The Misfit Commentary - Songs
By: Erick Nelson
Last Updated: May 11, 2002
Side One
The Misfit
I usually work on the music - chords and melody - first, and sing whatever comes to mind. I don't know how it became about "the Misfit." All I had for the longest time for words was the first part of the chorus ("Help me right away, love is on my mind"), which is pretty unexceptional.
I just waited for months, and after returning from a England tour in 1976, the rest just fell into place for me and I was basically finished in an hour or so. Then, late at night, I walked the streets, working out some of the phrasing.
I have no idea how I got the first phrase of the song ("...asleep upon the floor ...") or even what it means. It could obliquely refer to a time in college when things seemed really bad and I sat on the floor praying; that was certainly a tough time.
Some of the song is autobiographical, in various ways, but not all. Growing up I did tend to play the clown and resented it. You'd be surprised how many people have related to "Though I try to be like them, I hate them just the same"! I was also thinking about some of the kids I knew in school, who weren't able to keep up, were part of the out crowd. I used to try to help one guy learn to play "sock-ball." He's probably the CEO of a computer consulting company or something.
One thing I used to say in concerts was that the way to overcome this Misfit feeling is not to try to imitate everybody around you and try to fit in. The Bible says not to be conformed to the world, but to be transformed by the renewing of your mind. This is more than a social problem, it's a deep, core, existential one. We instinctively know that we are out of synch with the Creator, and therefore, try to correct it.
I also used to say that, in our heart of hearts, almost everybody feels this thing at one time or another. I believed it, too, but I have to say I was shocked when I was playing at Oral Roberts University and did this song. The current Miss Oklahoma was a dedicated Christian and was revered at that place. If anybody in the whole world fit in somewhere, she did there! Yet, even she came up to me after the concert and confided in me that she too felt like a Misfit.
What I'd really like to do is write an essay about the Misfit: about how we all feel that way, what we should do about it, how we'll continue to be misfits in a certain sense but can transcend it in another sense - all that. But no room here!
Carry Me AlongI wrote this while I was in Good News. I had been listening to a David Gates album, and I think some of the melody was influenced by one of those songs (can't remember which one). We first did this on the Good News album. About the chord progression: My dad had taught me the importance of an interesting, or at least coherent bass line. Musically, this song is basically three chords or so, made more interesting by an ascending and descending bass line!
The allusion to the Trinity should be pretty obvious. I was serious about the "crowd of seekers, follow after many teachers" after being part of T.M. and the neo-Hinduism of the 60's - everybody was a seeker, it seemed. I like the line that says I don't need to hear a bunch of human talk when the Spirit is speaking to me. And the theme, that God carries us. Oh yeah, "their shouts like lightning in the air" always stirred me.
Dave Diggs used to really like this song, and included it in a couple of things he did. When Michele started singing it with me, we discovered that she could blend with me, singing unison, in a really uncanny way. You wouldn't think we could possibly sound all that much alike, but thanks to her we did. That made us a little bit unusual.
One time Michele and I played an evening service at a large church where Jesse Jackson was the speaker. This was kind of a big deal, and we only were asked to play one song. We did Carry Me Along. When he finished, he asked if we were in the audience (and fortunately we were!), and then proceeded to ask us to come up and play that same song again!
StandThe first verse of this song almost eerily foreshadows important themes to come on the record: sailing on the ocean (Sail On/Can't Find My Way Home); "what love can do, how deep its pain can be" (Love Hurts/He Gave Me Love); "tombs of young men that have died" (Martyr Song).
I wanted the speaker, who could be Jesus, to say "I've been there in your shoes." I thought the call to Stand was a very strong theme.
The musical intro and bridge comes right from a Don Stalker song (Don Stalker and Steve Berg were my friends and former band-mates, who were a huge influence on me musically). They don't have songwriting credit, but I did slip them royalties when I got a check for radio play. I built some piano flourishes out of that, and this is the closest thing I ever did to flashy piano. Kind of classical. Most of my piano parts have been pretty simple. One time Dave Garland, playing on Fred Field's album, heard the piano part I did for one song, and complimented me on how "sparse" I played, how I showed "restraint." The hilarious part was the fact that I was playing everything I knew!
