byrdsongs, xi

I spoke of maturation yesterday, the way it’s a double-edged sword, wisdom and perspective on one side, a loss of innocence on the other.  String arrangements were one of a number of manifestations of creeping maturation in pop music.  One rarely if ever heard strings in any pop music before 1965. Rock ‘n roll was the soundtrack to a newly assertive post-war adolescence, and strings were anathema to its rebellious spirit.  But the young grew up fast back then.  It’s not like today where so many adults are technically adults but have really never stopped being children…  When I hear the strings in the Byrds’ interpretation of Wild Mountain Thyme, I think of pop music becoming increasingly self-aware of itself as an important vehicle of communication, which itself is an expression of young people having to come to grips with the turbulent 60s.  The strings – which I actually think diminish the power of the song considerably – are sad, but not for the reasons that were likely intended.  What’s sad about them is that they mark a passage out of the fleeting moment of carefree exuberance.  It’s the end of hotrods and burger stands and girls doin’ the watusi in the cage at Pandora’s Box.  It’s reefers and goofballs and the first few experiments with LSD morphing into bad acid trips and heroin overdoses.  Yesterday you were catchin’ a wave and sittin’ on top of the world, today you’re crouching in a rice paddy. The endless summer, seemingly so blissful and free, turns out to be based on racial domination, and now the chickens are coming home to roost. …I like this version of Wild Mountain Thyme even though its strings inspire in me nothing so much as romantic nostalgia.  They turn the song into a conservative lament...