Song 3: The Way We Were

The Way We Were - Barbra Streisand
There comes a time in every young man's life where he has to bow before the majesty of Streisand. Whether it's 'Hello, Dolly'. her version of 'Send in the Clowns', hell, it could even be 'Meet the Fockers', but even the most churlish need to accept at some point that this behemoth of American culture is actually rather good.

My full revelation Streisand moment came from watching 'The Way We Were' - it's a pretty imperfect film which could do with being shorter or longer, but it's given considerable power by three things 1. Streisand's excellent performance 2. the extensive use of this title track 3. the very subject matter being the passing of time, nostalgia, disappointment, unrealised dreams, endurance etc. At the end, it feels like a bigger, more important film than it is.

The song is, I think, an extremely pretty song, written by Marvin Hamlisch, who died this year [incidentally, there's a joke in the film 'Role Models' about one of the main characters looking like Marvin Hamlisch - an extremely obscure joke. 'Role Models' is a way way better film than you think it's going to be. Trust me] with lyrics by Marilyn and Alan Bergman. It's become a standard, I was aware of its existence throughout my life, I think, without really knowing much about it. It's the kind of think that soundtracks BBC golf montages and retrospectives of dead sitcom stars.

It is referenced in a couple of unlikely places - very briefly, implicitly, on the Paul Weller song 'Shadow of the Sun' where he sings "or has time rewritten everything like we never dreamt that it could?" and, more thoroughly on the Wu-Tang Clan "Can It Be All So Simple" from their classic debut album, though the sample is actually from the Gladys Knight version of the song.

The lyrics are, I think, beautiful, and extremely (excuse me ...) memorable. There are various phrases that leap out at you, "the way we were", "has time rewritten everything", "can it be that it was all so simple then", "what's too painful to remember we simply choose to forget" and, most simply, and famously "Memories ...".

Here is where my confusion starts and where, if I could, I would turn this blog entry into an impressionistic waltz through the multi-layered associative traps laid by nostalgia. For it can't be just me who, in their life, heavily associated (if not confused) this song with another monster power ballad, also sung by Streisand, by the name, of course, of 'Memory' - the Andrew Lloyd Webber one with lyrics by Trevor Nunn. [not surprising it's confusing - the two songs bookend a 1981 album by Streisand called 'Memories'].

Now, this was a song I knew well from a very young age - it was the signature track from 'Cats', which I was taken to twice by my father (the second time kicking and screaming, I think, only to be persuaded by tone-deaf Paddy's hilarious rendition of 'Macavity' and then to have a whale of a time). I think it's the only song from the show where the lyrics aren't from TS Eliot and, I must admit, it was my least favourite song in the show, even though I knew it was the one I was supposed to like the best. It made me feel sad, and creeped out, and was no 'Skimbleshanks the Railway Cat'.

And as years passed and I heard about a song called 'Memory' and it went next to Barbra Streisand, you can forgive my confusion. I have always stuck to my original feelings about the Lloyd Webber song - I didn't really like it, it was a far inferior companion piece to the stunning Marvin Hamlisch song, it demanded and screamed for attention, it warbled, it was melodrama, rather than dreamy reverie which lures you in.

Nevertheless, when I saw someone singing 'Memory' in the truly ridiculous Lloyd Webber reality show 'Superstar', it certainly did set off in me a version of the feelings that both songs attempt to get to grips with - a pain and sadness for my childhood, for my father and his good intentions, for all kinds of innocence.

I am reminded again of the blog post I wrote a couple of years ago about Possibilities and how 'The Sound of Music' set off in me an impossibly and indescribably dense melancholy and feeling of constriction and here was another musical, intrinsic to my childhood, having the same effect.

Also, I felt a little more well inclined to the song, began to see it in a new light, that it was meant to be mawkish and grotesque and self-pitying, it was about Faded Glamour  (something I also wrote a little about previously) rather than the gentles sadness of recollection.

Still, 'The Way We Were' is still just a far better song, isn't it? It's just lush. And, thankfully, I can enjoy it on its own terms and, rather than delve deep into my own personal memory bank. associate it with a 40ish year old Robert Redford pretending to be a college student and Barbra Streisand talking far too fast and a general sense of a film trying to be too big and serious for its own good. Which is fine with me.