SONG OF THE DAY

“You Are For­given” from the med­ley “A Quick One, While He’s Away” by The Who (A Quick One, Decca Records, 1966). Writ­ten by Pete Townshend.

INTERESTING FACTS (a la wikipedia)

- “A Quick One, While He’s Away” is a 1966 med­ley writ­ten by Pete Town­shend and recorded by The Who for their album A Quick One. The song also appears on the albums BBC Ses­sions, Live at Leeds, Live at The Mon­terey Pop Fes­ti­val, and Thirty Years of Max­i­mum R&B Live.

- Another ver­sion of this song is avail­able on the DVD, At Kil­burn 1977 + Live at the Col­i­seum, with Townshend’s long expla­na­tion of the song and con­stant humourous com­ments by Keith Moon. How­ever, because of prob­lems with the cam­eras, part of the per­for­mance is lost, and was replaced by stylised footage.

- In the per­for­mance on their Live at Leeds album Town­shend calls the 9 minute “epic” track a “mini-opera” and intro­duces it as “Tommy’s parent”.

- This song tells the story of an unnamed girl who is left stranded by her lover “for nigh on a year.” Her friends inform her that they “have a rem­edy”; the rem­edy comes in the form of Ivor the Engine Dri­ver. When the lover returns, the girl con­fesses her infi­delity, and she is ulti­mately forgiven.

- The song has six dis­tinct sec­tions. 1) The brief har­mo­nized a cap­pella intro is titled “Her Man’s Gone”. 2) The “Cry­ing Town” sec­tion is sung by Roger Dal­trey in an atyp­i­cal low reg­is­ter. 3) Dal­trey also sings “We Have a Rem­edy” in his more usual voice. 4) John Entwistle plays “Ivor the Engine Dri­ver” in that sec­tion. 5) Then comes “Soon Be Home”, another har­mo­nized sec­tion. 6) Finally, “You Are For­given” is sung by Pete Town­shend — his only lead vocal on the album (except, on most ver­sions of the album, a small part of “Heat Wave”).

- Curi­ously, when the song was per­formed live, instead of “girl”, Town­shend and Dal­trey would make a point to sing “Girl Guide”.

- A video per­for­mance was made for The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Cir­cus, and can be seen on that video and on the doc­u­men­tary film The Kids Are Alright. It also appears on both films’ sound­track albums.

- The sec­tion where the band repeats the word “cello” was done as a joke. The band wanted a string sec­tion to play in the song but Kit Lam­bert said that they couldn’t afford it, so they just repeated the word where the cello was sup­posed to play.

- The song was used in the sound­track of the movie Rush­more.

- My Morn­ing Jacket per­formed a cover of the song at the 2006 Bon­na­roo Music Fes­ti­val and on sev­eral Euro­pean dates dur­ing their stint as an open­ing act for Pearl Jam in the same year, when the latter’s front­man Eddie Ved­der would join them on stage. One such occa­sion (9/19/06, PalaIsozaki, Torino) is doc­u­mented as a bonus track on the DVD ver­sion of the PJ con­cert filmImmag­ine in Cor­nice.

- Green Day recently recorded a cover that was included as a bonus track on deluxe edi­tions of their recent album 21st Cen­tury Break­down. They have also per­formed all six sec­tions of the song at sound checks. The band per­formed the song in its entirety at their July 28, 2009 con­cert at New York City’s Madi­son Square Garden.

MY TAKE

I learned of this song from the sound­track to Rush­more, which I watched today. I received a copy of this soundtrack-and-score from my cousin Matt in the sum­mer of 2003 before I’d ever seen the movie. The sound­track became one of my all-time, favorite, top 10, desert-island albums, and made me for­ever a fan of Mark Moth­ers­baugh, The Kinks, The Faces, John Lennon and The Who. Yes, I’m seri­ous: this one lit­tle sound­track did THAT MUCH. If I only had room to take 10 songs to take on a desert island [small island, no room for even an iPod], I’d pick selec­tions from this sound­track. Seri­ously. You’ll find the track list below, and you’ll find my desert island Top 10 List of Songs below that.

