Moon River is one of those songs that grows on you over the decades. Written by Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer for the 1961 film Breakfast at Tiffany's, it's a wistful, romantic ballad about longing, dreams, and the pursuit of freedom. In the film it's sung by Audrey Hepburn as Holly Golightly, but it's had many covers that were equally transcendant. The lyrics evoke a journey of self-discovery and hope, with the "river" perhaps symbolizing life's unpredictable path shrouded by a light misty haze.
The song reflects Holly's yearning for a better, more authentic life beyond her transient, glamorous facade, capturing themes of wanderlust, companionship ("my huckleberry friend"), and the search for belonging. Its gentle melody and poetic lyrics convey universal emotions of aspiration and vulnerability.
The film itself (Breakfast at Tiffany's, 1961), is based on Truman Capote's novella of the same name. Audrey Hepburn as Holly Golightly is a glamorous but enigmatic young woman in New York City who lives a carefree, socialite lifestyle while hiding her past as a runaway. She befriends Paul Varjak, a struggling writer and her new neighbor, who becomes captivated by her charm and mystery. As their relationship deepens, Holly’s guarded nature and pursuit of wealth clash with her desire for genuine connection. The story explores themes of identity, freedom, and love, culminating in Holly’s emotional journey toward self-acceptance, set against the backdrop of 1960s Manhattan.
Reading and writing about this song makes me want to revisit the film, to see it with fresh eyes. May it one day come to pass.
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Meanwhile, here are three versions of the song--one by Audrey Hepburn from the film, a nice rendition by Elton John and a Frank Sinatra version after the lyrics.
Finally saw Rocketman the other night, the Elton John biopic that is part Broadway musical, part psychiatric study. The film-maker's attempt to create a movie as audacious and over-the-top as the subject himself failed for me, but my appreciation of Elton John's music remains undiminished.
The film begins in a group therapy session with a dozen people seated in chairs in a circle as you might expect to find in an AA meeting. The people are all in ordinary street clothes, and then this guy walks in wearing a bright orange outfit with horns and wings. He begins by listing all his addictions. The, using flashbacks, we learn the story of his life.
Despite my dislike of certain aspects of the film, it triggered a number of thoughts that I kept reflecting on afterwards. First, though I need to clear the air about what I did not like. The choreographed dance numbers.
When the Coen Brothers re-created these over-the-top scenes with dancers or sea-swimmers in Hail Caesar, it felt like it was intended to be a satirical re-creation of those 30's Hollywood musicals, which actually worked in films like The Wizard of Oz and Oklahoma. In this instance it felt out of place. Or maybe it's just that I dislike musicals and the problem is me. I know people who are wowed by this kind of choreography. If you like that kind of thing, I will accept that I am the odd man out. This did not kill my appreciate for the story.
That being said, the film did a fantastic job of revealing the challenges of success and that well-worn adage, "It's lonely at the top."
When the movie was over, a haunting line from Hendrix reverberated through me: "Loneliness is such a drag." Along with that came the chorus of Eleanor Rigby: "Ah look at all the lonely people." Followed by a remark that Kurt Vonnegut made to me when I said how much I liked Hesse: "You must be lonely."
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In show business people frequently assume a stage name for various reasons. I'd always assumed it was to protect their families, which is a noble motive, or to put on a more glamorous identity. Thus, Henry John Deutschendorf Jr. became John Denver and Frances Ethel Gumm became Judy Garland. For Elton John his name change emerged from an ice cold childhood that he simply felt compelled to escape, and a self-hate that bound him in chains.
In becoming Elton John, he could become anything he wanted. Elton was someone quite different from Reginald Dwight, and he would keep it that way.
The new thought I had about audacity, though, is this. It's not audacity alone that makes greatness. Instead, audacity only works when the thing you are drawing attention is golden to begin with.
What I mean here is this. Muhammed Ali recited poetry and made outrageous claims, but he delivered the goods in the ring, taking out Sonny Liston in two successive fights and become a legendary boxer. Bob Dylan likewise was audacious, but he backed it up with incomparable songwriting.
In Rocketman we early on get a glimpse of how remarkably talented young Elton John was as a pianist. Had he been an average talent who dressed in over-the-top attire show after show all those years, he would not have captured the audiences he captured in concerts. Nor would he have sold over 300 million records.
The Real Elton John & Bernie Taupin
Bernie Taupin
I first heard of Elton John in the spring of 1970. Your Song was getting air time and when I saw his album at the Farmer's Market in Bound Brook, NJ I purchased it instantly. These were the days when you absorbed liner notes, and this was the first time I saw the name Bernie Taupin. I vaguely recall someone commenting that Elton John was a homosexual and Bernie Taupin his partner, as if this were a negative against their music. "So what?" I remember thinking. The songs were great. The music was great.
As it turns out Taupin was a lyricist, and in Elton John he found the perfect vehicle for what he'd been writing. Theirs was a mutual admiration society type of thing. A gifted writer meets a gifted song-score creator who is likewise a compelling performer. Each proved to be impossibly valuable to the other. Rodgers and Hammerstein come to mind here.
"Take Me To The Pilot" and "Border Song" and "The King Must Die" on that first album I bought showed that Elton John was going to be more than a one hit wonder. The hits kept coming.
