About This Time 50 Years Ago… it’s The Hits Of December-ish 1974!

The Hottest Hit On The Planet:

“Cat’s In The Cradle” reached the Number One spot on the Billboard Hot 100 the week before Christmas 1974.

This begs at least two questions:

• The first being: just how many fathers were there in America, feeling guilty that they had to work, or were otherwise absent, on Christmas Day 1974?

• And, secondly, does this mean that “Cat’s In The Cradle” is a Christmas song?

Now obviously, none of the verses take place on Christmas Day, considerably curtailing its Christmas carol credentials. The first verse takes place on the day Harry’s son was born – coming into the world in the usual way.

And then there’s the final verse when Harry is retired, and he’s looking for shit to do, so he calls his son up. Maybe this takes place at Christmas – his kid’s got the flu, so it’s probably winter – but then again, maybe not.

Unless of course. Harry’s son was born on Christmas Day, but what are the odds?

So probably not a Christmas song then. But you can see why it might hit a little harder around the holidays.

“We’ve had men call up and say this is the story of their lives”, a program director told a newspaper. The kids could relate to it too. They also had fathers who didn’t have time to throw around a ball.

Harry had his own absent father – Jim – who hadn’t been there to watch Harry grow up.

Jim didn’t totally disappear from Harry’s life though. Harry and his brothers formed a Kingston Trio-styled folk group in the late 50s, calling themselves The Chapin Brothers.

The Chapin Brothers (plus father) were signed to Music Minus One, a record label that specialized in recording songs “minus one” of the instruments, so musicians could play along with it when they were practicing at home (sort of like a karaoke record, but for proper musicians). The Chapin Brothers made proper records though, with all the instruments, and vocals as well, but no-one ever bought them.

Continuing with the family theme: Harry wrote “Cat’s In The Cradle” with his wife, Sandy, who, handily, was an English professor.

Harry knew that stuff too: Harry had, after all, directed a movie about vintage boxing, after getting a job with The Big Fights, a company that owned boxes and boxes of vintage boxing footage. The movie was called Legendary Champions. It was nominated for an Oscar!1

Like the father – and later the son – in “Cat’s In The Cradle”, Harry was a busy man. He studied philosophy. He drove a taxi and wrote his first hit record about the experience. Not only did he write and direct movies, he wrote and performed a Broadway musical, The Night That Made America Famous, named after one of his songs about a plumber who saves a family of hippies from a house fire!

Being a rock star, Harry also had to go on tour. And he had to go on tour to do his part in saving the world: two out of three Harry Chapin concerts were for charities like UNICEF and Bread For The World, and he’d later on start his own charity: World Hunger Fund.

No wonder Harry didn’t have time for his kid.

So little time did Harry have for his kid, that all he can use for a chorus is a bunch of random kid-related cliches, consisting of nothing but string games and nursery rhymes. We probably shouldn’t read too much into Harry’s lyrical choices in the “Cat’s” chorus.

It was Sandy who wrote the “Cat’s In The Cradle” lyrics, probably about her ex-husband and the relationship he had with his father. But Harry was also feeling bad about being an absent rock star father himself, composing the music to “Cat’s In The Cradle” shortly after his son had been born. Harry had been on tour at the time. Just like his father. He’d grown up just like him.

Harry now has a playground named after him in Brooklyn.

Which makes me wonder, can anyone reading this remember Christmas 1974?

Was Christmas 1974 different from other Christmases?

• Did your father seem more attentive?
• Did he insist on playing catch with you?
• Did you get more presents than usual because your father, slightly misreading the message of the song, thought he could bribe you with material possessions?

Or were you a bit too old for that, and all you really wanted was to borrow the car keys? Did your father feel so bad about neglecting you as a child that he bought you a car for Christmas? Or did he just buy you a copy of “Cat’s In the Cradle” as his clumsy way of saying sorry, and have Harry say to you all the things he couldn’t say himself?

Enquiring minds want to know.

In case all of this doesn’t make you feel guilty enough, we have Harry on one of the picture sleeve covers, pointing at you accusingly: you know your kid is going to be like YOU!

“Cat’s In The Cradle” is an 8.

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Meanwhile, in Robot Land:

What’s another family-Christmas tradition? Long car journeys on your way to visiting your relations… it’s time then to have fun, fun, fun, on the Autobahn!!!

It’s a little odd to hear such futuristic music – futuristic, even now – matched with so many retro cars and sheep farms. But that’s Germany for you; a land where castles and computers co-exist with each other in a state of perfect equilibrium.

The lyrics to “Autobahn” are not, of course, “fun fun fun on the Autobahn.” For one thing, they are in German. It’s “wir fahr’n, fahr’n, fahr’n, auf der Autobahn”, or “we are driving, driving, driving, on the Autobahn.”

