Weep for Love - Denny Laine
Denny Laine is one of the Prufrock's of rock music -
"....not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse...." - T,S,Eliot "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
After his moment of greatness as lead singer of the Moody Blues on their 1964 number one, "Go Now", he popped up as part of the "supergroup" Ginger Baker's Air Force along with such luminaries as Baker (ex Cream) Chris Wood and Steve Winwood (both ex-Traffic) and Ric Grech (ex Family) and then was the "significant other" constant along with Paul and Linda McCartney in Wings for their 10 year duration, co-writing their biggest hit "Mull of Kintyre" with the ex-Beatle.
Between 1973 and 1996 he also released 11 solo albums. "Weep for Love" is from the third of these, the 1980 "Japanese Tears" released in the aftermath of the break-up of Wings the previous year. Curiously, this and at least four other songs from the album are in fact tracks recorded by Wings but never released by them, 3 studio recordings and 2 live ones.
So, even on this, perhaps his finest solo original recording, it's really a Wings number, with Denny on lead vocals and Paul, Linda, Laurence Juber and Steve Holley backing him.
"Weep for Love" is a plea for more tolerance and understanding of others, but, charmingly, even this he delivers with characteristic reticence, describing himself as "waiting in the wings"
"Every mother's son knows the colours in the rainbow
but there’s very few that ever do a service for mankind.
I'm waiting in the wings for the compère's announcement
that a change is in the programme and the time has now arrived."
Similarly, the call to the barricades of
"So stand up and be counted..."
is undercut by the
"...if you think you’ve got it in you..."
is in keeping for a Prufrock-like, mellow member of the love revolution or maybe, just maybe, he's also mourning the approaching demise of the band he so loved being a part of.
"I'm waiting in the wings for the compère's announcement
that a change is in the programme and the time has now arrived...."
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