This isn’t one of the big setpieces on that psychotherapeutic tool of a covers album My Beauty but it is one of the most emotionally naked of its tracks, even on a record which set new standards for emotional nakedness. “This Guy’s In Love” is another song which interpreters have to approach with extreme caution; it is easy to convert vulnerable into bland, or collapse through the trapdoor of overkill on the key line of “if not I’ll just die.” Originally composed with Chet Baker in mind – although the Chet Baker of 1968 was in no condition to tackle it – Alpert’s voice preserves Baker’s pretend nonchalance to conceal his extreme fear and uncertainty; humming to himself in the park, hands insecurely hunched in pockets, while swerving his head around every two seconds to ensure that she’s heard him.
Rowland’s reading, as with much else on My Beauty, puts me in mind of Robin Williams’ character in The Fisher King; his life having been razed to ground zero, clumsily and fitfully but faithfully attempting to build a new one, needing to relearn just about everything in terms of what a human being is and how that human being relates to other ones (“After being so lost and seeing only ugliness in the world, these songs started to penetrate my frightened world” remarks Rowland in his brief sleevenote…well, that’s why some of us build Churches…). He keeps the song very quiet indeed, as a sort of midnight blue jazz ballad, though this is as much to do with insecurity as restraint. Guitarist Neil Hubbard and bassist John McKenzie are the epitome of discretion; indeed, for the first two lines of the song Rowland is accompanied only by Blair Cunningham’s near-inaudible brushes.
The singer’s delivery is bluffly humble, like a broken man painfully and slowly learning to walk again; he’s trying to talk to her, to us, as best he can manage – the delivery is not refined, but it is a question of familiarising oneself again with this sort of language so that the ability to love can be rediscovered (“my-heart-a-keeps-a-break-in’-ah”). Lush strings filter in from the left channel but are for now kept at a distance. Note the subtle changes to the lyrics – “you see, this guy” as opposed to “you say this guy,” and “what I’d give to make you mine” rather than “what I’d do” – with a radical break at the first climax where, instead of offering death as an alternative option to himself, after “say you’re in love, in love with this guy,” he extends the “guyyyyyyyyyy” as though hanging onto an umbilical cord; then the music simply slides to a halt and he offers a simple, spoken “please.”
The trumpet instrumental break is replaced by Mark Feltham’s harmonica (we only hear a harmonica in the third and fourth lines of the first verse of Alpert’s version) while Rowland repeats to himself “come on, come on” as he does throughout the album, willing himself to believe in his own restoration, begging himself to keep breathing. When he returns for the second and final chorus it is clear that he has gradually lost his reserve; his post-Russell Mael vibrato sites his voice at the edge of tears and total breakdown (the vulnerable tightrope is a major theme on the record), and for the last, and indeed, only time, he sings, very lowly, slowly and deliberately, that crucial line, stretching it out like a noose threatening to overlap the clothes line – “if not I’ll just………die,” the “die” coming out as an exhausted bitonal baritone sob. Hubbard’s guitar ripples his consent and concern, and the song “dies” into the bluer ether. Mercifully, he has not died.
Rowland’s reading, as with much else on My Beauty, puts me in mind of Robin Williams’ character in The Fisher King; his life having been razed to ground zero, clumsily and fitfully but faithfully attempting to build a new one, needing to relearn just about everything in terms of what a human being is and how that human being relates to other ones (“After being so lost and seeing only ugliness in the world, these songs started to penetrate my frightened world” remarks Rowland in his brief sleevenote…well, that’s why some of us build Churches…). He keeps the song very quiet indeed, as a sort of midnight blue jazz ballad, though this is as much to do with insecurity as restraint. Guitarist Neil Hubbard and bassist John McKenzie are the epitome of discretion; indeed, for the first two lines of the song Rowland is accompanied only by Blair Cunningham’s near-inaudible brushes.
The singer’s delivery is bluffly humble, like a broken man painfully and slowly learning to walk again; he’s trying to talk to her, to us, as best he can manage – the delivery is not refined, but it is a question of familiarising oneself again with this sort of language so that the ability to love can be rediscovered (“my-heart-a-keeps-a-break-in’-ah”). Lush strings filter in from the left channel but are for now kept at a distance. Note the subtle changes to the lyrics – “you see, this guy” as opposed to “you say this guy,” and “what I’d give to make you mine” rather than “what I’d do” – with a radical break at the first climax where, instead of offering death as an alternative option to himself, after “say you’re in love, in love with this guy,” he extends the “guyyyyyyyyyy” as though hanging onto an umbilical cord; then the music simply slides to a halt and he offers a simple, spoken “please.”
The trumpet instrumental break is replaced by Mark Feltham’s harmonica (we only hear a harmonica in the third and fourth lines of the first verse of Alpert’s version) while Rowland repeats to himself “come on, come on” as he does throughout the album, willing himself to believe in his own restoration, begging himself to keep breathing. When he returns for the second and final chorus it is clear that he has gradually lost his reserve; his post-Russell Mael vibrato sites his voice at the edge of tears and total breakdown (the vulnerable tightrope is a major theme on the record), and for the last, and indeed, only time, he sings, very lowly, slowly and deliberately, that crucial line, stretching it out like a noose threatening to overlap the clothes line – “if not I’ll just………die,” the “die” coming out as an exhausted bitonal baritone sob. Hubbard’s guitar ripples his consent and concern, and the song “dies” into the bluer ether. Mercifully, he has not died.
7 comments:
In many ways the parent album is an incredible record. Deeply unfashionable, (Alan McGee deserves credit for putting it out, though it can't have been what he wanted or expected), at times it seems the soundtrack to a TV special from the 70's - all satin clad backing dancers and those small bands of session men that always turned up on the light entertainment shows of the day. At the same time it is an incredible emotionally naked record, almost uncomfortably so. Rowland is telling us how far he's fallen and how this music helped him get back out, fashion and record sales bedamned (he can't have thought this would sell?). As for fashion, let's not forget the cover and the Reading appearance, two things that killed this record stone dead on it's release. I can't imagine many Dexy fans of old would accept Kevin the cross dresser.
I haven't been able to track this one down - although judicious Googling did manage to unearth KR's utterly gob-smacking version of "The Greatest Love Of All", which straddles the divide between the ridiculous and the sublime to magnificent effect, before tipping firmly over into the latter category...
Marcello, I'm not sure if this would have travelled beyond the shores of Australia, but in the early 80s The Reels persuaded K-Tel to let them make an "easy listening" album (this was about the least (and perhaps therefore most) "punk" thing anybody could have imagined, years before the word "lounge" brought with it any sort of ironic cache). The album leads off with "This Guy", a really quite beautiful version with understated keyboard accompaniment and some lovely trumpet work to top it off. Mason's voice, and delivery, may not, now that you mention it, be a million miles from what Chet Baker would have done with the song. I can shoot you a copy if you're interested.
Stan, I don't know the Reels at all so I guess they never reached here, but I'm definitely interested in hearing their take on the tune - YSI at your earliest convenience please!
YSI.
Comments?
Most interesting. Jim Morrison crooning over Tindersticks. I liked the singer's collapse on "last to know" and the fact that he lets the last "die" just disappear into the ether - also, like Rowland, he only tackles that passage once.
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