Al Stewart – “Life In Dark Water” (with special guest Craig Smith)

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by Al Stewart - Copyright 1978 D.J.M./Frabjous Music Approximate Music

Singer/Songwriter Al Stewart came out of the London folk scene, but by the mid-70’s struck it big with MOR/AM Radio hit, “Year Of The Cat“. But there’s more to this Mr. Stewart than just that one hit. On this episode, I’m joined by fellow podcaster (and Al Stewart fan extraordinaire) Craig Smith to discuss the deep cut “Life In Dark Water“.

“Life In Dark Water” – Al Stewart Copyright 1978 D.J.M./Frabjous Music Approximate Music

TRANSCRIPT:

Brad Page: Buy me a ticket on the last train home tonight, because I gotta get back for the “I’m In Love With That Song” podcast on the Pantheon Podcast Network! I’m your host, Brad Page, and this episode, we’re exploring a song by Al Stewart– a deep cut from his 1978 album “Time Passages”; this is a song called “Life In Dark Water”.

Now, I gotta admit, I don’t know all that much about Al Stewart, really, but luckily, I happen to know somebody who does: Craig Smith, former host of the Pods and Sods Network, has joined us on this show before, and he’s the biggest Al Stewart fan I know. So I figured, let’s bring Craig back on the show, and we’ll all explore “Life In Dark Water”.

Brad Page: All right, well, Craig Smith, thank you for joining me on this episode to talk about Al Stewart. You are the biggest Al Stewart fan I know, so I couldn’t think of anyone better to come on and, uh, do this with me. So thank you for joining me.

Craig Smith: Absolutely. There are others of us around, too… you may be familiar with Brian Linnen…?

Brad Page: Yes, I know that young man– the upstanding citizen Brian Lennon. For the most part, my knowledge of Al Stewart is fairly minimal. You know, usually I do a ton of research for these things, but I thought I would be lazy and go to the expert I know to take care of that. So, let’s talk about Al Stewart. And what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna be talking about a song that, I guess I would put this maybe in, like, the middle of his career?

Craig Smith: Yes. Almost dead middle.

Brad Page: Yeah, from the “Time Passages” album. And let’s talk about how he gets to this record. If you could fill me in, because I know none of this, so tell me about Al Stewart up to this point.

Craig Smith: Okay. I should preface by saying that Eric and I were fortunate enough to interview Al Stewart in the very, very early days of Pods And Sods, which was a podcast that I was part of for ten years. But he comes from kind of the London scene in the mid-sixties, at a place called… now, I’ve heard it referenced as “Le Cousin”, but during our interview, I’m fairly certain he called it “Les Cousins”… which was a folk club. He played there with people like Paul Simon, Roy Harper, who was also somebody that I know you and I both admire, also comes from that same pocket of time. His first album came out in 1967. It was called “Bedsetter Images”. It was later re-released as “The First Album” with some different tracks. What is more interesting is that his second album, “Love Chronicles”, beat John Lennon by a year for throwing, uh, the very weighted f-word into a song, which is part of the title track, which is a sidelong folk number going through a bunch of relationships that he was in.

Craig Smith: His first four albums, very folky. And then, after that, starting with “Past, Present and Future” into “Modern Times”, snd then you start to move towards “Year of the Cat” & “Time Passages”. You’re getting into his commercial peak, as it were. He meets Alan Parsons– and Alan Parsons, I believe, did some work on modern times also— but he started to get more radio play around this time with a song from “Modern Times” called “Carol”.

Craig Smith: Of course, “Year of the Cat” is the song that, over here, propels him. It was a huge hit here, of course. “Time Passages” is the follow-up album. There’s another hit, the title track, flies very close to the blueprint “The Year Of The Cat” was built from.

Craig Smith: And then after that, he did a great album after “Time Passages” called “24 Carrots”, had a killer band called Shot In The Dark. Amazing live record after that. And then kind of after that, his releases get a little more, I don’t know that I want to say “electronic”… a little more “synthetic”, as eighties albums are want to do. But so much good stuff in that catalog. Even going in the later years, he never lost it.

