Robert Plant is rightfully known for many grand talents but subtlety isn’t one of them.
I admit that I lost track of Plant after Led Zeppelin imploded, but apparently in the interim Mr Hey Hey Ma got older and wiser and made some world music-ish records and sampled himself on a weird 1988 hit and got enough sleep and didn’t destroy his voice and recently decided to do an adult-contemporary record with a mainstream bluegrass singer. Confusing.
More confusing still, on Raising Sand he and Alison Krauss cover a song by Chris Isaak’s bass player called “Killing The Blues” that is the most beautiful thing you’ve heard in a long time, I promise. This is Robert Plant - he who needeth his lemon squeezed, who required a piece of your custard pie and was working from 7 to 11 every night. He’ll be 60 next year and sounds like he’s fronting a narcoticized Everly Brothers at the gates of heaven - apparently he survived his long seasons of rock and roll just fine.The song is slower and softer than anything I’ve ever heard, like it was produced by the most comfortable pillow known to man. Imagine Mr. Pillow at the mixing desk at 4 A.M. with a cigar and jelly donut and crushed top hat - Alright boys, lets try another take… but this time EVEN SOFTER.Anyway, the lyrics are a simple, effective take on lost love, but the chorus is unusual:
Somebody said they saw me
Swinging the world by the tail
Bouncing over a white cloud
Killing the blues
There are so many complicated images in those four lines. Why would you report in the first person what somebody else says they saw you doing? And don’t you know this “somebody” well enough that they wouldn’t sound so mysterious? And the idea that the blues can ever be forcibly detained, much less by a cloud, seems unlikely. Still, it all works, probably because the meaning sounds like it’s in there, buried just out of our reach.
I don’t know who’s responsible for bringing this song to the record, but won’t you join me in giving it up for Mr. Pillow. Still soft as a cloud and givin’ ‘em hell.You can hear it here or stream it (and the rest of the album, which I’ve barely heard) here.
April 25th, 2008 at 12:15 pm
“Killing the Blues” was actually orignally done by singer and songwriter John Prine who originally wrote the song for his 1970′S album “Pink Cadillac” Plant and Krauss’ version is good but I think the Prine’s is somethnig to be respected.
April 25th, 2008 at 12:27 pm
What I meant to say was originally made famous by John Prine who covered the song wrote by Sally…. my mistake
June 13th, 2008 at 11:44 am
Thanks for the link to “Killing the Blues.” I think the chorus is a way of saying “Loving you is making me happier than I can say — but other people say it’s like I’m killing the blues.” Putting it in the third-person lets this love-happiness be bigger than the singer, something so big that the public sees it and comments on it.
And yet, from the first verse, where their love is perfect, to the second, where the singer is more in love than the other, to the third, where the other has told the singer to go away, this song shows us a person whose total love is still “killing the blues”, no matter what.