SONG OF THE DAY

“Daniel” – Elton John (Don’t Shoot Me I’m Only the Piano Player, MCA Records, 1973). Written by Elton John, Bernie Taupin.

INTERESTING FACTS (from wikipedia)

– In the United States the song reached #2 on the pop charts and #1 on the adult contemporary charts for two weeks straight.

– Bernie Taupin wrote “Daniel” while inspired by the events of the Vietnam War.

– Taupin has said of the song: “Daniel had been the most misinterpreted song that we’d ever written…The story was about a guy that went back to a small town in Texas, returning from the Vietnam War. They’d lauded him when he came home and treated him like a hero. But, he just wanted to go home, go back to the farm, and try to get back to the life that he’d led before. I wanted to write something that was sympathetic to the people that came home.”

– Covers by Wilson Phillips, Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, Tortoise, Fuel and the Japanese ukulele rock duo Petty Booka.

MY TAKE

9/11 was my first week of college in Buffalo, NY. I woke up to the alarm playing “Daniel” by Elton John on the radio, a prophetic beginning to a day that is burned into my memory forever. Coming back from class, a janitor on the first floor of my building sat me down in front of a television in the lounge and told me I needed to watch the television. When I finally figured out what was happening and where, I froze. My roommate Jacky, who I barely knew, was from New Jersey, and her father worked in one of the Twin Towers. That much I knew, what little else I knew about her, I knew that. I raced up the stairs to the fourth floor to find her hysterical. Phone lines were down throughout the state, and she couldn’t get a hold of anyone. We didn’t have cell phones yet, but if we had, they’d probably have been useless too. It took hours to find out that her dad had been late getting to work that day, and was 20 minutes from being in that building. Hours of absolute agony. Every friend I had from Michigan was emailing and IMing ask if I “felt the blast” and “was I okay”. We actually got a pretty good laugh out of this together, considering no one from Michigan apparently knew just how far Buffalo was from Manhattan, and since there was nothing else we wanted to say out loud we talked about this for hours. Later that night, after we found out her father was okay and the school was quiet and unnerved, I saw the post-it on my desk telling me to look up the song “Daniel” after classes. I typed in a search for the lyrics, and had some of the most out of body few minutes of my life as I read along:

Daniel is traveling tonight on a plane
I can see the red tail lights heading for Spain
Oh and I can see Daniel waving goodbye
God it looks like Daniel, must be the clouds in my eyes

….

Daniel my brother you are older than me
Do you still feel the pain of the scars that won’t heal
Your eyes have died but you see more than I
Daniel you’re a star in the face of the sky

A few days later I was in a van with the college football team I managed on our way to our first away game in Jamaica, Queens. Driving through the Southern tip of Manhattan, driving past the smoldering smoke which permeated the air for miles and days, my coaches cried softly in the car seats around me while I cried so deep I could barely breathe for the sight and smell of that event

Later in 2001, I saw Ani DiFranco (Buffalo-native and indie scene superstar) perform downtown. She presented that hometown audience with a new poem that still resonates today. Here’s a link to the words and an MP3 of her performing it live. I can’t say I’ll ever close that chapter in my life, since it comes up again and again every year, fresh and raw, but Ani wrote the last few pages for sure and I find solace in coming back to her words again, in 2009 (please excuse the extended metaphor, but “people are just poems”).

Finally, I present to you David Bowie performing Simon & Garfunkel’s “America” as the opening number of the Concert For New York City, which took place days after 9/11/01 for the firefighters and policemen and policewomen of the city. This is a simple performance, with carnivalesque toy piano as background and sobering, heart-wrenching vocals by Bowie who’s simply sitting cross-legged on a dark stage in a simple spotlight. My dad bought the DVD of the concert right after we watched an E! documentary on Bowie and he saw this performance. I think it’s the top performance of the event, and perhaps my favorite live cover ever.

VIDEOS OF THE DAY

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