Poor Boy

INTRODUCTION

I wrote this as a contribution to the discussion of the relative merits Nick Drake's different songs in the newsgroup dedicated to this artist: The subject of POOR BOY has come again in these pages recently which together with Robin Fredrick re-posting her excellent analysis of Nick' s song-writing style has prompted me to offer a few thoughts on this song. Clearly not like most of the other things he wrote and especially not like the two Cale-produced tracks which surround it on BRYTER LAYTER, I am not surprised that POOR BOY provokes equivocal reactions even after repeated listenings by those generally sympathetic to Nick's general style and approach.

- STRUCTURE AND TONALITY -

The standard 20th century popular song often has a 32 bar basic format. It can be divided into four 8 bar sections comprising summarised AABA - ie there are two sections more or less the same, followed by a different passage. The song sequence ends with a final section in the initial pattern. A series of these 32 bar patterns make up the performance. PB is not at all like this. If the 4 bar vamp which turns the song around is included, this is a 36 bar sequence of the form ABACDE. Most songs are quite obviously in one particular key whereas PB oscillates between C major and C minor. One comparitor is John Lennon's song I'LL BE BACK on the second (non-film) side of the A HARD DAY'S NIGHT LP. Ian MacDonald - a contemporary of Nick's at Cambridge, also reading English and who also left before taking his finals, says of I'LL BE BACK in his book on the Beatles, REVOLUTION IN THE HEAD: "I'll Be Back is a melancholy essay in major/minor uncertainty mirroring the emotional instability of the lyric. The most unorthodox thing Lennon had then written, being constructed as a twelve bar verse in two equal sections, a six and a half bar bridge and a nine bar middle. Despite all this, and as so often with Lennon's more bewildering constructions, the whole thing rings totally true, being his deepest emotional expression to date." POOR BOY is made up as follows - there is: * an 8 bar A section "Never sing_..share of labour";* a 4 bar B section "I'm a poor boy_..over my shoulder";* a 2 bar A' section;* an 8 bar C section "Nobody knows_..cross their stiles",* a 10 bar D section "A poor boy_..stay tonight" and* a 4 bar Cminor/F vamp (E) to turn the song round.- RHYTHM -The basic rhythm pattern is a samba. As written in The Nick Drake songbook, the song is actually in 8:8 - it is easiest to count each bar in "eights". On this basis, the first three beats are emphasised and the last five carry a more syncopated pattern - a typical modern samba rhythm. - HARMONY -The A section, made up of a 2-chord pattern repeated four times, is very unusual in harmonic terms because of the way the second chord works. The bass line is a standard half step down between the tonic and the leading note (C to B). The note G is common to both chords - so far so conventional. Indeed countless songs and other pieces of music start like this, for example WHEN A MAN LOVES A WOMAN to just name one. The first chord is a Cm7 and so contains the Eb major triad over a C in the bass. The second chord slides this whole Eb triad down a half step to make a D major triad which sits over the B in the bass and the G which is held over from the first bar.So the second chord is defined by 5 notes: B, G, A, D, F# - not the everyday currency of popular music - but much closer (say) to the kind of guitar harmony which John McLaughlin used to make an impact on his 1969 debut, EXTRAPOLATIONS.

