Takin' You Back
Harry Chapin tells his Greatest Stories.
Modern singer-songwriters and acts like Iron & Wine, Conor Oberst and Damien Rice owe quite a bit to the people who came before them. Without guys like Paul Simon, James Taylor and Neil Young, it’s highly possible that some of the more popular acts in indie rock would never have gotten started. One of the greatest singer-songwriters ever was Harry Chapin, whose only song most people know is “Cat’s in the Cradle.” During his 15-year career, he managed to write songs that would inspire future generations of musicians and even a television series. Yep, WKRP in Cincinnati was inspired by “W*O*L*D”.
Chapin possessed, along with a voice unlike any other, a natural ability to tell stories through his music. In fact, that’s what most, if not all, of his songs do. He could take a small snippet of truth from his life and build upon it a story that could just as easily be fact as fiction. “I Want to Learn a Love Song” is a rarity in that it is the completely true story of how Harry met his wife who had been a New York socialite until she contacted him asking for music lessons.
In 1976, Harry Chapin released what is possibly his greatest album…and it’s not even a studio album. When it was released, Greatest Stories Live included eleven live tracks and three brand new studio tracks. While he had other albums that were more commercially successful, Greatest Stories Live featured Harry at his best. Sometimes it can be difficult to capture the emotion of a musician in the studio when multiple takes and editing can destroy the purity of a song, but when they’re on stage in front of a crowd the mistakes and imperfections all come through for an experience that is difficult to replicate.
Greatest Stories Live takes the sometimes funny, sometimes sad stories of a great singer-songwriter and gives them the benefit of improvisation and, in the case of the opening track “Dreams Go By”, a quick restart when Harry realizes that the beginning of the song sounds like something from Godfather 2. The fact that the album is basically a live greatest hits album lets the visual nature of Chapin’s music. In all of his songs, it’s extremely easy to see the stories play out in your head as the songs go on.
Other musicians may have been more famous or had more commercial success, but it’s difficult to find any other single singer-songwriter who had the talent of Harry Chapin.
Posted by Cory Roop on Feb 16, 2009 @ 7:00 am
