SONGS THAT MELT MY HEART

 

I don’t know if I could ever have qualified to be amongst “Hearts (Made) Of Stone” as the Fontaine Sisters sang in my youthful days. But I know that with age, my heart seems to be transforming into butter with an ever decreasing melting point which reaches its lowest with music and certain songs. The songs don’t need to be sad nor are my tears that of sorrow. It is just that some emotional chord gets touched by some tunes, lyrics and nostalgia.

Lately, the song which has been stirring my emotions is Louis ‘Satchmo’ Armstrong’s “We Have All The Time In The World”. I have always loved that song but its revival with the movie “No Time To Die” has brought it back in my thoughts. It was very touching to learn how its composer John Barry specially sought the ailing Satchmo to record virtually the latter’s last song. Satchmo was not even able to play the trumpet which was typical of most of his songs and the instrument was played by a member of the orchestra. The lyrics of the song are great but it is the trumpet piece ending the song which keeps blowing my mind.

Another John Barry composition that I find extremely touching is “You Only Live Twice”. Its opening bars leading to Nancy Sinatra’s superb vocal rendition make it irresistible. Its intriguing lyrics say, “You only live twice…. one life for yourself and one for your dreams. You drift through the years and life seems tame, till one dream appears and love is its name.” Love may be dangerous but if you think of the danger, the dream will be gone and you will continue to live only one tame life!

Two Christmas songs sung by ‘the old groaner’ Bing Crosby have always overwhelmed me. ‘White Christmas’ is pure nostalgia and ‘Silent Night, Holy Night’ movingly emotional. These songs transport me back to my school days and I can picture old Father Mackessack, my class teacher when I first joined St. Xavier's Jaipur, teaching us these songs.

Another old song that never fails to choke my throat is “If I Loved You” from the musical “Carousel”. Two lovers, Julie and Billy, ponder over what life would be like if they were in love but are hesitant to admit the attraction they feel for each other. “If I loved you, ….Words wouldn’t come in an easy way, round in circles I’d go….Soon you’d leave me, never never to know, how I loved you, if I loved you”.

In early 60s came the movie “Lovers Must Learn” with “Al Di La” hypnotisingly sung by Emilio Pericoli in a restaurant in which Troy Donahue and Susanne Pleshette walk in. I would like to think that it was this song that made them fall in love in real life and get married. I find the song touchingly romantic.

One of my personal favourites is “Feelings” originally sung by the Brazilian singer Morris Albert in 1974 and further popularized by Shirley Bassey and a host of top artistes from Frank Sinatra to Julio Iglesias. Despite its popularity, its lyrics have been criticized by many as insignificant. I, however, find them moving, aided by the way the song is sung. Its theme is the singer’s inability in ‘trying to forget my feelings of love’ followed by ‘feelings like I’ve never lost you, and feelings like I’ve never have you again in my arms’.

Most people are moved by the song “Memory” from the musical “Cats”. The original was by Elaine Paige but a very popular version is by Barbara Streisand. The famous Andrew Lloyd Webber composed the music while its hugely emotional lyrics by Trevor Nunn were based on poems of TS Eliot. I often listen to it driving from Delhi to Jaipur making efforts to keep composed with Akhila watching silently as she is quite used to this by now and has stopped inquiring if something is wrong! Let me recap a few lines:

“Memory, All alone in the moonlight,

I can smile at the old days, I was beautiful then,

I remember the time I knew what happiness was,

Let the memory, live again.

Daylight, I must wait for the sunrise

I must think of a new life....

When the dawn comes, tonight will be a memory too

And a new day will begin....

If you touch me, you'll understand what happiness is,

Look, a new day has begun."

Like I said in an earlier post, most songs by ABBA tug at the heartstrings because of their emotional lyrics. Here, I will confine myself to two which are touching for the resolve, hope and urge to look at the brighter side of life. The first one is “Chiquitita” which is about supporting a friend and exhorting her to get over her heartache. The lyrics would melt the hardest of hearts-

‘Chiquitita…. You’re enchained by your own sorrow’

In your eyes there is no hope for tomorrow….

