Tower of Strength - Gene McDaniels

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKyitdO740c

Gene McDaniels was one of the many MOR pop /soul singers making a quiet living in the US in the early sixties, until the British Invasion, spearheaded by the Beatles, effectively reducing them to musical also-rans.. (Others, for interest, included Garnett Mims, Chuck Jackson and even the wonderful Ben E,. King). He did have later success as a songwriter though, penning Roberta Flack's third and final US number one, "Feel Like Makin' Love" and contributing no less than ten songs to Flack's albums over the years, as well as writing for many other artists.

"Tower of Strength" was the second, and best, of his three US solo hits, reaching number five in the US charts in 1961. When revisiting this track I referred it to my old friend and ex Islington colleague Neville Young, who is my reference point on all things brass or classical, being a first class trumpet player himself. I forwarded "Tower of Strength" to him to check that the fabulous instrumental on this is indeed a trombone and not a trumpet, which he confirmed.

In the nineteen eighties Neville was a musician for hire, playing trumpet on a variety of records including Heaven 17's two greatest hits: "Temptation" and "Come Live With Me" and latter recordings by Frankie Vaughan, who earlier in his career had a UK number one with his hideous version of "Tower of Strength".

Last Thursday I met up with five friends, from the Islington Arts and Entertainments Department of the 1990's, including Neville. It was the first time we'd done this for eleven years although this was originally planned as an annual event to remember a colleague, Trevor Kates (see https://www.unclestylus.com/single-post/2020/09/02/forreggae-beto-barbosa ) who died tragically young at the age of 41 way back in 1997. We had lunch, reminisced, mainly about people who weren't there, and events or projects we'd been involved in, caught up on what we are up to now and tried to keep off the subject of our aging bodies. As is the case on this kind of occasion, the memories came flooding back, mercifully for the others, on my long drive home to the coast, many of them involving Neville, as he and I were the longest serving members of the team. He is also one of the most naturally amusing people I know and so the drive was punctuated by smiles, even shouts of laughter. He used to specialise in music jokes ("practice man, practice") which gave a little window into the world of classical orchestras and session artists.

One that come back was of a trumpeter who had a nervous breakdown and was having difficulty plucking up the confidence to return to performing in public. Playing the trumpet had been his whole life, and he had no family and no other consuming interests or hobbies even to occupy his time. Eventually he was persuaded by a friend to return to take part in an orchestral performance of popular tunes from the movies with a half-size orchestra in one of those corporate performance spaces 5 floors up in a city business block. The only moment in the concert when he was required to emerge from the sheltering anonymity of the ensemble was for a solo rendering of the middle 8 section of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" which he had practised rigorously prior to the event. As each tune was played and his solo moment approached, he found himself becoming more and more nervous until, during the number before "Over the Rainbow" he realised he longer could remember the middle 8. Overcome with his sense of failure, he stood up mid-tune and walked out of the performance area, through the foyer and onto a nearby balcony and threw himself off. As he lay there, crushed and broken, on the ground, his last thought was an attempt to remember the middle eight. Just seconds after he died, the siren of the ambulance, speeding, too late, to treat him, could be heard above the rumble of the evening traffic:

"dee da dee da deed da dee da, dee da dee da deed da dee da....."

Subtle stuff, but the beauty of the joke is the challenge of rendering meaning through music, in this case, asking the reader to recall and sing the tune, making the process about music itself.

"Tower of Strength", written by Burt Bacharach with lyrics by the underrated Bob Hillier, ( see https://www.unclestylus.com/single-post/any-day-now-chuck-jackson ) is an unusual song with McDaniels bigging himself up as a "tower of strength" who wants to leave the girl he no longer loves, but in reality hasn't got the nerve to do so. The wonderful trombone by turns stridently asserts his bluster and then wobblingly undercuts it like the tower itself teetering drunkenly. The lyrics are a refreshing antithesis to the standard "I Love You" themes of the day especially the wonderful almost gloating:

"If I were a tower of strength, I'd watch you cry,

I'd laugh at your tears and tell you goodbye,

I don't want you, I don't need you,

I don't love you anymore,

and I'd walk out that door....."

while the easy-going tempo of the song also suggests he's really not that disenchanted with his lot. The best trombone part in a pop song ever.

Question: where would you weigh a whale?

Answer: at a whaleweigh station.

Question: where would you weigh a pie?

Answer: somewhere over the rainbow.