I’ve been cataloging songs according to Key now for quite
some time and I’m almost embarrassed to say I have, well, more than seven-hundred
‘favorite’ songs, but, really, who has seven-hundred favorite songs? But there they are, songs that one can
consistently enjoys practicing one’s musical instruments with, or singing along
to, or just to enjoy a good dance. But
on rare occasions there comes along a song that one knows is a Classic, a song
with some Universal Quality in it that almost transcends just being a Hit, a
song that becomes one of the voices of our Civilization, a song that seems to
have percolated up from the very Earth Itself.
And that song is Rod Stewart’s “Beautiful Morning” off his new “Time” CD.
Before discussing the song, first, I need to set down the
lyrics. You see, on the little CD
jacket, they include the lyrics, but left out the words from the beautifully frantic
little middle break (I think the song went into post production when somebody
realized it had a bit more potential), and when I went On Line to search those
lyrics up on all of those pages that offer Song Lyrics, well, guess what I
found? Apparently they have Song Lyric
Software, which all those Sites use now – you play the song and it spits out what
Machine Language thinks is the best rendering of any possible combination of
words that might be the lyrics of the song in question. And, wow! Is that Software dumb! Anyway, getting the Real Words took human
intervention… First, I looked at the CD Jacket, which none of the Lyric Sites
bothered to do, which could have saved their Poor Machines quite a bit of
embarrassment, and I listened about 20 times to those passages in question
until I arrived at something that made sense to a Human Being. So here are the Real Lyrics to Rod Stewart’s “Beautiful
Morning”:
“Beautiful Morning” by Rod Stewart, C. Kentis, D.
Kirkpatrick, C. Korsch, D. Palmer, and P. Warren
On this Beautiful Morning
On this Beautiful Morning
On this Beautiful Morning here with you
Driving down the highway on a Friday evening
Me and my lady heading south for the weekend
Early start, left the city behind us
God to be together, there’s a lot we gotta discuss
Pull into Starbucks for a donut and a coffee
That’s when I noticed it was all around me
A new day dawning and it’s gonna be a winner
Roll out the summer, we’re tired of winter
See the sun coming over them hills
See that hare running through the fields
Bluebirds singing, not a cloud in the sky
Oh my God ain’t it good to be alive
On this Beautiful Morning
On this Beautiful Morning
On this Beautiful Morning here with you
No hesitation when we check into our hotel
Down by the ocean ‘bout a mile outta Frisco
Four poster bed in a room with a sea view
Lots a sexy loving on our personal menu
Don’t’ you worry ‘bout unpacking that case
Get down to the beach feel the sun on your face
Seagull singing not a cloud in the sky
What a wonderful day to be alive
On this Beautiful Morning
On this Beautiful Morning
On this Beautiful Morning here with you
(break…)
This weekend is gonna go real fast
Let’s make every minute last
(background singers: )
Wu-aa wu-aa wu-aa wu-aa wu-aa wu-aa wu-aa
Sing and dance and jump around
We could get drunk and all fall down
And most of all – no regrets
On this Beautiful Morning
On this Beautiful Morning
On this Beautiful Morning … (repeat, repeat,
repeat….)
Yep, great lyrics.
But now let’s look more closely at that song. It starts with a Rock and Roll Sunrise, a
Dawning, a Something of Light coming out
the Darkness, the Immanent becoming Manifest…. Great production decisions were
made so they could do that without having to bringing in an Orchestra. Anyway the Mood is set.
The first verse is in the past tense. We find a couple doing the best to put some
happiness into their lives. They’re
taking a weekend. But they have things
to ‘discuss’, and we all know what that is code for. Any time a couple needs ‘to talk’ it is never
about how well things are going. But
this is a basically optimistic couple, trying to live up to what has become the
World’s New Religious Ideal, being Happy and contributing to the general
Happiness. But the very pressure of
trying to be Happy all the time sometimes is enough to just bum us out, and so
couples have to ‘talk’.
But then, in the Starbucks verse, a Miracle
happens. Walking through the parking
lot, coffee in hand, somewhere just outside of San Jose, our Songster is
suddenly hit by a Zen Moment, a Satori Experience, he is frozen in some Eternal
Moment of Pure Joy. There is
Consciousness of Change of State – Winter is displaced by a sudden Summer. In the next verse we find that images are
locked into his Experience and become Material Expressions of the overflowing
Bliss – the streaming rays of the sun breaking over the hill, a carefree rabbit
seen in the nearby vacant lot, the morning songbirds singing… all become
integral to this moment of transcendental transfixion. “Oh my God ain’t it good to be alive”. It is like Julie Andrews in “The Sound of
Music” spinning like a maniac on top of an Alpine Mountain, except it is a
parking lot in the California Wine Country, but the Face of God remains the
same.
Then the song becomes almost frantically desperately
happy. There is no more discussion, no
more ‘hesitation’. Chores of unpacking
are foregone, and there is a hurry and a rush to soak up as much happiness as
possible while it lasts. We go from “Oh my God ain’t it good to be alive”
to “What a wonderful day to be alive”, and the middle break’s “This weekend is
gonna go real fast” – the Happiness is seen in context of its Temporal
Limitations. This is a Religious
Experience of somebody who had had a Religious Experience before, and knowing
that they are only Great while they last.
Now, remember, Rod Stewart is an old veteran from the “Drop Out”
Generation, where people let wonderful weekends that were almost absolutely
happy and joyess fool them into thinking that Life could always be like that,
if one avoided work, duties and responsibilities. But it was a Cultural Mirage that lasted only
a moment in our Civilized History but nonetheless stranded a large fraction of
an entire Generation. The Survivors realized
they had to ‘get back to work’, but the Ideal of Happiness hung on despite the
qualifications, limitations and obstacles.
We would be happy or die trying.
But the truly Beautiful thing about this song is
that we really are seeing a True Universal Experience of Transcendental Bliss –
the overwhelming Joy of a Weekend Vacation is indeed thorough, Real, genuine in
every sense – “Sing, dance, jump around… get drunk and all fall down… and no regrets”. Our songster is stuck in a Euphoric Manic
Episode, grinning ear to ear. So the background
singers are pumping out those “Wu-aa wu-aa wu-aa wu-aa’s”.
Remember the old Zen Puzzle?...
the Zen Student asked the Old Zen Master how to achieve Satori, and the
Old Guy just says “wu”. Well, we finally
know what ‘wu’ means.
Should it bother us if the State of Bliss is just
temporary… a wonderful weekend? Well,
not really. In Saint Teresa’s “Interior
Castle”, which speaks of the 7 Stages leading toward Spiritual Perfection, we
find that the Universal Experience is had from Stage 4 and 5 onward, but only
becomes permanent at Stage Seven… but each Experience brings one that much
closer to the Always and Forever.
And that is what this song has – Rod Stewart’s “Beautiful
Morning” has a huge chunk of Always and Forever in it, a perky happy grinning
song with a Universal Message in it that speaks directly to our Civilization –
It’s aspirations and therefore its direction.
Indeed, looking back, I think this is the first Truly Important Song of
the Third Millennium – yes a grinning happy almost stupid song, but it speaks
to us all, it speaks of us all, showing us what we want to be, hope to be, and
maybe just maybe, what we finally will Be.
Maybe our Civilization will one day be a Happy One. And this song will be seen as having been
something of a Milestone or Signpost, and Rod Stewart a Prophet of Better Days
to Come.
