Song Musings

It’s Wednesday and I hope this week has been kind to you. As usual, this is the time for another installment of my weekly feature where I take a deeper dive into a tune I’ve only mentioned in passing or not covered at all so far. For this post, I’ve decided to highlight Anticipation by Carly Simon.

Anticipation, a beautiful song I’ve come to dig, is the title track of the singer-songwriter’s second studio album released in November 1971. Solely written by Simon, the tune also appeared separately as the album’s lead single that same month.

Anticipation was Simon’s second single. It pretty much matched the remarkable chart performance of That’s the Way I’ve Always Heard It Should Be, released in April 1971 as the sole single off her eponymous debut album. In the U.S., Anticipation reached no. 13 on the Billboard Hot 100 and surged to no. 3 on the Easy Listening chart (now called Adult Contemporary). Elsewhere, it climbed to no. 9 in Canada and no. 64 in Australia – not too shabby for an artist who at the time was only nine months into her solo career!

The Anticipation album also did pretty well. In the U.S., it peaked at no. 30 on the Billboard 200, matching its predecessor, while in Canada it got to no. 36, lower than Simon’s debut (no. 17) but still a top 40. It did best in Australia where it climbed to no. 12, significantly up from its predecessor (no. 55). In the U.S., the album reached Gold certification (500,000 certified sold units) as of September 1973, placing it in the group of Simon’s five best-selling studio albums. Here’s a nice acoustic live cut of Anticipation, captured during a September 2005 concert aboard the British transatlantic ocean liner Queen Mary 2, which appeared as a DVD at the time.

Apart from Anticipation, Carly Simon has had 12 additional top 40 singles on the Billboard Hot 100. Her biggest hits on the U.S. pop chart were You’re So Vain (1972); Mockingbird, with James Taylor who also was her husband at the time (1974); Nobody Does It Better (1977), the great theme song of the James Bond picture The Spy Who Loved Me; and Jesse (1980), her final big hit.

Overall, Simon has also done well on the album front. In the U.S. alone, 12 of her 23 studio albums released between 1971 and 2009 charted in the top 40 on the Billboard 200, including five in the top 10. Three were certified Platinum (1 million certified sold units) while two reached Gold certification. Her 1975 compilation The Best of Carly Simon hit a whopping 3xPlatinum in December 1997.

Simon whose 80th birthday is coming up on June 25 was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame last year. She canceled her planned attendance after tragically losing both of her sisters Joanna Simon and Lucy Simon to thyroid and breast cancer, respectively, within one day of each other! Her brother Peter Simon had passed away from lung cancer in November 2018. Carly is a breast cancer survivor and underwent a mastectomy, chemotherapy and reconstructive surgery between 1997 and 1998.

Following are additional insights for Anticipation from Songfacts.

Carly Simon wrote “Anticipation” while waiting for Cat Stevens to come over for their first date (she was making chicken with a béarnaise sauce). She was his opening act for a concert at the Troubadour in Los Angeles on April 6, 1971, and they were set to play again at Carnegie Hall in New York City on June 5. Simon lived in the City, so she invited Stevens over for the date a few days before that show.

He was late, so Simon burned off some nervous energy by sitting down with her guitar. She imitated Stevens’ style (he was her favorite artist) from his song “Hard Headed Woman,” where he keeps it mellow but then ramps it up for a section when he sings, “I know many fine feathered friends.” Simon played loud, singing the word that came into her mind because she was waiting for Stevens: “Anticipation.”

“I was anticipating his arrival,” she said in the book Anthems We Love. “So I just started the song and I wrote the whole song, words and music, before he got there that night. So in about 15 minutes I wrote the whole song. Three verses and the choruses and the outro. That’s only one of three times that that’s ever happened to me. That I just sat down and wrote the whole song in just one stretch. It was only about 20 minutes that he was late.”

This song is very much about living in the moment. Simon isn’t sure this relationship is going to last, but she decides to just enjoy it while they’re together. “These are the good old days,” goes the refrain at the end.

Simon performed “Anticipation” for the first time when she opened for Cat Stevens at Carnegie Hall on June 5, 1971. The song got a great response, so she knew it was a winner. She added it to her repertoire and performed it a handful of times before recording it.

The romance between Cat Stevens and Carly Simon was short-lived, but they forged an enduring friendship Simon spoke of fondly many years later. She ended up marrying James Taylor in 1972 (they divorced in 1983)...

…Simon’s musical director Jimmy Ryan played bass on this track, but on the last verse he played guitar-style riffs on the instrument. The other personnel were Andy Newmark on drums, Paul Glanz on piano, and Simon on acoustic guitar and vocals.

Simon earned a Grammy nomination for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance, but she lost to Helen Reddy for “I Am Woman.”

Simon recorded an acoustic version with her son, Ben Taylor, for her 2009 album, Never Been Gone.

Sources: Wikipedia; Songfacts; YouTube

The Sunday Six

Spring has officially arrived – Yay, finally, as it’s been a long and lonely winter! I’m also happy to report that with today’s installment, The Sunday Six has hit its first mini-milestone: This is the 10th post in the weekly recurring series that celebrates the beauty of music from different periods and genres, six random tunes at a time. I think I found a nice set of tracks I hope you will like.