Taron Egerton as Elton.
Taron Egerton
One of the bright spots in this film had to be the acting of Taron Egerton, who played the Elton John character. He not only acted the role, he sang the songs. Many reviewers at imdb.com said Egerton deserved an Academy Award for the role, and even though he didn't grab the Oscar there, he did receive the nod at the Golden Globes for Best Performance as an Actor.
The Magic of His Music
As noted earlier, Elton John's tunes, the music with which he clothed Taupin's lyrics, we so often effective because it channeled his inner loneliness with an ethereal quality you just can't capture in words alone. Hence the power behind "I Guess That's Why They Call It The Blues." And again, that loneliness theme leaps out with these aching lines:
Loneliness was tough The toughest role you ever played Hollywood created a superstar And pain was the price you paid
The power isn't simply the lyrics, but the haunting melody that carries these words on wings. Along with a delivery that comes from someone intimately acquainted with the emotion.
When all is said and done, it's a "big" film about a man who has been a very big star, one of many whose careers were birthed in the Sixties.
1970 was a great year for albums. It was my first year in college and this was the music everyone seemed to be playing: Bridge Over Troubled Water (Simon & Garfunkel), All Things Must Pass (George Harrison's triple album), John Lennon's first solo album, Let It Be (Beatles last album), Velvet Underground's Loaded, Derek & the Dominos, Deja Vu (CSN&Y), Neil Young's After the Gold Rush, Santana' Abraxas, The Doors' Morrison Hotel, two vinyls by the Grateful Dead (Workingman's Dead and American Beauty), Sweet Baby James by James Taylor, McCartney's first solo album, Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out (Rolling Stones), the Moody Blues' A Question of Balance, and less effective albums by Elton John, Emmerson Lake & Palmer, CCR, King Crimson and the popular heavy metal slammers. Though not near the top of the charts that year, I also had taken a shine to Bob Dylan's New Morning and, with everyone else, the soundtrack from Woodstock, the movie. Bob Dylan's much maligned Self-Portrait also came out that year, and gosh, I liked that, too.
I remember exactly where I was when I first heard Let It Be, headphones on, after a day at the Cincinnati Zoo. I remember, too, how blown away I was by the inclusion of studio jamming on sides five and six of All Things Must Pass. James Taylor's "Fire and Rain" had an immersive heartfelt quality that touched a lot of us. (It didn't hurt his cred any that he was the first non-Beatle to record on Apple Records. And did Steve Jobs name his fledgling computer company Apple because he was a huge Beatles fan?)
Chuck Negron, 2008 (Creative Commons)
What brought this reminiscence to mind was the re-release of Chuck Negron's autobiograpchical lament, Three Dog Nightmare. His was the voice you heard on "Joy the the world, all the boys and girls, joy to the fishes in the big blue sea, joy to you and me." Unfortunately, he was ill-prepared for fame and he did the John Belushi thing, the Jim Morrison thing, the thing all too many others had done who found fame and fortune on the Big Stage. Not all of them were quite so self-destructive (Jerry Garcia simply became increasingly reclusive) but Negron's experiences were definitely over-the-top and self-destructive in the extreme. Gang members shooting bullets through the walls of your house? Bad dudes shooting your compadres and then deciding you were too wasted to waste bullets on?
Three Dog Night sold 90 million records, produced 12 Gold Albums, 21 hits in a row in the Billboard Top 20, six Numero Unos... They were the epitome of pop for a while. When I saw them at Ohio U my freshman, 1970, 11,000 people filled the Convocation Center and put on a very good show. I remember that night because there is a photo taken of my roommate and I with our dates for the evening. I was decked out in a wide-brimmed hat with some kind o suede vest and other accoutrements of hippie attire. I thought I was cool, but when I was introduced to her father six or eight weeks later, his first words were, "What is this, a clown?" (Early evidence that I've often had a tendency to take myself too seriously.) Three Dog Nightmare is a candid memoir about the dark side of fame. By age 30 Chuck Negron was a multimillionaire -- rich, famous and talented, with all the female adulation (read between the lines) the rock star lifestyle can handle.
I traded a plush, five-thousand-square-foot, Mediterranean-style villa in the Hollywood Hills with a garage full of Mercedes for a corner of an abandoned building in a crime-ridden Los Angeles neighborhood where I slept on a filthy mattress that was found in a vacant lot. I fought to share dull, dirty needles with a collection of lost, hopeless, pathetic junkies who are probably dead by now.
Drugs eventually ate the flesh off my bones and poisoned my mind to the point of dementia. I was hospitalized more than a hundred times and was a refugee from more than three dozen drug-treatment programs. The ugly tracks on my arms mirrored the scars on my soul.
It was a sick, sad, self-indulgent existence. Eventually, I just wanted to die a junkie.
But, for some unexplainable reason, I was saved.
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In some ways its just another "excess story." I'm curious how much of this is just "the American way." The famous Tolstoy observation comes to mind here: "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Negron's created his own personal hell by being a self-centered jerk, and he did it his way. Now that he is performing again and "living the dream" I pray that it is with a greater sense of humility, with afterparties of a different character than he was accustomed to in his prime.
Meantime, life goes on all around. That is, if you are one of the survivors.
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