So, to kind of just sum up what he is: I can’t remember if he said this during our interview or if I read it somewhere else, but he said ideally what he considers himself is a lyricist, period. And I think his singing is fantastic. It may not be everybody’s cup of tea, it is a very mellow leaning towards yacht rocky delivery, which I happen to love. But I think once you get into the middle period of Al Stewart, it kind of goes from folk to more of like, I don’t even know if this is the right term, but like a “progressive folk”, there’s more arrangement-wise going on in these songs.  And across the board, fantastic lyrics. Amazing lyrics. I’m an idiot when it comes to history and things like that… the funny thing is, if you’re looking at an Al Stewart lyrics without looking at who penned the song, it could either be Al Stewart or Iron Maiden. Given the balance of British history in both of their catalogs, it’s amazing, right? But yeah, what a rich catalog. Absolutely love it.

Brad Page: I’m not familiar with any of the early stuff… like most people, my first exposure to him was “Year of the Cat”, which was a bit of a mixed blessing, because this is back in the day when AM radio was still king.

Craig Smith: Oh yeah.

Brad Page: And that song was a big hit on AM radio. And at that point, AM radio was so formulaic and formatted that you knew exactly what song they were going to play, at what time, to the point where, like, on the school bus, you know, they would play the AM radio and without fail, we’d always be at one kid’s bus stop and they would play “Night Moves” by Bob Seger. And then, like two stops later, it would be “Year of the Cat” by Al Stewart.

It got to the point where I hated both of those songs, because you just heard them, like, every day. And it was, that’s what AM radio was like back then. When you have a song that just kind of– you’re sick of, sometimes it can throw you off a little bit. But “Time Passages”, that song I always liked quite a bit.

We’re gonna take a look at a song from that record. This is a song called “Life In Dark Water”, and it always jumped out to me from this record. I wouldn’t call it “heavy”, but it’s an intense song. It definitely has that Alan Parsons kind of Pink Floyd lite production to it. It’s very rich production, the whole album, but particularly in this song. Do you know the history of this song?

Craig Smith: Not too much of the history, aside from, there are some things that I can tell you about things that he said when introducing the song live on the “Time passages” concert. This is what he says: “This is a number which is about being stranded alive, thinking that you’re the last person in the world alive, alone on a seabed in a nuclear submarine. It’s a psychedelic sea song in which we never find out if the narrator is alone or not.” And then he goes on to say that “the Marie Celeste, which is referenced in the lyrics, was a ship found floating off the coast of the British Isles in the Atlantic Ocean with nobody on board, half eaten meals, and half smoked cigars. One of the great mysteries of the sea. In his trance, he thinks that he’s back in the Marie Celeste.”  However, Al is wrong about this…

Brad Page: Yeah, the ship was actually called the Mary Celeste, not the Marie Celeste, but he’s not the only person to misname it. A lot of people called it the Marie Celeste, but it was the Mary Celeste. It was a ship built in Canada, registered in the US, that just showed up off the coast of wherever it was, with nobody on board and, you know, some damage, but not trashed or anything. And the lifeboat was missing. And they never found any of the crew. Just kind of one of those creepy stories. But interesting.

Craig Smith: The kind of story that podcasters make a mint off these days, right?

Brad Page: If we were a true crime type podcast, we’d dig into that.

Craig Smith: Never too late! But when he, when he introduces the song, he does say Mary, just to be clear. But in the lyrics, I believe it’s printed Marie. And he, in the song, he pronounces it Marie with a rolling r, which I cannot do. Yeah, that’s the Mary Celeste.

Brad Page: Yeah. It’s very interesting and intriguing lyrically, and I guess we can kind of talk about it as we go along. But that was one of the things that pulled me into the song.

Craig Smith: And musically as well.

Brad Page: Yes.

Craig Smith: When I got into Al Stewart, I don’t know that I would have expected a song like this. It’s just such an epic sound.

Brad Page: Yes.

Craig Smith: That was the word that I kept coming to.

Brad Page: Yeah, absolutely. It’s not really something that I would have expected from Al Stewart, if you only know the few hits. This is a lot… It’s darker, it’s a lot more atmospheric like. This is a lot spookier.

Craig Smith: Yeah.

Brad Page: All right, well, let’s dig into the track. It opens relatively atmospherically with kind of a riff or chord change that sounds pretty familiar. It’s the James Bond chord change. Right?

Craig Smith: The chords, from what I looked up– and this can be wrong or not– but on the intro, the chords are D Minor, B Flat with a D bass, Dminor6. So that’s where that note is moving around, giving it that James Bond feel. Yeah. Good ear. I didn’t pick that out.

