Lylic It!

What do you do when you want to sing a song- say a folk tune with many verses- but you don’t necessarily want to learn up all the lyrics? Well, you resort to lylics. No that’s not a typo, but a state of mind. Lylics are those lyrics which you have to make up yourself because you can’t remember the original ones, or you can’t sing the given words right. Now, they change with the kind of genre of song you’re singing. Its decidedly difficult to lylic rock songs, or songs with a particular format, like say, Broadway standards or even Hindi film songs…but if the structure’s flexible, well, the sky’s the lylic…sorry limit.
There’s a driving unionist song we do called John Henry. My nitpickin’ friend who commented on the previous post might be able to give you a better history of this violent ditty, but this is the basic idea. Ol’ John is a dyed in the wool unionist who will resist mechanization at any cost. To resist the steam drill, he’ll die with the hammer in his hand, as he puts it. From what I know, this used to be a standard union sing-along in the US during the turbulent days of its post-war industrial intensification. Its been done by many a folk icon, from Woody Guthrie to me, and like all singalongs, the emphasis is always on the final line of each verse. Now therein lies the problem. For one, there is no ONE reliable set of lyrics. Seems to me, every successive version had been happily lylicing the song. The first verse is fairly straightforward…about ol’ Hurray Henry being a lil’ toddler getting roughshod lessons in worker’s rights from his working class father. (A minor aside: This song could also be read as an ongoing Thor family saga, what with every successive generation having a male who loves to sing his hammer. This brings us to an even more minor aside: the funniest Thor joke in any medium is the bit in Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, where Thor says this little gem to impress the cat-headed Bast- an Egyptian goddess- “Would you like to rub my little hammer? It grows bigger”). Ok, enough minors…the song, incidentally is not on a minor scale but on E… (which brings me to another minor aside: the Brit rock band Verve were sued by the American jazz label Verve over name copyright issues, so the lead singer of the band Richard Ashcroft joked about “Dropping an E for America”…you may know that E is Ecstasy which partakers often “drop”, as the lingo goes, instead of “consuming.” They didn’t drop the E, but added a “The” before their name.)
Ok, it seems I’m hijacking my own piece (which might be seen in the same connotation as Thor’s hammer…hammer…piece…get it??) ENOUGH!
Where were we? World Wide Web? MAN THIS IS INSANE!!!
Ok fine. So the first verse is okay. But then we fast forward some 30 years and Henry’s holding a conversation with his Captain- so he’s on a ship. All fine and dandy. But then what the hell are they talking about? Difficult to say. The gist seems to be that according to Henry, a man ain’t a man unless he’s swinging his hammer (but we already knew that) and then the Captain says something equally empowering to Henry. But how to sing it? Again, there’s no reliable blueprint. So you lylic it. Make up your own little conversation piece as long as it veers close to the subject in hand (no, not the hammer).
After all this strum und drang, comes the violent bit. Again, it’s a narrative jump. Suddenly we’re told that Ol’ John Henry had a girl called Molly Brown. We’re not told what the exact relation is, but therein hangs a tale. Now, Molly Brown- bless her heart- probably got fed up with Henry’s grandstanding and failure to put the money where his mouth is (and historically, men with large hammers aren’t made for good lovin’) and one fine night, while Henry’s sleeping, “ she drove steel like a man”. It’s the best bit of the song, and definitely the most enjoyable bit to sing, but what do we make of it? Did she drive a large and pointed and sharp kitchen knife through the heart, or did she do to him what he failed to do to her with his hammer? Anyway, whether its death by knife, or by too much sex, John Henry dies as he had lived- by the sword…oops, by the knife…er, by the hammer? Dunno if he died with the hammer in his hand, but hopefully Molly wasn’t wielding a steam drill.
Imagine what you want, and just lylic it.