TIME ON MY HANDS
Not long ago I had reason to say to a friend that I had ‘time on my hands’, and the phrase unexpectedly brought to mind a song of that name that I first heard in 1998 on an album called The McGarrigle Hour. A droll tune written and performed by Chaim Tannenbaum, I’ve always thought of it, perhaps wrongly, as a charming tale of a New York flâneur set in the 1940s or ‘50s. I find it oddly touching.
I listened to the song again, enjoyed it, and found my way to Tannenbaum’s only solo album, which was made in his late sixties and released in 2016, by which time he had spent most of his musical career playing with the extended McGarrigle family, essentially as a sideman, adding touches on banjo or guitar and singing background harmony. This role seems to have suited him well, as he was - and is - an old-fashioned amateur who likes to live his musical life at a leisurely pace. Born to immigrant parents in Montreal, he went to the same high school as Kate McGarrigle, learnt to play several instruments, and then joined an informal band with Kate and Anna, with whom he developed a long friendship and musical camaraderie. He nevertheless continued to pursue his main professional interest, which was teaching philosophy at university.
Although it appears that Tannenbaum never had a strong desire to make his own record, he was eventually persuaded to do so when he retired from teaching and moved to New York with his wife. He said that he’d have a preference for an ‘Italian wedding band’ to work with, but ended up with musicians who usually performed French cabaret songs of the 1930s, as well as with a handful of guests. They were a good match. The resulting album was mainly made up of obscure folk songs and three original compositions, all of which are notable either for their wit or wistful nostalgia. Although not blatantly autobiographical, his own songs seem to be based on personal experience; for instance, in what is probably the most striking of them, London, Longing for Home, Tannenbaum clearly draws from memories of the time he spent there studying for a PhD. It would be unfair to describe them as bitter, but the lyrics are decidedly gloomy, amounting to a dour description of the city and its people in terms of an English ‘kitchen sink drama’ of the 1960s. Tannenbaum later explained that his songs were ‘about an irremediable sense of exile, an exile from one’s own past, where the monuments, the landscape, have been destroyed’, and that certainly rings true.
Fictional or not, Tannenbaum’s dejected portrayal of London took me aback, particularly as the track goes on for almost ten minutes, and you can hardly miss the point. It’s common enough to find songs about a longing for home or somewhere you love (the McGarrigle sisters wrote and recorded one such beauty, Mendocino, which Tannenbaum has covered on his album), but it is rare to find lyrics in which the place the singer wishes to leave is described in such disgruntled detail, so I tried to think of another, possibly written by an American in England, that might be compared to Tannenbaum’s plaintive and surprisingly agreeable lament.
I failed to find an equivalent, but I was reminded of Paul Simon’s Homeward Bound, which was recorded in 1965 and included on the British release of Simon and Garfunkel’s Sounds of Silence album. I knew that Simon had written it while feeling despondent at a railway station near Liverpool when he was touring England in the early 1960s, and for a long time I assumed that the song’s lyrics described his longing to get back home to America. I subsequently discovered, however, that he was actually writing about returning to his girlfriend Kathy Chitty in Brentford, Essex, where he had met her after performing at the Railway Hotel. Simon wrote several other beautiful songs about her that are included on his first solo album, The Paul Simon Songbook, among them the delicate April Come She Will and the lovely Kathy’s Song, in which, like Chaim Tannenbaum in London, Longing for Home, the drizzle and ‘rain-drenched streets’ are the context for his doubts and loneliness, but also, in this case, for loving thoughts about their relationship.
Kathy Chitty can be seen with Simon on the cover of the album, but she soon became uncomfortable with his growing celebrity, and they went separate ways. Nonetheless, she was not forgotten; memories of their intimacy resurfaced soon afterwards in one of Simon and Garfunkel’s most poignant songs, America, on their 1968 Bookends album. Describing a journey on a Greyhound bus, it vividly evokes a young man’s hope and anxiety as he and his companion set out on a quest for adventure and discovery. Its mood of sombre innocence, both emotive and affecting, is reminiscent of the final scene in the 1967 film The Graduate, which featured many Simon and Garfunkel songs on its soundtrack: joy and elation fade away and slowly turn to reflective melancholy.
For further exploration:
Chaim Tannenbaum:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUbBkjCyF14
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0upKZIWT2Q
Paul Simon/Simon and Garfunkel:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylCGvOUL938
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eo2ZsAOlvEM
Final scene in The Graduate:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14pdNYXY3Zo