Without Defense (Fight Redux)

Listen:



Today's song is Fight, another quiet whisper of a tune from Look Alive.

Fight comes closest to the Joni Mitchell/Nick Drake vibe I had in mind when we started recording.

This is what Joni Mitchell said about Blue:

The Blue album, there's hardly a dishonest note in the vocals. At that period of my life, I had no personal defenses. I felt like a cellophane wrapper on a pack of cigarettes. I felt like I had absolutely no secrets from the world and I couldn't pretend in my life to be strong. Or to be happy. But the advantage of it in the music was that there were no defenses there either.

I can't really improve on or add to that.

Fight was written in two days, a verse each day.

The second verse originally ended with the line "So go our days until the summer ends."

We recorded Fight in one take, all live. I played my old '63 Gibson ES-125. We mic'ed both the amp (with a sweet reverb setting) and the actual guitar, as well as my vocals, and the result is ambient, eerie, close...

And defenseless.

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FIGHT

When the time is running down
And what's lost can't be found
Be it you by my side

And the tears of the night
Are revealed by the light
As silent prayers falling on deaf ears

Anything you do
I will fight for you

Silence comes like a knife
It cuts you up before your eyes
The pieces fall, down and down and down

Empty hears and broken strings
And empty songs for us to sing
So go our days until our story ends

Anything you do
I will fight for you

jbg