Brad Page: I mean, I’m not saying that it’s like a knockoff or anything, but it’s just, it’s very effective. I like it.

Craig Smith: It works really well.

Brad Page: And then the first verse, he’s talking about “Living in the bottom of the sea, down metal snake corridors, steely gray engines hum for nobody but me”.

Brad Page: I mean, it puts you in a place, right? You could feel this guy, alone on this submarine, right from the beginning. I’m wondering, “How did this guy get here? Why is he all by himself?”

Craig Smith: You’re dropped into the story.

Brad Page: Yeah, right! Yeah, you’re literally dropped in the middle of the story, trying to figure out what is going on.

Craig Smith: And even the line “No message crackles through the radio leads”, just another worded so well, you know?

This is one of those songs for me where it’s the music and the lyrics are both a ten out of ten.

Brad Page: Yeah. I mean, they’re intertwined, right?

Craig Smith: Yeah.

Brad Page: The mood of the music fits the mood of the lyrics so perfectly. And it takes a certain level of confidence to just plop people down in the middle of the story. Like, there’s no setup for this, right? There’s no, “We set sail from the port”, none of that. Like you’re just suddenly at the bottom of the ocean, alone on a submarine with this guy, not knowing, as he doesn’t know, apparently, who else is out there.

Craig Smith: Yeah. Fantastic. That’s what that “Year of the Cat” money can make you write songs like that.

Brad Page: Yeah.

Craig Smith: Drop the listener wherever you want.

Brad Page: Right. And you can afford to make a record that sounds this good too.

Craig Smith: One of the things that I really love about the arrangement: the piano tinkles.

Brad Page: Yes. Me, in my notes, I had basically the same words you’re using. I had “tinkling glass-like piano”. Uh, yeah, just very… It’s like icicles in a way, you know what I mean?

Craig Smith: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Like something visual was coming to mind, I think that describes it very, very well.

Brad Page: Let’s talk about the second verse here. You’ve got some, like, sonar pings in the background. I really like that. They’re very subtle.

Craig Smith: Yeah. Not completely unlike the pings we hear in another masterpiece that I know you and I both love.

Brad Page: Yes. Where those are much more upfront. I mean, they’re kind of like the key to that song.

Craig Smith: These are very subtle.

Brad Page: Yeah, yeah. The bass is playing octaves.

Craig Smith: Yeah.

Brad Page: The line, “jet planes nose through the clouds above me, they look for radar traces of me to see”.

So, then I started thinking, “Well, did this guy, like, hijack a submarine?” Like, why are they looking for him? How does he know that they’re looking for him? Are they really looking for him? Or is he imagining that?

Craig Smith: Right. That was my thought. Like, how does he know they’re looking for him? This is kind of likely all in his head.

Brad Page: Yeah, but you never get an answer to any of this, which is, you know, the song always leaves you to decide.

Craig Smith: Exactly. And it could also be just like his hope, you know?

Brad Page: Right.

Craig Smith: That there is somebody out there looking for him.

Brad Page: Right.

Let’s talk about his voice, because you kind of mentioned that it’s, um, it might not be for everyone. I guess it’s a little bit of an acquired taste. I mean, it’s an extremely “white guy voice”, right?

Craig Smith: Oh, yeah.

Brad Page: There’s no R&B or Soul to his singing. And he does have, you know, he’s got a bit of a lisp, which is something that I can relate to. You don’t hear that a lot on pop records. You certainly would never hear that today. You’d never make it on “American Idol”.

Craig Smith: Yeah. Oh, no, absolutely not.

Brad Page: But how did you take his voice? I mean, were you immediately taken by it?  Did it put you off at all or…

Craig Smith: It didn’t put me off. Um, “Year of the Cat” is part of my DNA. One of those songs that, before I got into Al Stewart, kind of like… and you know what, here’s another guy with a very similar voice” “Alone Again, Naturally”, by Gilbert O’Sullivan.

Craig Smith: But, um, I think that I didn’t have that roadblock at all. Like, I knew “Year of the Cat” from being a kid. And I’m like, oh, this is this dude’s voice. It doesn’t, there’s nothing about it that I find unpleasant. It’s– I don’t know that smooth is the, you know, because that’s going to make him sound like a crooner, but there’s absolutely no grit in Al Stewart’s voice in that respect. It is very smooth. So, like, Al Stewart’s voice isn’t going to, that’s not going to slow me down any. How about you?

