Brass in Pocket - The Pretenders

'Got brass in pocket' is the first line of the third single by the Pretenders that tooped the charts in January 1980 and was their first real success. Quite what the line is doing there is not immediately clear. Apparently co-writer Chrissie Hynde overheard someone use the phrase at a concert they did in Wakefield. The song seems to be describing that burst of confidence some get when they want to impress someone they themselves are drawn to. Indeed, Hynde has said that it is about cockiness. It is as likely to be about impressiing someone of the opposite sex as impressing an audience at a concert. Hynde has stated it s nithing to with feminism. It apparently began as a guitar progression from the late Honeyman-Scott to which Hynde added the lyrics. She thought it was trying to be MoTown but failing. Many of the lyrics are not immediately clear. Brass is northern slang for money. 'Got bottle, I'm gonna use it' is using the word bottle as in Cockney rhyming slang (bottle and glass ie ass or more appropriately here sass). 'Detroit leaning' is American slang for driving a vehicle with one hand. New skank is cannabis and reet is a nod to a trope by comic artist Robert Crumb. Hynde tends to sing a little off key and she particularly did not like her voice on this song at first but came round. The bouncing tune fits the lyrics well. The persona could offend if it was more aggressive but one is willing to accept that the singer really is special somehow and deserves some attention. She is going to use, she says, her arms, her legs, her style, he sidestep, her fingers and (and this is the give away) her imagination. The fact she's winking at us should not be missed either. Showing off is a sin but maybe ina song one can be forgiven for it.

A thousand years - Christina Perri

"A Thousand Years" is a 2011 pop song written for The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1 that somehow wormed its way into my psyche many years later. Perri, an American singer and songwriter wrote it with her producer David Hodges. It became her second single on Atlantic Records, again from the film's official soundtrack.

The song was apparently what they call a sleeper hit, eventually reaching its peak position of number 11 in the UK and 31 in the US only after the release of the film sequel The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2 in 2012. Perri re-recorded the song, again produced by Hodges, for the sequel, this time with added vocals from Steve Kazee. It was very successful round the world.

The song is about the love affair between Edward and Bella in the novel and subsequent film series and plays in the credits. However, you don't need to know that to enjoy the song. Every true love affair has its own version of "I have died every day waiting for you Darling, don't be afraid. I have loved you for a thousand years I'll love you for a thousand more." A beautiful tune, a clear voice, good but vague lyrics, nice piano chords guitar and orchestration, a romantic feel - no wonder it hooked me in. Also that final "And all along I believed I would find you, Time has brought your heart to me."

Two other carols - Simon & Garfunkel

More obscurely, two other carols sung by Simon & Garfunkel can be found. Comfort and Joy is an a cappella arrangement of the carol God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen. The Star Carol is a carol written by Alfred Burt and Wihla Hutson. It was first released by "Tennessee" Ernie Ford in 1958. Both are found on the album Old Friends published in 1997.

The lyrics of The Star Carol

The simple but moving lyrics of the star carol are

Long years ago on a deep winter night

High in the heavens, a star shone bright

While in the manger, a wee baby lay

Sweetly asleep on a bed of hay

Jesus our Lord was that baby so small

Laid down to sleep in a humble stall

Then came the star and it stood overhead

Shedding its light 'round His little head

Dear baby Jesus, how tiny Thou art

I'll make a place for Thee in my heart

And when the stars in the heavens I see

Ever and always I think of Thee.

Go tell it on the Mountain and 7 O'Clock news/Silent Night - Simon & Garfunkel

A feature of early Simon & Garfunkel is a willingness, despite being Jewish, to sing Christian songs, such as You can tell the world. Some of these songs are Christmas carols. Go Tell It on the Mountain is an African-American spiritual song probably passed down by oral tradition but originally published by John Wesley Work Jr (1871-1925) from Nashville. The lyrics are

Go tell it on the mountain, over the hills and everywhere;

go tell it on the mountain, that Jesus Christ is born

(alternatively, especially if it is not Christmas, "Jesus Christ is Lord".

If it is Easter, "That Jesus lives again".)

