Have just heard something I had been hoping to hear for many years: the original demo for That Day Is Done by Elvis Costello and Paul McCartney, now available on the 2017 edition of McCartney's album Flowers in the Dirt.
I didn't realise it had been issued, and it lives up to expectations. Costello said some time ago that it wasn't until he recorded the number himself with gospel group the Fairfield Four that it came close to the demo, and the similarity is immediately evident when you hear that first sketch. It may be a little rough round the edges but there is far more joy and life here than in Macca's finished version, which seems overblown in comparison.
You can certainly hear what McCartney is trying to do in the polished recording - to evoke a New Orleans funeral procession, which is reasonable enough, given the subject matter - but the arrangement is overloaded, sounds synth-heavy or at least determinedly non-acoustic, and the whole feels a little leaden. Nor does there seem much emotional directness in McCartney's showy vocal, as though Elvis is playing the Lennon role here not only as co-composer but as the more earthed performer. True, Costello's voice may not be a thing of beauty at the best of times - in the songs on Painted From Memory, his collaboration with Burt Bacharach, it must be obvious to the most indulgent fan that he ain't no Dusty Springfield - but on his own recording of That Day Is Done with the Fairfield Four at least it sounds as though he means it.
In fairness, it must be pointed out that the idea for the song seems to have come from Elvis's personal experience, so you could say he has an advantage, but at least in the demo honours are even, and it's a delight to hear something so obviously fresh and new to both of them:
McCartney discussed his collaboration with Costello in a BBC 6 Music interview to promote the new edition of the album, saying that they faced each other with acoustic guitars, just as he had done with Lennon all those years ago:
He was John, basically, and I was Paul ... [Elvis] would often tell a story about his grandma or his auntie or a family story and both coming from Liverpool, those kinds of things would come up naturally. And one of the songs That Day Is Done, he's talking about being at the funeral of his gran, as I remember, which was a very powerful thing for him and he's telling me about it. So we started writing it. Those kinds of things were very important because [of] this shared background of Liverpool, song writing, and both having similar memories - me from another generation but still Liverpool, same kind of thing.
... We’d have a writing session in the afternoon and [that] normally took about three hours before you get so fed up and think, we better finish this song. Then after that, we'd write in my office above the studio. We'd just go down to the studio and say to my mate, Eddie Klein [coincidentally Alan Klein's brother] who ran the studio and was the engineer: "Hey Eddie, let's do a quick recording of this." So he'd just set up mikes and we would do it. So there it was, from having written it, walk right downstairs and record it. So the performances are very raw and very straightforward. We didn't have time to think: “What are we going to do to tart this up?” I kind of agree with a few people that the actual demos of me and Elvis have got more spark, they've got more life than the recordings we ended up with eventually, so it was great to be able to include them in the package.
To close, an extract from an earlier post. I could tart it up a little and remove the overlap with the above, but in the spirit of that demo I won't. The original context for the following was a discussion about who brought what to Stand By Me - something which will never be known for sure now that two of the three involved are dead:
This is a discussion which could run and run so I will only suggest that the actual quantity of lyrics brought in is almost irrelevant if those lyrics include the key components which then suggest the rest of the song. Elvis Costello talks of Paul McCartney licking his That Day Is Done (a great gospel-style song, incidentally) into shape; Macca said not to be afraid of repeating phrases, hammering them home - "You mean like Let It Be?" as Elvis laughingly asked this giant of twentieth century popular music (which is maybe why they didn't collaborate again).
Okay, this is a diversion, albeit sort of related as it's a kind of pop-gospel thing too, so I'm going to go with it. McCartney recorded That Day Is Done on his Flowers in the Dirt album (whose title is a line from the song) but Costello later rerecorded it as a guest of veteran gospel group the Fairfield Four, and in the notes for the group's album I Couldn't Hear Nobody Pray, he talks of how they finished a version in the studio and it was good (I was going to add a "lo" there), but when a TV crew came into the studio, expecting to film the group and Elvis lipsynching to the recording, they decided to sing it live instead and, lifted by the presence of others, that rendition intended for TV had the indefinable magic and so replaced the earlier take on the final album. And there is a touching moment which can't really be replicated precisely: Elvis, half-hesitating, is instantly bolstered up by those other voices. Costello says it was nearer either to what he intended or to the original demo - meaning, I suspect, that while McCartney's version, which mimics the sound of a New Orleans funeral marching band, is a good idea in principle, it just sounds a teeny bit leaden by comparison.
The Costello / Fairfield Four recording is also dear to my heart because it was introduced to me by my Costello-loving friend, late of North Berwick and everywhere else, who correctly assumed I'd like it a great deal. When Elvis began singing - not so much. But when those wonderful grainy harmonies filled the little computer speakers - oh yesss. Though having the guy who played piano on pop gospel classic Bridge Over Troubled Water probably didn't hurt either.
The title of Paul Simon's song was adapted, as many reading this will know, from Claude Jeter's ad lib in the Swan Silvertones' recording of Mary, Don't you Weep: "I'll be your bridge over deep water if you'll trust in My name." You could even say that the Swan Silvertones' recording constitutes a kind of pop gospel, as it's a very compact version of what might have taken ten minutes or more to build to in live performance.
Gospel in feel as the Costello-McCartney (or was it McCartney-Costello?) composition may be, however, you could argue that the actual story of That Day Is Done also owes something to English folk song: a dead father laments not being able to attend his daughter's wedding, as far as I can work it out.
If you heard that moment of hesitation in the recording when the group seem to help Elvis out it may help to explain why, as recounted in a recent post, Ben E King remained so nostalgiac about his early days singing with groups on streetcorners and why (I like to think) that being on stage with ex-Drifters may have been an emotional experience for him: "You never felt alone, is all."
I've got a feeling that Frank Skinner, a big fan of the other Elvis, once had the chance to sing a song with the Jordanaires for a documentary or something, and said that their backing helped him, however, temporarily, to be a good singer - or believe he was, anyway.
No comments:
Post a Comment