Sail OnThis song was written by Don Stalker, way back when I was in the group Friends with him, Steve Berg, and John Berg. I always really liked the song, and always wanted to do it myself. They went on to record it as a single after I left to join Selah. When Michele and I were thinking about new songs to do, I suggested this one, and we had a great time with it. It was great for college concerts. And it was a natural lead-in for Can't Find My Way Home, so we made a medley out of it. Don says he's really glad, and relieved, that I didn't change the lyrics like I did with Flow River Flow!
I thought these lyrics "To see the morning slowly fading, feel the sunrise burning on my shoulder; to know not many men have seen what I have seen, brings on a rush inside that knows no ending" were exceptional, especially for the late 60's.
Can't Find My Way HomeI wrote this on an old, big, upright piano (which, for trivia buffs, is behind Tom Stipe in his Maranatha 3 rear cover picture). I had the Stalker/Berg new song "Flow River Flow" in my head, and the first part of this song is a bit like the chorus of FRF (in fact, my psyche seemed so intent on writing things that sounded just like FRF that I just put my own words to it, and asked Don and Steve if that would be ok. We split the songwriting). This was another song I did in my early solo days (1975 or so), and raised the key to sing it with Michele.
As usual, I had the music first, and I probably thought of the chorus first, with the idea it would be about getting lost at sea. This wasn't intended speicifically as a Christian song - the guy just calls out to Whoever is there, just a cry for help.
The "star to guide me" theme is an obvious one, but it my case it was significant because when I was in college, Father Harriot told me I should get some sense about what the Lord wanted me to do. He said that the way to plough a straight furrow is to pick a fixed distant point, and the way to navigate at sea is in relation to a fixed star, and that I should find my fixed star. There's more to that story, for a later time - but that's what I was thinking about at the time.
I first played that song at a Knott's Berry Farm Christian festival, playing in the chapel. That was one of my favorite concerts ever. When Michele started singing it with me, she was able to get away a bit from the Karen Carpenter sound. I remember us playing in an auditorium at a semi-secular concert, and a girl coming up to Michele saying, "Oh, you sounded exactly like ... Linda Rondstadt." Michele was thrilled.
The Moon is a Harsh MistressI was asked to play a few songs for a really early Vineyard Bible study at Larry Norman's apartment, and after it was over he said, "Here's a song you should do", and played the Joe Cocker version of The Moon is a Harsh Mistress for me. I was just knocked out. Even though I knew I could never match that rendition, I loved the song and started doing it in concert from time to time. I actually did it on accoustic guitar for a time, in the days when I would play a few guitar songs to break up the set. It remains one of the saddest songs of futility I've ever heard.
This was written by Jimmy Webb, who is generally considered to be one of the greatest popular songwriters of all time. In his book "Tunesmith", Webb says that Moon was voted one of the top ten most perfect songs ever. And I believe it.
It has a key-change cascading piano part that I never learned, probably because I was just too lazy, and partly because I originally played it on guitar and that would have been way too hard! Ironically, the third verse is the killer of the whole song,
"I fell out of her eyes, I fell out of her heart
I fell down on my face, I tripped and missed the stars.
I fell, and fell alone.
The moon's a harsh mistress, the sky is made of stone,
The moon's a harsh mistress, she's hard to call your own"But, because our medley sounded much too long with everything there, we had to cut something, and this verse was dropped.
Jimmy Webb never said in his book exactly what he meant by the song. I figured that the moon is the "fake sun", shining only be reflected light, not the real thing. Not specifically a "Christian" song, but telling an important truth (and all truth is God's truth) in a great way.
I didn't sound especially great singing that song. I did it in a few takes, and we kept the one that sounded the saddest. My voice even kind of gurgles at the end. I was really feeling the sadness of the song and that's what we wanted to come through.
He's AsleepI was at home visiting my family, probably picking up a free meal, and my mom told me her cousin (some guy named Alf) had written a musical and invited me to go with them to see it. I figured "How good could it possibly be" and tried to figure out how I could gracefully get out of it. Besides, the day before, John Hernandez (Good News' drummer) said he was playing in this really good rock oratorio at Golden West College the same night, and I wanted to go see that. Turned out they were the same concert!
