My Music: WINDOW IN THE TOWER

There are few photos of me during the high school years when I learned to play the guitar and began writing songs, this one from 1967, probably taken by my dad in our Pluckemin living room, is the best I have. The hair is pretty long for me at the time, and note the heavy plastic frames on the glasses.

Though I know November Woods was the first song I wrote, I’m less sure of the order after that, or the years they were written for the next few. There are two probably from early 1969, Window in the Tower is one. The guitar part is two similar triads repeated alternately, very simple. I can’t explain the lyrics, other than to say it was meant to paint a picture and create a mood rather than describe anything specific. I think I was influenced musically by Donovan songs like Legend of Girl Child Linda, heavy on medieval imagery, perhaps a bit psychedelic, though my song was not drug influenced, wasn’t doing any of that in high school.

1968 edition from my library, Bob Pepper cover art.

Another influence most evident in the title are the Gormenghast novels of Mervyn Peake that I was reading at the time, full of dense, gothic imagery about a vast, crumbling castle sparsely inhabited by inbred, ineffective royalty, scheming advisors, and cranky servants. Some of the song’s images may also have been suggested by these books. (The second, Gormenghast, is equally good, the third, Titus Alone, is disappointing, written when Peake was ill.)

The recording, made in my Highland Park living room studio around 1977, used a phase shifter, I think the one above, though I no longer have it. A single microphone cable ran to the input, another went from the output to my Teac reel-to-reel tape recorder. It added those swishing, rotating effects that I thought were cool. This sort of thing is now much easier to do digitally. I used it on only a few songs.

November Woods and Window in the Tower are © Todd Klein, all rights reserved.

The post My Music: WINDOW IN THE TOWER appeared first on Todd's Blog.