Postcard #28: 1973/2022
Many's the time...
A second postcard to follow the brief history and thoughts about the American Dream. Paul Simon wrote American Tune in 1973, just after Nixon’s re-election and with the Watergate scandal soon to break wide open.
Both tune and lyrics are a weary lament for the passing of the dream, as though the lights were going out along the seaboard and westward. The past is dimming too. History moves through the lyrics. The Mayflower appears, as does the Statue of Liberty, now seen “sailing away to sea” by the song’s dreamer. “I can’t help it, I wonder what’s gone wrong,” he sings. Having declared himself confused, mistaken, battered, forsaken, and misused, the dreamer staggers to something of a hopeful conclusion.
Oh, and it's alright, it's alright, it's alright
You can't be forever blessed
Still, tomorrow's going to be another working day
And I'm trying to get some rest
That's all I'm trying to get some rest
The song is a mournful letting-go but not a giving up. We keep going. “Many’s the time,” the song began. We shatter a dream to dream again. Differently. In 2022, while duetting with Rhiannon Giddens at Newport, Simon opted for a small, but honest and significant change to the fourth and final verse of American Tune.
Here then, is the updated version, explained and performed by Giddens at a later date:
A music historian as well as music maker, Rhiannon Giddens continues to bring us lost stories and remembered players in projects that began with the Black string band, the Carolina Chocolate Drops, and includes Our Native Daughters (the all-female banjo group), as well as collaborations with Yo-Yo Ma, Ken Burns, and more.1
Here, as an added gift, is an extract from her wonderful History of the Banjo: From Black Roots to American Music.