Willie and the Lapdog
The album, Willie and the Lapdog, holds a particular, poignant memory for me, partly because it represented the phase of my life where I was entering puberty, (growing up), and partly because it arrived in my world at a time where I was suffering extreme distress in knowing that my mother was on the cusp of leaving my father for good.
A couple of years prior, while watching the scratchy, live, footage of Neil Armstrong setting foot on the Moon, my mother had chosen that exact moment to tell me that her marriage was a sham and that my father was committing legalised r*pe by “Its too graphic to write here” … presumably against her will. (According to her).
I was just too young to hear such stuff BUT such ‘grooming’ helped my mother get me on her side … and it also encouraged me hate my father … which I did … with a vengeance for a further decade or more … possibly until I met jackie.
Anyway. I was 12 years (and 7 months), old at the time though, (thankfully), had no real understanding of the graphic description she had described to me back then. (But don’t ever ask me if the ‘chicken’ thing affected my perception of the opposite sex or I’d have to admit that, sure, it truly, truly did mess up my whole experience of getting to know girls in that way in the early years of my own development).
And that is just one of several reasons why I shall never forgive my mother.
Nevertheless, (back to the story), even at that early age, I understood, (and sided with), my mother’s desire to leave the marriage and our family home.
2 years later, with the whole of the UK in a blackout due to the strikes of the power workers at the time, I helped her carry her suitcases to town as she planned her escape.
Thus … Willie and the Lapdog by Gallagher and Lyle holds a particular spot in my own personal history.
Don’t be phased by the above though …
I LOVE the album and it did contribute to my growth.
Heck. It acted as a kind of lifeline, a lovely, detached reality way, way removed from my own screwed up life at the time.
AND I hope you’ll love it as a song writer because several of the songs relate directly to song writing!
Here are the tracks.
Willie
“I was a young man stepping into my life …”
“Oh. Willie you always said … a needless tear falls on nature’s head … Willie your helping hand … helped to make a man”.”
Home
“Home … Sobering winds fill thought filled minds. Winters come, old folks walk the prom. Their memories and overcoats … pass by the old boats … sheltered from the storm”.
“And what shall become of me … and will I be seventy? Spending my days … visiting graves … or will home, simply be a memory, parchment dry, faded as the days?”
“Days … Days as a boy, laughing my life away … Oh, I’ve had strife in my days … (Pause) Days when I’ve been destroyed” 🙁
Give a Boy a Break
“For the songs that I write in the silence of my bedroom. Are coveted and kept a secret, practice perfect, every word a part of me … and so I take the floor … to sing my songs to you … and if it turns you on … you can sing along”.
“You can sing along … PLEASE … to show you’ve not gone home!” 🙂
Sitting Down Music
“Up starts Mick without a word, singing like a bell so clear and and loud, a song that is his own composition”
Dan
“See the man, see … See the lines crossed … see the man … see the chances tossed away”.
Among the Birks
(Birdsong)
“Moments come. Moment go … but its moments such as this that mean a life … and you’re a heart to warm all hearts … and make a moment right .”
“Let me store it away … until a troubled day”.
Jesus Save Me
“Well I was down, feeling lonely, looking round for some company …”
“Oh Jesus save me. Jesus save me. lately I aint been much help to myself”.
“She took me up to a back room, there was a party going on in there. Bowls of rice lay on the table. Folk were smoking funny stuff and lying everywhere”.
SS Man. (Social Security man)
Today we’d entitle it UC Man … (Universal Credit man)
“In these hard times … sidelines is all I do”
Hotel Constantine
“Time is mine at the Hotel Constantine”.
“Feel I’m doing time at the Hotel Constantine”.
The Lapdog
“The way the Wanderer entered my life … hat in his hands … and taking a chance on a grin and a silvery tongue … Oh what it is to be young!”
“I had a faith and I had a dream … but I let the chance … slip through my hands …”
Harmonium
“Take me up and carry me … through these troubled times.
Let your notes restore me … to some peace of mind.
Bring some peace of mind … to these troubles times”
Thoughts from a station
Funny. I hadn’t heard this short, doleful track for several decades but … it made me cry all over again. 🙁
Oh yeah.
The point of this email?
Just to say …
Life can be sh*t. (Excuse my language).
Life can be tough, harsh … heart breaking.
BUT … If we view LIFE objectively, in context, in the whole scheme of things …
Well,
Turns out … We tend to forget or truly acknowledge the MAJORITY of good or great days we have BUT we tend to let the odd bad day really screw us up!
Put another way?
I was dealt a particularly bad hand when it came to entering this life 🙂
But, well … Look at me! Lol
I didn’t do bad. 🙂
And you … and Sophie?
You are YOUNG!
You have 30+ years to do great things before you get to your father’s age.
So …
Suck up and take whatever you need to take to get this particular awkward phase out of the picture and then build on the new foundations you are putting in place for yourselves.
THIRTY YEARS!
You’ve got thirty years before you get to my age!!!
Use those years wisely and do wonderful things.