{"id":21334,"date":"2024-06-06T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-06-06T06:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/?p=21334"},"modified":"2024-06-05T17:56:33","modified_gmt":"2024-06-05T16:56:33","slug":"forever-gentle-on-my-mind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/2024\/06\/06\/forever-gentle-on-my-mind\/","title":{"rendered":"FOREVER GENTLE ON MY MIND"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

FOREVER GENTLE ON MY MIND<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

with Norman Warwick<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In 1966, Nashville-based songwriter John Hartford (left<\/em><\/strong>) and his wife, Betty, ventured to their local theater for a showing of historical romance Doctor Zhivago<\/em>. Set in 1917 to the backdrop of the Russian Revolution, the film\u2019s lovers, Yuri Zhivago and Lara Antipova, made an impression on Hartford; their story mirrored that of his own rocky marriage, which would end in divorce a few years later. After returning home to his family\u2019s Tennessee trailer, Hartford penned a brand new song, \u201cGentle On My Mind,\u201d in a matter of 30 minutes. The lyrics \u201ccame real fast, a blaze, a blur,\u201d he\u2019d later recall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hartford wrote the tune while \u201cthinking in pictures, like paintings using words and sound,\u201d letting the tale of back roads, ink stains, highways and wheat fields flow through him, imagery breezing readily from his pen to the page. \u201cIt violates all the principles of pop songwriting,\u201d Hartford told The Tennessean<\/em> of the track in 1987, adding that the sheer number of words makes it \u201chard to sing.\u201d Inarguably, however, the song\u2019s strangest trait is its lack of a chorus. The verses endure with a lackadaisical continuity, picking up and dropping off above Hartford\u2019s banjo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cGentle On My Mind\u201d also rebuked his typical song-writing procedure. \u201cI think the melody is the most important part of [writing],\u201d he said in a 1993 interview with Banjo Newsletter<\/em>. \u201cA lot of times I take it into a jam session and test it before I even start writing words.\u201d This time, Hartford was bleeding glowing imagery from the get-go, paralleling his own life by tapping into feelings of limitless love and longing, contrasted by an unremitting need to be free.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cGentle On My Mind\u201d found Hartford\u2014or an anonymous narrator\u2014passing leisurely through junkyards and lingering along desolate railroad tracks, the only constant in life being the bittersweet persistence of memory. \u201cSome other woman cryin\u2019 to her mother, \u2018cause she turned and I was gone,\u201d Hartford sang, but his attempt at nonchalant faded quickly as he described his lost lover as \u201cmovin\u2019 on the backroads by the river of [his] memory.\u201d He promised that no tears of joy, nor blinding burns from the summer sun, could prevent him from seeing her in his mind\u2019s eye.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Rolling Stone once described Glen Campbell (right)<\/em><\/strong> as \u201cinhabiting every song he recorded.\u201d As such, when the Arkansas-born musician heard \u201cGentle On My Mind\u201d in 1967, it was a fateful meeting. Campbell purchased the single and immediately got to work recording it with the Wrecking Crew\u2014whom he was once a member of\u2014at Capitol Studios in Hollywood, setting in motion a production process that would give the song a new lease on life\u2014and further it to international success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Drummer Hal Blaine (left)<\/em><\/strong> recalled his involvement in the group of young studio musicians: \u201cWe came along at a time when rock \u2018n\u2019 roll was just beginning to get popular, but there were a lot of musicians who refused to play this filthy, nasty music,\u201d Blaine told uDiscover Music in 2018, noting in his 1990 memoir that the band received disparaging remarks insisting they would \u201cwreck\u201d the music industry, and that rock \u2018n\u2019 roll was a \u201cweek or two\u201d – long fad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Campbell joined as a session guitarist in the 1960\u2019s, a move which would see him supply guitar for\u00a0the Beach Boys<\/a>\u2018 acclaimed\u00a0Pet Sounds<\/em>, and join the band as Brian Wilson\u2019s replacement on tour from December 1964 to March 1965. \u201c[Glen] didn\u2019t read a note of music. He played by ear. He could do some of the wildest solos known to man. It was incredible,\u201d Blaine said, \u201cand Glen just absolutely fell right in with us with this new genre of music.\u201d The demo tape of \u201cGentle On My Mind\u201d was burnished by producer Al De Lory, and released in June 1967 alongside B-side \u201cJust Another Man,\u201d climbing to an impressive #62 on the Hot 100.