A CASE FOR SONG, #1A - That Day Is Done

[docinwestchester]

This is really an offshoot of post #1 in this series about Bullets for New-Born King. Thus the "#1A" designation. I thought this article was interesting, especially the parts I enlarged:

In a July 1996 interview with Hot Press ( Dublin)

Elvis is a fervent believer in the purgative powers of music, both in times of immediate grief and in those more difficult ensuing times when grief gives way to something empty and unnamable but no less distressing. At the aforementioned Meltdown Festival, he performed with an American gospel choir a version of ' That Day Is Done’, the song co written with Paul McCartney about the death of Costello’s grandmother. It was, he says, oddly exhilarating experience.

“That was a rare song among the ones we wrote which had a lot of personal detail in it,” Elvis explains. “It was about my grandmother’s funeral. After I had written ‘Veronica’ about her, this song was about not being able to attend her funeral, It was a very sad song to write. And Paul was very good about helping me to write this thing which was really bugging me and in making what I think is a very beautiful song out of it. He made a great record of it but I always wanted to cut it.

“To do it with these gospel guys was the right way for me to do it. It added a gravity to it, without it being maudlin. When they sing it, because they believe in this stuff which I don’t believe, it lifts you up to sing with them. They believe so much, and you’re standing among them, all singing together, it’s just fantastic. You are borne up by their belief."
......
"The gospel singers believe a coded thing, if you like. They believe their code, their doctrine, and I don’t. But I’m completely in sympathy with them on the ground of music which is the language that we do share. And the idiom that that song was written is a sort of gospel idiom, even though it’s not saying a gospel thing. It’s an experience, which is what the best music should be.”



I feel such sorrow, I feel such shame
I know I won’t arrive on time
Before whatever out there is gone
What can I do, that day is done

It’s just a promise that I made
I said I’d walk in her parade
Hot scalding tears I thought would flow
Still in my heart they’ll never show

That day is done
That day is done
You know where I’ve gone
I won’t be coming back
That day is done

Well I recall the time and place
Where they announced her precious face
I thought at once my heart would burst
Still every time is like the first

There was applause as she stepped up
I wished that I could interrupt
I made no sign, I made no sound
I know I must stay underground

That day is done
That day is done
You know where I’ve gone
I won’t be coming back
That day is done

That’s why she walks, or so they say
She always knew just what I needed
But if she would just look my way
One time before they proceed

She sprinkles flowers in the dirt
That’s when a thrill becomes a hurt
I know I’ll never see her face
She walks away from my resting place

That day is done
That day is done
You know where I’ve gone
I won’t be coming back
That day is done

You know where I’ve gone
I won’t be coming back
That day is done
That day is done
That day is done

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpmpzhZihM8
Concert For Linda 1999 - with Steve Nieve

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UezwYpNosf4
London Meltdown 1995 (AUDIO ONLY) - with Steve Nieve and The Fairfield Four

[HopeYou'reHappyNow]

Am I being blasphemous in saying that I prefer McCartney's reading on the 1989 album, Flowers In The Dirt? It's a beautiful song, whichever rendition floats your boat.

[And No Coffee Table]

Fairfield Four singer Robert Hamlett dies at 84

(I believe Joseph Rice is now the only surviving member of the Fairfield Four's mid-'90s lineup. James Hill died in 2000, Wilson Waters in 2005, and Isaac Freeman in 2012.)