John Cale released this on an album called “Slow Dazzle” in 1975. It’s one of a whole slew of songs I’ve come across about killing the “lover who done you wrong”. Mississippi John Hurt’s “Nobody’s Dirty Business”, a heap of folk traditionals like “Frankie and Albert”, Johnny Cash’s “Delia’s Gone” and so on. There are a lot of them. What is it about matricide that just makes you want to whistle? In the case of “Guts”, the singer comes home to find a man in bed with his wife and, picking up a twelve-bore shotgun, “(blows) him all over the living room floor/ like parrot shit”. I always got the feeling that John Cale, in his writing and performing, took himself a little too seriously. Singer/songwriters who don’t have a sense of humour about what they do have always been a big turn-off for me. But when I look at his environment (I’m googling here, instead of doing actual research, like a fucking….whatever. One of those.) I start to think about why he, and a lot of other writers of that time in America, would have had a difficult time straying from the dark and impending. A difficult time making light of what was going on. The decade in which Cale shifted into his solo writing career, 65 to 75, was a turbulent one. A violent America was intruding into the living room of the nuclear family through the television and a fascination with dark deeds was swelling in the mind of the average Joe. The American media was feeling a strong rise in interest around killings and killers. Truman Capote had popularized and started a frenzy with his non-fiction crime novel “In Cold Blood”. The United States government had settled uneasily into the complicated and delicate patterns of the Cold War lifestyle. The Manson Family murders, which would soon be noticed leaving a noticeable streak in the content of Cale’s lyricism, hit the public like a sledge hammer in the summer of 1969. Andy Warhol, a close friend and mentor to Cale, was exhibiting to the world of pop art a near inhuman contemplation as daily world events continued to prove too great and terrible to absorb. “People sometimes say that the way things happen in movies is unreal, but actually it's the way things happen in life that's unreal. The movies make emotions look so strong and real, whereas when things really do happen to you, it's like watching television – you don't feel anything.” -- Warhol I think it’s this sense of unemotional observe-and-report artistry, the tossing the violence and mayhem and idolatry of the nation onto the table with a lazy sweep of the hand, fuck-it-all, everything-just-is attitude, that I initially mistook for a lack of humour. I admire the types who took the alarming state of world affairs and made the public laugh at their own fears, people like Stanley Kubrick or Richard Pryor, but I can also appreciate why for the most part people didn’t feel like fooling around with this stuff. “So kill all you want or more Make sure, do it right Dead is dead, and door nails forget And then you’ll notice How the waster and the wasted Get to look like one another In the end, in the end In the end, in the end…” -- Cale I drink black coffee because everything seems to be served sweet these days. Bitter should be bitter and should be appreciated as such, just as mayhem should be mayhem. Violence is violence after all. And sometimes a solemn and nihilistic, possibly full-of-himself voice can be a much needed sobering brew.
Guts and Black Coffee
ReplyDeleteJohn Cale released this on an album called “Slow Dazzle” in 1975. It’s one of a whole slew of songs I’ve come across about killing the “lover who done you wrong”. Mississippi John Hurt’s “Nobody’s Dirty Business”, a heap of folk traditionals like “Frankie and Albert”, Johnny Cash’s “Delia’s Gone” and so on. There are a lot of them. What is it about matricide that just makes you want to whistle? In the case of “Guts”, the singer comes home to find a man in bed with his wife and, picking up a twelve-bore shotgun, “(blows) him all over the living room floor/ like parrot shit”.
I always got the feeling that John Cale, in his writing and performing, took himself a little too seriously. Singer/songwriters who don’t have a sense of humour about what they do have always been a big turn-off for me. But when I look at his environment (I’m googling here, instead of doing actual research, like a fucking….whatever. One of those.) I start to think about why he, and a lot of other writers of that time in America, would have had a difficult time straying from the dark and impending. A difficult time making light of what was going on.
The decade in which Cale shifted into his solo writing career, 65 to 75, was a turbulent one. A violent America was intruding into the living room of the nuclear family through the television and a fascination with dark deeds was swelling in the mind of the average Joe. The American media was feeling a strong rise in interest around killings and killers. Truman Capote had popularized and started a frenzy with his non-fiction crime novel “In Cold Blood”. The United States government had settled uneasily into the complicated and delicate patterns of the Cold War lifestyle. The Manson Family murders, which would soon be noticed leaving a noticeable streak in the content of Cale’s lyricism, hit the public like a sledge hammer in the summer of 1969. Andy Warhol, a close friend and mentor to Cale, was exhibiting to the world of pop art a near inhuman contemplation as daily world events continued to prove too great and terrible to absorb.
“People sometimes say that the way things happen in movies is unreal, but actually it's the way things happen in life that's unreal. The movies make emotions look so strong and real, whereas when things really do happen to you, it's like watching television – you don't feel anything.” -- Warhol
I think it’s this sense of unemotional observe-and-report artistry, the tossing the violence and mayhem and idolatry of the nation onto the table with a lazy sweep of the hand, fuck-it-all, everything-just-is attitude, that I initially mistook for a lack of humour. I admire the types who took the alarming state of world affairs and made the public laugh at their own fears, people like Stanley Kubrick or Richard Pryor, but I can also appreciate why for the most part people didn’t feel like fooling around with this stuff.
“So kill all you want or more
Make sure, do it right
Dead is dead, and door nails forget
And then you’ll notice
How the waster and the wasted
Get to look like one another
In the end, in the end
In the end, in the end…” -- Cale
I drink black coffee because everything seems to be served sweet these days. Bitter should be bitter and should be appreciated as such, just as mayhem should be mayhem. Violence is violence after all. And sometimes a solemn and nihilistic, possibly full-of-himself voice can be a much needed sobering brew.