“That is wrong.” Florian explained, when told of his commonly misheard lyrics, and in his best arch-villain accent.  “But it works. Driving is fun. We had no speed limit on the Autobahn, we could race through the highways, through the Alps, so yes, fahren fahren fahren, fun fun fun. But it wasn’t anything to do with The Beach Boys!”

Kraftwerk, were, reportedly, Beach Boys fans, but not for the music.

As they told Lester Bangs, they liked The Beach Boys for “the psychological structure”, whatever that means.

Elsewhere in that interview, Lester tried to trick Kraftwerk into saying that their method of making music with machines was part of a “final solution”, but they didn’t fall for it. That, or they didn’t understand what Lester was getting at.

But that didn’t stop NME from using “Kraftwerk: The Final Solution To The Music Problem” as its headline, and this as its artwork. I’M NOT MAKING THIS UP!!!

The 1970s had absolutely no qualms about mentioning the war. Melody Maker in April 1975 went with “Kraftwerk et al: Germany invades U.S.!” And then a year later in the NME “Krautwerk: This is what your fathers fought to save you from…” It’s honestly a little surprising that 1hadn’t gone with “Ze Final Zolution To Ze Muzic Problem”, or some such.

Not that Kraftwerk necessarily needed journalists to try and trick them into saying things they probably shouldn’t have:

“We cannot deny that we are from Germany, because the German mentality, which is more advanced, will aways be part of our behaviour.”

Did they not realize what that sounded like?

Kraftwerk were never going to be able to escape their Germanic roots, and neither did they want to. Kraftwerk were all about reinventing and rebuilding a German – and later a pan-European – identity the same way that the German nation was rebuilding itself as an economic superpower. Or, as Lester put it, they were working on the musical “rearmament of the fatherland.”

“Autobahn” does feature other lyrics besides just “wir fahr’n, fahr’n, fahr’n, auf der Autobahn”, although they aren’t exactly poetry. Maybe they work better in the original German.

This was Kraftwerk’s idea of having fun, fun, fun on the Autobahn!

Despite there being no speed limit on the Autobahn, Kraftwerk cruise along at a very responsible speed, of 82 BPM. This is because Kraftwerk were robots, and as such, weren’t into such crazy shenanigans as speeding along a highway, even when permitted to by law. Kraftwerk were mad professors, not partying rock stars. They referred to their studio as a laboratory. They called it Kling Klang. They invented their own instruments.

Kraftwerk had not always been so robotic. Florian’s favourite early instrument was the flute. There’s even a flute on “Autobahn.” And a violin as well! It’s not all machines and computers!! Although, according to this very-BBC narrator they were hoping to phase out even the keyboards soon – which in this clip, sound like a distorted-out-of-tune-accordion – and replace them with touch-sensitive lapels on their jackets.

All of which made Kraftwerk seem like evil Bond villains. Just watch Florian smile at the end of that BBC video and tell me he isn’t thinking about world domination. Although if he had been, he had a lot to be smiling about. Kraftwerk were already dominating the burgeoning “Krautrock” scene:

Two earlier members of Kraftwerk had already split off to form Neu!, meaning that Kraftwerk made up two of the three canonical “krautrock” bands, along with Can. All three bands came from either Cologne or Dusseldorf, deep in Germany’s industrial heartland.

Fun fact: I just checked how long it takes to drive from Cologne to Dusseldorf, on the A57.

Which is just one minute shorter than the complete – and definitive – album version of “Autobahn!” You could totally use “Autobahn” as your soundtrack for commuting from Cologne to Dusseldorf, using the Autobahn!

Coincidence? I have absolutely no idea. But probably.

“Autobahn” is a 10.

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Meanwhile, in Soul Land:

“Take Me To The River” was not released as a single – the big hit from “Al Green Explores Your Mind” would instead be “Sha-La-La (Make Me Happy)” – a fact that seems deeply weird. (“Sha-La-La (Make Me Happy”)is a 7.)

Maybe it was because Al was too busy with other aspects of his life to be able to commit 11a second single from the album. Because Al Green was certainly going through a lot at the time. A hell of a lot! Let’s have a quick look at some of the hot Green-goss of late 1974.

There was just one hitch: there were other girls who were equally adamant that Al should not get married. 208 girls had recently sent Al a petition begging “Please Al, Don’t Get Married.” Al reassured them that – despite his recent hit single “Let’s Get Married” – he had absolutely no plans to get married. Poor Mary.

Actually, there was more than one hitch. There was another hitch. Mary was already married. And she had three kids.

