MONDAY
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Edward & Rod: The Brother's McKuen.
Photographed by Diane Kopperman, May 2002 at BB King's New York City
A Thought for Today
Unless you call attention to your
presence, who will know you’re there?
.ASK
ROD
Good Monday morning.
TWO RE: THROUGH EUROPEAN WINDOWS
Hi Rod: I've always loved your song "Like A Child", which you co-wrote
with Jacques Brel. I can actually sing and play it pretty well myself on
the guitar.
I was making a CD on my computer from the analog LP Through European
Windows (since it looks like it may never come out on a commercial CD). I
have some software that takes out a lot of the clicks and pops from the
vinyl source.
Anyway, I had two copies of the album Through European Windows, and I
discovered that "Like A Child" was missing from one of the albums. The
album number had RE after it, so I guess that means it was a re-issue. Any
idea why they would have omitted the song on the re-issue? Was there a
licensing issue? I know this is kind of trivial, but what a shame to leave
it off the album!
Thanks. I saw you perform at my college in the late 60's at Western
Washington University in Bellingham. Eons ago! Glad to see you're still
carrying on. Peace. Larry Kronquist
Olympia, WA
Dear Larry: Glad you enjoy Through European Windows so much, I finished
mastering it for CD this very day. It now runs over 75 minutes and
contains 10 tracks that were not on the original LP and have never been
released on CD. It is part of the RCA/Bear Family Boxed Set that will be
released in the spring.
That's strange about Like A Child. I must say I never encountered an LP
with that track missing. I have had some interesting adventures with
albums over the years; The first run of my Other Kinds of Songs album went
out with an Elvis album in the sleeve and half the run of New Ballads at
Warner Bros. contained Frank Zappa's "Weasels Ripped My Flesh." That was
an eye opener for both of our fan base.
The Like a Child caper sounds like something for Austin Powers. Obviously
the re-release took place after I left RCA and they must have wanted to
cut back the number of songs in the album to save paying additional
publishing and songwriter royalties. Once you leave a label they are not
as keen on pleasing you as they were while you were under contract.
Glad you remember the concert in Bellingham. Very friendly campus. All the
best, Rod
In about 1970-71, I had one of your albums with 'On the Road Again' and
'Natalie' on it. I loaned it to a friend who left it in the back window of
the car. Summer in Florida was hard on LPs. Never got around to replacing
that album and don't remember the name of it. Would you tell me the name
of the album so I can replace it if it is still available? Thank you.
Janice Bates
Dear Janice: The album is Through European Windows, it came out in 1967
and was my fourth album for RCA. Here is the complete track listing: I'll
Say Goodbye; La Mer Sans Soliel (Sea Without Sun); Les Bourgeois; Through
European Windows; Song Without Words; Paris; Baby Be My Love; The Ever
Constant Sea; Like A Child; On the Road Again; Nathalie; The Far West;
Three Poems from The Sea (Pushing the Clouds Away, Do You Like the Rain &
Gifts from the Sea).
Through European Windows was my second album to go 'gold' within six months
of its release and it signalled a final turn from the folk-like songs I had
written in the past to a heavily influenced European style of writing. Not
so incidentally the entire album was my first to be arranged and conducted
by Anita Kerr; my partner co-writer and friend for The San Sebastian
Strings Series
Stanyan By Mail still has a few factory sealed (about a dozen each) of the
seven LP's I made for RCA. Frankly I'm surprised they haven't been snapped
up considering the price some Internet sites are charging for used copies.
I am just completing mastering, annotating and choosing photographs and
editorial material for the Bear Family boxed CD set entitled Rod McKuen:
If You Go Away (The RCA YEARS 1965-1970.) I'm on deadline and if I make it
the set will be issued at the end of April. It will contain nearly as many
tracks that were kept in the vault as those that made the cut for LP and
single release. One of the added tracks will be a recording of Seasons in
the Sun that never saw the light of day because of contract restrictions
(I had recorded it earlier for Capitol Records.) The listen to the Warm CD
will contain 17 tracks that were not on the original CD.
All this is probably more than you want to know. Warmly, Rod
PS: I still love vinyl, enough to know it hates sunlight.
FROM LAZY AFTERNOON TO EARLY HARVEST
I was showing friends at work an autographed picture I received from you
many years ago. They are fans of your poetry and were unaware of your
early movies and records.
