So once again the choice for the best video this week is very easy to make. "April Rain" by Guns 'n Roses is worth taking time to watch even though it is 9 minutes 16 seconds long. It is a great mashup of a wedding, including a reception, combined with the band playing in a concert hall. Yet from 6 minutes 40 seconds the video story takes a dark turn which is also reflected in the musical progression of the song. Won't spoil it for you, if you haven't seen it before.

So today I watched a very interesting video analysis of a song by the Beatles called A Northern Song. Post Covid Island Discs now usually records the death of famous musicians and of course poor old George Harrison passed away many years before the Covid-19 pandemic. So I guess this post is in memorandum to George Harrison even if he did pass away so many years before this website was even born. Yet there appears to be so much more to this song of Harrison's than meets the eye as explained by James Hargreaves in his video which is also included under the Beatles Anthrology recording of Harrison's clever song which I think, as Hargreaves argues, is a passive-aggressive dig at the way McCartney and Lennon treated him as an inferior member of the Beatles.

After watching Hargreaves excellent analysis of the Harrison's song, along with his detailing of the complicated tensions that existed between the Beatles in the late 60s, it became obvious that the band was always in trouble and it was only a matter of time before the fab four would go their separate ways. Hargreaves analysis challenges the commonly held idea that the breakup of the band was solely down to Yoko entering the scene as clearly relational tensions in the Beatles were not just confined to John and Paul.

A less known version but better version (in my opinion) of the song before Lennon and McCartney fell into a possible trap set by Harrison (see Hargreaves analysis below).

Analysis of the song and its meaning by James Hargreaves

The mainstream version of the song as first published on the Yellow Submarine Album

So keeping to my musical thread, yesterday I posted the hit Watching the Wheels by John Lennon which appeared on his final album Double Fantasy. A little bit of rock trivia. Apparently, he was stimulated to come out of retirement and produce Double Fantasy after hearing Rock Lobster on the radio. Another great song to get you dancing around your living room with your fellow family prisoners.

PS: Why is the guitarist playing a guitar which is missing the D and G string? Perhaps he wants it to be a ukulele?

Fast forward some years

What an amazing album cover and appropriate song for day 50 of this long shutdown. I bought a 12 string just so I could play this piece when I was a young and foolish 20 something year old. I'm sure a lot of us can relate to this song now more than ever.

In this song, Alan Parsons adopts Egyptian mythology and imagines a conversation between a man who is at the point of death and the boatman who has been charged with taking his soul across the river of death. I have written below the beginning of verses 1 and 2.

"Well I sympathise completely, but there is nothing I can do, I am just a humble servant with a message here for you. And I know you have good reasons and there's things you have to do but the boatman won't be waiting and he's leaving here with you."

"Well I sympathise completely, but there is nothing I can do, I am just obeying order, I'm a simple soul like you. Well you really are persuasive but I heard it all before.."

That final line of verse 2 I have always found striking as the image is so powerful. Yes imagine the most powerful richest man or woman in the world trying to argue with death that it is not their time. I love the way death (the boatman) is so polite softening the blow with feigned praise; "yes you really are persuasive .... but I heard it all before: wow what an understatement when one thinks of the number of people in the history of the world who have died.

Back in the days when I was a St Paul's fellowship leader, I used this song in an Evangelistic play I put together. A girl who attended our fellowship group at the time, who was a dancer, put together a really cool choreographed dance sequence for me. Once more all distant memories of long lost days.

So one final thing, about this clip. It features the late comedian Robin Williams playing the part of the protesting traveller. Somewhat sad and ironic because, as with so many comedians, in reality William's life was much more towards this melancholic end of the scale rather than the funny man of many of his movies and of course in the end he embraced the boatman through suicide — RIP.

For a band that was created for a television series this song certainly deserves to be included in Covid Island Discs. A really pretty song and probably the Monkees at their best.

To open week 60, I shall start with probably one of the most famous Neil Young songs of his very large repertoire which is Heart of Gold. This concert was recorded for the BBC all the way back in 1971 when Heart of Gold was just fresh of the press; hence why he says it is a new song. Now it is only a mere 50 years old!! How time flies when you're having fun hey.

This one of the Police's strangest songs. I cite this song straight after yesterday's song by Dido Life for Rent because apparently it is about a guy submitting to his girlfriend in a relationship but in the final verse he turns the tables on her and she becomes wrapped around his finger. Again these songs capture the more adversarial aspect of boy/girl relationships where both parties are trying to establish dominance over the other rather than acting in love which ideally looks to putting the other person's interests first.