While shepherds kept their watching o'er silent flocks by night

Behold throughout the heavens there shone a Holy light

The shepherds feared and trembled when, lo! above the Earth

Rang out the angel chorus that hailed our Saviour's birth

Down in a lowly manger our humble Christ was born

And brought us all salvation that blessed Christmas morn

"Go Tell It on the Mountain" probably refers to the shepherds described in Luke's Gospel, hence the alternate title of "While shepherds kept their watching". 

Before Simon & Garfunkel recorded it in 1964, Peter, Paul and Mary had adapted and rewritten it with specific references to Exodus and using the phrase "Let my people go" but referring implicitly to the civl rights struggles of the early 1960s.

*

Also in 1966 they recorded a version of the famous German language carol Silent Night. Billed as 7 O'Clock News/Silent Night the track is a sound collage juxtaposing their two part harmony rendition of Silent Night with a simulated 7 O'Clock News bulletin featuring actual events from the summer of 1966 read by Charles O'Donnell, a then radio disc jockey. As the track progresses, the news report assumes a greater presence through an increase in volume. The very basic point is made that though Jesus has come, the world is still a mess. Jewish polemic sometimes argues that Messiah cannot have come because of this but that is to forget the Second Coming. The mix on the track purposely clashes with the piano accompaniment mixed solely to the left channel and the news solely to the right channel while vocals remain in the middle.

Events referred to include a dispute in the House of Representatives over "the civil rights bill"; the death of comedian Lenny Bruce from an overdose aged 42 (actually 40); Martin Luther King Jr. reaffirming plans for an open housing march; the grand jury indictment of Richard Speck for the murder of nine (actually eight) student nurses; disruption by protesters at the House Committee on Un-American Activities hearings into anti-Vietnam War protests; a speech by former Vice-President Richard Nixon to the Veterans of Foreign Wars (actually the American Legion) urging an increase in the war effort in Vietnam, and calling opposition to the war the "greatest single weapon working against the US".

Winter Song - Lindisfarne

Elvis Costello once called "Winter Song", the third track on Lindisfarne's 1970 debut Nicely out of tune, one of the greatest songs ever, and he may be right. There is a starkness about the presentation, appropriate for a winter song, and it sounds like a solo effort on first hearing but the bass and excellent mandolin work become evident on further listens. The contrasting harshness and gentleness of the vocals at various points is another great feature of this excellent alternative Christmas song that manages to reference snowdrops, the turkey in the oven, the Christmas presents bought, Santa and Jesus and yet remains sceptical throughout. Its message, a typical Alan Hull socialist one it would seem, is that in the midst of winter rather than just feeling sorry for ourselves we should spare a thought for homeless tramps, gypsies and even for Jesus (although even there Hull is as non-commital as he can be). What a striking song.

Do you spare one thought for Jesus

Who had nothing but his thoughts

Who got busted just for talking

And befriending the wrong sorts?

Mother and child reunion - Paul Simon

When Paul Simon's eponymous second album appeared in 1972, this was the first single taken from it. It is a reggae song recorded in Jamaica and has impressive guitar and drum work. The title has its origin in a chicken-and-egg dish called "Mother and Child Reunion" that Simon claims he saw on a menu in a Chinese restaurant. The lyrics were inspired by the death of a pet dog that was run over and killed, the first death Simon had personally experienced. It made him begin to wonder how he would react if the same thing happened to his wife at the time, Peggy Harper. "Somehow there was a connection between this death and Peggy and it was like Heaven, I don't know what the connection was" Simon told Rolling Stone at the time of its release. The song was recorded at Dynamic Sounds Studios, Torrington Bridge, Kingston, Jamaica, with Jimmy Cliff's backing group. Guitarist Huks ("Hux") Brown and bass guitarist Jackie Jackson were also long-time members of Toots & the Maytals. Cissy Houston is one of the four backing singers. Unusually, Simon recorded the music first then wrote and added the lyrics subsequently. He had previously wanted to make "Why Don't You Write Me" – recorded with Art Garfunkel on Bridge over Troubled Water – sound Jamaican but it ended up sounding like a "bad imitation" and the idea was abandoned. Simon was instructed by the musicians during the recording on the differences between reggae, ska and bluebeat. He felt awkward at first being "the only white guy there" and an American. He later overdubbed piano and vocals to the track, back in New York.