It was called "When Jeremiah Sang the Blues." It was in a really nice auditorium. Had a band, a full orchestra, and a choir. They covered a variety of styles - classical, jazz, rock. There was even a narrator, a man high on a podium with a big voice, doing God's parts. The lead singer, playing Jeremiah, was Roger Brazier. The other, playing the Angel, was Michele. They both wore long robes and would walk up to a podium to sing their parts. Michele did a few songs, but all I remember is He's Asleep. That happened when Jeremiah was just completely burned out (Jeremiah was the "weeping prophet", after all - "sings the blues", get it?). Michele stood up and very angelically sang this; it seemed as if the whole presentation was geared to set her up for this moment. Riveting.
The poignant thing about the song is that the guy who is asleep wakes up without ever knowing he's been soothed and comforted by an angel. It's quite probable that we ourselves are often recipients of either angelic ministry or for sure God's grace, without ever knowing it.
The Moon/Asleep Medley
When we started singing together, Michele got me a chord chart from Alf and I learned the song. I'm not sure who's idea it was to put it together with The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, but I'm certain that the ending was totally her idea (that is, for me to reprise Moon at the end and sing the songs simultaneously). At first I thought that was the hokiest thing I ever heard of, and didn't want to do it - but they fit together so perfectly that it worked out great. Then I really liked it. Whenever we played at colleges for secular concerts or coffee-house situations, this was a perfect medley. Michele's world-class singing gave me the courage to face those situations. I knew, even when I doubted my own abilities, that Michele was objectively a great singer, so we deserved to be there!Here's an interesting thing about that medley. I became friends with my cousin Alf (actually, I think he's my first cousin once removed, since he's my mom's cousin; but he's much closer to my age than to my parents'; he's Alf Clausen, Grammy award winning composer for The Simpsons, named by TV Guide the 8th best TV series of all time), and one day I went over to his house for something. He had given out some copies of The Misfit to friends in the biz. Apparently Toni Tennille really liked it, and plugged the Moon/Asleep medley to Gary Sims, who was part of the Carpenters' band throughout their career and was handling the new songs. He loved the medley, and wanted the Carpenters to record it, but he wasn't sure about the words to He's Asleep. I guess he thought they weren't commercial enough. He had worked with John Bettis and changed the song to "Come Away", completely changing all the lyrics. He wanted to get Alf's permission to alter the song in this way. But Tommy Wolf, the lyricist, had recently died, and Alf wasn't sure what he wanted to do. He decided to decline (at the time, that was my advice, too), and that was that. At least that's how I remember it.
So, Side One is concluded with the Misfit asleep - alone and dejected, but being comforted by the angel.
Side Two
Hurting People
Side Two opens with the Angel praying for this lonely one, and for the other Hurting People. Jonathan knew a good singer when he heard one. He asked Michele to come and sing background vocals with Kelly Willard on her first album (Blame it on the One I Love), and Kelly and Michele became good friends. Kelly had this great new song, and showed it to Michele, and so we started doing it. This is a refreshing departure from the Parade of Erick Nelson Ballads that this was threatening to be. The theme of helping the "lonely children who roam the streets at night", and "rain, rain go away" evoked the childhood idea, with the twist "never come back, even on another day."
Take Me to the LightFinally, a rock 'n roll song. I wrote this song around the introductory chords. Then the chords for the verses (which are not especially unusual) just came to me. Pretty soon I had a bridge, or chorus, whatever you want to call it. I got a couple of ideas from a song on a Kiki Dee album, but I can't remember what. I liked the "tied down, shot down" idea. I did a little play on words with circle, using it three different ways. Where the bridge ends with an ascending thing, Dave Spiker said he fully expected us to attempt a Beatles "O-o-o-o-o", but we didn't. Wish we had.
This was a great live song with a band, especially at colleges. It gave Michele a chance to stretch out, too. Keith, Darrell, and I had an Elton John thing going at the end of it (at least that's what we thought it was), and when Tony Dean played guitar for a few gigs he was so outstanding that people were probably thinking this was the Tony Dean Band! One time somebody from Campus Crusade called up to get my permission for one of their bands to do it, which was kind of flattering.
