Tag Archives: run

#1144: George Harrison – Run of the Mill

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Well, it looks like this track right here will be the last one you’ll see on here from George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass album. I know, it’s a real shame, isn’t it? On the contrary, if there was a real-life situation where songs were disappearing from albums and the one left standing was the one you could hear for the rest of your days, I wouldn’t complain about having ‘Run of the Mill’ as the survivor. Ever since hearing it around 2010/11 via an old, old streaming service called We7 that went defunct years ago, the track’s been a strong favourite of mine from the record. It’s that horn melody during the introduction that always stirs something within me initially. And Harrison’s lyrics are also something to ponder on, even though they’re very much himself and his own experiences.

The big experience influencing the song’s words would be the tense time when the Beatles, that band Harrison used to be in, were on the verge of breaking up. Harrison didn’t feel he was being taken seriously as a songwriter by bandmates Paul McCartney and John Lennon, and his relationships with the two were becoming strained. Adding the fact that they were trying to run a business at the same time, which ran itself into the ground quite dramatically, and the whole situation was a sorry state of affairs for everyone involved. ‘Run of the Mill’ contains Harrison’s thoughts on the matter, which basically tell his two bandmates to get their acts together and stop laying their own frustrations out on him without mentioning their names outright.

The performers on this particular track are an all-star cast, featuring the members who would go on to become Derek and the Dominos with Eric Clapton very during the album sessions for All Things… Session musician Jim Price provides the trumpets that play the song’s main instrumental hook. But, apart from George Harrison’s great vocal, my ears also tend to latch onto the bass guitar work of Carl Radle that climb and fall and perform other melodic hooks that interplay with the track’s chord progression. Harrison is also singing “It’s you that decides” and not “The jeweller decides”, which I believed to be the lyric initially. ‘Run of the Mill’ is a song of rumination, but it doesn’t aim to make the listener feel sad or melancholy in any way. You can empathise with Harrison for sure. But I think it’s the warming music against the resigned inspiration behind the lyrics that make the track one of the songwriter’s best.

#1143: The Beatles – Run for Your Life

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I don’t care what anyone says. I really like this song. The Beatles’ ‘Run for Your Life’ has gained a bit of a stink amidst the Internet community in recent years. People hear the song’s first line and are immediately shocked. Appalled. “I’d rather see you dead, little girl, than to be with another man.” Gasp. “What? Oh, my God.” Then come the rest of the lyrics that detail this girl’s low survival rate at the hands of the song’s narrator who will kill her if she even dare tried to leave him. It strikes a chord. Then add in the whole ‘John Lennon beat women back in his day’ statement (which is true and is bad, but the guy’s dead – can’t get any more cancelled than that) and people have a field day with criticising it. Then there’s the argument that it doesn’t bring the most satisfying end to the band’s Rubber Soul album. That’s a notion I would be fine with agreeing with if I cared that much.

The track was the first to be recorded for the album in October 1965. Not much is known of how John Lennon came to write the words, but the opening line (stated in the above paragraph) was taken from the Elvis Presley song ‘Baby Let’s Play House’. I assume that everything that followed was made just to match the tone of that source of inspiration. Backing up the threatening lyrics is an upbeat performance by the four band members. Lennon’s vocal performance is one that I thoroughly enjoy too. He’s backed up by the harmonies of McCartney and Harrison on the choruses, which aid in building that sort of tension within the song, that’s then resolved in the slide guitar and rhythm guitar riff that arrive after each iteration. A piercing bluesy guitar solo adds the icing on the song’s cake. In the end, George Harrison really liked ‘Run for Your Life’. Lennon not so much. He would later state that it was his least favourite Beatles song. In fact, I’d probably say the reason the track was chosen as the album closer was because he thought it was the worst one out of all the songs they’d recorded for the album, rather than thinking it would be a good way to finish things off.

I dunno. I think at the end of the day, it’s just a song and shouldn’t be taken so literally. I mean, are there people living today who could very much hold the values and ideals held by the narrator of the song? I wouldn’t doubt it. And that sucks. But at the same time, it’s so outrageous coming from the Beatles that you almost sort of have to laugh at it. Is Lennon writing about himself? Don’t think you can objectively say no. But I think once people learn about Lennon’s history, they hear the track and judge the dude’s character solely based on it. A whole hypocrisy argument comes in because Lennon was the peace guy, even though this song was written years before he became the figurehead of that specific movement. Maybe it’s me who’s making a big deal out of all of this. I’m just writing about what I’ve seen, I swear. Whatever view you may hold on it, I’m gonna carry on listening regardless.

