Welcome to Part 2 of the Ira Awards!  If you have no earthly idea of what the Ira Awards are, then go to Part 1 and find out.  Besides, who would start anything with Part 2?

If you’ve already read Part 1, then welcome back!  Tonight let’s start with Joni.  In Part 1 I opened with the expression “A poem doth not a lyric make”.  Joni Mitchell, in my book, comes the closest to writing poetry that works as lyrics.  It is her genius to do so.  Even though she can make it work sometimes, I still wouldn’t try it if I were you.  Joni Mitchells only come along once in a lifetime.

Joni writes a lot like Paul Simon – she paints an impressionistic picture.  She is a poet at work on a lyrical canvas.  She sometimes tells a story, but that story often just has splotches of through line and she leaves it up to the listener to fill in the blanks.  She is also, you may already know, an accomplished painter whose work often graces her album covers.

Here’s one of my favorite Joni’s.

Just before our love got lost you said

I am as constant as a northern star

And I said, constantly in the darkness

Where’s that at?

If you want me I’ll be in the bar

On the back of a carton coaster

In the blue TV screen light

I drew a map of Canada

Oh Canada

With your face sketched on it twice

Oh you’re in my blood like holy wine

You taste so bitter and so sweet

Oh I could drink a case of you darling

And I would still be on my feet

Oh I would still be on my feet

Oh I am a lonely painter

I live in a box of paints

I’m frightened by the devil

And I’m drawn to those ones that ain’t afraid

I remember that time that you told me, you said

Love is touching souls

Surely you touched mine

Cause part of you pours out of me

In these lines from time to time

Oh you’re in my blood like holy wine

You taste so bitter and so sweet

Oh I could drink a case of you darling

Still I’d be on my feet

I would still be on my feet

I met a woman

She had a mouth like yours

She knew your life

She knew your devils and your deeds

And she said

Go to him, stay with him if you can

But be prepared to bleed

Oh but you are in my blood you’re my holy wine

You’re so bitter, bitter and so sweet

Oh I could drink a case of you darling

Still I’d be on my feet

I would still be on my feet

When you get done reading or hearing this lyric, you’ve only gotten sketches, but you really have an insight into their relationship and the analogy used is just terrific.

I grew up writing theater lyrics.  They have to be more straightforward, less obtuse, because, especially in today’s musicals, the lyrics must advance the plot.  That’s a lot to require in a medium where most people pay little attention to the lyrics being absorbed by the music, but the surroundings of the theater, the stage, the costumes, the characters, the plot itself make the audience focus more on the lyrics.

Oscar Hammerstein pretty much invented this tradition with the advent of the ground breaking “Oklahoma” (No one who has ever seen this musical will ever have trouble spelling this word).  After “Oklahoma” the songs pretty much always had to forward the plot.  Previous to that, songs turned up most often as nightclub routines that had nothing to do with anything except pure entertainment.

Pop music is a whole different story.  In the 50’s when rock was born, lyrics went from great sophistication to great simplicity.  “Da doo run run” and “Purple People Eater” tickled the sensibilities of millions, but I couldn’t say that the 50s or the 60s were exactly a high watermark in the craft and art of lyric writing.

Then the Beatles came along and smashed all the traditions and turned the musical world, and the rest of the world for that matter, upside down.

Lennon and McCartney not only could write with beautiful, cogent and intelligent simplicity (think “Yesterday”), but they could also take you far beyond Joni and Paul in the art of impressionism.

In terms of simplicity, here’s a beauty from John:

Imagine there’s no Heaven

It’s easy if you try

No hell below us

Above us only sky

Imagine all the people

Living for today

Imagine there’s no countries

It isn’t hard to do

Nothing to kill or die for

And no religion too

Imagine all the people

Living life in peace

You may say that I’m a dreamer

But I’m not the only one

I hope someday you’ll join us

And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions

I wonder if you can

No need for greed or hunger

A brotherhood of man

Imagine all the people

Sharing all the world

You may say that I’m a dreamer

But I’m not the only one

I hope someday you’ll join us

And the world will live as one

Lennon and McCartney could also write with a kind of off the wall sense of humor.  It was Stephen Sondheim who said that one of the hardest things to do in the theater was to write a song that got laughs.  Then he went out and proved himself wrong with “Gee, Officer Krupke” and “Comedy Tonight”.

Lennon and McCartney tickled our funny bones with songs like “Octopus’s Garden”, “When I’m Sixty-four”, and even the following great straight rocker that gives a tongue in cheek nod in the middle to the great Brian Wilson’s “I Wish They All Could Be California Girls” and also squeezes in a tip o’ the hat to Ray Charles.  I may not have a boffo laugh from this song, but I can’t hear it without breaking out into a big grin.

Flew in from Miami Beach BOAC

Didn’t get to bed last night

On the way the paper bag was on my knee

Man I had a dreadful flight

I’m back in the U.S.S.R.

You don’t know how lucky you are boy

Back in the U.S.S.R.

Been away so long I hardly knew the place

Gee it’s good to be back home

Leave it till tomorrow to unpack my case

Honey disconnect the phone

I’m back in the U.S.S.R.

You don’t know how lucky you are boy

Back in the U.S.S.R.

Well the Ukraine girls really knock me out

They leave the West behind

And Moscow girls make me sing and shout

That Georgia’s always on my mind.

I’m back in the U.S.S.R.

You don’t know how lucky you are boys

Back in the U.S.S.R.

Show me round your snow peaked mountains way down south

Take me to your daddy’s farm

Let me hear your balalaika’s ringing out

Come and keep your comrade warm.

I’m back in the U.S.S.R.

You don’t know how lucky you are boys

Back in the U.S.S.R.

And then, of course, in the impressionistic tradition of Joni and Paul, there’s Lucy.  For two decades my generation argued about what this song was about, but when you were on what they were on, you didn’t care.  The song is an icon of its time.

Picture yourself in a boat on a river,

With tangerine trees and marmalade skies

Somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly,

A girl with kaleidoscope eyes.

Cellophane flowers of yellow and green,

Towering over your head.

Look for the girl with the sun in her eyes,

And she’s gone.

Lucy in the sky with diamonds.

Follow her down to a bridge by a fountain

Where rocking horse people eat marshmallow pies,

Everyone smiles as you drift past the flowers,

That grow so incredibly high.

Newspaper taxis appear on the shore,

Waiting to take you away.

Climb in the back with your head in the clouds,

And you’re gone.

Lucy in the sky with diamonds.

Picture yourself on a train in a station,

With plasticine porters with looking glass ties,

Suddenly someone is there at the turnstile,

The girl with the kaleidoscope eyes.

Lucy in the sky with diamonds.

Stay tuned.  Coming soon: Cole Porter, James Taylor, Lieber and Stoller, Johnny Mercer, Irving Berlin, and the great Oscar Hammerstein.