Falling, falling, on the school yards and the grave yards.
Falling, falling on the lost and the lonely.
Sometimes it really, really pours.
Falling on the outcasts and the refugees.
Falling relentlessly on Hank Williams as he walks purposefully down the lost highway.
Longer than the memory of man the rain has been falling down.
Mysterious and Merciless.
Falling down.
Falling down.
On Pharaoh and Caesar.
On the Saints and the Sinners.
Who’ll stop the rain?
Who’ll stop the rain?
A mysterious and alluring fable lasting barely 150 seconds which you will never sound the depths of even if you have 150 years for the task.
John Fogerty as the dark eyed seer alerting the tribe round the campfire to the signs and rhythms all around them if they would but attend to them.
His vocal and guitar is lit with ancient lore brought fatalistically to the present.
Lashed to the mast of John Fogerty’s obsessive imagination brother Tom, Stu Cook and Doug Clifford sail on into the unknown immensity ahead.
Bruce Springsteen from his youth recognised the primal power of John Fogerty’s songs with Creedence.
He also was struck by their mythic charge and insights into American history and contemporary society.
And they always had a dynamite riff!
The Boss also had that shiver looking out on, standing under, the still falling rain.
He knew there was a darkness that no one can evade.
Learning his trade and reflecting on his own and his nation’s experiences he understood that songs, if written and performed with craft and commitment, could provide shelter from the storm.
Who’ll stop the rain?
Good men through the ages though they know the rain will always fall still look to find the returning sun.
Bards and medicine men meet in colloquy reminding themselves of the insights of their vocations.
Aeons of songwriting and performing lore are distilled in this miraculous recording by John Fogerty and Bob Seger.
Impossible to say which voice is more aged in the wood.
Together they stand, shoulder to shoulder, as the hard rain tumbles from the sky.
Their is balm in the fellow feeling they show each other and us all as they sing.
Who’ll stop the rain?
Long as I remember …
The rain will never stop as long as the world turns.
All we can do is offer each other shelter and believe, no matter how sodden we become, in the reviving warmth of the sure to return sun.
Take the time to attend to an ordinary life and you will find; dramas and disasters, triumphs and terrors, hope and horror and stories more fantastical than Dostoevsky ever imagined.
Solar systems of fascinating and moving stories.
Stories just like yours.
Stories entirely different to yours.
Stories which will make you laugh and cry and shake your head at the wonder of it all.
The wonder of it all.
Sometimes you’ll hear a story and think – well, that’s a story I can identify with even though it never happened to me.
That’s a story that needed to be told.
And, stories that need to be told need attentive listeners.
John Gorka is a songwriter who ponders stories in his heart so that the songs that emerge carry an enormously powerful emotional charge.
Soldiers fight and soldiers die
Soldiers live to wonder why
Semper fi fe fo fum
Look out peacetime here we come
*
*
A Family story.
One man’s Father and a story he carried within him for silent decades.
My father joined the leathernecks
To stay out of the mines
The new marine was just fifteen
In 1939
A story of a nation and its leaders.
My father met Eleanor Roosevelt
In 1945
The war at last was over then
And they were still alive
*
Her husband was the President
Till he ran out of time
Her Franklin D. was history
And they’d put him on the dime
*
A story of a War which left a bloody trail all over the world.
There were medals and malaria
The south pacific war
Through jungles that were paradise
And were paradise no more
A story that excavates buried torments
Some of the men who did survive
Were not the lucky ones
My father lay recovering
The hurt was all inside
Sometimes the wounds that never heal
Are easiest to hide
*
A story that tells you hard truths.
*
Soldiers fight and soldiers die
Soldiers live to wonder why
War is only good for those
Who make and sell the guns
*
A story that reminds us that in the midst of terror and chaos what saves us is kindness and love.
*
When Eleanor came bearing gifts
To San Francisco Bay
She gave my dad a blanket
In the hospital that day
*
That blanket meant alot to him
My mother has it still
*
Some forget the kindnesses
That others never will
A story that’s a nightmare and a hard won blessing.
*
Soldiers fight and soldiers die
Soldiers live to wonder why
Semper fi fe fo fum
Look out peacetime here we come
*
Soldiers fight and soldiers die
Soldiers live to wonder why
Semper fi fe fo fum
Look out peacetime here we come
*
*
In the interviews I have seen with John Gorka he appears charmingly modest and hesitant.
*
But playing live, having pondered the story he is about to tell, when his fingers encounter the guitar and he sings a voice emerges which is deep, rich and resonant.
*
In Semper FI John has been faithful to the lived experience of his father.
A 15 year old boy who grew up during a dark depression only to travel thousands of miles to grow up faster than anyone ever should among shot and shell and death.
*
John Gorka has also been faithful and done honour to the craft of song writing.
I am scrolling down the myriad programme options on my TV menu when I see a documentary called, ‘Pipers of The Trenches’ and immediately press the record button as it unites my interests in History and Music.
Resolving to watch the programme later I punch the play button on the CD in the car (selected by my son) and at once emerges Mark Knopfler’s wonderful family tribute and lament, ‘Piper To The End’.
What else could I write about this week!
A heartfelt tribute to Mark Knopfler’s uncle Freddie, a Piper for the 1st Battalion Tyneside Scottish who died at the age of just 20 in May 1940.
A song and a performance imbued with deep affection and love.
The musical arrangement has a powerful and tender sway suggesting fathomless depths of feeling at such tragic loss.
The interplay between Mark Knopfler’s Guitar and John McCusker’s Violin has a Band of Brothers closeness that sets salt tears swelling.
Knopfler’s characteristically laconic delivery lets the music and the traditional and mythic tone of the lyric express the universal pathos of the story.
… if there are no pipes in heaven
I’ll be going down below
If friends in time be severed
Someday we will meet again
I’ll return to leave you never
Be a piper to the end
Pipers feature prominently in the lore and legend of the British Army – most especially the Scottish Regiments.
Tales of the electric effect of the Pipes on troops about to go into battle abound.
On the heights of Dargai in India and on the dusty plains of the Peninsular War wounded Pipers played until their breath fell silent.
In the slaughter house fields of the First World War imagine the raw courage of an unarmed Piper marching towards the enemy trenches amid withering machine gun fire and the relentless barrage of artillery shells.
In virtually every major battle Pipers played and Pipers were slain.
We watched the fires together
Shared our quarters for a while
Walked the dusty roads together
Came so many miles
*
This has been a day to die on
Now the day is almost done
Here the pipes will lay beside me
Silent with the battle drum.
*
The bravery and sacrifice of Pipers was then reflected in the Piping tradition through compositions such as ‘Battle of the Somme’ by Willie Lawrie.
*
*
The British Army lost a scarcely credible 20,000 men on the first day of The Battle of The Somme.
The Pipers who played that day need no one to tell them about Hell.
Still I am convinced that there will be company upon company of Pipers in Heaven.
As long as there are storytellers and songwriters like Mark Knopfler their heroism and sacrifice will never be forgotten and the skirl of The Pipes will always echo on.
Echo on.
Some things can never be severed.
If friends in time be severed
Someday here we will meet again
I’ll return to leave you never
Be a piper to the end
The Immortal Jukebox 