Daron's Guitar Chronicles Volume 12

1066 I Can't Make You Love Me

I Can't Make You Love Me

Where do you think I would rather be, sitting in front of a court reporter while middle-aged men (and one woman) in suits grilled me about my relationship with my father, or sitting in front of a bunch of doctors grilling me about my mother's drug use? Unfortunately, Ziggy's principle that things are usually not either/or and are instead both, came to pass. But that's not what I wanted to tell you about today.

I want to talk about music. Even if at the time I didn't, I want to talk about it now. I want to talk about how every human has a heartbeat, we have a rhythm inside us even if we aren't aware of it half the time. If you can walk, you have a rhythm there, too. If you can breathe. Rhythm is a part of being a living creature like us in the world. It's part of being flesh and blood.

Our brains organize patterns. Sometimes we think we see patterns that aren't really there, but a lot of what we do, a lot of what makes us function as humans, involves organizing patterns. That takes a natural rhythm and makes it into something else. Where two rhythms intersect you have math and when you make it visual you have geometry.

To live is to make sound, whether it's footfalls on the floor, or voice or breath. You clap your hands, you stamp your feet, you tap your chest and pop your lips. Repeating a pattern is pleasing to our brains. Why? I don't know. Everything in our brains isn't about just keeping us alive on the savanna. Some of it is about keeping us happy. And we like patterns, sometimes the more complicated the better, but sometimes even the simple ones satisfy us.

Rhythm is about the journey, not the destination. Rhythm is the footfalls as you walk, that sound in your throat as you fuck, the ticking of a clock. Rhythm is the engine that drives the train forward, not the brake.

When people think of a song they usually think of the melody. They think of the highs and lows. They aren't really thinking about the rhythm usually, unless it's got some unique riff that sticks in their brain. Songs that are more about rhythm than melody are not that common in pop music. Now that I think about it, though, you know Janet Jackson's "Nasty"? I had such an argument with someone in school about that song. I can't even remember who—not Bart, Bart understands better than most how important rhythm is. Anyway, the argument was basically that the song was a piece of trash because it had no melody and she "wasn't even singing." (It was probably a singer I was arguing with...) My argument was that they just couldn't appreciate a different kind of artistry, where the emphasis was on something other than melody.

Probably not a coincidence that Janet's next album was called Rhythm Nation.

Another example from the Eighties that comes to mind is Bananarama's covers of "Really Saying Something" and "Ain't What You Do, It's the Way that You Do it." One was Motown, one was jazz, both were reformulated into rhythm-heavy pop where the women's voices and their singing were compressed into ash at was less a melody and more a kind of slick, repeatable riff.

Not to mention rap. Melody is not the point there, either.

Why am I telling you this? Because I'm thinking more about the thing that keeps songs going than I am about how songs end. Only a few popular songs out there have really memorable endings. A lot don't even end, right? They just fade out. The only song I can think of right now with a memorable ending is, of course, the Beatles, "A Day in the Life."

No one wants to think about how the rhythm of life comes to a halt. When the pattern is broken our brains are not happy about it.

I was in Los Angeles at Digger's lawyers office when I got the call. I honestly remember almost nothing from the deposition. My lawyer had flown in a day or two ahead. Carynne and I took a red-eye and she convinced me to take a Benadryl so I'd sleep on the plane. I did. I woke up in LA with a terrible crick in my neck and a flight attendant shyly asking me for an autograph and a photo.