There are many ways these harmonies could be analysed. For example they imply two harmonically distinct scales for the improviser - the first is the major scale of Bb centred on C and the second is the major scale of G major centre B. For anyone immersed in the jazz innovations which shaped the first half of the 1960's, where chordal improvisation was replaced by scalar, they are an invitation to have a ball - and indeed this is exactly what Chris MacGregor does on this track when he gets his chance. Part of the reason for this is that the transition between the scales offer the soloist so many impactful possibilities. The F# on the second chord - which lies a dissonant tri-tone away from the "home" note of the song - C - is particularly appealing to the improviser. Nick's melody line for the first phrase of the A section ("never sing for my supper") is centred on G. The second phrase starts on G jumping up then dropping down through a B natural back to the G. The B would be moderately extreme with "normal" harmony but the oddity of the innovatory 5 note chord underneath sharpens up the "edge" of this note, complimenting the sense in the words and giving each response, eg "I never help my NEIGHbour", added bite. The whole A section gives a sensation of oscillation between two related but very distinct worlds. With the opening of the B section, "I'm a Poor Boy," the mood and nature of the harmonic tension shifts. Things have moved on and indeed could be coming to a conclusion. There is a standard "II/V" pattern from the key of Ab major (some way from the G major of the second chord defining the A section pattern). Nick's melody line continues to emphasise the note G but with this different harmonic underpinning it has a completely different sense - it is a leading note, a centre of tension which would be released by the half step up to Ab, (ie II,V,I) which of course never comes. A protracted period of II/V changes is quite a common device for building a particular kind of tension. Songs which do this are often very popular as vehicles for jazz - SATIN DOLL would be an example. The two chords which make up the B section stand in a coherent relationship to those in the A section. You may remember that in the A section, part of the chord change was a descending major triad - from Eb to D major. The B section starts with a Db major triad (over a Bb root) - ie the triad has slipped a further semitone. The second of the chords in the B section (the V chord) has two of the notes in the Db triad - the Db and the F. Strictly speaking they should be joined by a G. The Songbook gives a very unusual voicing for the next chord which I will pass over at this stage but there is a lot that might be said about that chord alone. (Only Nick would have thought of playing it that way!) Suffice it to say that the harmony is very wound up and a move to Ab major would release that tension with a rush. If the song took that direction the fundamental harmonic pattern would be III, IIIb, II,V, I - like many other songs, including for example MAN IN A SHED - another of Nick's songs with a strong jazzy feel. The tension does not resolve in this way. The expectation that this song is "really" in Ab - is defeated by the 2 bar A section which is the repetition of the basic pattern of the first section - ie C minor is re-emphasised. Harmonically, the idea of two related but distinct worlds is reinforced - "I may grow older".

- STYLISTIC REFERENCES -

The "Nobody knows" C section reworks a little rhyme AA Milne wrote for his character Pooh Bear: The more it snowsThe more it goesThe more it goes on snowingAnd nobody knowsHow cold my toesHow cold my toes are growing(A.A.Milne, The House at Pooh Corner, 1928) as compared to Nick'sNobody knowsHow cold it growsAnd nobody seesHow shaky my kneesNobody caresHow steep my stairsAnd nobody smilesIf I cross their stiles.It is accompanied by an over-familiar chord sequence, often found in country blues on the 11th bar of a 12 bar blues (or thereabouts) and evolve a "run down" using the interval of a major sixth which is easy to play on the first and third string of the guitar. By this time, in this song, it is emerging that the songwriter may be having a game with us - having led us to believe the song might be in Ab major and built up a lot of tension to that effect, then emphasising C minor he has decided to switch into C major and started to quote from the HUMS OF POOH and using a "standard" winding down motif from the blues. The dreaded girl singers appear on the scene. Do we really take this new attempt to relax the tension seriously? The girl chorus often serve to literally "back up" the singer - repeating his/her lines, complimenting the meaning with lines of their own or filling out the harmony. Many listeners report that they dislike these girls - and this may well be because they confound our expectations further - are they really on Nick's side? They sound like a gospel or R&B group - so is this a "down-home" tune after all? That expectation is overturned in the D section which is an ironic comment on the standard "I, IV" candence which characterises the blues. This "blues" cadence occurs in the most unbluesy articulation possible. The second chord which ought to be the essence of the blues carries an E natural over from the inititial tonic chord to provide a major seventh on the subdominant - if it were a blues, the E would fall to Eb and give a typical blues seventh dissonance. To complicate matters more, the bass note of the second chord is an A - ie the subdominant is in the first inversion - not a blues figuration. It is as if the writer has taken the blues and deliberately settled on the most European possible inflection of those harmonies. The last part of the first bar in the D section building up to the subdominant is made up of stacked fourths - the notes of the chord are C, F, Bb, E - a very sophisticated musical device. The bit of musical history where you are most likely to find all these ingredients is arguably in the compositions of Ravel or Satie. The song finally gets to its point of harmonic resolution - "where will he stay?"- and even then lingers a bit before getting to the final point of resolution. Having spent the D section building up the thought that this song is really in C major, it immediately switches (again against expectations) back from C major to C minor for the E section. This is a relatively uncontroversial C minor/F vamp. After all that has gone on before, not least the Satie episode, even this straightforward tonic/subdominant progression assumes quite a mocking quality. You might expect that final resolution into C minor to be a moment of bathos, but the nervous energy only falters for a split-second. Expectations are turned over again - the Eb triad in the first chord of the vamp goes up a tone to make a F major triad in the second. In other words, the turn around has rising harmonies contrary to the various falling patterns that have been so predominant up until this point. So there is an awful lot of art and artifice in the construction of the song. I leave it for the list to judge how far the critical vocabulary which Ian used to analyse the Lennon song is appropriate to this one, ie "bewildering complexity/emotional instability/emotional depth".

