Lame, That Tune!
Long after any- and everyone else interested had seen it, Robyn & I got the 2003 movie My Architect: A Son’s Journey from Netflix last week and gave it a look. Based on a (for me) outstanding premise—we’re going to learn more about the architect Louis Kahn and his famous friends!—the movie proceeds to disappoint very quickly. For it turns out that the movie is—given its subtitle, one might even say, explicitly—not so much about the architect as about his son. And what a pathetic (and really not sympathetic) sad sack he is. It’s tempting to call him a “sad bastard,” but really, that’s just stooping too low.
The film succeeds on at least one level: I’m a closet architect wannabe, and for me, it was thrilling just to see and listen to the superstar architects that Nathaniel Kahn was able to bring together: I. M. Pei, Frank Gehry, Philip Johnson, Robert Stern…. On the other hand, Nathaniel’s painful attempt to establish, as a historical fact, that his father (who passed away in 1974) had loved his mother and himself more than his other two contemporaneous families: Eesh. It’s almost unbearable to watch.
I’m not here to do either architectural or film criticism. The fcrp part of my brain, though, was intruiged by one of the film’s many errors. Twice, when the filmmaker wants us to admire the long shadow cast by his father, Neil Young’s “Long May You Run” fades up in the mix; one of these moments, embarrassingly, comes while the then forty-something-year-old Nathaniel is roller-blading in the brutalist concrete courtyard of his father’s magnificent Salk Institute complex in La Jolla, California.
Not to beat around the bush, “Long May You Run” (as I’ve impatiently explained here before: see February 28, 2010) is an elegy that Young wrote for his car, a 1948 Buick Roadmaster hearse. When the song comes up as Nathaniel rollerblades, we’re supposed to think, I gather, either 1) that the song is a wistful chuck-under-the-chin to the poorly treated son–long may he run; or 2) that it’s the father whose memory is being celebrated here, a long “run” being the equivalent of an eduring legacy. That confusion notwithstanding, it’s hard to muster the appropriate sentiment if one’s actually paying attention to the words:
Well, it was back in Blind River in 1962
When I last saw you alive
But we missed that shift on the long decline
Long may you run.
Long may you run, long may you run
Although these changes have come
With your chrome heart shining in the sun
Long may you run.
Now of course, Neil himself has misused the song: he performed it as a farewell on the last installment of the Conan O’Brien show earlier this year, as well as the “Taps” for the 2010 Winter Olympics. And if the song is sometimes confused for a personal elegy, there’s ample reason: Young exploits the ambiguities of language so that for much of the text, one might be forgiven thinking it’s a friend or lover he’s addressing: “we missed that shift,” “trunks of memories,” and so on.
This got me thinking, though, about the larger cultural category of the mis-appropriated song. Back in 1979, for instance, the U. S. Navy thought that maybe the Village People’s “In the Navy” might make for a hipper recruiting campaign than anything they had on the drawing board; the VP’s manager agreed to give the Navy permission in exchange for the use of a warship (the USS Reasoner) and its crew for the song’s video. It’s not altogether clear when things finally clicked for the Navy’s most innocent adminstrator, but the campaign was eventually “scuttled,” as they say.
Other examples: Ronald Reagan’s use of Springsteen’s bitter “Born in the USA” on the campaign trail: indeed, when politicians try to pull from their iPods the results are often catastrophic, and I’ve written about this in connection with the 2008 Presidential election. I’ll try to repost that piece here soon.
So how about it? Can you share a story or two about a song awkwardly, even disatrously, pressed into service in this way? If so, please tell us about it in the Comments.
“London Calling” was used for a Jaguar commercial, which freaked me out entirely. Also, “Lust for Life” in cruise line commercials. Iggy Pop on a cruise? I’ve never tried to decipher the lyrics, but there is some pretty non-family-friendly there. In fact, using the wonders of the web, I just looked up the lyrics, which begin with “Here comes Johnny Yen again/With the liquor and drugs/And the flesh machine.” Sounds like an interesting cruise, but probably not what Carnival had in mind.
There’s probably a clever “carnival” = carne, “flesh” = flesh machine move to be made here — but I’m too sleepy today. Good examples, Ken!
There’s always the Buzzcocks’ “Everybody’s Happy Nowadays” which the AARP has used in a commercial.
Life’s an illusion love is a dream
But I don’t know what it is . . .
Life’s no illusion love’s not a dream
Now I know just what it is
Everybody’s happy nowadays
Maybe it does work . . .
AT&T’s use of Nick Drake’s “From the Morning” in their Christo-inspired cell-phone commercials not only misses the point of the song, but their editing of the song renders the lyrics almost grammatically incomprehensible. (“So look see the sights that you learned from the morning”?)
Thanks for listening carefully, Kevin. Hadn’t even noticed that. But they’re only words, right? Who cares what they say!