Of course there is nonsense and nonsense. It can vary from, at one extreme, merely that with which you disagree, through entertaining whimsy before finally arriving, quivering and juddering, at the howling at the moon of full blown madness. It is just over fifty years since Roger "Syd" Barrett, onetime face and voice of the then The Pink Floyd, released his first solo record, having been ejected from the band. Having enriched the band with his Edward Lear-like eccentricities of lyrical source material, knicker nickers and the like, this release now gave agonising insight into the perilous state of his psyche.
The reports weren't good. Attendees at his later performances with Pink Floyd would speak of no shows and, worse, shows where he may have been there, but was clearly somewhere miles away at the same time. Drugs, mainly the psychedelics, LSD predominantly, deemed the culprit, either by a de novo tripping of the switch or by bringing earlier to the surface that which lay anyway beneath. I don't suppose we will ever really know, but my view, professional opinion, if you like, as a practising medic, is the latter.
Terrapin/The Madcap Laughs (1969)
I remember well my first exposure to The Madcap Laughs, as the record was entitled. The cover alone was disarming enough, certainly to a 13 year old boy, just beginning a lifelong exploration of music in all its varied hues. In truth, it had been out for a couple of years, so I would have been 15, tipped in that direction by, first, the cheapo Pink Floyd compilation, Nuggets, on the Music for Pleasure label (which also put out similar curiosities by other acts as disparate as the Beach Boys, the Monkees and Donovan), and later by full price immersions in Atom Heart Mother and Meddle. A chum of mine, with preternaturally deep pockets, seemed to able to buy up anything that much cooler and on the fringes than the rest of us. We has also learnt there was a record player in the school music building, and how to get in to it out of hours. He had bought Madcap and the strange Roger Waters/Ron Geesin soundtrack of Music From The Body. The poop song apart on the latter, we agreed it held little appeal. But Madcap was deeply disturbing. None of the songs seemed complete; there seemed often a mismatch between the vocals and the backing, sometimes just with a rambling talking voice taking exit of any earlier structure mid song. And the lyrics? What was this? More a random placement of words than any storyline, words jumbling together based on their sound or upon whatsoever garbled thought processs could conjure up on the hoof, live in the studio. I later, during my psych training, learnt that this freeform word (dis)association, Knight's Move Thinking, can be a symptom of schizophrenia. OK, there were a couple of clearer and more orthodox songs, clamoured towards the end of the second side, dripping with the sense of a necessary medication having taken place. And with some relief, given at an earlier stage, in a segue of live studio tape seemingly just running, you can hear the anguish of a brain frying in real time. Shocking, heady stuff, and deeply disturbing, if likewise compelling. Of course I had to have a copy.
If It's In You/The Madcap Laughs (1969)
Dark Globe/The Madcap Laughs (1969)
"Oh where are you now pussy willow that smiled on this leaf? When I was alone you promised the stone from your heart my head kissed the ground I was half the way down, treading the sand please, please, lift a hand I'm only a person whose armbands beat on his hands, hang tall won't you miss me? Wouldn't you miss me at all?
The poppy birds way swing twigs coffee brands around brandish her wand with a feathery tongue my head kissed the ground I was half the way down, treading the sand please, please, please lift the hand I'm only a person with Eskimo chain I tattooed my brain all the way... Won't you miss me? Wouldn't you miss me at all?"
I later bought his second LP, the less dramatically presented and titled Barrett. A gentler affair, with structure more firmly moulded upon the songs, even if as a later thought and at a latter time. His old buddy and his band replacement, David Gilmour here responsible for gilding the lily and gelding the mania. Some good songs and a smoother ride, that would later be brought back to mind by the closing scenes of the film version of Ken Kesey's book, One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest, the sadness of seeing the madness constrained and controlled.
Love Song (Barrett, 1970)
Neither the time or place to reiterate all the later trajectories, all well documented and widely elsewhere. A journey of little sense from nonsense to no sense at all. A tragedy and a majesty combined. The old adage is that genius needs a touch of madness. I don't know about that, and certainly Syd didn't need it, nobody should or would choose psychosis. But we got to get the outcome, and for that I will always be grateful to that legacy being granted us.
Had enough of the doo-doo we're publishing? Well, here's another.
Actually, if I had done my homework well last week, I would have posted a version of the Stones performing <Da Doo Ron Ron>. Here.
I would stand up for the Stones like many Pres D.T. supporters do: well, maybe not even if Mick shot someone on Broadway, but just about through thick and thin. Thin includes their version of <Da Doo Ron Ron>: it's even worse that most of <Between the Buttons>, but then... that was a long time ago.