Beautiful Day - U2

Probably the Irish band U2's best album is their tenth, All that you can't leave behind. Released in 2000, its opening track is Beautiful Day, also released as a very successful single. The distinctive percussive guitar sound is a reversion to earlier hits. The song won various prestigious awards and is apparently a concert favourite. It went through various incarnations before emerging in its final form, the genesis being a chord sequence written by lead singer Bono and adapted by guitarist, The Edge. The band got bogged down with the song at one stage but producers Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois took things forward by introduing a drum machine, a piano part, synthesised strings and a new guitar part. Near the end of a 20-minute jam of the song, Bono sang, "It's a beautiful day, don't let it get away". After lunch, this impromptu vocal became the song's chorus. The Edge also added a high backing vocal and Lanois a lower wimoweh vocal. These were doubled and processed by Eno. The later mix, which included work by Steve Lillywhite, added a Bono guitar part. The bass line was also changed and some of the guitar work. The song ended up with four different time signatures. It opens with reverberating electric piano over a string synthesiser. The progression set up continues throughout the verses and chorus. After the opening line, "The heart is a bloom", the rhythm enters. In verse 1, Bono's vocals are in the front of the mix. About 30 seconds in a guitar arpeggio pattern first appears, echoing across the channels. The verses are relatively quiet until the chorus, when the Edge begins playing the song's guitar riff and the drums enter. During the chorus, Bono sings in a restrained manner, contrasting with the Edge's loud background vocals and the sustain on "day". After the second chorus, a bridge section begins, heightening the track's emotion as Bono sings "Touch me. Take me to that other place".The bridge links to the middle eight with a section in which the Edge repeats a modulated two note phrase on guitar. After seven seconds, the rhythm breaks and the middle eight begins. The lyrics for this section are in space, above Earth, as it were and views China, the Grand Canyon, tuna fleets and Bedouin fires, oil fields, etc. I especially like the biblical reference to "the bird with a leaf in her mouth after the flood", After a third chorus and a return of the bridge section, the song suddenly ends in a "low-key" fashion; most of the instrumentation stopping as a regeneration of a guitar signal drifts back and forth between channels before fading. According to Bono, it is about "a man who has lost everything, but finds joy in what he still has."

Bridge from heart to heart - Horslips

Bridge from heart to heart is a rare Horslips track that was a B-side to Speed the Plough in 1978, sharing the honours with a live version of Red river rock. There was also an EP in Ireland called Tour-A-Loor-A-Loor-A-Loor-A-Loor-A with four tracks including this one. Horslips shared vocals and I'm not sure which one takes the lead here. I'm guessing Barry Devlin backed up by Charles O'Connor. It is a simple song, upbeat but with a dark theme, what appears to be the death of a loved one. The opening reference to a three thousand mile gap, however, suggests the real theme is the Irish emigration. It is reminiscent a little of Ghosts in that respect. Halfway through there is a beautiful flute lead from Jim Lockhart. The flute then continues to the close of the song. As so often with Horslips the underlying tune is a traditional Irish one, this time a tune called Carrickfergus.

Cross a weary three thousand miles
Your face is with me every hour
I saved your love, it's all I've got to stay alive
And standing at these bright cross roads you feel the glory and the power
But I feel I've left the mystery far behind

First thing every morning when the mailman comes to call
Think I hear your footsteps in the hall
And they build a bridge from heart to heart
They'll see the ways of other lovers
When they build that bridge
They'll know that we already tried

 
The nights are long without you here
The days go by like heavy weather
The feeling lasts, I'm only biding time
When all I see is cold and lonely streets
We're still somehow together
It's cold tonight but you're still on my mind

Woodland Rock - T Rex

Woodland Rock first appeared in 1971 as one of the 'B' side tracks to Hot Love. Not to be confused with the earlier Woodland Bop, this is one of the first tracks recorded wth Steve Currie on bass and Bill Legend on drums. In many ways it is a very old fashioned stop start rock'n'roll number (based on Long Tall Sally no doubt, although Jailhouse Rock may be in there somewhere too). Despite the title, the lyrics are not particularly pastoral. Bolan often used a capo and a slightly different tuning to get the sound he wanted. There has also been some electronic jiggery-pokery from the producer Tony Visconti. The guitars appear to be going backwards at some points as on the Beatles track Rain.