Sonny Rollins Quartet/My Reverie

Let’s kick things off with some amazing saxophone action by American tenor sax player Sonny Rollins. I have to give a shoutout to fellow blogger Cincinnati Babyhead, who recently posted about Tenor Madness, a studio album Rollins released in 1956 as the Sonny Rollins Quartet. In addition to him, it also featured Red Garland (piano), Paul Chambers (double bass) and Philly Joe Jones (drums) – what a cool name, Philly Joe Jones – I love the flow! Oh, and there was this other fellow called John Coltrane, who joined the band on tenor sax for the album’s opener and title track. The track I’m featuring is called My Reverie. Apparently, the first jazz recording was by Larry Clinton and His Orchestra in 1938, featuring Bea Wain on vocals, with lyrics by Clinton. The music is based on Rêverie, a piano piece by French classical composer Claude Debussy, dating back to 1890. This really goes to show there’s such a thing as truly timeless and beautiful music!

The Horace Silver Quartet/Song for My Father

Let’s shake up things a bit on The Sunday Six with another another instrumental and another jazz track back to back. And, nope, Donald Fagen or Walter Becker are not Horace Silver’s father or otherwise related to the American jazz pianist, composer and arranger. But Becker and Fagen both loved listening to jazz. Undoubtedly, they also got inspired by the intro of Song for My Father. Somehow, it became the introductory riff of Steely Dan’s 1974 single Rikki Don’t Lose That Number, their most successful U.S. single, peaking at no. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100. Whether consciously or unconsciously, to me, this looks a bit like yet another case where a credit should have been given to the original composer. Perhaps Messrs. Becker and Fagen lost his number! Silver who began taking classical piano lessons as a child was active between 1946 and 2004. Initially, he started as a sideman before leading mainly smaller jazz groups. In the early ’50s, he became a co-founder of The Jazz Messengers, which at first he ran together with drummer Art Blakey. After leaving the band in 1956, Silver formed his own five-piece combo, which he led into the 1980s. He continued to release albums until 1998. In 2007, it became known that he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. He passed away in June 2014 at the age of 85. Song for My Father, composed by Silver, is the title track of an album he released with his band in late 1965. Great tune!

Jackson Browne/Shaky Town

I trust Jackson Browne needs no introduction. The American singer-songwriter who has been active since 1966 is one of my all-time favorite music artists. I dig both his vocals and his songwriting. I also have something in common with him: We were both born in the lovely town of Heidelberg, Germany. He went on to become a rock star. I ended up playing bass in two bands in my late teens and early ’20s with short-lived ambitions to become a professional musician. It’s probably a good thing it didn’t happen (though never say never! 🙂 ), and I’m a daddy though not rocking in the U.S.A. Instead, I get to enjoy listening to great music by fantastic artists and giving my two cents as a hobby blogger – not such a terrible thing, after all! The one Jackson Browne album I keep coming back to is Running on Empty, his fifth studio release that appeared in December 1977. When I had that aforementioned dream to become a professional musician, I actually envisaged sounding like Browne on Running on Empty, notably, not like The Beatles – true story. I was tempted to go with the title track. Instead, perhaps somewhat ironically, I decided to pick a tune that’s not by Browne: Shaky Town. The song was written by guitarist Danny Kortchmar, who has worked with the likes of Linda Ronstadt, James Taylor, Neil Young, Carly Simon and not to forget Carole King. Kortchmar also provided harmony vocals. And check out that sweet lap steel guitar by the amazing David Lindley.

The Church/Under the Milky Way

The Church are an alternative rock band from down under, formed in Sydney in 1980. Their debut album Of Skins and Heart appeared in April 1981. Since then, the band that remains active to this day, has released 16 additional studio albums. Their most recent one, Man Woman Life Death Infinity, came out in October 2017. I covered it here at the time. But it was their fifth international breakthrough album Starfish from February 1988, which brought the Aussie band on my radar screen. I just love the sound, and it remains one of my favorite ’80s records. Here’s the fantastic lead single Under the Milky Way. It was co-written by the band’s bassist and vocalist Steve Kilbey and his then-girlfriend and guitarist Karin Jansson, founder of alternative Australian rock band Curious (Yellow). The atmospheric sound and Kilbey’s distinct vocals still give me good chills.

George Harrison/Blow Away

What’s better than enjoying some sweet slide guitar? You guessed it – more sweet slide guitar action! One of the artists I’ve always admired in this context for his unique tone is George Harrison. I don’t know of any guitarist who got that same sweet slide sound. Blow Away was first released in February 1979 as the lead single from Harrison’s eighth, eponymous studio album that came out a few days later. Written by him, it became one of eight top 20 mainstream hits Harrison had in the U.S., peaking at no. 16 on the Billboard Hot 100. It did even better in Canada, hitting no. 7, one of his nine top 10 hits there. The recording features former Sly and the Family Stone member and session drummer Andy Newmark. Nuff said – let’s get blown away!

Elton John/Your Sister Can’t Twist (But She Can Rock ‘n’ Roll)

Time to wrap things up. How about kicking ass with some good ole rock & roll Elton John style? Ask and you shall receive! I guess Your Sister Can’t Twist (But She Can Rock ‘n’ Roll) is more of a deep track. As usual, the lyrics were written by Bernie Taupin, while Sir Elton composed the music. According to Songfacts, the tune is a “throwback to music of the late ’50s and early ’60s when lots of songs were about dance crazes and teenage girls.” Songfacts also quotes John from a 1973 interview with now-defunct American rock magazine Circus, in which he reportedly characterized the tune as “a cross between surfing music and Freddie Cannon records” that was intended “to end the ‘Crocodile Rock’ thing.” Sounds like John had hoped it would help people forget about that latter tune. While it’s a great song that appeared on his masterpiece Goodbye Yellow Brick Road from October 1973, it’s fair to say Your Sister Can’t Twist (But She Can Rock ‘n’ Roll) was completely overshadowed by other tunes from the album, such as Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting, Bennie and the Jets, Candle in the Wind and of course the title track. John also didn’t release it as a single.

Source: Wikipedia; Songfacts; YouTube