Loudon The Third - Dysfunctional Father Figure & One-Man Guy
For Cryin’ Out Loud:
Songwriting Singularity
by Jamie Jobb
Loudon Wainwright III is a singularly unique songwriter -- at times a one-man jug band, other times a punkish rocker, a jazz master, a soul sister, a bluesy righteous brother, a well-tuned troubadour, a folk laureate. Hell, he can do damn-fine country music if you want; not that silly rockabilly stuff, neither! But that’s not to imply the man can’t summon his inner Spike Jones when need be … the other Spike Jones, the one with the ridiculous orchestra! Like they say in Hollywood: “This guy puts the fun back in dysfunctional!”
Loudon’s very seriously funny songs-of-all-styles attract the finest session musicians who add luscious layers of sonic comment under what amount to otherwise scathing story-songs best appreciated up-close-and-personal in coffeehouse settings or on headphones alone. Someone else’s suffering has never been such easy-listening, laughing-through-the-tears kind of funny.
Wainwright writes about the hard stuff -- bad habits, gender wars, therapy, breakups, parents, siblings, generations, genetics, sexual confusion, family holidays, jealousy, celebrity, ladykillers, one-night-stands, drinking, depression, discipline, diapers, faulty logic, faded memory, missing inspiration, health care, aging bodies, longing times and overuse of the word “like” ... And that’s not even “the half of it” as they say in East Virginia (Midwestern joke). Look at his record as a father who writes songs about his family. Clearly he can express his demons in his lyrics.
Perhaps he produces these dark-humor true-confessionals all too well. Biographer Kirk Lake writes: “Loudon seemed more able to communicate in song, as though he saw a song as a way of bundling up his emotions and feelings for someone, whether good or bad, and leaving the package in their lap for them to unwrap later, while he was safely out of the way.”
It could be argued that no other songwriter -- certainly no other folk song writer -- would ever turn so many of his own heartaches inside out like this. Just look at the titles of his songs: “Mr. Ambivalent,” “The Man Who Couldn’t Cry,” “I Can’t Stand Myself,” “Therapy,” “What Are Families For?” “So Damn Happy,” “Saw Your Name in the Paper,” “Motel Blues,” and “Be Careful There’s a Baby in the House.” Listen to enough of Loudon’s unrhymed lyric stories about his plentiful woes and you start to realize Wainwright occupies his own Wildlife Wing of the Great House of Music. Everything seems to incite a song to him, and he has a knack for nailing his subject. Take for example Peter Pan:
“Grown Man”
You got a grown man for a boyfriend,
So you better treat him just like a baby.
He's a saint on Sunday, he's a bum on Monday;
The rest of the week he's just crazy.
He's unpredictable, like an animal,
Proud as an eagle, big and strong like a bear;
He's a snake and a frog, he's a pig and a dog;
There's a menagerie that's living in there.
You'll be his princess forever after, yes
If you keep acting like you're always sixteen.
He is the king, ruling the kingdom's his thing;
Just remember his mother is queen.
Sometimes he fools around
when he goes out of town
But sooner or later he's bound to get caught.
He loves coming home,
but then he has to roam;
Mr. Ambivalence is the guy that you've got.
|
He's got some problems--
no, you can't solve them--
He's got some goblins that he can't exorcise.
Mostly he wants to cry, he's afraid to die,
But he's living life like it's a booby prize.
He wishes he were young, a little better hung,
And he's paranoid you feel that way too;
So reassure him, you'll never cure him,
But he still needs his daily dose of you.
You got a grown man for a boyfriend,
So you better treat him just like a baby.
Yeah, he's a saint on Sunday,
he's a bum on Monday;
The rest of the week...
He's asleep on Sunday, he's a beast on Monday;
Rest of the week...
He's blue on Sunday, and
he's manic on Monday;
Rest of the week he's just crazy.
|
Indeed, consider Loudon’s tune “Talkin’ New Bob Dylan” in which Wainwright takes a direct potshot at Dylan’s inability to write self-searching songs from so deep in the heart that if feels like they come straight from the gut -- something Loudon does with seeming ease. The song ridicules Dylan’s “Self-Portrait” album, roundly proclaimed as Bob’s worst effort. Since he arrived on the scene a Dylan protege, every Loudon Wainwright album has been a self-portrait.