I am trying to come up with the name of your record of folk songs I wore
the groves off, which included "Follow The Drinking Gourd." Can you
refresh my memory? Thanks, Susan Watkins
Dear Susan, The album you are thinking of is entitled Songs for a Lazy
Afternoon. It was my first album for a major record company (Liberty
Records LSP 3011.) Here's a track listing: All Around Trinidad; Aunt
Louise; Bimini; The Bird's Courting Song; Colorado Trail; Follow the
Drinking Gourd; Happy is a Boy Named Me; JayDee; John Hardy; Lazy
Afternoon; Sinner Man; Puttin' on the Style; With a "No" that sounds like
"Yes."
I was a tenor in those days. While there are no plans to release the album
on CD you can get a good idea of what I sounded like early on by listening
to "Colorado Trail" (taken from Lazy Afternoon) on the Stanyan/LaserLight
CD Early Harvest (12 445).
Early Harvest is my favorite of all the compilation compact discs of my
work because it's a retrospect that starts with Advice to Folk Singers and
ends with Stay With Me. That makes is an over view of my recording life
from the 50's through 1994.
Here are the tracks on Early Harvest: Advice to Folk Singers; Colorado
Trail; Happy is a Boy Named Me; The World I Used to Know; The Intellectual
Rag; Sin; Way Farin' Stranger; Times A-Gettin' Hard; Doesn't Anybody Know
My Name (2:10-6:18); It Was A Very Good Year (duet with Barry McGuire);
Shady Grove (duet with Jack Elliott); The Summer's Long; Rose; Many
Summer's Ago; April People; An Isle in the Water; The Beautiful Strangers;
I Never Go There Anymore; The Lovers; Baby It's Cold Outside (duet with
Petula Clark); The Ballad of the Sad Young Men; Love, Let Me Not Hunger;
Movin' Down The Line and Stay with Me.
I was recently playing Early Harvest because I thought I might give "Sin"
to David Galligan who's producing Valerie Pediford's new act. I ended up
liking the disc so much that I plan to use several of the songs in my new
shows beginning with the Citrus College performance on November 10th.
Sometimes I forget about my early songs.
Thanks for remembering the 'Folk Years." Susan. Warmly, Rod
THANKS
Thank you, for being with me all of my adult life. I am now
approaching 51 and you have been in my life, like an old friend, since my
first child was born.
I was 18 and two weeks when motherhood came into my life. My husband was
away (VietNam) and my mother had to stand in for him. She was truly my
best friend then and remains today my truest and most trusted friend. You
were with me in the hospital after a grueling 36 hours of labor and an
operation to remove my child from my belly...what an experience!
My mother purchased "Listen to the Warm" for me to take to the hospital.
What a comfort you were then, like a soft warm blanket or great cup of
coffee. I forgot my pain as I read every poem, cried with every glimpse
into your life and trusted that you were the most experienced and
insightful man I could imagine. At 18 I was hooked on Rod McKuen.
Over the next several years besides having another child in '72 and
getting divorced in '73 (much to young to get married in the first place),
I bought "Seasons in the Sun", "Hand in Hand", "Alone" and a 3 hardback
set of "Listen to the Warm", "And to Each Season" and "In Someone's
Shadow" and they have always been near me since. Like beacons to a safe
harbor each book has certain works that I am drawn to for different
reasons.
"The Beautiful Strangers" and "Thirty-Five" are just two of my favorites.
I even embroidered on my much loved jean jacket "...There are some wounds
I never speak about. Some things that words have done to me that none will
ever know." I still have that jacket after all these years...funny huh?
You have been such an inspiration to me for so many years ... through my ups
and downs, through my single post-marriage years in the 70's with new
loves and losses which left my heart broken in so many pieces, so many
times. I turned to you for comfort, time and time
again ... and still do even after 23 years marriage to my husband, my best
friend. I simply wanted to say thank you, and not ramble on, but I am a
poet too. Always have been, and we tend to get flowery sometimes, don't
we, or at least I do.
Good Health and Great Happiness to you Rod, Kathy
Dear Kathy, Thanks for sharing so much of your life with me in your
thoughtful letter. It's correspondence like yours that help me get through
busy afternoons like this one when I’m making lists of things I have to do
and things I haven't done. The two are not exactly the same things. What I
'haven't' done seems to go from list to list and eventually becomes
irrelevant. The 'Things to do' list usually produces some results but
never enough.