Foot Tapper - The Shadows

Human beings have many ways to communicate, including the tap of the foot. Of course, such foot tapping can be for illicit reasons. Feet will often tap in response to music with a beat and that is the context here. A foot tapper is a song with a good beat. The name has been appropriated by The Shadows for one of their many instrumentals.  Written by Hank Marvin and Bruce Welch, this one was Number 1 in the UK in 1963. It was originally written at the request of French film director Jacques Tati (he had seen them in Paris in 1961 and liked them) but was not used by him as Tati hit difficulties and did not release his next film until 1967. Instead, in 1963, the Shadows had a small role in the Cliff Richard film Summer Holiday and producer Peter Yates used it for the radio music in the bus scene. It was then released as a double 'A' side with the pop standard "The Breeze and I". The whole thing is very tight and well arranged and works well. It does what it says on the tin. Brian Bennett on drums shines. It is hard not to tap your foot to it. It became well known later as the signature tune and closing theme for BBC Radio 2's Sounds of the Sixties from 1983 until 2017 when presenter Brian Matthew left.

Jokerman - Bob Dylan

Jokerman is the opening track on Bob Dylan's 1983 album, the much less preachy Infidels, his follow up to a trilogy of Christian albums. Recorded on April 14, 1983, it was released as a single on June 1, 1984, but was not successful. It is often regarded as one of Dylan's best songs, especially since his sixties heyday. It has excellent ingredients - a good tune, excellent musicians (Mark Knopfler, Mick Taylor, etc), that distinctive voice and some trademark harmonica, Nobel laureate standard lyrics. The lyrics are full of biblical imagery (Standing on the waters casting your bread, Sodom and Gomorrah, Leviticus and Deuteronomy) and have been understood as a political metaphor, perhaps referring to Ronald Reagan. The video made for the song includes photographs of historical figures such as Hitler, Reagan, Muhammed Ali and Dylan himself with paintings by Bosch, Goya and Dürer.

Woodstock - Matthews Southern Comfort

For a song very much if its era you would have to look hard to find a better candidate than Woodstock, first performed live in 1969. The song was written by Joni Mitchell (and is the B-side of Big Yellow Taxi) but several notable versions immeditately threatened to eclipse the original. In the USA, there was the version by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young (which initially had input from Jimi Hendrix) and in the UK, the modified version by the short lived Matthews' Southern Comfort, the most successful commercially. The lyrics reference the famous Woodstock Music and Arts Festival of 1969 and tell the story of a concert-goer on a trek to attend the festival at Max Yasgur's farm. Mitchell was unable to perform at the festival, having been advised that a TV appearance was preferable, but heard all about it through her then boyfriend Graham Nash, who had performed there. She wrote the song in a New York hotel while watching TV reports of the festival. David Crosby for one felt she had captured the feeling and importance of the Woodstock festival better than anyone who had actually been there. Among the most interesting lyrics, apart from the anti-war message, are the references in the chorus to "We are stardust, we are golden/We are billion-year-old carbon" and "and we've got to get ourselves back to the garden". The first picks up on the idea of modern science which teaches that we are largely made up of elements made in the stars billions of years ago. The second phrase references the Eden of the Bible lost in the Fall. Of course, the problem is that we cannot get ourselves back there, we need salvation from God. "We are caught in the devil's bargain" is another lyric worth pondering.