Sometimes Loudon’s lyrics can provide strikingly opposed viewpoints, which is the mark of a great writer. Take for example two Wainwright songs about simply hanging out at home …
“When I’m At Your House”
When I'm at your house everything's strange
When I'm at your house I go through the change
I feel out of touch, way out of reach
Like a fish outta water or a whale on the beach
When I'm at your house, When I'm at your house
When I'm at your house everything's weird
There are so many things there to be feared
The telephone rings and I get scared
The machine takes the message,
I wouldn't have dared
When I'm at your house, When I'm at your house
Somebody's at the front door and I wanted to hide
They want in I'm locked inside
Today's Thursday, and it's your cleaning lady
She wants to get paid today, she's got a key
When I'm at your house, When I'm at your house
When I'm at your house I go out of my head
I lie on your couch, I sit on your bed
I eat and I drink I don't know what for
I spill wine on the carpet, and food on the floor
When I'm at your house God only knows
Why I go through your drawers,
try on your clothes
I shower and I shave, use your tortoise shell comb
When I'm at your house and you're coming home
|
“Housework”
I’ve been waiting for you
to come through that door, dear
Your whereabouts tonight I do not know
The house is nice and clean
The wine glasses they gleam
The candles on the table cast their glow
I finished cooking dinner an hour ago
I've been listening for the sound
of your step, darling
Hoping that I hear it on the stair
You've been gone all day
I hate when you're away
Don't worry though, I've Hoovered everywhere
Just to prove to you I really ...
I've been washing dishes all the live long day
I've been making wishes you'll come home and stay
Don't worry, sweetheart, I did all the shopping
While I was out I dropped off your blouse
I paid all the bills and I picked up your pills
Mustn't grumble, no I shouldn't grouse
Your heart's here though
you're nowhere near this house
I've been wondering when you'll come home, baby
I'm paranoid you're with another guy
You said I was your man
The bathroom's spick and span
I even cleaned the mirror, that's no lie
As I did a tear came to my ...
I've been washing dishes all the live long day
I've been making wishes y
ou'll come home and stay
I pray you haven't gone and left me, bum fluff
If you did, I don't know what I'd do
Herein lies the rub -- I even did the tub
You treat me like a dog, a worn out shoe
I got down on all fours, dear, just for ...
[I've been washing dishes]
|
Clearly, Wainwright’s tunes are more like short films with words and sounds evoking pictures and tones above and beyond the call of his music. These terse tunes suggest their author is no easy roommate, nor any other kind of mate for that matter.
His songs suggest his fatal attraction to the solitude that solo songwriters on the road know all too well. Also, anyone would be hard pressed to find a songwriter who’s more brutally honest about his own troubles than Loudon Wainwright III. Consider his ode to self-inflicted solitude, “Four By Ten”:
“Four By Ten”
It's not strange, no mystery,
you and I are history
I put up my protective wall
It's four feet thick and ten feet tall
Ten feet tall and four feet thick
Granite, concrete, steel and brick
Protection for you, understand
The little boy, the inner man
Boys kissed the girls then made them cry
That's a man's job, that is why
|
When you cry, you're just a clone
Of every woman I have known
And every Harry, Dick and Tom
Gets all of this shit from his mom
Who was unhappy, mom was sad
Because of a wall that dad had
Once it's up it won’t come down
And mom's a queen and dad's a clown
It's not strange, no mystery
that you and I are history
It's four feet thick and ten feet tall
|
* * *
What’s even more revealing about Wainwright’s four-decade career is how his family remains integral to his music. Certainly it’s no picnic being related to Loudon Wainwright III. Turns out he has one son and a pair of daughters who apparently took up songwriting in pure self-defense -- if not some preset destiny of their DNA! Both their mothers and their aunt, Loudon’s sister, are well-known for their own songs as well. Seven sensational talents, and all pensive singular songwriters in their own right.
Rufus Wainwright, the son, is a very dramatic guy and it shows. More famous than his dad, Rufus already had a biography in print when he was only 36, while his Dad’s bio book has yet to be published. Rufus knows Loudon’s song “Rufus is a Tit Man” is about him as an infant breastfeeder. Rufus can handle the attention.