First PrayerI first met Randy Stonehill at Jesus '73 in Pennsylvania. I was playing bass for Danny Lee and the Children of Truth on a long tour, and Danny knew Andrae' Crouch (they had the same booking agent), and so I wound up with Danny in Andrae's motel room. There was a really skinny guy with a guitar who was eager to play for Andrae'. I was even less than that, I was a only bass player! I'm sure Randy wouldn't remember me; he might remember me from my singing with Michele. Even then, he had some great songs, and of course it's obvious that he just kept getting better. My two favorites were King of Hearts and First Prayer. They were the kind of song I wished I had written. So simple, sincere, and straightforward, but well-crafted. A difficult combination.
Naturally, nobody can match Randy's own rendition of it, and I don't know how I or we picked First Prayer, but it turned out to be really good with Michele singing it. I think that when we did it in concert I sort of sang along, but we dumped that quickly for the recording.
Love HurtsI had heard the Nazareth version of it, and it was mildly amusing to hear a guy just screaming "Love Hurts" - it seemed kind of overkill. Later I heard a bubble-gum version of it, all cheery sounding, which seemed kind of blasphemous, musically speaking. The version that got me was the one by Jennifer Warnes. Really beautiful, lamenting, haunting - boy, you really believed that love hurts when you heard her.
We already had He Gave Me Love, and one day it just occurred to me that this would prove to be a perfect lead-in to that song. On the one hand, the song portrays the risk, the danger of loving someone (presumably, the unrequited love angle), and "Love" is so glamorized and trivialized that I wanted this serious aspect to stand out. On the other, it comes out and says that love is a LIE, actually designed to give pain, and that is totally false! So, it was risky for us to sing that song, because people might misunderstand.
When I suggested the song to Michele, she sang the words I had written down, and by the time the song was finished she started laughing hysterically, for no good reason. She couldn't stop. I couldn't figure it out; later, we decided that it was so sad that she laughed to keep from crying. I consider a song like that a powerful song.
Thus, we joined the songs together so that nobody could ever play our Love Hurts on the radio without its companion piece, which finishes the story. I've had people say that this is their favorite song on the record. In fact, a daughter of a friend was going through a rough patch, and apparently she bought The Misfit and played it over and over - but just the negative songs! She actually skipped over anything positive. I don't consider this exactly listening to the album in the spirit intended. I'm happy to report she got better, and probably threw the album away.
He Gave Me LoveThis, I think, is the only song I ever wrote away from the piano, and is one of the few interesting song-writing stories I have. I was driving home from a Seawind concert in at The Baked Potato. I was fascinated by the fact that Bob and Pauline Wilson (and some of the band members) were Christians, singing songs that had Christian content, but played exclusively in clubs and other secular venues. (In fact, we once opened for Seawind at Cal State Fullerton, a secular paid concert, a very nervous experience.)
Anyway, here I am driving late at night on the freeway, and I start to think "If I had five minutes to sing a song to people who don't know the Lord, what song would it be? If I could write a song that just said in a straightforward way what I want to say, what would it be like?"
And I came up with the words to the song, with a simple melody, right there in the car (as I said that's absolutely not how I write songs). I wanted to say that while other people had failed me, Jesus had called me and had not failed me; and that he had gone through that too, in fact all he got for his attempt to help people was a crown of thorns. And that even though people sometimes mocked me for believing this stuff, all I can do is live by what I find to be true. And the bottom line is that he gave me love that I never had before, and you can have it too.
When I got home, I put some chords to it, intentionally keeping it simple so that the words stood out - throwing in a couple of things to make it more interesting, and it was done. As songs go, there wasn't much to it, but it said just what I wanted to say, and it sounded nice, so I always considered it to be one of my best songs. I did this on Maranatha 6 well before Michele and I teamed up. Background vocals were a big part of the recording - by Steve Berg, Don Stalker, and ... Michele. Small world.