I’m a shoulder to cry on, your best friend , I’m the one you must rely on….

Heartaches come and they go and the scars they are leaving….

But the sun is still in the sky and shining above you,

Try once more like you did before, sing a new song, Chiquitita.’ 

In the second song, “I Have A Dream”, the singer is determined to getting over life’s difficulties and reach the desired destination at the right time:

‘I have a dream, a fantasy,

To help me through reality,

And my destination, makes it worth the while,

Pushing through the darkness, yet another mile,

I believe in angels, something good in every thing I see….

I believe in angels, when I know the time is right for me,

I’ll cross the stream, I have a dream.’

In addition to the vocals, what stimulates the tear ducts is the brilliant instrumentation at the beginning of “I Have A Dream” and towards the end of both songs.

We were in Singapore when the movie “Top Gun” was released in 1986. Its theme song was “Take My Breath Away”. The sweet melody is particularly touching when the characters superbly played by Tom Cruise and Kelly McGillis have a misunderstanding and make up soon after. Whenever I hear the song, it takes me back to the wonderful years we spent in Singapore watching Ruchir and Shumita grow up from kids to their teens.

Then there is the Demis Roussos classic “Goodbye My Love Goodbye”. Beautifully sung in his romantic, sentimental style, its lyrics are hugely emotional:

“Goodbye my love goodbye, Goodbye and au revoir,

As long as you remember me I’ll never be too far.

Goodbye my love goodbye, I always will be true,

So hold me in your dreams ‘til I come back to you.”

There are more such songs but for now, my hanky is wet- I’ll go get a towel!

 

P.S. Surfing through YouTube on the TV, I chanced upon Dana Winner- ‘One Moment In Time’ performed live. The audience consisted of very young people and everyone was in tears entranced by the song. I found it reassuring- it is not only old geezers like me but the youth too who get emotionally affected by songs!

COLOUR BLIND PASSES COLOUR VISION TEST WITH FLYING COLOURS

 

Talk about a sailor less qualified, here is an amazing true story.

I was undergoing my Sub Lt’s courses in Cochin in 1960 and was on duty one evening under the Officer of the Day (OOD), Lt BR Bakshi. The duty room was facing the Ernakulam Channel and I noticed a vessel displaying some coloured lights passing by. I pointed this out to Lt Bakshi and asked him if he knew whether the lights signified anything or were just for decoration. His reply, “I can only see white!”

I was a bit flabbergasted and asked him if he could not see the colours and he replied “No, I can’t.” I then asked him how he managed to be in the Navy and that too in the Executive Branch where colour vision is of the utmost importance for night watches at sea where the entire Rules of the Road (Sea traffic rules) are based on distinguishing between colours particularly red and green. Here is Lt Bakshi’s story.

Bakshi joined the Navy as a non-commissioned sailor. He was very intelligent and his talents were recognized early by his seniors. He was made a CW (Commission Worthy) candidate and he passed all tests required to qualify to become an officer of the Executive branch. Finally, there was the medical examination which included a colour vision test.

To recap how a colour vision test is conducted, the doctor has a book of about 50-60 pages. On each page which are as usual numbered in black and white, there is a diagram of multi-coloured dots enclosing a random number in one particular colour which the candidate has to read out.  If the reader is colour blind, he would not be able to discern the number.

Bakshi knew he was colour blind. So he got hold of the book that was going to be used for his test and got someone to write the coloured number and memorized it corresponding to the page number. For example, he committed to memory that on page 15, the coloured number was, say, 23. During the test, he read the page number and rattled off the memorized coloured number! As you would appreciate, an excellent memory was required to perform this task which Bakshi obviously possessed and he passed the test with ease.