Down by the Salley Gardens - Clannad/You rambling boys of pleasure - Planxty

Down by the Salley Gardens (Irish: Gort na Saileán) was a poem by celebrated author W B Yeats first published in The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems in 1889. Yeats said it was "an attempt to reconstruct an old song from three lines imperfectly remembered by an old peasant woman in the village of Ballisodare, Sligo, who often sings them to herself." The song no doubt was the ballad Ye Rambling Boys of Pleasure which includes the verse "Down by yon flowery garden my love and I we first did meet. I took her in my arms and to her I gave kisses sweet. She bade me take life easy just as the leaves fall from the tree. But I being young and foolish, with my darling did not agree." The rest of the song, however, is quite different. Yeats' original title, An Old Song Re-Sung reflecting his debt to Rambling Boys gave way to the present title when reprinted in Poems. The power of the song is in the ability of its author to look back on his youth with palpable regret. Rambling boys rather blames money for the problems encountered. (It should be noted that the Bible does not say that gold is the root of all evil but that the love of it is the root of all kinds of evil). The "Salley Gardens" were on the banks of the river at Ballysodare where trees were cultivated for roof thatching. Sally is Standard English for "sallow" ie a tree of the genus Salix and close in sound to Irish saileach, willow. In 1909 the verses were set to music by Herbert Hughes to the traditional air The Maids of Mourne Shore. (Other tunes were written by Rebecca Clarke (1886–1979) in the 1920s and John Ireland (1879–1962) in 1929–31. A vocal setting by poet and composer Ivor Gurney was published in 1938. In 1943 Britten set it using the tune Hughes collected. In 1988, American composer John Corigliano published his own setting.) Clannad recorded it live in 1979 and are just one of a host of artists to record it - from Kathleen Ferrier through Dolores Keen to actress Emma Thompson.

The lyrics

Down by the salley gardens my love and I did meet. She passed the salley gardens with little snow-white feet. She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree, but I, being young and foolish, with her would not agree.

In a field by the river my love and I did stand and on my leaning shoulder she laid her snow-white hand.

She bid me take life easy, as the grass grows on the weirs, but I was young and foolish and now am full of tears.

*

You rambling boys of pleasure, give ear unto these lines I write. Although I am a rover, in rambling I take great delight. I cast my mind on a handsome girl and often times she does me slight. My mind is never easy, except when my true love is in my sight.

Down by yon flowery gardens, where me and my true love do meet, I took her in my arms and unto her gave kisses sweet. She bade me take love easy, just as the leaves fall from the tree, but I being young and foolish, with my own true love I did not agree.

And the second time I met my love, I thought that her heart was surely mine but as the season changes, my darling girl has changed her mind. Gold is the root of evil, although it bears a glistening hue, causes many the lad and lass to part, though their hearts like mine be e'er so true.

And I wish I was in Belfast town and my true love along with me and money in my pocket, to keep us in good company; liquor to be plenty, a flowing glass on every side - hard fortune would ne'er daunt me, for I am young and the world is wide.

Hello, Goodbye - The Beatles

When talking about popular music it is hard not to get round to the Beatles at some point. But which track to highllight? The single, Hello Goodbye recorded at the end of 1967 is as good as any to focus on. It has plenty to commend it  - a great commercial tune, interesting vocal harmonies and a nice (improvised) 45 second coda after the briefest caesura. Lennon is said to have considered the McCartney song inconsequential, calling it "three minutes of contradictions and meaningless juxtapositions." Perhaps the real problem was that it knocked his I Am The Walrus on to the B-side. The single was commercially successful all over the world and spent seven weeks at the top of the UK chart. Partly because it came after the advent of BBC Radio 1, it is said to be the most played Beatles record on radio. McCartney later said that the lyrics take duality as their theme. It is claimed that the song was started off by McCartney sitting down at home at a harmonium with Alistair Taylor, who had been an assistant to the then recently deceased Brian Epstein. McCartney got Taylor to sing the opposite of whatever he sang. He was later eager to point out that he sang all the more positive words but he does sing no as well as go. The Beatles produced three promotional films for the song, one of which was shown on The Ed Sullivan Show in America.

Fire Brigade - The Move

Fire Brigade by the Birmingham band The Move was released in 1968 as their fourth single. It is a consummate piece of pop music, two and a half minutes long. It starts with the sound of an old fashioned fire engine, has a very catchy hook of a guitar riff (apparently derived from "Somethin' Else" by Eddie Cochran and a favourite of the composer but almost twangy enough to be Duane Eddy) and some nice background vocals (including onomatapoeic hoots). It even has an excellent middle eight, courtesy of Carl Wayne, the main vocal being taken by Roy Wood, the song's composer. (On Flowers in the rain the roles had been reversed). Wood apparently wrote it to order the night before in a hotel room. Sessions for the song began the next day, on 16 November 1967, at Olympic Studios, Barnes, London. There are apparently other versions of it, including one with Matthew Fisher of Procol Harum on piano. In a 1976 interview for Sounds magazine, Wood said, "When The Move began I had a lot of children's fairy stories I'd been writing and the songs grew out of them, childlike with a lunatic side like 'Fire Brigade.' I really worked on the words." When consulted, the lyrics are surprisingly poetic. The basic idea is that there is a girl who is so hot she "could set the place on fire". Hence the need to "Run and get the fire brigade, Get the fire brigade" as you "See the buildings start to really burn". The metaphor is legitimate because it well describes the excitement only a teenager really experiences.