And there was another hitch: Al was unaware of Hitch No.2.

And yet another hitch: given everything that was about to go down, it was clear that Mary wasn’t in a good place… emotionally, speaking.

By “everything that was about to go down” I’m referring of course to Mary throwing a boiling pot of grits at Al, whilst he was naked – he was about to have a bath – before shooting herself with Al’s .38 handgun. Mary had allegedly also posted a suicide note to Al’s office earlier that day, which suggests that this wasn’t a spur of the moment decision. Mary’s suicide note simply said that all she wanted “was (to) be with you and love you until I die.”

Jet Magazine speculated that Mary was “despondent, knowing that Green’s popular tune “Let’s Stay Together”, didn’t mean her. (“Let’s Stay Together” is a 10).

Jet Magazine’s coverage of the tragedy also focused a lot on the fact that Mary’s suicide spoiled plans for an official “Al Green Day”, that the Memphis Police Department had been planning for that very same day. Obviously Al couldn’t turn up to that. He’d just had a boiling pot of grits thrown at him. He needed to rush to the hospital for skin-graft surgery.

But Al Green’s troubles did not stop there:

• Two days after Al left the hospital his cousin held him up at gunpoint, demanding money she said he owed her.
  
• Also about this time: Al’s secretary was suing him for assault. Also, there were rumours that someone had made a sex-tape of Al and was trying to find a buyer. Presumedly, since this was 1974, it was an audio cassette-tape, which may explain why no-one seemed interested in buying it.

So, in short, there was A LOT going on in Al Green’s life.

So much that he decided it was probably a safer bet to become a Baptist minister instead. He had already become a born-again Christian a year earlier. This means that “Take Me To The River” can be viewed – if you are into that sort of soul-singer narrative stuff – as the half-way point in Al’s religious transformation: a song half-spiritual, and half-secular.

The title certainly sounds religious, as if Al is asking to be baptized, whilst the verses seem to have more to do with his earthly woes: you stole his money, you stole his cigarettes, his sweet 16, Al will never forget, you threw grits all over him, when he was in the bath getting wet…

Another reason for Al not releasing “Take Me To The River” as a single himself, was because the label had given the song to Syl Johnson, who created a slightly more upbeat, and harmonica drenched version, whilst still sounding more-than-a-little-like Al Green himself. “Take Me To The River” became Syl’s biggest hit.

It’s not impossible that some record buyers thought Syl’s version of “Take Me To The River” was Al, and then bought the Al Green album by mistake. Typical record industry trickery. It’s unlikely that any record buyer would have felt miffed by this of course, since the Al Green version is pretty funking great!

Or maybe “Take Me To The River” has nothing to do with Al’s ongoing struggle between spirituality and sex – a struggle that had begun at an early age when his ultra-religious father threw him out of the house for listening to Jackie Wilson, after which he lived with a prostitute for a while – or maybe it’s simply about Little Junior Parker.

Al would like to dedicate “Take Me To The River” to his cousin – as best as I can tell, not a literal cousin, and definitely not the cousin that held him up with a handgun:

Little Junior Parker:
A man who totally deserves having a song dedicated to him.

• Playing harmonica for Sonny Boy Williamson and Howlin’ Wolf
• Writing and recording “Mystery Train” for Sun Records…
• Before discovering that, even better than his harmonica playing, he was in possession of a voice almost as smooth and soulful as Al Green himself – without ever having an important historical moment to call his own.

Little Junior Parker died of a brain haemorrhage during surgery in 1971, but not before recording a posthumous album with the cumbersome title of  I Tell Stories Sad and True, I Sing the Blues and Play Harmonica Too, It Is Very Funky, which really tells you everything that you need to know about the man. Here’s his cover of The Beatles’ “Taxman”, which would be sampled by Cypress Hill for “I Wanna Get High.”

In the years following “Take Me To The River”, Al considered, more and more, giving up the soul-star life and all of its sexy strife, and by the end of 1976 he had bought a church! The Full Gospel Tabernacle!

 “Do you want to have a good time? You see, there’s nothing wrong with having a good time. I don’t see no other reason you could have to spend your time here, if you didn’t come out here to have a good time…”

Al’s most recent album had been titled “Have A Good Time.” And t1o ensure you had a good time, the service included seven dancers!

Al must’ve already been seriously considering becoming a preacher before Mary attacked him with the grits, since Mary had made him promise to always save her a seat whenever he was preaching. And he always has :

If you find yourself in Memphis on a Sunday morning and you mak1e your way down to the Full Gospel Tabernacle to hear Al Green preach, and there’s only one seat spare… do not sit on that seat.

“Take Me To The River” is a 9.

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