“Friends of Mine” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ON-F0i69_8k is a song in which the narrator has an appreciative yet ultimately ambivalent attitude towards marriage, and towards “pairing off” more generally. Officially, that is, judged by the meaning of the lyrics alone, it is a song that celebrates the happiness of the marriage-bound couple:
It feels so good to know two people
So in love…
… When people disappoint me
That’s when I need you two
To help me believe…
There is other evidence besides the plain meaning of these words that this is a sincere feeling. But there are also indications that is not the only feeling the narrator has. He is not one who belongs to these couples he describes as “so in love.” He looks on from the outside. And as the chorus underlines, there are a lot of these friends of his pairing off: “Joyce and Terry, Paul and Molly, Liz and Bryan,” and on and on with five more couples listed, sung in a sing-song but rote manner. The effect is musically annoying, deliberately suggesting that the narrator also feels that there is something rather too pat about all this pairing off. At least some of these friends of his are not going to wind up as happy as they look now, and perhaps they aren’t even so presently. Love can be seen as pat—everyday someone “sees someone standing there,” and then it’s on to dates, love songs, wedding invitations, and all the rest. It can be seen this way all the more so for those who, for whatever reason, are not able to pair off in the societally endorsed way. The unwillingly single, the gay, the spurned, the childless, the divorced, and the widowed might all have reasons to feel alienated, at least at times, by society’s (necessary) celebrations of married families. I don’t fit! The one wise about the ways in which love can fail or become deluding, which certainly would apply to a posited overall narrator of Odessey and Oracle, might have further reasons for feeling alienated from the happy feelings.
So, it makes sense that in next song, “Time of the Season,” we leave the couple-love world of Odessey and Oracle, the world briefly made nauseatingly sunny by “Friends of Mine,” and explore (after darkening the lights) the idea of love/sex detached from permanent coupling. But, as either of the plausible interpretations of “Time” discussed in my Songbook indicate, the fruits of this exploration are by no means unambiguously positive. I would suggest that it is a move of despair—insofar as love as eros for one often doesn’t work out, we can be tempted to enter this post-‘65 world of free love. I hold that Odessey and Oracle ultimately opposes that move—the touching pictures it gives us of couple-love likely working out, albeit amid struggles, as in “This Will Be our Year,” or even in “Care of Cell 44,” are what it wants us to strive for.
Such an interpretation of course only works if we accept the album-as-unity interpretation, and I will admit that even then it is open to challenge. So I cannot make a slam-dunk case that “Time of the Season” secretly opposes the sexual revolution it seems to be a celebrating. Again, the other possibility is that it accepts that revolution, but secretly corrects the optimistic expectations for it.
But there remains a serious problem, and it is not one of lyric-interpretation. While it has been delightful to discover the artistry of “Time of the Season’s” ironic message(whichever of the two it is), I ultimately hold that the song must be regarded as an artistic failure. The reason why, to be discussed in the next Songbook entry, is rather important to the whole rock enterprise.
P.S. My thanks to commenter Chan for pointing out the Zombies’ weird deliberate misspelling of “Odyssey” as “Odessey.”
May 16th, 2011 | 4:08 pm
Carl, It is good to leave us hanging–but really!–”Time of the Season” is an artistic failure?! I have baited breath now that I have purchased and listened to the album. It is still the best song to my initial hearing.
Even with your excellent account of this album, I am not persuaded of the importance of “Odyssey and Oracle” (whether in a formalistic, aesthetic or historical manner), but then there are other albums considered to be great “concept” albums, like the Kinks’ “Something Else” (I love the Kinks, nut not that one), to which I also remain tone deaf.
I think you are right that in terms of the songs on “Odyssey and Oracle” there is a build up to the conclusion of “Time of the Season.” It may be that this song seems to offer a false resolution of the problems the earlier songs–in your interpretations (which seem plausible to me).
Your discussion of “Friends of Mine” and the “unwillingly single, the gay, the spurned, the childless, the divorced, and the widowed” is truly evocative of the sense of the whole album. But the sentiment of “Time for the Season” rings false when it is confronted with such partial and alienating situations.
“Changes” shows a regret in the loss of simplicity for diamond-studded hipness. You were right to point to “Caroline, No”–but in making that allusion you show (in my mind) the superiority to the Beach Boys. That song, unlike “Changes” is inherently melancholic or nostalgic–what with its minor key, but also the sadness that golden hair has when it shines in the sunset of a California coast. All that glitters…and all that.
“Changes” shows the difference between the earlier and later girl as a process of “socialization” (as the sociologists would put it), whereas “Caroline, No” compares the present “bad” Caroline to the imagined “good” Caroline from the perspective of an indelibly stamped memory. It reminds me of the effect that the memory of swimming with a youthful Anne Stanton had on Jack Burden’s character and belief in RPW’s “All the King’s Men.” His belief regarding Anne was “trapped in amber,” and it made for a certain naivete which was ultimately lethal even if beyond his power to stop.
Anyway, I look forward to your account of the artistic failure of “Odyssey and Oracle.”
In the meantime, what is the difference between the oracle and the odyssey, and how do they play out on this album? Also, I look forward to Damon-esque accounts of the music too–if you wish to go there.
May 20th, 2011 | 4:24 pm
Awesome comment, John…love the foray in All the Kings’ Men…just noticed, since I’ve been attending to other things. So glad you’ve purchased the album.
#4 is now up!
Interesting that “Time of the Season” seems the outstanding song for you. The record company idiotically released the grating anti-war song as the first single. To my mind, “This Will Be Our Year,” is the most hit-possible standout, although “Brief Candles,” “Beechwood Park,” and even the cursory “Hung up on a Dream,” seem the most representive of the album’s sentimental loveliness. And “Rose for Emily” keeps growing on me.
January 10th, 2012 | 5:46 pm
[...] particular lives of others, his own life, and our common modern life. We can see (shades of the Zombies’ Odessey and Oracle) that couple-love is not the answer to the problem of modern loneliness, for Terry and Julie [...]
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