So it's my turn to say 'thanks' for making me feel a bit relevant on this
early autumn day. My best to you and yours. Warmly, Rod
LOST POEM: SUNDAY
Hi, My husband passed away last year but I remember a poem, I believe set
to music we used to listen to (he had it taped). It's something about a
couple spending the night together, and at the end he says something to
the effect -- It's Already Tomorrow.
Please, if you know the poem I mean, can you let me know what book of
poems it is in? Or if it's a tape, the name of that also?
Thank you so much. Linda Ruthem
Dear Linda: You’re right, to all intense and purposes “Sunday” is a lost
poem. It first appeared in the San Sebastian Strings album “The Earth.” I
recorded it again for “Back to Carnegie Hall” and it was anthologized in
Greatest Hits V: Speaking of Love. All three albums only came out on LP
and cassette and have long ago gone out of catalog. I am considering
Sunday for a double CD I’m putting together for Sanctuary Records in Great
Britain.
As far as I can remember it’s never been in print before, certainly not in
any of my books. Printing it without Anita Kerr’s beautiful music behind
it doesn’t seem quite right. Come to think of it Ken may have featured it
on one of his Flight Plans. In any case, courtesy of Jay Hagan, here it
is; but remember because this was written to be read aloud to music it is
more conversational than poetic. No apology, just a statement of fact.
Affectionately, Rod
SUNDAY
Sunday.
It’s hard to believe it can be so quiet
after such a noisy Saturday night.
There were so many words
I wanted to use last night.
Some I’m afraid of,
like tomorrow
and together
and love.
If I say I love you
I want it to mean more than
I love peanut butter or James Bond movies.
I want it to mean I’m letting go for always.
that I won’t turn back.
I’ve never used the word before.
I’ve been afraid.
Once you say you love somebody
you can’t take it back.
But let’s not talk about love.
Let’s talk about dogs or summer time.
We can read the funny papers out loud.
or go to the zoo
or just stay here like we are.
Come out along the trees with me.
You never knew my middle name.
I haven’t told you that.
Do you know that I can stand on my hands?
Almost.
There’s probably a mole
somewhere down your back
that escaped my eyes in darkness.
We need to know it all.
Everything that brought us
to each other’s eyes and Why.
All those mysteries we’ve saved for no one
we can give to one another.
Where did the night go?
Already it’s Sunday.
I love you.
-from the album “The Earth.” © 1967 by Rod McKuen & Anita Kerr
I’M STRONG BUT I LIKE ROSES
Dear Mr. McKuen: A friend of mine introduced me to one of your songs, "I’m
Strong But I like Roses". He once bought the music but he lost it. I would
like to know if I can buy this music for him. Please let me know were to
find it.
Thank you very much for your attention and I hope I hear from you, Adriana
E. Marrero De Lima
Dear Adriana, I'm Strong But I. Like Roses can be found in the songbook
The Songs of Rod McKuen, Vol. II. You can order it from
Stanyan By Mail.
All my best, Rod
PUSHING THE CLOUDS AWAY
Rod, I discovered you in seventh grade on an assignment to find my
favorite poem. Our English teacher told us if we chose her favorite poem
we would get an automatic A+. I was a frightened skinny, brown haired,
brown-eyed girl who stood in front of her class and recited the words...
"Clouds are not the cheeks of angels you know, they're only clouds..."
when my teacher leapt from her chair and pronounced "A+ you found my
favorite poem!"
I didn't have to finish the poem that day but it has been indelibly etched
into my mind and it plays over and over again as I enjoy the clouds of
Colorado. Tonight, my daughter who is in honors English had to chose a
favorite poet out of default so I wanted to introduce her to my favorite
poet and found your web site. But I can't find the "Clouds" poem - can you
help me? -Beth Morris
Dear Beth: I loved your story. Who was that masked teacher? Pushing the
Clouds Away first appeared in “Listen to the Warm” and the San Sebastian
Strings album, The Sea. Over the years it has been reprinted several times
in the Flight Plan. You can access a copy of it by going to the "Search
This Site" link at the bottom of this page and typing in the title. Don’t
forget to put quotes around it.
Thanks for the kind thoughts and thanks especially for passing “Pushing
the Clouds Away” on to your daughter. Warmly, Rod
The mail continues tomorrow. Sleep warm.
RM 10/20/2002 4:40:PM PST
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(posted 09/28/2002).
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