One More Day
Richie Havens’ final studio album is vintage in sound,
lyrical preoccupation and the ability to take the classic songs of others and stamp
his indelible mark upon them. This latter quality oozes its aural charm on Pete
Townsend’s Won’t Get Fooled Again, a
song so steeped in The Who’s musical iconography you wouldn’t think it possible
that a version could break those signature shackles – but Havens wraps it in
his inimitable vocal and strummed acoustic guitar, the lyrics sadly as apt
today as when written, as are the sentiments Havens presents from others and
his own pen throughout this wise reflection on a world he has documented for
over 40 years,
But the world looks
just the same
And history ain’t
changed
Opener The Key,
supported as are a number of others by a cello accompaniment, is beautiful – quite simply
beautiful – and the lyrics embrace the optimism for a better world that has
walked in tandem with Havens’ anger at the way we have treated ourselves and this
world,
Somewhere there is a
chance
To escape from tribal
dance
No one breaks the
common trance, of global glance
At freedom’s plate
Somewhere there are no
lies
The truth and beauty
still survives
And all the days of
our lives
The sun rises, just to
show us the way
Just between you and
me
Follower Say It Isn’t
So is similarly gentle as a song, and the cello again joins in with its
softening as the lyrics this time are less hopeful though still tinged with the
disbelief that in its expression suggests something better,
Say it isn’t so that
people must bend
To this war without
end
I can’t believe it, I
can’t believe it
I can’t believe it, do
you believe?
And then the third is Townsend’s anthemic declaration of
regret and fight, encapsulating the battle Havens has sung and fought
throughout his life, so sadly ended.
Fourth Standing On The
Water continues the righteous ruefulness, the rhetorical questioning
perhaps reflecting more sagacious resignation than revolution, but nonetheless
pertinent for that genuine concern,
Why do we surround
ourselves with houses and big cars
Trying to make out we
got it made
When nothing really
belongs to us
We’re only passing
through
We’re part of a masquerade
Fifth is a lovely cover of Citizen Cope’s [Clarence
Greenwood] Hurricane Water, and sixth
If I is another Havens’ original with
a sweet simplicity that exemplifies all that is peaceful and introspective
about this album’s music.
Sixth, title track Nobody
Left To Crown, is classic Havens, the guitar strummed vigorously with those
speedy oscillating rhythms, and the narrative offers its mix of hope and
criticism,
What if politicians
were all good guys?
Oh Lord, don’t we wish
they were
We would not be so
dependent
On courts of law that
make us
All feel like dependents
sometimes
and what stands out in this song is Havens’ mash-up [of
sorts] where he segues a few satirical bars of Home On The Range into the song,
Be it ever so humble,
there’s no place like home
Home, home on the
range
Where the fear and the
antidotes play
Where seldom is heard,
an encouraging word
And our leaders do
nothing all day
Ninth is a cover of Jackson Browne’s Lives In The Balance, and although written about American
involvement in El Salvador, its focus on political corruption is still apt in
the larger world-view Havens is presenting throughout this album, but also his
specific focus on America itself.
Eleventh Fates
sees Havens adopt a more caustic criticism with his linking of capitalism and
the power-elite to slavery, and it is clear he hasn’t forsaken his life-long political/philosophical
ethos,
He’s got his factories,
he’s got his slaves
He’s got his prophets,
he owns our cave
He has his prisons, he
has his cage
He has his judges,
they have our fate
This ethical protest is continued in the cover of the Peter
Yarrow’s [Peter, Paul and Mary] song The
Great Mandala (The Wheel of Life) which is a complex lyric, it seems to me,
about punishment and justice. The album finishes on Havens’ song One More Day, a calm and poetic
rumination, proffering both secular and spiritual love and peacefulness, a
fitting testament to end the album as well as honour Havens’ life as a musician
and person,
My love so dear as
this life you are to me
Your kiss so clear as
the crystals of the sea
Please save me, I have
fallen here
I am lost and alone
An angel weeps, I hear
him cry
A lonely prayer, a
voice on high
Dry all your tears,
come what may
And in the end the sun
will rise
On one more day
The sun will rise on
one more day
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