Martha Wainwright, a daughter who’s expressed her extreme disdain for Dad in song, likewise is very dramatic. Martha knows Loudon’s lyrics to “Five Years Old”, “That Hospital”, “I’d Rather Be Lonely” and “Hitting You” are directly about her. She returned the favor with her bitterly sour tune “Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole”. She also had the guts to record a dueling duet with Dad.
Kate McGarrigle, their singer-songwriting Mother, sang with her sis Anna as The McGarrigle Sisters. Kate passed away in 2010.
Suzzy Roche, Loudon’s partner from another relationship, is a quiet folkie, who’s managed to remain outside the public family fracas.
Lucy Wainwright Roche, their daughter who often sings with Suzzy, likewise seems immune from Wainwright public bitterness in song.
Sloan Wainwright, Loudon’s soulful sister, appears as well to be satisfied to continue her more private sound track that traces back to Greenwich Village, making her more akin to bashful Fred Neil than her own forthright folkie brother and his public feuds.
“I wrote my first song after hearing my brother’s first song,” Sloan says on You Tube “And I thought to myself when I heard that song: ‘I can do that, I wanna do that!’ … I just sat down at the piano in the tv room and wrote a song about my cat.”
* * *
Although Sloan and the Roches have avoided Loudon’s public family battles, the Wainwrights and McGarrigles could have been conscripted into an altered reality tv show -- certainly far more intriguing than “The Osbournes” ever could be. However, it seems every topic of debate has already ended up in one of their songs. Or, as David Browne writes in Time Magazine:
“It's hard to conjure how challenging it must be to be a member of the Wainwright-McGarrigle clan, the first family of reality folk-pop. Imagine if every member of your household was a singer, songwriter and musician. Then picture something painful happening — say, a divorce — and everybody writing songs about its aftermath, then singing those songs for all the world to hear. For the last four decades, the Wainwrights and McGarrigles — Loudon, Kate, and their two children, Rufus and Martha—have been doing just that. They're the modern dysfunctional family setting strife to music … “
Let’s look at links to the most stinging songs from those familial songwriters “setting strife to music”:
Loudon, the unfaithful husband, sings:
"Saw Your Name in the Paper," jealousy over wife Kate’s rising fame
"Dilated to Meet You," exasperation over the arrival of Rufus, their first baby
“A Father and a Son,” a generational lament
AND
"Rufus Is a Tit Man," envy over his son's breastfeeding
"I'd Rather Be Lonely," the disastrous year Martha lived with him
Kate McGarrigle, the spurned-wife, responds:
"Blues in D," a reluctant welcome-back for her wayward Loudon,
"Go Leave," a stark solo version of her vulnerable song, she gives up.
"I Eat Dinner," devastating portrait of leftovers at home in duet with Rufus.
Anna McGarrigle’s "Kitty Come Home," beckons her sister to escape her husband's "feeble love" and return to Canada.
His embittered children chime in too:
Rufus’ "Dinner at Eight," about a testy meal together;
"One Man Guy," a gay twist to his cover of Loud's ode to solipsism.
The whole family does the same tune:
Martha railed against her father in
"Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole," aka misery of damaged-chanteuse daughter
“Father Daughter Dialogue” on Dad’s “Grown Man” album
Both aforementioned songs by Martha should be considered in light of this brutally frank tune Loudon wrote about her as a child in the back seat:
“Hitting You”
Long ago I hit you
We were in the car
You were crazy in the back seat
It had gone too far
And I pulled the auto over
And I hit you with all my might
I knew right away it was too hard
and I'd never make it right
I was aiming for your buttock
But I struck your outer thigh
You had on a bathing suit
And right before our eyes
Suntanned skin turned crimson
Where the hand had hit
And my palm stung from hitting you
so hard that I hurt it
Against the law in Sweden
Charges can be filed
Here it's all too common
A parent hits a child
|
On your face I saw the shock
And then I saw the pain
Then I saw the look of fear,
The fear I’d strike again
Then I saw your anger
Your defiant pride
And then I saw one tear drop
The rest you kept inside
I said I was sorry and
I tried to clean the slate
But with that blow I'd sown a seed
And saw it was too late
These days things are awful
Between me and you
All we do is argue like
Two people who are through
I blame you, your friends, your school,
your mother and MTV
Last night I almost hit you
that blame belongs to me
|
* * *
Rufus Wainwright tends to compose more theatrical and cinematic tunes, a very fine-tuned Somewhere-Over-The-Rainbow counterpoint to his dad’s funky folk roots. Indeed, Loudon grew up in the “Westchester County Delta” while Rufus grew up in LA, hung out at Judy Garland’s house, played on Hollywood backlots, and became fast friends with LGBT icon Lance Loud of the first reality tv show, “An American Family”.