Brad Page: Well, I think it, I’m not sure I’d say it was off-putting… I thought it was a little strange, I didn’t necessarily love it, but again, that was kind of all mixed up in the thing of just being sick of “Year of the Cat”.

Craig Smith: Yeah.

Brad Page: It doesn’t bother me. Um, but I can see why some people might be turned off by it.

Craig Smith: I get it.

Brad Page: But what I like about it today is that it’s not generic.

Craig Smith: Oh, yeah.

Brad Page: Nobody else sounds like that. And today, I think because of the influence of things like “American Idol”, singers are so generic and they’re so auto tuned and everything, that we’ve lost a lot of this individuality.

And then there’s this bridge, which is pretty incongruous for the rest of the song. It’s kind of this very Beatle-y, a British music hall sound.

Craig Smith: Oh, yeah.

Brad Page: And there’s this kind of slapback delay on the vocal. Just a minimal delay time. Almost a radio broadcast sound.

Craig Smith: Yeah, absolutely. Radio EQ.

Craig Smith: And we’re moving into, like, tack piano. A very chorus-effected piano.

Brad Page: It’s that kind of player piano, old barroom feel.

Craig Smith: Stride. Like Stride piano.

Brad Page: Yeah, yeah. The guitar is there, but it’s just kind of doing these kind of staccato chords. It’s really the piano that comes to the front. The bass is almost, kind of feels like what a tuba would be playing, you know, almost an Oompa kind of sound. It’s a very interesting bridge to put into this song.

Craig Smith: The one thing that’s interesting about this part to me is that, on the record, it really feels shoehorned in, in terms of how the arrangement switches on a dime.

On the live versions– or the live version, I should say, that the whole band plays on in the 1978 show– It’s a lot smoother transition, because they’re all playing it live. But, like, on the record, it does kind of feel like an edit. I’m not entirely sure if it is, but it feels like a splice onto a different, you know, something different. But then the way it kind of melts back into the song with that held note and the reverb is, is mesmerizing. So good.

Brad Page: Yeah. So we have this bridge out of nowhere that ends with this kind of big power chord that takes us into the guitar solo. And what a guitar solo.

Craig Smith: It is one of my favorites. It’s hard not for me to throw this in with, like, “Comfortably Numb”, but it’s one of those songs… I think this guitar solo, there is not one note that isn’t perfect. Tim Renwick playing it. A monster, monster guitar solo.

Brad Page: Yeah. Tim Renwick was, uh, one of those British studio guys that just played on lots of records. Of course, he worked with Alan Parsons a lot, which is probably how he ended up on this project. He played with Pink Floyd live, and he worked with Eric Clapton and Elton John; just, you know, one of those guys with a pretty impressive resume. I’m pretty sure he’s playing a Fender Strat. It sounds, uh, pretty Strat-y to me. But it’s just, it’s a great guitar tone; it starts kind of clean and then it gets a little more distorted, more bite to it, more echo in the middle. He’s doing these harmonics. It’s very cool.

It kind of gets heavier and more intense as it progresses, and just ends with that big power chord. It’s a really well-structured solo, really well performed. And the way they’ve recorded it just makes it even better. It’s a great moment. Yeah. He deserves a gold star for this one.

Craig Smith: Absolutely. And my favorite thing about the solo, this was actually the reason I kind of dug up the chords, I kind of wanted to see what that big moment in the solo, what it was doing. So most of the song’s in D Minor, or kind of moving around a D Minor chord. The part of the solo that I’m thinking of is when it goes, you’re moving into major chords there. You’re moving into an F, C, A, B Flat seven and a D Minor. And then, right as it goes to that run, that’s an A Flat Diminished chord, resolving to an A, which is just an amazing run of chords for that solo.  Because that solo, as great as it is, once it starts snarling, when it really takes off on that F chord, it is a chills moment. And great as the whole solo is, that one moment when that string bends is just one of my favorite things in the Al Stewart catalog. Absolutely fantastic.

It’s one of those things that, you know, when you’re listening to this record, this comes around and you’re like, wow, I didn’t expect a minor key, at least not moody like this song, by Al Stewart. You’re getting into the song and the song’s great, and then this guitar solo completely pushes it over.

Brad Page: Yeah.

