Lord, we don't need another mountain (Bacharach/David) #117

Tom Clay 1 What The World Needs Now Is Love 2 Abraham Martin And John /The Four Tops Reach Out I'll Be there (Motown, Gold 51, ?) 

I think this piece of cynical Motown product came out in the late eighties, after The Four Tops had returned to Motown. Someone in the marketing department at EMI had a thought and here we are.

It's a weird combo - DJ Tom Clay's 1971 creation is paired with the sublime Levi Stubbs lead vocal from 1966. Go figure.

I remembered hearing the Clay song in the early seventies on the radio - must have been - there was no music TV, interweb, social media aside my friends at Mt Albert Grammar lending me stuff, so - must have been the radio.

As you know I'm a sentimental old fluff and growing up I was obsessed with American culture. I loved the Kennedys and Martin Luther King so this 'song' left a deep impression.

Of course MLK's dream speech creates goosebumps still and I love Edward Kennedy's eulogy that's included here along with the real time sounds of the assassinations.

The use of the Bacharach/David song is inspired. For years growing up I thought it was about the events. I interpreted the mountain in the title metaphorically for many years.

There is a really wistful melancholy aspect to the music that seemed perfect - still does.

Hidden gem: The official B side is the Four Tops song but I have the single filed in the F's because how can this song be side 2?? Impossible. Levi Stubbs is immortal and this Holland Dozier Holland song is a classic. 

The Four Tops are easily my favourite Motowners - as big as Hendrix, Sonny Terry/Brownie McGhee, Miles, Coltrane and Chuck Berry as far as I'm concerned.

And that's the 7 o'clock edition of the news (Simon and Garfunkel)

Gregarious in his seventies music blog recently wrote about the Tom Clay song What The World Needs Now/ Abraham, Martin and John and wondered aloud if it was the most emotionally charged song of all time.

It's a tear jerker – there is no doubt and the song cleverly manipulates our emotions with its collection of sound bites from the assassinations and speeches by the three Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King, most notably Edward Kennedy's moving eulogy for Bobby.

On the plus side, I have always liked the way the ambiguous Hal David line – 'we don't need another mountain' and King's metaphoric 'I have been to the mountaintop' juxtapose.

But on the whole it's a form of middle of the road song married to sound bites shtick that doesn't really hold water. It becomes too manipulative and the little kid's bookending of the song (I don't know what segaration is) becomes cloying and redundant after repeat listens.

So what else is out there that provokes real/raw emotions in a less contrived way? And, yes, I know, we're heading into deeply subjective territory here.

Here are some other contenders:

Simon and Garfunkel's Silent Night/Seven O'Clock News is top of my list (in under two minutes we have a slow build under the hymn of the anodyne newsreader telling us about death and violence in a sixties world where Lenny Bruce has just died but where Martin Luther King is still alive. Chilling! A simple idea – not overdone and leaves us thinking rather than manipulating an emotional response like the Clay contrivance. We also get the trivialising of the news thrown in for good measure).

 

There are a few more that spring to mind as second equals:

Jim Croce Alabama Rain (probably only emotion for me as I associate the song with my maternal grandmother - like I said - it's highly subjective what works the emotions).

June Tabor And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda (I've posted on this before – a sober and unsentimental song about the ANZACs during World War 1)

Bob Dylan Idiot Wind (pretty sure I've posted on this amazingly vitriolic song before too – try the live Rolling Thunder Revue version on Hard Rain for extra venom)

Bruce Springsteen 41 Shots (you can get killed just for living in your American skin is the harrowing message from Scooter, a.k.a. The Boss).

And what about the Fabs you ask? Try George Martin's Pepperland track for The Beatles Yellow Submarine (it conjures up perfect childlike, and somehow, psychedelic swirls of emotion).