53, 10 Songs with Imagined Encounters

Roy - Animals that Swim
Sylvia Plath - Ryan Adams
Ingrid Bergman - Billy Bragg and Wilco
Judy - Pernice Brothers
I Dreamed I Saw St Augustine - Bob Dylan
The Queen is Dead - The Smiths
She's Madonna - Robbie Williams
Beatles - Kathryn Williams
Walking in Memphis - Marc Cohn
Let It Be - The Beatles

Hey there, sports fans, this is a nice little subcategory of songs, where the singer has some kind of vision of a famous person - Bob Dylan made rather a habit of this, but there's only one from each performer and one for each subject, which means no place for Badly Drawn Boy's You Were Right, which is a song i used to really love, and in it he's married to the Queen and Madonna lived next door.
Why didn't Badly Drawn Boy keep on producing great stuff? That was a shame. I met him once after a gig (I'm not imagining it), he was very nice - Andy Rourke from The Smiths was there too, i imagine that would excite a lot of people more. His first album I've been listening to recently, it's really a great album. Anyway, I digress.
Some crackers here, Roy by Animals by Swim is really funny, about Roy Orbison. It imagines meeting him in a murky London bar, and says "I thought he was dead" (Roy Orbison is dead, of course). I'd be interested to know about more of this kind of song. Pop stars should be talking to and imagining, summoning up their heroes all the time. It's an agreeably crazy thing to do.
I like the Billy Bragg one, taken from a Woody Guthrie lyric, about Ingrid Bergman and Ryan Adams does the same thing, to slightly unsatisfactory effect, about Sylvia Plath.
So I've brought the same kind of craziness to a story about Jenny Lewis. It's kind of twee, twee mcgee, and some may question whether Jenny Lewis deserves to be mythologised in this way. Sure she does.

JENNY LEWIS
I met Jenny Lewis outside the Hilton
on Park Lane. The summer evening was pressing
my nerves to tobacco, and I was admiring
wealth's tacky apparel and feeling so healthy
when Jenny came sliding through the side entrance
not looking for nothing but i begged her to ask me
for a light. She begrudged, and exhaled like a sailor
and I told her I loved her - always a good start.

I wasn't the first, not even ten thousandth
but she deigned to seem shocked that I stated the obvious.
I quoted a lyric from Track Six of the second
Long Player just to prove it wasn't just her red hair
that moved such a man who hid in dark doorways
at a hint of affection to express so entirely
his deepest devotion at just one exhalation
with eyes shut, fingers crossed and arms outstretched.

She spun round and back and urged me to speak on -
I waged her she felt too this grim city sickness
afflicting and withering us soft country soulsters,
born in the wrong place, raised at the wrong time.
I can't say she nodded, I can't say she didn't -
"look at this place, now, Jenny, look at these people
coughing and conning themselves and their loved ones
and crashing and crashing the same cars, always.

"Jenny, I'd ask you to take a walk with me
somewhere unheard of by doctors and lawyers
if I could muster the strength of adventure
to put out this cigarette, walk out on this city
uncaring and fragile, to take care of itself -
but bear with my bent-double, crippled bravado
i used up in the instant i first saw your red hair
so out of place on this grey, green, blue lane."

"Brother, how many times do you rightly imagine
I've heard men of your ilk offering to walk me
out of my troubles and into some forest.
But I read 'bout the forests and i'm sticking to cities."
"Ten thousand times, maybe, but men will keep asking,
Jenny Lewis, if you keep writing such songs
of such longing and sorrow. How could one man
with one part country soul withhold his best efforts?"

Jenny she smiled and said "brother, remember,
i'm all California and I'm all child actress.
Don't be too enticed by my hollow devices -
I'm not worth those efforts, shrink back to your doorway
and i'll return gleaming to my Hollywood stagepost."
I knew she was lying to spare me my blushes
and she'll still be waiting on hard city pavements
for the right country soulster to offer her a light.