November 27-December 3, 2003

music

Test of Time

WHAT CAN BROWNE DO FOR YOU?: Philly's Denison Witmer is among those covering the Jackson Browne classic these days.

Nico said there'd be "These Days."

by Michael Pelusi

Some songs -- they get called standards -- never go away: "God Only Knows," "When Doves Cry," "Happy Birthday to You." Other songs are gone even before they reach the chorus. They don’t get called anything.

Then there are songs that lay fallow, and then suddenly, seemingly, start turning up again and again.

I’ve been out walking,

I don’t do too much talking these days.

"These Days" first appeared on Chelsea Girl (1967), the debut solo album from Nico, the haunted Teutonic beauty best known for providing the lead vocals on three songs on the first Velvet Underground album earlier that year. The song was written by Jackson Browne, a man usually mentioned in the same breath as ’70s El Lay merchants of mellow like The Eagles, not a Warhol-ite like Nico, who died in 1988 following a bike accident.

These days I seem to think about

How all the changes came about my ways

And I wonder if I’ll see another highway.

When Chelsea Girl was released, Browne was only 19, and he’d been serving as Nico’s accompanying musician (and erstwhile lover) for a little while. Yet, in "These Days" he had already penned a song not only tailor-made for Nico (almost exactly 10 years his senior) but one able to convey a heartbreaking world-weariness without betraying the easy cynicism of youth. The plaintive arrangement of guitar and strings subtly chips away at the singer’s notoriously icy demeanor. When she sketchily "la la la"s her way through the melody halfway through, she sounds as if in a reverie. But the pain of the song never dissipates. It’s no surprise that Wes Anderson used this recording in The Royal Tenenbaums; the fear of missed opportunity that its characters share is what propels "These Days."

Browne himself recorded the song on his 1973 sophomore release, For Everyman. He reworked the lyrics and cast the song in a whole new arrangement -- slower, and driven, like so many of his songs, by the mellifluous slide guitar of David Lindley. Despite the fact that the song was now prototypically singer-songwriter, it still sounded unique, and piercingly sad.

Around the same time as The Royal Tenenbaums, the opening guitar riff of the Nico recording became the background music to a Kmart commercial. It wasn’t quite as memorable as Nick Drake humming through that VW ad. Fortunately, three recent covers of "These Days" make steadier cases for the song’s endurance.

Indie duo Mates of State released their interpretation on a split 7-inch single with Dear Nora on Polyvinyl Records this year. The group -- comprised of married couple Jason and Kori Gardner Hammel -- stick to Nico’s script, translating the song into their trademark organ-driven sound. Via e-mail, Kori Gardner Hammel comments, "I love [Browne’s] version but I think it was written for Nico really. … It’s kind of like 'Strange Fruit’ in that way; so many people love the song and even if it’s been done before, we all want to take a stab at a perfect song."

Philadelphia singer/songwriter Denison Witmer included the song on his 2003 covers album, Recovered (Fugitive), basing his rendering on Browne’s. He says, "Being a songwriter, I felt like [Browne was] writing about songwriting in some way, but also giving it this universal feeling that a lot of people can understand. So I felt I had the universal attachment to it, but then … I’m a songwriter, [so] I’m attached to it in that way as well."

And if I seem to be afraid

To live the life that I have made in song

It’s just that I’ve been losing so long.

The most recent cover came out last month on Paul Westerberg’s new album, Come Feel Me Tremble (Vagrant). Truth be told, he’s committed a more affecting version. Westerberg performed the song last year on Chicago radio station WXRT. Hedging closer to the Nico version, he sang in a much deeper register than usual and, in the hands of the former heart-on-sleeve hell-raiser from The Replacements, "These Days" sounded like new once again.

"I think it’s an honest song," says Mates of State’s Hammel. "And maybe people are looking for authentic, honest music. It’s beautiful because … it’s nostalgic even if it’s your first time hearing it. The words are so simple but so obviously genuine. I think it’s that kind of music that withstands the test of time."

Denison Witmer plays Fri., Nov. 28, 8:30 p.m. and Sat., Nov. 29, 7 p.m., $18, with Innocence Mission, Tin Angel, 20 S. Second St., 215-928-0770.

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