Is it love? - T Rex

Is it love? is best known as the b-side of the successful break through single, Ride a White Swan. It shared the space with a version of the Eddie Cochran song Summertime Blues. It was also the opener for the album T Rex and has its own merits, without doubt. The song is very simple, lyrically and musically, minimalist almost. It is a sort of transitional song for the folky duet sound of Tyrannosaurus Rex that became the regular guitar band sound that T Rex espoused. Here we have distorted electric lead and bass but backed by bongos rather than drums. Other distinctive features are the drone effect caused by some sort of electronic buzz, the distinctive cry and count down at the beginning of the track and the multi-tracked voices at the end. The short lead riff was then a new departure for T Rex. The song's brevity (2' 36") is another one of its strengths. It is a hidden gem.

Things - Bobby Darin

I like this song partly because I can remember my dad singing it. It came out in 1962 when I was three going on four but it probably got sung for several months after its chart success (No 2 in the UK). My dad had a pleasant voice and could sing this song well. Bobby Darin himself, the American writer, singer and instrumentalist who wrote and sang the song, is a brilliant laid back singer. The instrumentation and the echoing female chorus enhance the whole. The subject - a failed romance that the singer is seeking to revive - is only incidental. The upbeat tempo contrasts with the melancholy lyric in a very attractive way, as so often in pop music. The key change half way through and the choke in the voice at one point also add to the whole effect. By 1962, Darin had begun to write and sing country music like this. "Things" was the final Darin single released on Atco Records, a division of Atlantic, before he began recording for Capitol. He later returned to Atlantic. The next hits after this one were "You're the Reason I'm Living" and "18 Yellow Roses". Before this he had become famous with Splish Splash, Dream Lover, Mack the Knife and Beyond the Sea.

The Bells of Rhymney - The Byrds

A recent reference to Fleetwood Mac's Dragonfly set me thinking on The Byrds' and Bells of Rhymney, the connection being that both tracks are based on poems by Welshmen, indeed men from Monmouthshire, my home county. The former is by W H Davies and the latter by Idris Davies (1905-1953). Idris from Rhymney wrote in Welsh and (mostly) English.

The lyrics to The Bells of Rhymney are from the poetic work Gwalia Deserta, first published in 1938. It was inspired by a local coal mining disaster and the failure of the 1926 General Strike. The stanzas are based on the pattern found in the nursery rhyme Oranges and Lemons.  In addition to Rhymney, the poem refers to the bells of a number of other places in South Wales - Merthyr, Rhondda, Blaina, Newport, Cardiff and the Wye Valley (also Caerphilly, Neath, Brecon, Swansea in the original).

Two decades after Gwalia Deserta was published, Pete Seeger used a part of the work as lyrics for his song after discovering them in a book by Dylan Thomas. The song was first released as part of a suite that included "Sinking of the Ruben James" and "There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly", on the 1958 live album, Pete Seeger and Sonny Terry. Another live version was included on Seeger's 1967 compilation album, Pete Seeger's Greatest Hits.

The best known version is the one by The Byrds, recorded on April 14, 1965, and released on the band's debut album, Mr. Tambourine Man. At the time of recording, the song was a relative newcomer to the Byrds' repertoire, having first been performed during their March 1965, pre-fame residency at Ciro's nightclub on Sunset Strip, Los Angeles. Lead guitarist Roger McGuinn (then known as Jim) brought the song to the band after becoming familiar with it as an arranger on Judy Collins' album, Judy Collins 3, which included a cover version of the song. The Byrds were anxious to correctly pronounce the Welsh place-names in the lyrics on their recording, but, like Seeger, they actually mispronounce Rhymney as "Rimney" (it should be pronounced as "Hrumney" although the former rhymes better with "give me").

