General Music Chat

I'm hoping you haven't seen this video, or heard this collaboration, and if true, then you are in for a treat, if you have a soul!

I think I am a pretty good songwriter, and then I listen again to a song like "Vincent". It is a Don McLean song written as a tribute to Vincent van Gogh, and particularly, van Gogh's painting "Starry Night", hence the opening line "Starry starry night", although the song contains references to other famous van Gogh paintings as well. It is one of the most beautiful and touching songs ever written.

Recorded first by Don McLean, it was later recorded as an instrumental by none other than legendary guitarist Chet Atkins. In the following YouTube video, Don and Chet perform the song together. And the combination is simply phenomenal. Chet's guitar, and the song... the lyrics and melody. I would love to write just one song this good!

Here is the very definition of "timelessness" in music...

http://youtube.com/watch?v=DeR4G8519vI


VINCENT

Starry, starry night
Paint your palette blue and gray
Look out on a summer's day
With eyes that know the darkness in my soul
Shadows on the hills
Sketch the trees and the daffodils
Catch the breeze and the winter chills
In colors on the snowy linen land

Now I understand
What you tried to say to me
How you suffered for your sanity
How you tried to set them free
They would not listen they did not know how
Perhaps they'll listen now

Starry, starry night
Flaming flowers that brightly blaze
Swirling clouds in violet haze
Reflecting Vincent's eyes of China blue
Colors changing hue
Morning fields of amber grain
Weathered faces lined in pain
Are soothed beneath the artist's loving hands

Now I understand
What you tried to say to me
How you suffered for your sanity
How you tried to set them free
They would not listen they did not know how
Perhaps they'll listen now

For they could not love you
But still your love was true
And when no hope was left inside
On that starry, starry night
You took your life as lovers often do
But I could have told you Vincent
This world was never meant for one as
beautiful as you

Starry, starry night
Portraits hung in empty halls
Frameless heads on nameless walls
With eyes that watch the world and can't forget
Like the strangers that you've met
The ragged men in ragged clothes
A silver thorn on a bloody rose
Lie crushed and broken on the virgin snow

Now I think I know
What you tried to say to me
How you suffered for your sanity
How you tried to set them free
They would not listen they're not listening still
Perhaps they never will

Wow, that was one of my favorite songs from that album. I never knew what it was about though. Cool.

This song can bring tears to your eyes. Perhaps no song has ever expressed such love and compassion for someone so misunderstood.

While much of the world makes jokes and performs comedy sketches of the "lunatic" van Gogh, who cut his ear off after becoming so distraught over arguments with friend and famed artist Paul Gauguin, Don McLean saw inside the man's soul, after reading a book about the artist, and immediately felt understanding and compassion toward van Gogh, and his idealistic and generous nature, who in his own lifetime, was misunderstood, rejected by much of his own family and generally unloved.




The painting "Starry Night" was painted looking through bars of a mental institution, where van Gogh had been put.

van Gogh, who early on had a promising career as an art dealer, was run out of the business when he began complaining, even to the businesses own customers how art had become a commodity, rather than the thing of beauty and inspiration that it was to van Gogh, and as he saw it, which the great masters used to help us find God through their works. Impoverished, he felt the calling to religion, but when he practiced a humbled and poor life, lived in the service of others, as he saw the essence of true Christianity to be, the priests threw him out, for demeaning their standards (read, dressed nicely, with expensive trappings). Then finally, as an artist, he was often ridiculed for his vision of art, and for his techniques. Of course now, he is considered a master, and his art is among the highest paid in history for artwork at auctions. But then... he was often ridiculed and his work belittled.

The oft repeated line.... "They would not listen they did not know how, Perhaps they'll listen now" is a reference to van Gogh, pouring out his soul, in as honest a way as possible, only to suffer repeated rejection by everyone, including his own family, in all his endeavors, and that his eventual suicide, was his final statement, to make them listen, to make them understand.

It is sad and heartbreaking. And McLean brilliantly, and movingly, portrays this all in the song "Vincent (Starry, Starry Night)".

Listen again, with the above understanding, and see if it does not move you as well.

Tupac Shakur, famed rapper who was murdered, also felt a connection to van Gogh, and wrote this poem in tribute...


Starry Night Dedicated in Memory of Vincent van Gogh


a creative heart, obsessed with satisfying
This dormant and uncaring society
u have given them the stars at night
and u have given them Bountiful Bouquets of Sunflowers
But 4 u there is only contempt
and though u pour yourself into that fame
and present it so proudly
this world could not accept your masterpieces
from the heart

So on that starry night
u gave 2 us and
u took away from us
the one thing we never acknowledged
your life

- Tupac Shakur

GREAT song. It does humble me. My high school art teacher used to play that for us while we created. What an inspiration. Thanks for posting Craig!

I used to play that tune, long long ago...dunno why I stopped...perhaps it's just too sad.

Nice vid, Craig!

Thanks for reminding me of one of the best I ever heard.

not crazy about chets playing on this version... he is way better than that
but, you have rekindled my love for this song. thanks for that.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dipFMJckZOM

this link plays the studio version to a bunch of van gogh paintings.... very touching.

Damn and all this time I ignored that tune not being in the know.
Ya'll continually enlighten me.
Thank you.

Good ol' tune for sure, but I always got more choked up over Harry Chapin's "Cat's In The Cradle".

Craig,
It goes without saying that there has been a lot of songwriters that humble us all, among them Jim Croce, Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Richard Thompson etc. etc., but I got to tell ya, I am impressed with much of the creative work that I hear on this forum, and your stuff ranks high on the list.

Howlin'

Yes. And for sure!

Great song indeed. If you ever get a chance see "Lust for Life" (1956) with Kirk Douglas as Van Gogh. Being a so-so artist (I also paint) and musician I am awestruck when I see someone give their life for their art.

Thanks guys. And thanks for the kind words Howlin' John! Hey Jimmy, I'll check that movie out if I ever get the chance.

Wow. That song really paints a picture, doesn't it? I've written a few songs, and this is the kind of song that I aspire to write. Really, great choice.

Damn, HJ, I play Cat's Cradle, too...& Taxi, of course. LOVED Harry C!

I do a lot of tearjerkers, I guess.

It goes without saying that there has been a lot of songwriters that humble us all, among them Jim Croce, Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Richard Thompson etc. etc.

How did you manage to leave out Paul McCartney, Ian Anderson and John Hiatt?? Hiatt is less well known, but wrote several great tunes for other people, now records his own as well. Riding With the King, Confidence Man, Runaway (Bonnie Raitt) are just a couple of Hiatt's better ones. He was one of the writers group that included Carole King, he's written tons of material over the years. If you get a chance, check out the "Perfectly Good Guitar" album.

I played Cat's in the Cradle for years, one of my very favorite songs from high school daze, sat on the band room steps and played it every day, the people who came to listen wouldn't let me get by without doing that one or American Pie...and Cat Stevens' Wild World and another one I can't remember.. Oh, and Taxi too, that one was a favorite, never got away without playing it either.

As far as songwriters go, I think Mark Knopfler should be right up there with the best of them too. Add Bob Dylan ( although I think he should let someone else play and sing) ditto for Neil Young...

And did you know Harry Chapin also wrote a l ot of movie scores? I didn't find out until he died, there was a bit about it in the news story.