Craig Smith: And you didn’t, you listen to the song and you’re like, yeah, this song probably can’t get better. And it does– you know, that’s one of the best things about it. Like the way it does soar during that section and we have the first verse, the second verse comes in, brings in the drums by the time we’re in the solo, like everything is kind of just  peaking. And I love it. Absolutely love it. It’s always a chills moment for me. Always.

Brad Page: It’s so well structured. It’s cinematic.

Craig Smith: Yes, absolutely.

Brad Page: Yeah. And like you said earlier, this is track number three on this album, which is an interesting placement for it. This, to me, feels like a side one ender, or a side two, or even maybe the last song on the album. But to put it that far up front on the record, it’s kind of a shock.

Craig Smith: Yeah. Yeah. And coming after… the one thing, the one issue that I kind of do have with the “Time Passages” album is I don’t love the sequencing of it. I don’t know how I would restructure all of it, but “Life In Dark Water” would absolutely be a side ender, on either side. I think that “End of the Day” is a great song to end the album with, but “Life In Dark Water”, I think, should absolutely be at least a side A closer. That’s me sidetracking on something not important to anybody except me…

Brad Page: Well, you know, I’m an album guy, and so a lot of times how I feel about songs is impacted on, in the context of an album, right? Because I tend to not listen to songs, I listen to albums. As much as this podcast is about songs, I typically, you know, I’m putting on an album and I’m listening it front to back, and how things feel in the context of that. So I’m with you.

So after the guitar solo, we get into the third verse. There’s guitar fills throughout the verse. More tasty Tim Renwick playing. This is the verse where we get the lines “No memory, tell me what’s wrong with me why am I alone here with no rest”.

Brad Page: And then there’s the Marie Celeste or Mary Celeste reference: “And now the name of the ship’s not the same. How long has it been Marie Celeste”.

Craig Smith: Now, this is something that I didn’t even realize this until I read the lyrics: Not kind of clocking what the line before it was. I always took it as “How long has it been” comma “Marie Celeste”. Like he was talking about another ship.

Brad Page: Or referencing it, right?

Craig Smith: Yes, yes. I never thought that he was speaking about the ship that he’s on, right?

Brad Page: He’s, I guess, kind of losing it.

Craig Smith: Yeah.

Brad Page: And he thinks he’s on the Marie Celeste.

Craig Smith: Yeah. Which completely opened up as soon as I read it. I was like, “Oh, this?” I never even realized that’s what he was trying to get across there.

Brad Page: “Tell me what’s wrong with me”– I don’t know, we don’t know! We don’t. And then, um, the verse wraps up with “Now there’s nobody from the crew left. 500 years supply of food just for me”.

Craig Smith: Yeah.

Brad Page: I mean, cinematic lyrics, right?

Craig Smith: Just the whole thing– and essentially the end of the story. That’s all we get.

Brad Page: Yeah, that’s all we get. And we don’t know what happens to him. We don’t know anything. Just, still to this day– 500 years of food, right” Still to this day, he could be an 80-year-old man still at the bottom of the sea in this submarine.

Craig Smith: I mean, Al Stewart could choose to write a sequel. He has chosen so far not to, and to leave the listeners hanging.

Brad Page: Yeah. Really intriguing lyrics. And then we’ve got, you know, there’s just a huge ending. More of that kind of tinkling piano. And then we ride out on, now very blatant, sonar pings.

Craig Smith: And also that last chord is fantastic.

Brad Page: Yeah.

Craig Smith: I would love to know what that is. Something tells me that if I was to look it up online, I would not get an accurate answer. But there’s something funky going on with that last chord. The site I’m looking at has it as a D Major 7 Sus 2. So I will need to try that later to see if that’s actually the case. But, uh, yeah, it’s just, it’s just one of those chords you haven’t heard in the song, so it’s just ending on this note of, uh, uncertainty is really the only way I could probably put it.

Brad Page: It’s not fully resolved. Right.

Craig Smith: Yeah.

Brad Page: Uh, just as the story is not resolved; just as those sonar pings just kind of fade, Like they could still be going today, right? It’s just cinematic.

You know, there’s a lot of ways to write a song: there’s the personal revelations, there’s opening your soul, there’s all, you know, those kind of things. There’s twists, and ways to turn cliches, and all of that. But one way to write a song is to kind of tell a story. And to me, this is one of my favorite story type of songs. You know, it’s not a personal thing, he’s telling a story, but you’re only getting this, like, one chapter in the middle of a book.