#926: Blur – No Distance Left to Run

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Damon Albarn and former Elastica frontwoman Justine Frischmann were sometimes labelled the ‘King and Queen of Britpop’ during that time in the ’90s when that whole movement was happening. They were a couple through and through until they broke up in 1998, leaving Albarn traumatised and incredibly bummed out by the ordeal. The fallout of that, plus a dependence on heroin and straining relationships within Blur resulted in 13, the group’s most experimental album, possibly their most sonically adventurous too. It truly goes off the deep end about four songs in and onward. So when ‘No Distance Left to Run’ comes in as the record’s penultimate track, it enforces a sound of band that really has nothing left to give.

The song has to go down as one of the saddest in Blur’s catalogue. It’s about the dreadful realisation that a relationship’s over, one that a lot of years went into with a lot of heart, and tearfully wishing the other person all the best with someone else while you’re all alone and left wanting to die. I may have exaggerated a little bit on that last point. But it’s clear that Albarn wasn’t in the greatest of places while recording this. His trembling vocal take alongside Graham Coxon’s weeping guitar are the highlights throughout. In the band’s 2010 documentary, named after this track as a matter of fact, Coxon mentions that Albarn never told the bandmates what was going on, but it was quite obvious that things weren’t good. So he tried to make a riff and some chord progressions that would match whatever words Albarn wrote down. Fair to say he does them justice. I do particularly like the spacey instrumental in the middle, with those twinkling keys that pan from left to right alongside those smooth ‘ooh’ vocals. I thought it was a choir doing them, but I upon further research it seems they are done by Albarn and Coxon, or Albarn double-tracked. Whatever way, it’s good listening.

I wasn’t properly living around the time of this album’s release or thereafter. Would have been very young at the time. But looking back as a Blur fan and reading up on stuff, ‘No Distance Left to Run’ could very much have been the band’s last track on an album. One on which there’s singing anyway. Going into the new century, it seemed that the group wasn’t sure where to go, releasing a ‘Best Of’ compilation. Then Damon Albarn put more focus on Gorillaz, and forged a whole other path of success. But thankfully that wasn’t the case, and two more Blur albums were made. Let’s hope there’s another soon.

My iPod #308: Linkin Park – Easier to Run

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Hmmmm…… It’s now 2014. So from what I remember the first time I actually listened to a Linkin Park song was when the “Breaking the Habit” video was showing on the television. Well, either that or the one for “Numb”. Crazy. I’ve known Linkin Park for about ten years now. But they’ve never been my favourite band. I can get into their songs though. Especially their songs. Not the most recent ones though, I’m a bit off with those. I’m more the “Hybrid Theory”-“Minutes to Midnight” Linkin Park guy. I’m actually not that big of a fan of “Minutes” either. The singles off it are great though. Nah. My favourite album of theirs is the one in the middle of those two, “Meteora“.

Yeah man, “Meteora” is the only Linkin Park album that I could sit down and listen to all the way through. It gets a bit of shit for sounding a bit too much like its predecessor. I can’t add much to that. Never listened to “Hybrid” in full. Nu-metal is a genre where you can’t really change much too. You have the rap-rock style which is done very well on “Meteora”. The same can’t be said for a lot of nu-metal albums out there. All the songs segue into each other too, and I like that shit.

“Easier to Run” is a track on “Meteora”. The sixth one, I believe. It’s about finding easier to run away from your problems rather than facing them head on, because of the fear of facing more pain. Quite sad, yes.

I’ve always liked how this song sounds. There’s something very epic and atmospheric about it. The quiet and meek tone established by Chester’s vocal and the light guitar plucks during the verses which then builds tension when Mike comes in with his part and the strings enter before caving into the loud guitars that take over during the chorus. Very cool.

It’s all very slow too. But not in bad way. It just makes you appreciate it more, you know? And it makes a good contrast to the following track, whose one note string opening appears in the last few seconds of this one. Just as the dust settles, there’s something running at you that you can see from a distance. Then “Faint” takes over. Good transition.