There Is No Time For Cracking Up (Believe Me, Friends)

The Verve's album Urban Hymns came out when I was seventeen, selling millions of copies by riding high on the success of the song "Bittersweet Symphony". It seemed the perfect companion to the way I was feeling at the time---washed ashore, depressed, melancholic, self-destructive, eager to romanticize away my misery the way only a teenager can do. The demise of Britpop seemed fitting. It was as if both of us had hit the skids and simultaneously lost our previously upbeat swagger.

The American music industry, as it is apt to do in times of musical famine, had resumed producing a variety of flash-in-the-pan one hit wonders while scrambling to find the mythical next best thing. Grunge had played itself out with the demise of Nirvana, Soundgarden, and much of the rest of the Seattle scene. No one wanted to admit that the music produced currently simply didn't live up to the high expectations produced by the roaring success of the first part of the decade.

Across the pond, meanwhile, the dreariness of Radiohead and its ilk had washed over to most of the big groups. Britpop had died away and now in its place a kind of defeated, druggy space rock reigned supreme among the top acts. That same year, Blur released a self-titled album that aside from one anomaly, Song 2, was dark art rock at its finest. Oasis, a band I was never that keen on to begin with, had reached the point where high expectations and heavy cocaine usage met, and produced a tremendously lazy and tuneless album named Be Here Now.

Being there with them was the last thing I'd ever wanted for myself. So, at any rate, the perfect compliment for the way I was feeling then was this beautiful downer of an album. I fancied myself a younger incarnation of Richard Ashcroft, before I realized that Ashcroft was another tormented musician and in addition to being a major depressive, was a tremendously heavy drug user to boot--the kind of which it is best to observe from afar but never seek to emulate in one's personal life. In retrospect, Ashcroft was my age now, twenty-seven, when he wrote and produced most of these songs. I've come a long way since then and apparently grown up far faster than many of my contemporaries have.

_____________

When morning breaks
We hide our eyes

and our love's aching
Nothing's strange

It was in our hands
from 6 to 10

It slipped right out again

There'll be
no better time

There'll be
no better way

There'll be no better
day to save me

Save me
Yeah, save me

I hope you
see like I see

I hope you see
what I see

I hope you feel
like I feel

And the world
don't stop

There is no time
for cracking up

Believe me, friends

'Cause when freedom comes
I'll be long gone

You know it has to end

There'll be no
better time

There'll be
no better way

There'll be no better
day to save me

Save me

Yeah, save me
Yeah, save me

I hope you see
what I see

I hope you feel
like I feel

Someone to stand
beside me

Weeping willow
The pills under
my pillow

Weeping willow
Pills under my pillow

Weeping willow
The Gun under
your pillow

Weeping willow