He Was A Friend Of Mine — Dave Van Ronk
#365Songs: January 9
Yesterday’s #365Songs recommendation highlighted one of Stevie Wonder’s more explicitly political songs — and for good reason. Song can be a tremendous symbol of, and catalyst for, political action.
But songs can also be spiritual. They can heal, strengthen, and save.
We’ve all likely said, at one time or another, that a song saved our lives.
(U2 even released a single called “Your Song Saved My Life.” Admittedly, it was for the Sing 2 soundtrack, but still, the sentiment is legit!)
Take a look at this Reddit thread if you get a chance; it’s heavy as hell:
https://www.reddit.com/r/popheads/comments/5r2o0m/discussion_what_song_saved_your_life/
only a few people know about this but when i was going to kill myself “angels” by chance came on and actually made me…..not kill myself.
‘Marry The Night’ gives me so much hope. ‘Sweatshirt’ made me put that gun down.
I embraced my sexuality around then, and it put me in an awful mood, because I couldn’t accept it, which eventually pushed me into depression. These songs helped me cope with myself, and later helped me when I started therapy.
The comments go on and on. And it’s just one conversation. There are millions of them going on all over the world, all the time. Songs matter.
The act of songwriting itself has saved many a life as well. But it has its shortcomings, too. John Fogarty wrote and sung about this with painful, beautiful clarity:
Wrote a song for everyone
Wrote a song for truth
Wrote a song for everyone
And I couldn’t even talk to you
I don’t know if a song has ever saved my life. Largely because I don’t really know how genuinely close to death I’ve ever been. I suspect the truth is more often and more close than I’d care to realize or admit.
But I do know this. My life would have been very different if I’d never heard Dave Van Ronk sing “He Was A Friend Of Mine.”
First off, the voice. It wasn’t pretty. Neither was mine. It gave me hope. And the roughness, the cracks, the breaks — it brought the song alive for me. THIS … was storytelling. It physically hurt to hear him sing. I loved it. The melody was perfection. Folky, but bluesy. Major, but minor. The rhythm was hypnotizing. Straight, but swung. Soft, but hard. The whole thing just seemed to exist in a space that didn’t exist. In this weird space that was just always in between.
And the lyric. God, the lyric. It was so beautiful, so painful, so sweet and awful all at once.
Every time I think about him now
Lord I just can’t keep from crying
’Cause he was friend a friend of mine
It was everything I wanted to feel, and everything I wanted to be.
Did it save my life? I don’t know. It probably did. Several times. These days, it restores me to my life. When I feel lost, uncertain, out of touch with who I am, I return to this song. It reminds me why I’ve done what I’ve done and why I do what I do. It reminds me what I wanted to be and what I still want to be.
It is, to me, the gospel. The gospel that takes the lost and renders them found.
~
Start following the #365Songs playlist today, and listen to each new song with each new article!
