Re: I Do Not Like Away From the World, But I Wanted To
I don't think drugs alone made Dave a great lyricist, but here are two things that mark the change in his lyrics: Glen Ballard and getting married. It was Ballard who told Dave circa 2001 that he didn't need long, intricate poetic lines to write song lyrics, he could just repeat a few short phrases over and over. Dave has spoken of this in multiple interviews. Now Dave's penned some damn good lyrics since 2001, but it's been a lot more Dreamgirls and Angels than You Never Knows and Stay or Leaves. Lyrically speaking, I think Big Whiskey was a little more of a return to form, with very obvious exceptions of course.
Also, far better than drugs, longing, rejection, misery, and existential crises fuel great lyrics and great art. The plain truth is that Dave, as far as we can tell, was less happy in the 90s than he's appeared since 2001. He can still channel some good songs of longing and unrequited love now, but they sound more conjured than his earlier lyrics. LLD, Crush, and GIG all felt raw when debuted. They still feel raw.
Can't most fans just agree that Dave is best when he’s chasing someone who doesn’t love him or thinking about dying and singing a carpe diem rallying cry while rain is coming down on him and a monkey. Not one appearance of a monkey and only two allusions to going down on a woman on this album. It was a good run, Mrs. Matthews.
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Monkey Man is so right.
Last edited by Gandalf; 11-30-2012 at 02:04 PM.
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