Perhaps not the same story, as we focussed on in the first edition of this section, but both songs treat the same basic subject in two very different ways. Which is kind of what this section is all about really. Not that there's a finite amount of things writers can write about, but often the same themes or ideas will be used in two vastly different songs. Take something as simple as a city. Take New York. Someone might write a song praising the Big Apple whereas someone else might not be so enamoured of it, and look at its darker side. Of course, after 9/11 many songs will take that tack, whether praising the rescue services or commenting on the losses, or railing against the perpetrators of the deed, real or imagined. On a different level, one writer might see fishing as a relaxing sport, another as a form of murder, or one man's take on a news story could be totally different to another's, and how that inspires them both to write divergent songs about the same thing.
"Homeward bound" (Simon and Garfunkel) from the album "Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme", 1966
This time I'm looking at the basic idea of going home, as viewed through two very different sets of eyes. In Simon and Garfunkel's classic "Homeward bound", the opening line is
"I'm sittin' in a railway station/ Got a ticket for my destination", which we'll come back to when we get to the second example I want to examine. Simon, who wrote the lyric, moans about life on the road. Now, I'm not one to castigate artistes and musicans for their take on touring. It's surely hard, being away from your family, your home, living out of a suitcase from hotel to hotel, but there is one point that Simon is forgetting, or conveniently ignoring here: he (and Garfunkel of course) is getting paid! It's not like he's out here for the good of his health, tramping across America for no reward. Sure, he wishes he was "homeward bound", but that's the life of a touring musician.
When he sings
"Every day's an endless stream of cigarettes and magazines" it's hard to have too much sympathy for him. I mean, as I say, he
is being paid for the inconvenience, and some people can't
afford cigarettes or magazines. So he wishes he was homeward bound, but in fact he's heading off to some other American town or city to play for his fans, and yet he doesn't seem to appreciate them when he sings
"Tonight I'll sing my songs again/ I'll play the game and pretend"... But whatever I think of Simon's less-than-glowing tribute to being on the road (for a better one, see Jackson Browne's "The load-out/Stay") he has his own ideas of wanting to be home, and if he wants to go home nothing, other than contractual obligations and the possibility of losing money, is stopping him.
"Borderline" (Chris de Burgh) from the 1982 album "The Getaway"
Chris de Burgh, on the other hand, is in a much darker place. His song opens with lines very similar to Simon's, as he sings
"Standing in a station/ I am waiting for a train" but this train is taking him home. However, it's a temporary respite, as here he is writing about a soldier on leave from the war, visiting his girlfriend or wife, and knowing he will have to return to the fighting. De Burgh keeps the identity of the war his protagonist is fighting in carefully ambiguous, so that it could be World War I or II, or even a fictitious or future war. It does however seem to concern one in which the British fight --- there's just not an American feeling from the lines
"Rolling through the countryside/ Tears are in my eyes" --- so not likely to be Vietnam or Korea. In some ways, many ways in fact this song mirrors his 1975 "This song for you", from the "Spanish Train" album, although in that song it's very definitely World War I he's referencing, not only in the twenties-influenced melody but in the line
"They say this war will end all wars" which sadly, and rather obviously, we know not to be true.
But de Burgh's writing is more melancholy, less concerned with himself and while certainly sad and yearning, contains the understanding that this is only a brief respite ---
"I hear my country calling/ But I want to be with you / I'm taking my side/ One of us will lose" --- and that he will face his duty even though it breaks his heart to leave his lover. He must also realise that this could be the last time he sees her, as he may not come back from the war. It's a sad song, very moving in contrast to Simon's upbeat-melody but ultimately somewhat sulky and indulgent "Homeward bound".
Both men are on a train, one heading home but knowing he will have to return to the war, the other heading away from home but in no danger and knowing he will eventually come back to his own hometown. Very interesting to see the way two very different writers, almost two decades apart, treat the subject of coming home, which when I think about it now, dovetails rather nicely with the first edition of this feature. I love it when a plan comes together. Sort of.