The Party’s Over (1967)

Today I’m going back to before I was born. I have already commented on the lyrics for “Suffer in Silence” in the blog entry for “The Ghost” (Part 1). On some albums it is listed as “Suffering in Silence.” I find this with several of Willie’s songs. The titles vary slightly over time or from album to album or compilation to compilation. This version is drenched in strings. “Hold Me Tighter” takes a new approach to an old Willie theme. “I thought if you’d just hold me tight maybe I’d forget her. But I don’t suppose, as yet, you’ve held me tight enough. Please hold me tighter. I still remember. Put your arms around me. Hold me close and hold me tight and long… and I can’t love again until her memory’s gone.” What other country singer can get away with using phrases like “as yet”? I would not be shocked to hear Willie use “moreover” or “heretofore.” Here he wants his new love to squeeze the memory of his old love out of him. In his other songs Willie has tried to out run memories, drink them away, sleep them away, hide from them, but here he tries to squeeze them out. Proust would have a field day with this. Or a madeleine. I’ve reviewed “Go Away” on previous blogs. The strings drown out the otherwise solid vocals. The version of “The Ghost” on the compilation of the same name is so much better than this one. It is a textbook example of how the same song is so much better as a demo recording than as a fully-produced Nashville Sound recording. “To Make a Long Story Short” is pregnant with meaning. Isn’t that what songwriters do? Make long stories short? Condense entire love affairs into 2 ½ minutes? “To make a long story short, she’s gone.” All of Willie’s music, and all of country music in general, and the blues, could be summed up in these two words: she’s gone. The irony here is that Willie has spent 80 years singing and writing about why she left. He hasn’t made the story short at all. He’s made the story into a career, into hundreds of songs. He’s made the story last, literally, forever. So, as an artist, he both condenses and contracts and thereby heightens stories, but he also lengthens and preserves and extends them. And, inexplicably, does both at the same time. In the same way Proust makes a long story short in “In Search of Lost Time,” or is it a short story writ long? Maybe writers make long stories short and short stories long. “I won’t try to give the reasons why I miss her so.” Yeah, right. I’ve heard that one before. And then, of course, “A Moment isn’t Very Long.” It’s forever. It goes by so fast, but then it lasts so long. It almost seems as if the faster it goes by the longer it lasts? Like the skid marks of time, the residue. I have reviewed most of these songs previously, but it is interesting to see how they fit together on one album. “The Party’s Over” gets at the notion that “all good things must end.” And yet all of Willie’s songs deal with how we face this fact. Time and life is fleeting, it passes quickly, it ends, and yet tomorrow comes. How do we find closure within eternity? How do we deal with unique experiences in the midst of the “same old thing again.” “The Party’s Over” is also another “she’s gone” song. It’s interesting to compare the 1962 Liberty version of “There Goes a Man” with this 1967 version. Both have strings, but this more recent version does without the canned back-up vocals. I have commented on the lyrics in an earlier blog, but this time around I note Willie’s statement about fate: “Fate has frowned on him, then turned around and smiled on me.” Willie does believe in some sort of fate or destiny. This is confirmed again in the next song: “Once Alone.” “Life’s too short to spend it feelin’ blue. And it’s not too late. Our dreams could still come true. But before our chance for happiness is gone. Don’t you think we should try it once alone?” When the going gets tough in marriage, the Willie way is to hit the road and look for sunnier pastures. Why feel blue if you don’t have to? Then Willie builds on his no-fault approach to relationships: “It’s not your fault, and neither is it mine. It seems that we’re just victims of the times.” Star-crossed lovers, victims of fate and time. “It’s not that I don’t love you, ‘cause I do. But love alone can’t make a dream come true.” Not sure what to make of his. If love alone can’t make a dream come true, what can? He seems to be saying that love alone is not enough to sustain love. Which implies that he actually wants something more than love (adventure maybe?). Or maybe it’s the Gatsby/Daisy paradox that real love cannot support the weight of ideal, imagined, platonic love. “I suppose that we’ll survive the parting tears. We’ve survived so many others through the years.” And back to tears again. Tears and time. That might be the title of my book. Time and Tears. This version of “No Tomorrow in Sight” sounds very similar to the one on “The Ghost,” but it’s hard to tell. I have commented elsewhere about the lyrics, but what strikes me this time around is that this is another “Leave-me-quietly-in-the-night” song. This seems to be a theme. No fault, no blame, just leave and move on. “Our love was too weak to pull our dreams through, but too strong to let us forget.” Ah, the twin tides of love. As with the previous song, love is not enough to pull us through, but strong enough to haunt our memory. It can’t last forever in reality, but it can last forever in our minds. It can’t conquer time, and yet it can. “I’ll Stay Around” also appears on “The Ghost,” which seems to be the case with many of these songs. “I’ll hang around till it’s over and hope that it never ends and maybe in time you’ll change your mind and decide to love me again. I’ll just simply refuse to leave you. Call me stubborn, but I’ll never give in.” Ah, Willie playing the faithful housewife again. Sitting at home waiting longingly for her spouse to return. He’ll just wait patiently forever. This from the man who wrote “On the Road Again.” It’s one of the most delightful paradoxes in all of music. Willie, like Walt Whitman, is both of these people. The wife waiting at home and the husband who never comes home. And he plays both parts convincingly. It’s another “always” song, another “forever” song. It flies in the face of his many “Funny how time slips away” songs. Willie is both the person who sincerely pledges his love will last forever, and the person who knowingly smiles when it doesn’t. He’s just casually “hanging around till it’s over” and hoping it will never end. Even though “the party’s over,” the lights are out, Willie is hanging around in the dark ever hopeful, ever optimistic. A modern day Pangloss preaching that all is for the best. This is one of Willie’s most tender vocal performances. If only we could edit out the strings. “The End of Understanding” is another song that also appears on “The Ghost” and “The Road Goes on Forever.” I review the lyrics on the blogs for those albums, but suffice it to say that Willie will never reach the “end of understanding.” He stays on the intellectual and emotional road to nowhere. Understanding is as elusive as the light at the end of Daisy’s dock. And “understanding” here means both forgiveness and knowledge. Willie is always reaching the end of his own rope, and he is always forcing others to reach the end of theirs. Living at the end of all ropes seems to be his motto, and maybe even living at both ends of both ropes, if that’s possible. In any case, a perfect song to end an album with. I need to look more closely at how he sequences songs on albums. Always very thoughtful.