- BOSSA NOVA & JOBIM -

The question of the bossa nova was also raised recently in the newsgroup - in many ways this song is similar to the best work of A C Jobim - Brazil's Gershwin - the kind of things he was writing at the end of the 60s when presumably the success of the earlier tunes like GIRL FROM IPANEMA meant that he could write exactly what he felt like. Strange harmonic shifts, eccentric section lengths, the mundane and the exotic all mixed up together, are very much typical of Jobim. A good example of this would be the song TRISTE - it has the Nick-like device of starting some way through the first bar, it switches from major to minor, it is a mixture of quite standard chord progressions and rather large and surprising harmonic jumps and it is on the rather Nick-like theme of a man who has to leave his love because he finds the strain of being near her so great.

- INSTRUMENTALISTS -

I also want to say something about the two lead instrumentalists on this track. But let me mention first that there seem to be two guitar parts - one acoustic and one electric - on left and right - I have no idea if they are both Nick. Tony Reif of Songlines wrote about Chris McGregor, the pianist on this track, so I don't need to repeat that. However, his solo is a gem - the tune is fast anyway and Chris plays mostly in semi-demi -quavers which is technically pretty demanding. Nonetheless he varies this subtly, sometimes putting more notes in, sometimes fewer according to taste as his line requires. From around 3.30 to 3.38 Chris makes the most of the drama inherent in the A section harmonies by playing phrases which alternately emphasise the G and the F# but then as he moves through the B section these two notes also feature in the line he creates. Their "meaning" or melodic force has changed because the harmonies have altered - they give a funky flavour or bluesy flavour to this passage but pretty much in style of Horace Silver. The rhetorical posture of the jazz soloists on this track is worth a moment's reflection. Chris in particular is using quite a modern style of playing - not particularly curbing himself to appease the audience's sensibilities. There is a rumour that he was called into the studio and recorded his contribution in one take - if so it would not be the first time that good jazz has been recorded in this way. This "first take" approach is valued by some jazzmen because it emphasises the values of authenticity and spontaneity which are at the heart of the jazz ethic. There is no greater crime in jazz than to play the same solo with the same inflections night after night - not a point of view Nick subscribed to at all. So perversely, Chris's approach stands in ironic counterpoint to the position of the singer and writer who (it appears) has decided to manipulate the audience's expectations rather craftily on many different levels. Nick's considered, mannerist approach is set against the impulsive rush of McGregor's creativity. The track is 6 minutes long and so the producer probably thought there wasn't time to let the alto player, Ray Warleigh, take a crack at the changes which is a shame because it is clear from the obligato passages that he is on good form. Ray played on a number of John Martyn LP's in this era. I last heard him a couple of years ago when the London Sinfonietta, the UK's premier ensemble specialising in 20th century music, delighted a packed Royal Festival Hall by recreating most of the classic Miles Davis/Gil Evans charts. The lead trumpet duties were split between the relevant Brecker Brother and Guy Barker - Ray had the alto chair - not the easiest of slots but a wonderful night's music. I mean to write more about Ray Warleigh's playing on BRYTER LAYTER on another occasion - in particular the poise which he so consistently maintains.

- CONCLUSION -

Does all this oddity and ambiguity mean we have to like the track? Well, not at all - to be honest I never really liked BL when it first came out and it is the last of the 4 "units" of Nick's that I've bought prompted mainly by the resurgence of interest in his music surrounding Patrick's book. It is quite possible than no one involved in creating this track is setting out to make the listener feel comfortable and have her/his preconceptions validated. But I think I'll keep listening to POOR BOY pretty carefully for a while yet. For a start I am very curious about how it might link up with two other songs which jump backwards and forwards between major and minor tonality - RIVER MAN and AT THE CHIME OF A CITY CLOCK...

- IAIN CAMERON, OCTOBER, 1998.