Craig Smith: Absolutely not what you expect from Al Stewart.

Brad Page: No, not at all. And I think that’s kind of one, that’s one of the things that drew me in from the beginning, is because it’s not what I expected. When I put this record on for the first time, I didn’t expect to hear a track like this. And again, as we said, it’s one of the first songs you hear and really grabs you. Just a great track.

So tell me how you got into Al Stewart.

Craig Smith: It’s a very strange story. So, always loved the “Year of the Cat”, but never sought it out, never owned it… I take that back, I did own it on a K-Tel album, I believe the album was called “Stars”, and it also had either “Beth” or “Rock And Roll All Night” on it.

Brad Page: Did it have, like, 30 songs on one vinyl record? Was it one of those?

Craig Smith: It’s a K-Tel album– Of course it did. So, it was one of those songs, like “Torn Between Two Lovers”, like all those are on this album and represent a very specific period of time of me being a toddler. So I grew up with this album in the house, so I knew “Year of the Cat” from that.

There was a friend of mine, Otto, who I used to, in my thirties, would often… here was a karaoke place. We were the two guys that might have been a little too old to be hanging out at the bar, but we would go there and we would do karaoke. And I remember one of the times coming out, it was like a block or two from my house, so we would walk there, but for some reason he had had his car and he drove there, and he’s like, “I got to hear “Year of the Cat” before I go home. And we’re sitting in the parking lot, and he’s just sitting in the car, and he’s playing “Year of the Cat” on his car stereo, and he is blissing out in his car, just like it’s the best thing he’s ever heard. And me, having always kind of enjoyed the song, I was like, “Okay, this might be the time where I dig further in”.

When I sought out “Year of the Cat after that, probably the next day or whatever, I specifically remember sitting at my desk at work listening to it on a loop for 8 hours while I worked. I did not shut the song off.  Shortly after, I bought the album, and then Otto turned me on to “Time Passages”. And then after that, I just kind of, I moved in different directions; one of the first things I grabbed was the “Uncorked” live album. So this had to be around 2009. I saw him shortly thereafter, uh, three times, with Dave Nachmanoff, who’s a guitarist. They were acoustic shows. Al pretty much played rhythm and Dave riffed on top of him like a madman. The “Uuncorked” album is also a nice way to get into other eras of Al Stewart. It’s not kind of hits-focused, it doesn’t have “Year of the Cat”, doesn’t have “Time Passages”. It’s all deeper cuts. “Life In Dark Water” is on there. Fantastic version.

But, yeah, after those three shows, I was like, “I’m in”.  One of the most disappointing moments of my life was buying the 8-track to “Year of the Cat” to have him sign it, because I was like, “this is a conversation piece right here”. He’s going to be like, “Oh, I haven’t seen one of these”. No, he didn’t say a word about it. He threw a signature on there and handed it back. So I was like, well, okay… Yeah, a super nice guy and just like a storyteller, which is something that we kind of talked about it in terms of song, but he is also a storyteller. His song intros are maybe second to none. But if you have a chance to check him out, I absolutely would.

And then I just started listening to the whole catalog, and realized I loved every bit of it. There are hidden gems all over the catalog, but right in the middle, you have “Year of the Cat” and “Time Passages”. If you’re going to pick two, those are probably the two to pick. And then if you were going to go further, I’d go backwards a little bit. “Modern times”, “Past, Present and Future”. Maybe forward a little bit– Oh, absolutely “24 Parrots”. The live album “Indian Summer”. Fantastic, also great– except for that stupid thing they do where they fade every song out on the original vinyl. The CD is not like that. These are the kind of things I can contribute, Brad, from having owned literally every incarnation of Al Stewart CD’s that have been released.

Brad Page: That’s good to know; So on the vinyl, they fade out the live tracks, but on the CD, they do not, correct?

Craig Smith: Yeah, I bought a couple of vinyl copies, thinking maybe it was like the first run, but every vinyl copy I got fades them out. So, super weird. But remember, there’s a 38-disc box set called the “Admiralty Lights” at the end of this, if that’s a road you want to go down. And that is a road that I did go down. So, um, yeah, tons of Al Stewart out there, and I couldn’t be happier.

