Song performed by Derek and the Dominoes
Written by Bobby Whitlock

From the opening guitar harmonics through the finger picking end, I can’t hear this song without a rush of reminisce, not exactly regret as much as a view down the road not travelled. Let me elaborate…

Back in college, I rented my first apartment ever with a friend and an acquaintance. The place was the top floor of a multi-use building with all the nooks and crannies you might expect. The ancient structure sported gables, leading to odd alcoves and weird layout. We created a common area on one side and placed the holy of holies there- the stereo (back then this meant a record player, cassette player, and amp). We had no television. Having a computer was not a thing. We had a typewriter.

Being of an age when time meant nothing, we tended to burn the midnight oil either working or schooling or playing. In order to wind down at the end of daily exertions, I would stumble up to our third floor, find food, and pop on headphones in a nod to the off chance that someone was sleeping somewhere in the building and I liked the music loud.

We had filled the nearby alcove with a few pillows and I would settle down to munch and stare out the window, enjoying the soundtrack in my ears that played along with whatever silliness was happening after midnight in the small downtown spread out below.

Layla is an album of love songs that mostly build and build in energy, as well as an album about a relationship that cannot work– that whole being in love with your best mate’s wife. Perhaps that was not the ideal choice for chilling out, but I had it on heavy rotation, even with it being a two record set that required three schleps to the record player in order to listen to the whole thing. And I had to listen to the whole thing because I wanted those last two and a half minutes with the song I thought was one of the most beautiful pieces in this world- still do, to be honest.

Everyone knows that the guitar playing on Layla is magnificent, but the vocals, especially Bobby Whitlock, reach in and grab my heart, as often as Duane Allman and Eric Clapton do with their strings. After all that “will he or won’t he get the girl”, Layla ends with a song looking back on her departure, sung with an ache in the throat that might make you weep. In the end, Layla does not seem to be about desire and lust as much as about acknowledging that so much is ephemera. Surely, it is a thematic album, but the girl gets further and further away as the songs break down the distant longing and she becomes a symbol of the unattainable. Perhaps even in real life, once attained, she proved to be unlike the woman on the pedestal. Thorn Tree in the Garden may very well be about that woman up there on the pedestal, the next one barely glimpsed in passing.

You’ve Got to Check This Out is a blog series about music, words, and all sorts of artistic matters. It started with an explanation. 287 more to go.

New additions to You’ve Got to Check This Out are released regularly. Also, free humor, short works, and poetry are posted irregularly. Notifications are posted on Facebook which you can receive by friending or following Craig.

Maybe Banksy comes closest to the cultural icon status that Andy Warhol held, but I doubt anyone comes close in this country. Maybe no one ever will since Warhol came to the zeitgeist when mass media was truly mass- the perfect mix of widespread reach yet limited options. If you hit it big with some staying power, then the media took care of the rest. (Let’s take a moment and acknowledge that Picasso and Dali and a few others doubtless had as much or more fame/notoriety outside the U.S., but I did not grow up there.) Warhol may have promised fifteen minutes to the rest of us, but he hung in there for a lot longer.

Was the art beside the point? Warhol’s constant flow of art during the peak of his fame was screen print after screen print, technicolor faces and consumer products more often than not. The oeuvre fit perfectly in with Roy Lichtenstein and Chuck Close. Warhol was always good for a quote. The Factory provided a home for the Velvet Underground and many transients with varying degrees of staying power, although one stayed too long and shot him.

A number of years ago, the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh realized they had access to a lot of Warhol items and opened one of those rare museums dedicated to a single artist. On first blush, I’m not certain this played well with everyone who knew his name. As it turned out, the building was nearby, so we visited a number of times.

Beyond the pop artifice and the cultural persona, Warhol comes across as the son of solid, hardworking stock, even if effeminate and artistically driven. He worked his ass off producing drawings and prints. He constantly took young artists in, but he had no patience for those he deemed lazy. He may have taken the idea of studies to an extreme, but they come across as searches for the ineffable. And his mother lived with him for most of his famous years. To be in the Factory must have come with heavy expectations. Even if you only contributed to the ambiance, it meant being onstage, never off, never dull. It was work.

When all was said and done for Warhol, his life inspired one of the great rock song cycles in Songs for Drella by Lou Reed and John Cale. They speak of Warhol’s drive and the pressure he placed on them.

Another lesson few talk about with Warhol (who knew there could be so much?), was his approach to managing life’s detritus. Apparently, when his work space became too crowded to tolerate, he swept it all into a box, taped it up, and labeled it. These went into storage until the Carnegie began opening them on a cultural anthropology expedition of Manhattan in the seventies and eighties, including invitations and programs and sketches and crap. A lot can be said for regularly engaging in a personal reset button, that thoroughgoing self awareness that you have stopped giving a damn about the detritus.

You’ve Got to Check This Out is a blog series about music, words, and all sorts of artistic matters. It started with an explanation. 288 more to go.

New additions to You’ve Got to Check This Out are released regularly. Also, free humor, short works, and poetry are posted irregularly. Notifications are posted on Facebook which you can receive by friending or following Craig.

Book written by Sarah Vowell

Long form journalism is a dangerous business. Personal memoir is the blog writ large with all of the attendant pitfalls in multitude. Lest we forget the likelihood of boring your audience- at least blogs are brief. And then there are those who dare create a beast with two heads: the long form personal memoir reportage. Confederates in the Attic and The Orchid Thief are classic examples.

Then there is Sarah Vowell. Her recent book on the history of Hawaii is brilliant, but I will always have a soft spot for Assassination Vacation– her tour of locations associated with assassinated presidents. Interspersed with her travels, she researches marginalia about the victims and the events, turning up remarkable insights that make the men more human and more remarkable.

I confess that this book moved me to visit at least one location discussed: the crypt of James Garfield in Cleveland, a side-trip I never would have considered because it never occurred to me that it was so easily accessible. Moreover, Vowell’s in-depth discussion of the man raised his short tenure quite high in my estimation. The crypt is indeed a national historical site with its single guide available at the entrance. Most striking of all was the simplicity of the coffins for husband and wife- resting in the basement for all to see and for me never to forget. As much as any place in the U.S. and far more than the majesty of so many other vistas more sculpted in their presentation, the site of one of our leaders so humbly presented at eternal rest reminded me why I love my country.

And that encapsulates the entire book for me. Team of Rivals, Founding Brothers, and so many others have done heavy lifting in changing our views of our most famous leaders. Vowell somehow sidesteps the pedestals upon which we place these people and brings them down to a height where we can look them in the eye. Yet, she is no iconoclast. She finds the greatness within their humanity. These dead presidents faced choices that sometimes derailed them and may very well have led to their premature deaths.

Moreover, Vowell has a way with the villains of the piece: the assassins. All were misguided and arguably clinically insane. Yet, they had motivation which proves of interest if only because they took their reasons for expiation of the worst of all crimes.

This could have been a litany of horrors as the horrors are plentiful and real. The craft that Vowell brings to the book allows the story to flow like a travelogue of the best of our country found within the worst. It is heavy history with a deft touch. She brings the This American Life style of embedding herself in the tale to a far grander stage, which should not have worked nearly as well.

You’ve Got to Check This Out is a blog series about music, words, and all sorts of artistic matters. It started with an explanation. 289 more to go.

New additions to You’ve Got to Check This Out are released regularly. Also, free humor, short works, and poetry are posted irregularly. Notifications are posted on Facebook which you can receive by friending or following Craig.