way that honored and exemplified the values of each of those men, and he leaves a righteous, courageous and resounding legacy that rings with theirs.”

Author Bill Malone noted in “Country Music, U.S.A.,” the standard history of the genre, “Kristofferson’s lyrics spoke often of loneliness, alienation and pain, but they also celebrated freedom and honest relationships, and in intimate, sensuous language that had been rare to country music.”

I wholeheartedly agree. Consider these lines from his 1974 song “Shandy (The Perfect Disguise)”: “‘Cause nightmares are somebody’s daydreams, /Daydreams are somebody’s lies, /Lies ain’t no harder than telling the truth, /Truth is the perfect disguise…”

He could also be quite provocative, as in these lyrics from the title tune from his 1972 LP: “Jesus was a Capricorn, he ate organic food, /He believed in love and peace and never wore no shoes, /Long hair, beard and sandals, and a funky bunch of friends, I reckon we’d just nail him up if he came down again…”

*Coolidge and Kristofferson at home in Malibu in 1974*

In 1971, he developed a personal and professional relationship with singer Rita Coolidge, marrying her and recording a handful of albums with her (“Full Moon” in 1973, “Breakaway” in 1974 and “Natural Act” in 1978) that reached the Top 20 on country charts. The couple won two Grammys (Best Country Vocal Performance by a Duo) for “From the Bottle to the Bottom” in 1973 and “Lover Please” in 1975. They would divorce in 1980 but remained friends and occasionally performed together.

Said Coolidge last week, “Kris was a wonderful man and an extraordinary songwriter. He’s been a close friend of mine and the father of my daughter. We had a volatile marriage, but I have nothing but glowing things to say about him today.” In her 2016 autobiography, “Delta Lady,” she bemoaned his drinking, his verbal abuse and his infidelities, but concluded, “Everything we did was larger than life. I never laughed with anybody in my life like I did with Kris. When it was good, I was over-the-moon happy, but when it was sad, it was almost too much to bear.”

Kristofferson’s acting career took off in 1973 when Sam Peckinpaugh cast him as outlaw Billy the Kid in “Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid,” in which Coolidge also appeared. Martin Scorsese concurred that Kristofferson’s rugged good looks and magnetism lent themselves to the big screen, and cast him as the male lead alongside Ellen Burstyn in the critically acclaimed 1974 drama “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore.”

When Barbra Streisand was unable to secure Elvis Presley as her co-star in the 1976 remake of “A Star is Born,” her next choice was Kristofferson, who won a Golden Globe for his turn as John Norman Howard, a singer on the downside of his career who ends up killing himself in a drunk-driving incident. Kristofferson, who had described himself as “a functioning alcoholic,” said he was so disturbed by the scene where Streisand’s character tends to his dead body, he quit drinking in real life. “I remember feeling that that could very easily be my wife and kids crying over me,” he said in the 1980s. “I quit drinking over that. I didn’t want to die before my daughter grew up.”

He followed that experience with “Semi-Tough,” the sports comedy film opposite Burt Reynolds and Jill Clayburgh, but his movie career suffered in 1980 when he starred in Michael Cimino’s epic Western, “Heaven’s Gate,” one of the biggest box-office disasters in Hollywood history. Kristofferson fared reasonably well in the reviews, but the movie itself was so mercilessly panned that anyone involved with it found themselves unhirable for years to come. It would be another 15 years before he regained his footing in John Sayles’ Oscar-nominated “Lone Star.”

*Kristofferson in “Heaven’s Gate” in 1980*

He attracted a new generation of fans for his portrayal of mentor/father figure Abraham Whistler in Marvel’s first successful film, “Blade,” and its two sequels. Indeed, many superhero movie fans of the late 1990s and early 2000s had no idea that Kristofferson had another career as a singer-songwriter, which he found rather amusing. “I was doing a show in Sweden, and somebody backstage mentioned to me, ‘Hey Kris, there are all these kids out there saying, ‘Geez, Whistler sings?'”

When he experienced a dry spell in both acting and songwriting in the early ’80s, he found solace in his friends in the music business. Kristofferson teamed up with Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson and Cash to record “Highwayman,” Jimmy Webb’s marvelous song about a soul with four incarnations in different places in time and history. It became a multiplatinum hit that inspired a full album by the foursome, who came to be known as The Highwaymen. They capitalized on the favorable commercial and critical response by recording more albums and touring multiple times over the next decade. Kristofferson later marvelled, “I always looked up to all of those legends, and I felt like I was kind of a kid who had climbed up on Mount Rushmore and stuck his face out there!”

He often talked about how grateful he is to the established songwriters and singers in Nashville who took him under their wing when he was new to town. In comparison, he noted, “Those shows like ‘American Idol’ are kind of scary to me. They wanted me to be on one of those panels one time, and I said it’s the last thing in the world I’d ever want to do. I would hate to have to discourage somebody.”

His legacy as a songwriter is cemented by the number and diversity of artists who have admired his material enough to record it. In addition to Johnny Cash, Janis Joplin, Ray Price, Rita Coolidge, Roger Miller, Gordon Lightfoot, Sammi Smith and Al Green, you can hear strong covers of Kristofferson songs by The Grateful Dead, Frank Sinatra, Willie Nelson, Gladys Knight and The Pips, Elvis Presley, Dolly Parton, Wilson Pickett, Charley Pride, Olivia Newton-John, Ronnie Milsap, Tina Turner, Glen Campbell, Bryan Adams, Joan Baez, Jerry Lee Lewis, Emmylou Harris, Michael Bublé and Thelma Houston.

Streisand said recently, “At a concert in 2019 at London’s Hyde Park, I asked Kris to join me on stage to sing our other ‘A Star Is Born’ duet, ‘Lost Inside Of You.’ He was as charming as ever, and the audience showered him with applause. It was a joy seeing him receive the recognition and love he so richly deserved.”

Kristofferson was married to his third wife, Lisa, for more than 40 years, from 1983 until his death. He had a total of eight children from his three marriages, and seven grandchildren. When asked about his family in 2016, he said, “When I was thirty, and a long time after that, I felt like I had to leave home to do what I had to do. Now, it’s just the opposite.”

Bypass surgery in 1999 slowed Kristofferson down, as did an extended bout with Lyme disease in the decade that followed, but he remained active into his 80s. On his final album of new material, 2013’s “Feeling Mortal,” the title song sums up Kristofferson’s feelings near the end of his life: “Here today and gone tomorrow, that’s the way it’s got to be, /God Almighty, here I am, /Am I where I ought to be? /I’ve begun to soon descend like the sun into the sea…”

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