With his more classically-attuned orchestrally-oriented ear, Rufus could be a sonic son of Sondheim or Talking Head David Byrne. Listen to his very ironic cover of his dad’s “One Man Guy” to get a sense of Rufus Wainwright’s fluid Broadway style. Rufus respects his dad’s tune enough to have covered it on his Poses album in a way that gives his Dad’s song a complete and complex new meaning, given Rufus’ sexual orientation.
“One Man Guy”
People will know when they see this show the kind of a guy I am.
They'll understand just what I stand for, and what I just can't stand.
They'll perceive what I believe in and what I know is true,
And they'll recognise I'm a one man guy; always was through and through.
Yeah, I'm a one man guy in the morning, I'm the same in the afternoon.
One man guy when the sun goes down, I whistle me a one man tune.
A one man guy. One man guy, only kinda guy to be.
I'm a one man guy. I'm a one man guy, and that one man is me.
I'm a one man guy.
People meditate, hey that's just great- trying to find an inner you.
People depend on family and friends and other folks to get you through.
I don't know why I'm a one man guy, or why this is a one man show,
But these three cubic feet of bone and blood and meat are what I love and know.
'Cause I'm a one man guy in the morning, I'm the same in the afternoon.
One man guy when the sun goes down, I whistle me a one man tune.
One man guy. One man guy, only kinda guy to be.
I'm a one man guy. I'm a one man guy, and that one man is me.
I'm a one man guy.
I'm gonna bathe and shave and dress myself and eat solo every night.
Unplug the phone and sleep alone, stay right out of sight.
Sure it's kinda lonely, yeah it's sort of sick.
Being your own one and only is a selfish dirty trick.
But I'm a one man guy in the morning, I'm the same in the afternoon.
One man guy when the sun goes down, I whistle me a one man tune.
One man guy. One man guy, only kinda guy to be.
I'm a one man guy. I'm a one man guy, and that one man is me.
I'm a one man guy.
|
Loudon Wainwright has been around the music scene so long, he’s now able to recover his old songs like a sofa that’s seen better days. Compare one of his more powerful tunes, “The Drinking Song”, first done in 1972 pretty much as a straight-up folk tune with Loudon unaccompanied on guitar. It’s a raw recording, Listen:
Wainwright then redid the same tune for his 2008 album, “Recovery”. The later version had more musicians who laid down looping percussion and soused slide guitar riffs that make the old tune stumble onward in new ways. Listen:
* * *
More Wainwright Family Links
Loudon Wainwright III’s official website:
Sister Sloan Wainwright’s official website:
also see:
Son Rufus Wainwright’s official website:
Daughter Martha Wainwright’s official website:
Daughter Lucy Wainwright Roche’s official website:
Ex-wife Suzzy (Wainwright) Roche’s official website:
Ex-wife Kate McGarrigle’s official website with her sister:
Family dynamic, Martha Wainwright and “Hitting You”:
“The Wainwright-McGarrigles: The Dysfunctional First Family of Folk-Pop”
“Sing Me The Songs That Say I Love You: A Concert for Kate McGarrigle”, a feature length music documentary starring Rufus and Martha Wainwright with their family. Concert film captures May 2011 tribute to their late mother, singer-songwriter Kate McGarrigle.
Watch it for $3.00:
“There Will Be Rainbows: a biography of Rufus Wainwright” by Kirk Lake (2009) Harper Collins.
“Lance Loud: A Death in An American Family” - Rufus sings “Over the Rainbow”. https://youtu.be/8M6KPCT3G8o
One mistake here - Suzzy Roche (who sang as part of The Roches with her sisters) was Loudon's partner for a while. Lucy Wainwright Roche is their daughter. You've got it the wrong way round. Martha and Lucy sometimes sing together as The Wainwright Sisters.
ReplyDeleteThanks so much for your note. I've corrected the Roche relationships at the top of the text where the family is listed. It's correct in the links section. Difficult to name another family of performers who offers such public displays of disaffection! I appreciate you reading this with sharp eyes, Rod!
ReplyDelete