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Campbell\u2019s version called upon rolling acoustics and his buttery smooth vocal delivery to help hoist the track\u2014and him\u2014to a new level of popularity as a solo recording artist. The song\u2019s palatable, folksy flavor, the same attribute that led RCA to cease promoting Hartford\u2019s version, proved its highest-selling quality. With no chorus, almost no rhyming lines and a total departure from country\u2019s pillars of song-writing, \u201cGentle On My Mind\u201d flourished into a song everybody and their mother wanted not only to sing along to, but cover in a professional setting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A version by Frank Sinatra (right<\/em><\/strong>), Aretha Franklin, Elvis Presley and Dean Martin followed, among thousands of others\u2014Tammy Wynette\u2019s rendition takes on the perspective of the woman, whose door \u201cstays open\u201d for her lost love should he feel called to return. Hartford and Campbell both won Grammys for their performances of the song in 1968, and the Band Perry followed suit in 2015 when their version, recorded for\u00a0Glen Campbell: I\u2019ll Be Me<\/em>, took home another. In 1982, Hartford donated the original, handwritten \u201cGentle On My Mind\u201d lyric sheet to the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, but the track\u2019s historical significance has snowballed in the decades since.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In watching Hartford and Campbell perform the song live, it becomes clear that there are two distinct moods presented by the lyrics. Hartford is soft-spoken, his voice naked and irresolute but undoubtedly genuine. This can be attributed to his disinterest in certain facets of the music industry. \u201cI\u2019m not into the whole entertainment-business game,\u201d Hartford (originally\u00a0Harford<\/em>, but renamed at the suggestion of Chet Atkins) said in 1969, going so far as to call steam-boating his life\u2019s work, and music something that \u201cgot in the way.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a self-coined \u201cdrugstore pilot,\u201d Hartford had his heart situated in steam-boating before he ever picked up an instrument, let alone released his own catalogue of work. Yet, much like the undercurrent of humility that defined his music, Hartford never thought of himself as particularly knowledgeable in the field. In conversation with Mike Leonard, he explained: \u201cWhen a real expert comes into the pilot house, I\u2019m always content to stand back and let him show me how it\u2019s done.\u201d His love for the water was \u201call-encompassing,\u201d which is what made it unexplainable, leaving him to utilize music as a means of verbalizing his passions more articulately.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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While Hartford would never live to see himself become a legacy act\u2014his 20-year-long battle with Non-Hodgkin lymphoma would prove fatal in 2001\u2014his body of work endures with excruciating sincerity, so much so that listening to the original \u201cGentle On My Mind\u201d feels like reading a tear-stained postcard penned a little too late, from a little too far away, the words fading in and out of audible distance like half-confident confessions. Hartford is shy, Campbell is content\u2014both dispositions somehow do right by the lyrics down to the very last word uttered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why Campbell (left) <\/em><\/strong>ended up giving the track its commercial wings is up for debate, but one could argue that while the soul of the song lies in the throes of romantic uncertainty, approaching the lyrics with confidence sold the story to a broader audience. He held heartache to a light so beautiful the words melted away, urging you to skim by the narrator\u2019s weaknesses and lean into their strengths. Campbell was objectively better at this kind of showmanship, furthered by Hartford\u2019s total lack of interest in being a showman to begin with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The most satisfying accomplishment an artist can hope to achieve is hoisting their work to the untouchable shelf of immortality\u2014that place where a melody morphs to a hymn, resonating at a level so deep that no number of years can separate it from being universally loved, artistically venerated and historically recognized. John Hartford climbed there with \u201cGentle On My Mind,\u201d and, with the help of Glen Campbell, the track has become a relay race of poetic truth spanning over half a century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The primary source for this piece was written by Emma Schoors who is a music journalist, photographer, and wannabe fifth Bangles member based in Los Angeles, California. Find her on Instagram @eschoors.<\/em> and has already been published on line. Authors and Titles have been attributed in our text wherever possible<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Images employed have been taken from on line sites only where  categorised as  images free to use.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For a more comprehensive detail of our attribution policy see our for reference only post on 7th<\/sup> April 2023  entitled Aspirations And Attributions.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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