Brad Page: Thank you so much for the recommendations. Thanks for coming on and talking about this song and for the, edumacation on Al Stewart. I really appreciate it.

Craig Smith: Thank you for having me on. Always a pleasure.

Brad Page: It’s always a pleasure to have you on. Thank you, Craig.

And thank you for joining Craig and I on this journey deep into dark water. If you’d like to revisit any of my previous episodes, you’ll find them all on our website at lovethatsongpodcast.com, or just look for them in your favorite podcast app. If you’d like to support the show, all I ask is that you share it with your friends. Tell people about the show, because we count on your word-of-mouth to grow our audience and to celebrate and preserve this music.

I’ll be back in approximately 15 days with another new episode, so let’s get together then. Thank you for coming aboard for this edition on Al Stewart and “Life In Dark Water”.

REFERENCES:

Al Stewart
https://www.alstewart.com/

Time Passages album
https://www.discogs.com/master/

Pods and Sods Network
https://podsodcast.com/

Roy Harper
https://www.royharper.co.uk/

Bedsetter Images album
https://www.discogs.com/master/

Al-Stewart-Bedsitter-Images
8— Love Chronicles album
https://www.discogs.com/master/

Al-Stewart-Love-Chronicles
9— Modern Times album
https://www.discogs.com/master/

Al-Stewart-Modern-Times
10— Year of the Cat
https://www.discogs.com/master/

Al-Stewart-Year-Of-The-Cat
11— Alan Parsons
https://alanparsons.com/

Marie Celeste
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Celeste

Tim Renwick
https://www.allmusic.com/artist/tim-renwick-mn0000594665

Admiralty Lights box set
https://www.discogs.com/release/

The Cars – “It’s All I Can Do”

"It's All I Can Do" (Ric Ocasek) Copyright 1979 Lido Music Inc

The Cars debut album was a commercial and critical success. The pressure was on for a follow-up, and the band delivered big time with their 2nd album, “Candy-O“. The album was packed with more Cars classics, including the subject of this episode, “It’s All I Can Do”, a song that shows the strengths of each band member– everyone contributing something special top this great track.

“It’s All I Can Do” (Ric Ocasek) Copyright 1979 Lido Music Inc

…and check out this previous episode on The Cars:
lovethatsongpodcast.com/the-cars-just-what-i-needed/

TRANSCRIPT:

Time for another edition of the “I’m In Love With That Song” podcast. I’m your host, Brad Page, sending these love letters to the music we cherish, care of the Pantheon podcast Network. Each episode I pick a favorite song and we look at it in detail, trying to understand what makes it a great song. You don’t have to be a musician or have any advanced knowledge, because we don’t get into music theory or technical stuff here. If you’re willing to listen, then this podcast is for you.

On this episode, we’re exploring a track from a band that came onto the scene as the 70’s were coming to a close, and their sound was critical in launching the sound of the 80’s. This is The Cars with “It’s All I Can Do”.

We talked about The Cars on this show once before, back in episode number 43, “Just What I Needed”. So you can check out that episode for an overview of the band’s history. This time, we’ll pick up where that episode left off.

They released that first album in June 1978. A year later, their second album, “Candy-O”, hit the shelves. That first album was considered one of the strongest debut albums of all time, and it still is. Rolling Stone ranks it in their Top 20 Greatest Debut Albums. So when it came time to record their second album, the pressure was on, and they delivered… no sophomore slump here.

“Candy-O” ended up charting higher than the debut album. It made it to #3 and would eventually sell over 4 million copies. There were three singles released off of “Candy-O”. “It’s All I Can Do” was the second single. The song features Rick Ocasek on rhythm guitar, Elliot Easton on lead guitar, Greg Hawks on keyboards, David Robinson on drums, and Benjamin Orr on bass and lead vocals.

The song begins with a bass drum hit and a quick open and close of the hi-hat. One guitar on the left with a slightly distorted tone is playing staccato, muted power chords. The bass in the center is duplicating that guitar part. On the right, there’s another guitar playing smoothly strummed, ringing chords. Sounds like there’s maybe some reverb, perhaps some chorus effect on that guitar. The rest of the tracks are pretty dry, and Greg Hawks is playing a simple but effective melody on the keyboards.

Rick Ocasek is universally acknowledged as the architect of The Cars’ sound, and he wrote all the songs on the album; but every member of the band contributed something special, and to me, the magic ingredient of the best Cars songs is the vocals of Benjamin Orr. He had a great voice and so perfectly suited to The Cars sound.