The “You Are For­given” sec­tion of this med­ley really rouses me up. I want it played at my funeral, and, to be hon­est, I don’t really care what else hap­pens just so long as this song is a major part of the fes­tiv­i­ties of my demise. I want every­one to visu­al­ize me sail­ing up to heaven, faults and mis­takes and flaws and errors and moments and all. I want that to be the truth for every­one. What I’m tyring to say is that this song is my reli­gion. I believe in what it says and abide by its logic. It’s that seri­ous to me. Here are the lyrics, so that maybe you’ll get what I’m lay­ing down a lit­tle better:

LYRICS

TRACK LIST FOR RUSHMORE

1. “Hard­est Geom­e­try Prob­lem in the World” – Mark Moth­ers­baugh
2. “Mak­ing Time” – The Cre­ation
3. “Con­crete and Clay” – Unit 4 + 2
4. “Nothin’ in the World Can Stop Me Wor­ryin’ ‘Bout That Girl” – The Kinks
5. “Sharp Lit­tle Guy” – Mark Mothersbaugh
6. “The Lad With the Sil­ver But­ton” – Mark Mothersbaugh
7. “A Sum­mer Song” – Chad & Jeremy
8. “Edward Appleby (In Memo­riam)” – Mark Mothersbaugh
9. “Here Comes My Baby” – Cat Stevens
10. “A Quick One While He’s Away” – The Who
11. “Snowflake Music” (from Bot­tle Rocket) – Mark Mothersbaugh
12. “Pira­nhas Are a Very Tricky Species” – Mark Mothersbaugh
13. “Blin­uet” – Zoot Sims
14. “Friends Like You, Who Needs Friends” – Mark Mothersbaugh
15. “Rue St. Vin­cent” – Yves Mon­tand
16. “Kite Fly­ing Soci­ety” – Mark Mothersbaugh
17. “The Wind” – Cat Stevens
18. “Oh Yoko!” – John Lennon
19. ““Ooh La La”” – Faces
20. “Mar­garet Yang’s Theme” – Mark Mothersbaugh

The fol­low­ing songs appeared in the film but were not included on the soundtrack:

1. “Take Ten” — Paul Desmond
2. “Jer­sey Thurs­day” — Dono­van
3. “I Am Wait­ing” — The Rolling Stones
4. “Hark! The Her­ald Angels Sing” — The Vince Guaraldi Trio
5. “Manoir de Mes Rêves” — Django Reinhardt

MY TOP 10 DESERT ISLAND SONGS

1. “Oh Yoko” by John Lennon [because it would keep me upbeat and in love and want­ing to wake up each morning]
2. “I Am Wait­ing” by The Rolling Stones [because, let’s be hon­est, that is prob­a­bly my real­ity on a desert island…“Waiting for some­one to come out of somewhere”…perfect, right?]
3. “You Are For­given” by The Who [because it would keep me sane to know that some­thing else was next, and that I wasn’t being pun­ished by being put on this desert island. I mean, really, you have to imag­ine that after a few days of any person’s LOST lifestyle, the ques­tion of “why?” grows louder and louder. I ould need some music to calm that down and ease my philosophical/logical lit­tle mind from freak­ing out on unanswerables.]
4. “Nothin’ in the World Can Stop Me Wor­ryin’ ‘Bout That Girl” by The Kinks [because I’d prob­a­bly be wor­ry­ing about my lovey back on the main­land, if he wasn’t with me on the island, that is.]
5. “Ooh La La” by The Faces [Spirit-lifting songs are much needed on the island, espe­cially an island too small for an iPod or books. I’d also dance to this song, to get some healthy exercise.]
6. “Con­crete + Clay” by Unit 4+2 [Another song to keep me danc­ing and healthy, but this one would also make me laugh out of the sheer irony of the thought of concrete.…I mean, come on! I’m on a desert-island!! That’s funny!]
7. “A Sum­mer Song” by Chad & Jeremy [because it is the music of my island.…“trees, sway­ing in the sum­mer breeze”…and it’s the per­fect song for me to lie on my back in the sand and drift away.]
8. “Blin­uet” by Zoot Sims [Since this song will be played at my wed­ding, I will have a nice happy mem­ory to go back to when­ever I hear this song. I can smile and remem­ber the good times on the main­land. Wow, I’m really get­ting into this desert-island thing, aren’t I?]
9. “The Wind” by Cat Stevens [“I lis­ten to the wind, to the wind of my soul”…hello? What else would you do on a desert island?]
10. “Kite Fly­ing Soci­ety” by Mark Moth­ers­baugh [because it’s light and play­ful and fairy­lan­dish and I would need that cre­ative make-believe world to pull me out of the real­ity of my desert-island existence].