"Don't let the past remind us of what we are not now."
Dang, what an inspired line.
Has there ever been a more well-conceived and well-concealed breakup song than Steven Stills' "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes?" For my money, this soaring seven-minute epic is quite possibly one of the smartest pop songs ever written. Rolling Stone seems to agree -- they named it as one of the top 500 songs in all of rock and roll history.
Although, if you wanna' get technical -- it's actually more like *four* miniature songs in one (needless to say, today's post will be a bit longer than most). But yeah, four-in-one -- such is the beauty of a "suite:" a collection of loosely affiliated sub-portions of one, larger whole.
Now if this was a strict poem, we'd probably group this under the same "theme with variations" category as Yeats' "Crazy Jane" writings (which we talked about here). Or perhaps we'd lump it in with the lesser-known subgenre of the sonnet crown: a seven-poem set written on a single subject (usually, a lover) where each new sonnet borrows a line or two from the last one in order to explore a different aspect of the original topic.
How YOU doin', Lady Mary Wroth?
But anyway -- getting back to good old "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes"...
Our boy Steven Stills reportedly penned this not-so-little-ditty just as his relationship with the venerable Judy Collins was hitting the skids. Basically, he knew that a breakup was imminent, and so he sat down and banged out four demo songs in quick succession to tell her how he was feeling about the whole thing.
And when you think about just about any breakup you've ever had (especially the really complicated ones), it's kinda' hard to fault the guy for churning out multiple musings on the exact same event. Dude's got a lot to say, after all. And Judy Collins was quite a catch (well, I mean, at the time). Heck, when your emotions are all over the map -- four songs might even fall short of covering the full gamut, right?
Right.
Now then, let's see just how broad this spectrum of subtext can be. Accordingly, we'll proceed to the sub-song(s), in order:
MINI SONG NUMERO UNO: "I am yours, you are mine, you are what you are..."
This first section is the most conventionally "pop" of the whole lot. It's structured around a simple, repeating chorus, written from the perspective of the soon-to-be-used-to-be-boyfriend, and it recalls just how stale things have gotten between the couple ("It's getting to the point / where I'm no fun anymore") in spite of their best efforts. The poppy guitar helps mask the inherent sadness of the ordeal -- but the text (much like Shakira's hips) don't lie.
In other words: "no hard feelings, sweetie... but we're done here."
Fittingly, this section wraps with the repeated incantation: "you make it hard," as if to say "I know what I *have* to do... but dayyyum, gurrrl -- you sure don't make this any easier."
MINI SONG NUMERO DOS: "What have you got to lose?"
Ever have that "one last makeout session," or a wild night of breakup sex?
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to song numero dos (which kicks off at just around 2 minutes and 50 seconds in, or so). Sure, old Stevie Stills made up his mind to call it quits in the first chunk of the song -- and once again here, he reiterates his decision and tells Miss Judy Blue Eyes to hit the bricks ("Tuesday mornin', please be gone -- I'm tired of you"). But then throughout this slower, second section, he seems to second-guess himself:
"What have you got to lose?"Do we break it or do we give it a shot? Do we try and stay friends and keep seeing each other, or do we rip that Band-Aid right off and go our separate ways? Dang, if only things could be so cut-and-dry. Or, to borrow a line from Macbeth:
"If it 'twere done when 'tis done, then 'twere well it were done quickly."
- Macbeth: Act I, Scene vii
Ahh breakups.
('ish just got real...)
SONG NUMERO TRES: Gratuitous poetry? You know it.
Steven Stills was emo before emo was cool. And like any self-respecting emo kid -- at the first sign of self-doubt, he
Case in point, right around 4:43 into the song:
Chestnut brown canary / Ruby throated sparrowWTF?
Sing the song, don't be long / Thrill me to the marrow
Voices of the angels, ring around the moonlight / Asking me, said she so free
How can you catch the sparrow?
THIS MEANS NOTHING.
Well okay, maybe not "nothing" -- but it's a pretty clear indication that there's a whole lotta' big issues swirling around all at once, and our songwriter's attitude has clearly shifted away from one of:
"Relax, man, I totally got this..."
to one of...
"Dude, I have *NO* clue what's going on here (ps: cocaine's a helluva drug)."
SONG NUMERO CUATRO (or is that "catorce?"): Nonsensical Spanish -- GO!
Bono wasn't the first rock star to butcher the Spanish language. In fact, the guys from CSN&Y beat him by a good forty years or so with the nonsensical mishmash that closes out "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes." Here, take a look at the closing lyrics to this song (6:25 to the end):
Que Linda me la traiga cubaFor those of y'all who don't quite habla Espanol, a rough translation -- courtesy of Babelfish:
La reina de la mar caribe
Cielo sol no tiene sangre alli
Y que triste que no puedo vaya
Oh va, oh va, va
Such beauty brings me back to CubaWhoah whoah whoah -- wait, what? So he's in Cuba now? And the sun has... bled itself dry?
The queen of the Caribbean Sea
Sky, the sun has no blood there
And how sad that I cannot go.
Oh, go! Oh, go!
Even with the most liberal of translations, we're looking at something that barely passes for "English" here. The individual words? Maybe. But the sentences? Not so much.
The balladeer has gotten so caught up in everything that he's completely lost sight of what all he was talking about in the first place. The cheery music helps mask the message, but in four short movements (and in just under seven minutes time), he's gone from knowing where he stands to jabbering virtual nonsense -- in a garbled hodgepodge of Spanish, no less. Style imitates substance: the audience can barely understand the songwriter because he can barely understand himself.
Say --
Remember waaaaaay back in the beginning of this post when we called "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" one of the smartest pop songs ever written?
Neat :)
