As much as I really like the Beatles, today that's all that their music does for me - evoke likability and enjoyment. But none of the songs, much less whole albums, make me think about the human condition and what it means and about my place personally. DSOTM does. Here it is, "Live at Wembley," the full album.
I would call attention to two factors that still impress highly even after 40-plus years. One is the remarkable engineering of the tracks that leads them seamlessly one to another. But this was not their rock invention. In fact, the first credit for that innovation belongs to Sgt. Pepper's. Nonetheless, it is simply stunning here because in Pepper's the technique basically only provides a lead-in from one song to a different one that is thematically unrelated.
However, in DSOTM there is thematic unity from the first note to the last. This makes the album more of a concert than a rock performance, although it excels at that, too. The instrumentals are extended and compelling. The vocals are matched almost as a counterpoint to the instruments at one place, as a complement at another.
It is the fourth track, "Time," that pushes the album into the number one spot for me. When the album was released in 1973 I was graduating from high school. Now I am 44 years on, in my early sixties, and "Time" hits me harder now than ever:
Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
Fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way
Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain
You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun
So you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in a relative way but you're older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death
Every year is getting shorter never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone, the song is over
Thought I'd something more to say
HomeTrust me, young people, when you get to my age, this song will put you into a highly reflective and self-evaluating mode.
Home again
I like to be here
When I can
When I come home
Cold and tired
It's good to warm my bones
Beside the fire
Far away
Across the field
Tolling on the iron bell
Calls the faithful to their knees
To hear the softly spoken magic spell
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