Desperado/ Desperados Waiting For A Train: R&R Rewind
Posted: July 12th, 2024 | Filed under: Culture, Music, Rock & Roll Rewind | 1 Comment »
I am a desperado.
One who has for all the bounty I’ve enjoyed in life been somewhat desperate of soul. An outlaw of sorts once upon a time.
Just as a descriptor, it is a sonorous word, with which I’ve been fascinated.
It’s use in two totally different tunes is something I’ve been meaning to write about for a long while. Years actually.
But, I’ve been somewhat of a missing person, if you will a desaparecido — another play on that term — when it has come to actually sitting down at the keyboard and doing what I am at this moment.
Because the reasons for putting it off are how closely I relate to some of the lyrics.
Desperado, why don’t you come to your senses?/ Come down from your fences, open the gate/ It may be rainin’, but there’s a rainbow above you/ You better let somebody love you/ (Let somebody love you)/ You better let somebody love you before it’s too late
So, yeah, the otherwise insufferable* Don Henley and partner Glenn Frey’s lyrics cut through like a machete.
(* Why do I use that adjective to describe the obviously talented and successful Henley. Two reasons. One, the Eagles have been famous for not liking each other for decades, taking separate limos from hotel to venue. Rubs me the wrong way. But, his arrogance caught me from the get go. The first time I heard the band, they opened for Yes at Louisville Gardens. As was often the case, much of the crowd was milling about before the headliner, not really listening. At some juncture, Henley, annoyed at the inattention, brayed into his mic, “What’s wrong with you people? Don’t you know who we are? We’re the Eagles!”)
Still it’s a great damn song, a bracing use of imagery. Best rendered by the incomparable Linda Ronstadt, who stole the tune.
Damn, Linda, shred me apart why don’t ya?
* * * * *
Then, there’s Guy Clark with a totally different tale, also a brilliant use of the imagery.
About his relationship with an old man.
About how life evolves with its inevitable conclusion.
I know nothing about playing Moon and Forty-two.
But I look in the mirror and I’m pushing 80, an old man.
Conscious that not too far off that sumbitch is comin’.
— c d kaplan
Just get rid of that Eagles version of the song.
Guy Clark wrote that song, and he “owns” it.
He wrote it in 1973 and Jerry Jeff Walker recorded it. Clark put out his version in 1975.
Listening to Clark sing that song evokes memories of past adventures with folks no longer with us. The train has taken them and we are the remaining desperados.