A number of The Byrds' early musical trademarks are on the recording - the complex harmonies, McGuinn's jangly twelve-string Rickenbacker, etc. Scott Schinder (sic) has noted how the band's rendition of the song "managed to craft the dour subject matter into a radio-friendly pop song without sacrificing the song's haunting message." The Byrds' recording influenced The Beatles, particularly George Harrison, who constructed his song "If I Needed Someone" around the same guitar riff that The Byrds had used in the song.

The lyrics

Oh, what will you give me? Say the sad bells of Rhymney
"Is there hope for the future?" Say the brown bells of Merthyr
"Who made the mine owner?" Say the black bells of Rhondda
"And who killed the miner?" Say the grim bells of Blaina

"Throw the vandals in court" Say the bells of Newport
"All will be well if, if, if, if, if-" Say the green bells of Cardiff
"Why so worried, sisters, why?" Say the silver bells of Wye
"And what will you give me?" Say the sad bells of Rhymney

The first stanza is repeated.

Sunken Rags - T Rex

Sunken Rags is one of those throw away Marc Bolan tracks that he seemed to be able to come up with with ease when T Rex was in its hey day. Indeed this is one of two songs that first appeared on the B-side of Children of the Revolution (the other track was Jitterbug Love). This one was recorded in Copenhagen at the end of the Slider sessions. The lyrics are as throw away as the tune but what he actually says is in the main correct (from a Christian point of view) "So ride on, fight on, Love is gonna win. It's gonna beat your sins." However, there is no real instruction as to how this will come about. Ultimately, it is a song about unrequited love, one of so many in the pop genre, although some suggest he is speaking to an antagonistic press. As ever with Bolan what exactly each individual line means is anyone's guess. Sunken rags is the best line in the piece. The vocals of Flo and Eddie (Howard Kaylan and Mark Volman) add a lot to the track. They appear to be joined by Micky Finn and Tony Visconti. There is an acoustic demo of the song that was recorded in 1971. There is also a remix recorded in 1985.

Dragonfly - Fleetwood Mac

"Dragonfly" is one of the lesser known singles in the catalogue of the old Fleetwood Mac. It was written by Danny Kirwan, a member of the band 1968-1972. The lyrics are based on a 1927 poem by the Welsh poet W. H. Davies, who, like myself, was born in Newport. It was originally recorded in 1970, and became the first UK single released by the band after the departure of Peter Green. It was also the first single with Christine McVie as a full member of the group. By the time the song was released, guitarist Jeremy Spencer had left the band. He did not play on the track. The single failed to chart. Peter Green said of it "The best thing he ever wrote ... that should have been a hit." In his book, "The Complete Guide to the Music of Fleetwood Mac", Rikky Rooksby says of it "... wonderfully textured guitar playing. It has shimmering chords and the tune coming down in octaves... This is far and away the best thing which Kirwan ever wrote." The lyrics of the song are

And when the roses are half-bud soft flowers

And lovely as the king of flies has come

It was a fleeting visit, all too brief

In three short minutes, he had been and gone

He rested there upon an apple leaf

A gorgeous opal crown sat on his head

Although the garden is a lovely place

Was it worthy of so fine a guest.

This is Davies's poem

Now, when my roses are half buds, half flowers,
And loveliest, the king of flies has come-
It was a fleeting visit, all too brief;
In three short minutes he has seen them all,
And rested, too, upon an apple tree.

There, his round shoulders humped with emeralds,
A gorgeous opal crown set on his head,
And all those shining honours to his breast-
‘My garden is a lovely place’ thought I,
‘But is it worthy of such a guest?’

He rested there, upon the apple leaf-
‘See, see,’ I cried amazed, ‘his opal crown,
And all those emeralds clustered around his head!’
‘His breast, my dear, how lovely was his breast-’
The voice of my Beloved quickly said.

‘See, see his gorgeous crown, that shines
With all those jewels bulging round its rim-’
I cried aloud at night, in broken rest.
Back came the answer quickly, in my dream-
‘His breast, my dear, how lovely was his breast!’