If you think you owe somebody one, don’t be surprised if they bend you out of your way for the payback. David Was gave Mel Tormé a rave review sometime in 1982; Tormé got in touch and suggested working together. I’m not sure how much attention he devoted to the lyrics on the first Was (Not Was) album but those on the second, Born To Laugh At Tornadoes, were sufficiently warped to darn at least one of Paul Haines’ socks. The album has never appeared on CD; some say this was down to Tormé’s reticence to let the world hear “Zaz Turned Blue,” but the track did appear carefully hidden away at the tail end of a posthumous 4CD box set.
The key is that Tormé sings it straight. The song is a light-verging-on-terminal vignette, perched midway between Carver and Coupland, about this kid Zaz who indulges with wrestling-hold-as-psychoasphyxiation-turn-on one night in the park (“Steve squeezed his neck/He figured…what the heck?”) but then collapses (“Zaz turned blue…what were we supposed to do?”) following which he joins the Marines – “at the age of eighteen” Tormé intones with Tom Clay-ish solemnity - fights, or maybe doesn’t fight, for a bit, then comes back to hang out, shoot pool and wear a silly grin on his chin. A typical Was (Not Was) scenario, in other words.
But Tormé and his pianist Mike Renzi don’t treat it like chapter 439 of “Out Come The Freaks”; the Velvet Fog applies his most tender compassion to the song, treats it as though it were “It Was A Very Good Year” or “None But The Lonely Heart”; his tenor soft, tactile, arching to noble when required, the melody played slowly and delicately. With his final, undemonstrably extended “blue,” into which he indeed seems to vanish into the blue of the air, Tormé turns the song into a starkly lush elegia; for what, it’s not quite certain, but he defies both himself and his listener to drop the straight face; he clearly had some idea of the cumulative absurdity of what he was singing, and in turn what does that tell us about Pavlovian responses to emotional signifiers related to the grain of a voice? He started out in 1946 as one of Artie Shaw’s bluffingly bright harmony singers wondering “What Is This Thing Called Love?” and in the intermediate lifetime he continually sought to supersede the notion of voice as direct expression of words; he was Art Pepper without the horn and without the drug hassles. “Zaz Turned Blue”’s implication might yet turn out to be: was that all there was?
The key is that Tormé sings it straight. The song is a light-verging-on-terminal vignette, perched midway between Carver and Coupland, about this kid Zaz who indulges with wrestling-hold-as-psychoasphyxiation-turn-on one night in the park (“Steve squeezed his neck/He figured…what the heck?”) but then collapses (“Zaz turned blue…what were we supposed to do?”) following which he joins the Marines – “at the age of eighteen” Tormé intones with Tom Clay-ish solemnity - fights, or maybe doesn’t fight, for a bit, then comes back to hang out, shoot pool and wear a silly grin on his chin. A typical Was (Not Was) scenario, in other words.
But Tormé and his pianist Mike Renzi don’t treat it like chapter 439 of “Out Come The Freaks”; the Velvet Fog applies his most tender compassion to the song, treats it as though it were “It Was A Very Good Year” or “None But The Lonely Heart”; his tenor soft, tactile, arching to noble when required, the melody played slowly and delicately. With his final, undemonstrably extended “blue,” into which he indeed seems to vanish into the blue of the air, Tormé turns the song into a starkly lush elegia; for what, it’s not quite certain, but he defies both himself and his listener to drop the straight face; he clearly had some idea of the cumulative absurdity of what he was singing, and in turn what does that tell us about Pavlovian responses to emotional signifiers related to the grain of a voice? He started out in 1946 as one of Artie Shaw’s bluffingly bright harmony singers wondering “What Is This Thing Called Love?” and in the intermediate lifetime he continually sought to supersede the notion of voice as direct expression of words; he was Art Pepper without the horn and without the drug hassles. “Zaz Turned Blue”’s implication might yet turn out to be: was that all there was?
6 comments:
Born To Laugh At Tornadoes also featured "Shake Your Head", with Ozzy Osbourne on vocals...(this being a time when Ozzy was almost as much of a curveball as Mel Torme)...apparently, Madonna also cut vocals for this song, and you can hear both her and Ozzy (and Kim Basinger!) on Steve "Silk" Hurley's wonderful remix of the song...
...which made number four in our charts in '92, but without Madonna input; the Wases decided not to use Madonna's voice on the original (recorded when she was simply another struggling session singer) and I've no doubt they've regretted that ever since...
... or perhaps not.
Thanks for resurrecting a song that had slipped so deep into my subconscious as to be almost irretrievable. What you have written could, and in an ideal world would, serve as a pretty convincing thesis proposal. The song, I reckon, would be strong enough to support it.
Born to Laugh at Tornadoes was definitely released on CD. I have a copy. Part of the Geffen goldline reissues back in the late 90s. (they were very cheap at the time - there were OOP reissues of 80s albums including John Hiatt, Debbie Harry, Steve Forbert..)
nicely analyzed, indeed. I wrote it and am not necessarily proud of the fact! mel didn't suggest working together. he said 'you've got a marker on me, babe,' meaning he felt he owed me one....now we owe the Fog one back...
Thank you for writing up the background behind one of my very favorite songs. That perfect balance and utterly straight and beautiful performance makes it a gem.
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