<Goats Head Soup>, the album that included "Heartbreaker" faced a fair amount of headwind: it came out the year after <Exile on Main Street> - a rather hard feat to beat. That said, it includes some of my favorites (in addition to "Heartbreaker"): Angie, Winter, 100 Years Ago. Not too shabby IMHO.
As for the non-sense aspect:
we could go back to the "doo-doo head" aspect of the lyrics, but that is probably not what Jimmy Miller, the producer had in mind. This seems more like of case of "we need filler lyrics" and <da da>, <doo doo> is what might come to anyone's mind. ie: no meaning/non-sense. Mission accomplished.
Having missed my prompt for other versions of "Da Doo Ron Ron", here's more:
Would it surprise you to find out that Sting believes that this song, with its nonsense title and refrain, is actually a very serious song? Look, we all know that Sting can be very pretentious, but he knows that—even embraces it—and I think that you have to give him credit. And as I’ve mentionedbefore, I have no problem with pretentiousmusic. It’s just that you wouldn’t expect that from a song with that title. But here’s what Sting said about the song in a New Musical Express interview in 1981:
I think my songs are fairly literate - they're not rubbish. 'De Do Do Do', for example, was grossly misunderstood: the lyrics are about banality, about the abuse of words. Almost everyone who reviewed it said, Oh, this is baby talk. They were just listening to the chorus alone, obviously. But they're the same people who would probably never get through the first paragraph of Finnegan's Wake, because that's 'baby talk', too. I know that sounds pretentious, but in that song I was trying to say something which was really quite difficult - that people like politicians, like myself even use words to manipulate people, and that you should be very careful. It's quite a serious song, but because it's by The Police it was just written off as being garbage.
In 1993, in Q, Sting said about the song:
God, I got flak for that one. I always thought it was an articulate song about being inarticulate. The first thing you have to consider is that this was a huge hit on both sides of the Atlantic. I was intrigued with why songs like that worked. Why 'Da Doo Ron Ron', why 'Doo Wah Diddy Diddy', why 'Be Bop A Lula', why 'Tutti Frutti' worked. I came up with the idea that they worked because they were totally innocent. They weren't trying to tell you anything or distort your vision - it was just a sound. So in the song I try to intellectualise and analyse why that works so effectively which is self-defeating in a way but it was still a massive hit. Some people might think that the man who wrote 'De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da' is a stupid twat but...I'm living here.
And, according to Wikipedia, Joni Mitchell, a
pretty fair songwriter, loved it.
It is hard not to listen to the song, and Sting’s explanation, without thinking of our remarkably inarticulate president, who nevertheless uses his simple (minded) words (and his lies and insults), to manipulate people—somehow getting millions of people to vote for him for a job that he is profoundly unqualified for. And to maintain their blind loyalty despite his consistent lies, corruption and failures. His actions in response to the current coronavirus emergency—for which the Police song “Don’t Stand So Close To Me,” comes to mind, although the subject of the song, about an affair between a school girl and an older man is more fitting for the social lives of Trump and his friends—have been dangerous and incoherent, but hasn’t yet seemed to erode the support of his base.
Sadly, though, in this era or hyperpartisanship, he could stand in front of a podium, say “De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da,” and walk away, and his sycophants would somehow declare it brilliant.
Eventually, though, I’m hoping that another Police song, “Truth Hits Everybody,” becomes appropriate—hopefully, before November 3, 2020.
There are two ways to look at a non-sense song:
(1) it makes no sense to anyone, but that's the whole point of it
(2) it makes no sense to you and me, but it had meaning to thems that wrote it
The story goes that Phil Spector chose the nonsense lyrics "da doo ron ron" because they were "dumb enough" not to interfere with the actual lyrics telling the girl-meets-boy story (and that Sonny Bono was there to give his approval).
Among the various options to the <non-sense> theme, this one seemed particularly appropriate because ... welp ... we need some diversionary non-sense to help us survive these days of gibberish from all corners of the world, and <da doo ron ron> makes as much sense as everything else we are hearing. And because the song just brings bouncing happy feelings whenever I listen to it.
I wonder if I have an element of the Trump "things were better back in those days" virus, or if things really were better back then (just see how many "old" songs are still covered)
The Crystals were no one-hit group; Phil Spector made sure of that. Wikipedia reminds us that they were "one of the defining acts of the girl group era in the first half of the 1960s". Another of their hits you probably know is <Then He Kissed Me>.
Speaking of non-sense, Phil Spector's tactical games flip-flopping the Crystals and the Blossoms is one step short of non-sense and likely would not fly far these days.
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