Glen Hirshberg's Blog - Posts Tagged "largehearted-boy"
The Music of Motherless Child
I've contributed the Book Notes column today at
Largehearted Boy
,
writing about the music that powers the characters in (and the writing of) Motherless Child . Here is a snippet from that piece:
Warren Smith - "Red Cadillac and a Black Mustache"
This is the song Natalie and Sophie hear the Whistler play on the night he seduces and alters them. The Whistler is indeed a master musician, a mimic, an artist in the George Jones mold, drawing relentlessly on explosive emotions he sees people feeling but can't seem to experience himself. As for the song, it seemed the right one here for several reasons: it's got that melody, that rhythm, first of all, so sweet and scary at the same time. When Warren Smith's jilted lover sings, "Who you been lovin' since I've been gone/A long tall man with a red coat on," I both hear his heartache and find myself more than a little afraid, maybe for the singer, but just as much for the red-coated stranger, and most of all for the woman. There's a sort of love in this music. But there's also a primal, barely acknowledged fury.
Chuck Berry - "Memphis Tennessee"
The greatest midnight phone-call in the history of rock music isn't to a lover, but a daughter, and so inevitably surfaces in Natalie's thoughts as she tries, and fails, repeatedly, to accept the fact that her son is no longer with her. Natalie is the more grounded, more thoughtful, and moodier of these two lost women, Sophie her sunnier, lighthearted opposite, but both of them are applying the considerable force of their respective personalities to coming to terms with their grief. Natalie wants "to feel, yet again, the full force of the emptiness there, where her child had been. To know it was permanent. She needed to know that, if she hoped to go on. If she did." So this is what she sings. And as with "Red Cadillac," there's a magic in the melody itself that doesn't so much mask the grim subject matter as bathe it in beautiful, almost alluring light. Which, again, makes it terrifying to me.
Read the full article here-->
Stream the playlist at Spotify-->
writing about the music that powers the characters in (and the writing of) Motherless Child . Here is a snippet from that piece:
Warren Smith - "Red Cadillac and a Black Mustache"
This is the song Natalie and Sophie hear the Whistler play on the night he seduces and alters them. The Whistler is indeed a master musician, a mimic, an artist in the George Jones mold, drawing relentlessly on explosive emotions he sees people feeling but can't seem to experience himself. As for the song, it seemed the right one here for several reasons: it's got that melody, that rhythm, first of all, so sweet and scary at the same time. When Warren Smith's jilted lover sings, "Who you been lovin' since I've been gone/A long tall man with a red coat on," I both hear his heartache and find myself more than a little afraid, maybe for the singer, but just as much for the red-coated stranger, and most of all for the woman. There's a sort of love in this music. But there's also a primal, barely acknowledged fury.
Chuck Berry - "Memphis Tennessee"
The greatest midnight phone-call in the history of rock music isn't to a lover, but a daughter, and so inevitably surfaces in Natalie's thoughts as she tries, and fails, repeatedly, to accept the fact that her son is no longer with her. Natalie is the more grounded, more thoughtful, and moodier of these two lost women, Sophie her sunnier, lighthearted opposite, but both of them are applying the considerable force of their respective personalities to coming to terms with their grief. Natalie wants "to feel, yet again, the full force of the emptiness there, where her child had been. To know it was permanent. She needed to know that, if she hoped to go on. If she did." So this is what she sings. And as with "Red Cadillac," there's a magic in the melody itself that doesn't so much mask the grim subject matter as bathe it in beautiful, almost alluring light. Which, again, makes it terrifying to me.
Read the full article here-->
Stream the playlist at Spotify-->
