Dion Week No 5: Every Day (That I'm with You)
Dion finally spoked publicly about the tragic Winter Dance Party tour (see last post) in 2014, over fifty years later, in a presentation that was filmed, called "The True Buddy Holly Story"- or it least that's what it's called on Youtube, and it's well worth a watching. At the end, Dion says "I never put a lot of things to rest but sometimes writing......gives your heart a little bit of peace, and these songs that I write sometimes are the best way to get my emotions out and put things to rest. I do it with music." Then he plays "Every Day (That I'm with You)". Although he wrote the song a long time ago, it wasn't until the year 2000 that he finally recorded it. With every year that passes you can feel the words becoming more true.
Like "Daddy Rollin' (in your Arms)" (see last post), on the surface this could be just another love song. But the bittersweet tone of Dion's singing tells a different, more complex story, born out by the words. This is a love song indeed, a love song to his of memory Buddy Holly, and how their short friendship in the winter of 1959 has deeply affected his whole life. The two were thrown together as you only could be on one of those early rock tours, at least one gig per day, with hundreds of miles driving in a small tour bus in between.
Dion takes the title of one of Holly's greatest and well-known hits, "Everyday", and uses it as the repeating motif for the song, not only to say that he's thinking of Holly all the time, that the tour has influenced everything in his life, everything he's ever done since, but that in essence he IS with him all the time.. Whether it's through the Christian belief that got Dion out of his drug habit, or through the idea that he lives on in Dion's head, the feeling of closeness is palpable and increasingly moving the more you listen, as the sadness becomes a celebration, the death a resurrection, and Dion is "walking just a little south of heaven". Dion at his best and most poetic. It's difficult to sing along as you choke up a bit but you should try.
"Every day I stare down trouble
heaven knows that's what I do
every day I raise my fist for the struggle
every day that I'm with you
every day I wake up hungry
yeah and I try to get my fill
any way it's a great big country
and I've got time to kill
We dreamed a dream together one dark winter night
and found the dream still firm in the warm summer light
every day you call upon the angels
they do what you tell them to
I'm walking just a little south of heaven
every day that I'm with you
I've crossed mountains, I've crossed valleys
walked the highway see the sea
every day it's another blind alley
every day just you and me
the sun is always shining somewhere when you smile
the chimes of freedom ring and your heart beats in time
Everyday I get a little closer
yeah and I get another clue
every way I feel it more and more and more
every day that I'm with you
We dreamed a dream together one dark winter night
and found the dream still firm in the warm summer light
Everyday I get a little closer
yeah and I get another clue
every way I feel it more and more and more
every day that I'm with you
every day that I'm with you....."
Commentaires