For the second half of the verse, the guitar that was playing those clean, ringing chords on the right is going to suddenly shift to playing heavy, distorted chords. Listen for the change.

Then David Robinson is going to do a short drum fill on the toms to launch us into the first chorus, and those toms are pretty high in the mix.

The instrumentation behind the chorus is pretty minimal, not a lot of overdubs, just the basic band performing, but each player is doing something just a little different enough that it sounds nice and full, with Greg Hawke’s melodic keyboard part just riding on top. Let’s bring the vocals back in and listen to that again.

Both The Cars’ first album and “Candy-O” were produced by Roy Thomas Baker, one of the most famous and successful producers of the 1970s. Baker is probably most known for working with Queen, including producing “Bohemian Rhapsody”, so he knew how to layer vocals. Though the cars kept the production tricks to a minimum on this album, there are moments where the Roy Thomas Baker effect shines through those rich backing vocals at the end of the chorus. Here is a good example.

That chorus leads immediately into the second verse, and notice that clean, ringing guitar is back.

That’s one of my favorite lines in the song—“When I was crazy, I thought you were great.” We’ve probably all had a time in our lives where we were so crazy in love that we couldn’t see just how bad that person was for us.

And the distorted guitar returns.

Greg Hawkes is playing pretty much the same keyboard part that he played on the first chorus, but he’s using a different sound this time. Here’s the sound again from the first chorus. And here’s the keyboard sound on this second chorus. They add an extra six beats in there to lead us into the guitar solo.

And I’ve mentioned before on this show that I love Elliot Easton’s guitar playing. And this is another great example of a tasteful, melodic, memorable guitar solo by Elliot Easton. Check it out.

One thing we haven’t looked at yet is David Robinson’s drum part on the verses. What he’s doing is pretty subtle, but it’s not just a straightforward drum beat. He’s put some pretty clever twists into it. Let’s listen.

Also on this final verse, Greg Hawkes has added a new keyboard part. You can imagine a string section playing this part. It really adds a new layer of drama to this last verse. Listen to how it builds through to the end of the verse.

And that’s another great line; “As soon as you get it, you want something new”.  How many of you have been on one end of that in a relationship?

Listen to the way the guitar and the keyboard are going to answer each other. It’s the guitar on the right, the keyboard on the left.

Like the way Benjamin sings this line here.

“It’s All I Can Do” by The Cars

The Cars released six albums between 1970 – 1987. Five of them were top 20 hits. Four of them reached the top ten. They split up in 1988.

Benjamin Orr died from cancer in 2000. The remaining members reformed for one more album in 2011. But without Benjamin Orr, it just wasn’t the same.

Rick Ocasek died in 2019. David Robinson has more or less retired from the music business and owns an art gallery in Rockport, Massachusetts. Elliot Easton is still active and has a number of musical projects that keep him busy, and Greg Hawkes does session and touring work, working frequently with Todd Rungren.

Thanks for taking a few minutes out of your day to listen to this show. I always appreciate it. New episodes of the podcast come out on the 1st and the 15th of every month, so I’ll be back soon with another episode. You can keep in touch with the show on our Facebook page, or on our website, lovethatsongpodcast.com, where you’ll also find all of our previous episodes. And you can find the show on your favorite source of podcasts, whether it’s Amazon, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher– wherever you listen to podcasts, you’ll find this show. We are part of the Pantheon Network of podcasts, the place for music related podcasts, so be sure to check out some of the other shows, too.

Thanks again for listening to this edition of the “I’m In Love With That Song” podcast featuring The Cars and “It’s All I Can Do”.

REFERENCES:

The Cars
https://www.thecars.org/

Candy-O (Album)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candy-O

Rolling Stone (Greatest Debut Albums)
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/best-debut-albums-of-all-time-143608/the-cars-1978-163377/

Roy Thomas Baker
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Thomas_Baker

Bohemian Rhapsody
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohemian_Rhapsody

David Robinson’s Art Gallery
http://www.rockportartassn.org/

Elliot Easton
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elliot_Easton

Greg Hawkes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Hawkes

‘I’m in Love with that Song’ Podcast Facebook Page
https://www.facebook.com/lovethatsongpodcast

Pantheon Podcast Network
https://www.pantheonpodcasts.com/