The cat was out of the bag when Bakshi was posted on a ship for his watchkeeping ticket. He had then to confess that he could not see colours. I guess the Navy could have dismissed him but recognizing his other good qualities and taking a benevolent view, the authorities decided to use his talents elsewhere. So Bakshi was not sent to sea and branched off to become a Physical Training Instructor ashore.

WE HAVE ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD-NO TIME TO DIE

In February 2020, Akhila and I saw "Little Women" in Jaipur. Then the pandemic struck, cinema halls were forced to close down and an about-to-be released "No Time To Die", the latest James Bond movie, had to wait as, quite rightly, such a movie had to be seen in a theatre and not on the telly screen. After 18 months, picture halls have opened up again and James Bond is back. So we plucked up courage and went to see it back in Jaipur as that is where we are now. In a hall of 400 capacity, I counted 14 viewers including us. That would meet the approval of Mr. Modi as far as sosal distancing or 'do gaj ki doori' is concerned.

In an extraordinary coincidence as the movie well-preceded the outbreak of Covid, the story revolves around the theft of an engineered DNA through which the villain wants to develop a weapon of mass destruction. Talk of the theory propounded by many that Covid broke out of a Chinese lab!

The movie is typical modern James Bond stuff: technical brilliance, exquisite cinematography with a lot of scenic Italy and icescape, breathtaking car sequences, innovative gadgets developed by Q and almost non-stop action portraying the apparent invincibility of Bond though with a little more than usual emotional scenes of love, trust and family on the part of the normally stoic 007. Lasting over two and three quarter hours, it sets a record for being the longest Bond movie. Largely, critics have praised it as a fitting finale to Daniel Craig as he has declared that this is the last Bond movie he is doing. Remains to be seen if like Sean Connery he may be reminded in future "Never Say Never Again"!

Frankly, we did not think that highly of the movie. Maybe we are a bit old for this kind of stuff and prefer something simple and romantic like "The Last Letter From Your Lover", for me the best movie I have seen in recent times. But I did love Bond movies of old made even more enjoyable with the music of my top favourite movie music composer, John Barry. Again, I guess age comes into play for I know that my daughter and grandchildren love Billie Eilish's rendition of the theme song "No Time To Die". But for the life of me, I cannot imagine it merits comparison with Shirley Bassey's "Goldfinger" and "Diamonds Are Forever", Tom Jones' "Thunderball", Nancy Sinatra's "You Only Live Twice" or "Louis 'Satchmo' Armstrong's "We Have All The Time In The World".

Even the makers of the latest movie have harked back to the past by reviving the last named song. Not only is the song played in full during the final credits but is referred to a number of times in the dialogues. For instance, Bond's love interest Madeleine asks him in a car drive to go faster eliciting his reply, "We have all the time in the world". In another scene, Madeleine says, "We need more time" only to be told by James, "You have all the time in the world".

That is the big irony of it: in the end, neither James Bond nor Daniel Craig playing his last Bond film has time on his side! This irony has its origin in the movie "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" in 1969 with Louis Armstrong singing the song while a tearful Bond cradles his dying young wife in his arms. "We have all the time in the world" are also Bond's final words both in the book and the movie.

But the biggest irony was in real life. John Barry homed in on Louis Armstrong because he felt that only the latter could deliver the lines with the required irony. By that time, Satchmo was very ill and the song had to be recorded in a single session. Satchmo was too weak to pick up his trumpet which was then played by a substitute in an enchanting refrain. Satchmo was running out of time and this was his last recording session as he died shortly after. John Barry fondly recalled the pleasure of working with Satchmo and himself considered it the finest piece of music he wrote for a Bond movie.  

So tell me, do we really have all the time in the world or is it just a self-delusion?

P.S. A dear friend told me after one of my blogs, "Ravi, I now know what you are; you are a romantic." Careful not to hurt my feelings, a qualifying adjective like 'pseudo' was conveniently omitted!