Michele and I played at several college coffee-houses as a regular, secular group. The perennial problem with trying to cross over is that the vaguer you make your message, the more pleased the audience is but they have to idea what you're saying; and conversely, the more specific you make your message, the more offended they become.
There are lots of ways to approach this. My plan at the time was to do a lot of songs about the futility of life (or of much of it), like The Misfit, Moon/Asleep, Can't Find My Way Home, plus a couple of faster numbers so as not to overly depress the audience, and then for the last song really sing about the Answer. And specifically say that Jesus is the Answer. I remember one little concert, we started the song and people's voices were just casually buzzing away, and the instant I sang "Jesus called me and I must obey" it became so still you could hear a pin drop.
As soon as the song was over I tried to address the issue. I said, "You know, I used to sing about girls and cars, and the only reason I played music at all was to get what I could out of it. But now, I see that we all face problems and difficulties, and are struggling for an answer - and I think I have the answer. If I had the answer and wouldn't tell you, you'd be right in being angry with me. So don't be mad that I'm trying to help. If you think I have the wrong answer, then come up after the concert and and tell me what the right answer is, and if you convince me, you can bet I'll sing about that answer next time!" Then we'd do a final song, and it all seemed to work out ok.
Martyr SongThis is one of my favorites songs, and one of my greatest disappointments. I was listening to Jackson Browne a lot at the time, and I worried excessively that the verses sounded too much like him. What I didn't even realize was that the chorus was way too similar to the Byrds' Chimes of Freedom (written by Bob Dylan)! That pretty much wrecks the whole thing for me.
But if you can get past that - and I forced myself to get past it because I thought the message of the song was too important to dump - you'll see that the words of the song are unusual and moving.
When I was a new Christian, probably through the influence of Cameron Harriot (an Episcopal priest who was my primary Christian role model), I was captivated by the stories of the early martyrs, such as Ignatius of Antioch and Polycarp of Smyrna (two of the "Apostolic Fathers"), Justin Martyr and Irenaeus (the "Apologists"), and others. I read not only accounts of bravery and endurance, I even came across stories about cases where the people being killed seemed to experience no pain. I wondered, what was it that these people had that made them so strong, even when everything was going wrong for them? It was this relationship with Jesus that they had - not theory, not religion, not dogma, none of that stuff. And I wanted that.
I even wrote a rock 'n roll song called "Burn My Clothes", also called "The Martyrdom of Polycarp", well before I ever knew there was such a thing (other than church music) as "Christian Music." In fact, that was probably my very first "Christian" song, even earlier than Picking up the Pieces. My secular band took it all in stride and chalked it up to my weirdness, I suppose.
When writing the Martyr Song, I pictured lines of people - from children to aged folks - lined up, in chains, rather underdressed, in their rags, for prime time (I think that most of the saints were not especially snappy dressers): but not depressed, dragged down, miserable, but joyously and victoriously singing songs of praise, of true freedom.
This reminds me of the movie with Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor where they are in jail, and the authorities are trying to punish Gene Wilder. At first they put him in "the box" for several days; when they finally bring him out, instead of being broken by this confinement, he begs to be allowed to go back in, because he was just starting to "get in touch" with himself! Then, they string him up by his manacles with arms outstretched, and instead of crying out in agony, he thanks them, because the tension had snapped his bad back in place! It was like he was too stupid to know he was supposed to suffer. Something about him made him invulnerable - nothing could defeat him!
The martyrs were this way - except it wasn't because they were too stupid to know when they were being tortured, they had something that overcame the pain. I pictured it in my mind as "one like unto a Son of Man" standing before them, holding a door open for them, the door to the Real Land. And I pictured Satan himself shrieking with frustration, and trembling with fright, as he knew that The Power was personally present.
Michele and I had the chance to play one time for my early mentor, Fr. Harriot, at his little church fellowship hall. There were maybe twenty or thirty people sitting in folding chairs, clapping appreciatively after each song. It was very nice. We closed with The Martyr Song, and as people came up to say hi to us, I saw Fr. Harriot walking toward me, with joyous tears on his face. I had never seen him cry at all before. This was a greater reward for me than the applause of thousands. He said something like "That song was wonderful", and I knew that he knew what I meant. He probably knew it much better than I.