Sunshine Life for Me (Sail Away Raymond)

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"Sunshine Life for Me"
Song

"Sunshine Life for Me (Sail Away Raymond)" is a song written by English musician George Harrison, released on fellow ex-Beatle Ringo Starr's 1973 solo album, Ringo. In addition to Starr and Harrison, the recording features contributions from Levon Helm, Robbie Robertson, Rick Danko and Garth Hudson of the Band, and multi-instrumentalist David Bromberg.

Harrison began writing "Sunshine Life for Me" in Ireland while staying with Scottish singer-songwriter Donovan in 1969. The composition reflects the influence of Irish folk music, as well as aspects of country and hootenanny. Lyrically, the song espouses an escape from modern life for the tranquility of nature. The "Raymond" mentioned in the song title was a lawyer hired by Beatles manager Allen Klein to represent Harrison, Starr and John Lennon in the lawsuit instigated by Paul McCartney in 1971 to dissolve the band's legal partnership.

Background and composition

George Harrison wrote "Sunshine Life for Me (Sail Away Raymond)" in 1969 while on holiday with his wife, Pattie Boyd, in Ireland.[1] They were staying at the home of Scottish singer Donovan,[1] who, having accompanied Harrison and his fellow Beatles on their visit to India in 1968,[2] had moved to Ireland, partly to escape the pressures of fame.[3] In his 1980 autobiography, I, Me, Mine, Harrison recalls composing the melody on an open-tuned guitar and adds: "I wrote it like an old Irish folk song a bit like country music ..."[4]

The lyrics reflect what Harrison biographer Simon Leng describes as a theme of "escape from people, pressure, and society":[5]

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It's a sunshine life for me
If I could get away from this cloud over me
Seems to just follow me around

There's a good life had for free
When you're out in the country,
That's what I could use
If I could get away there soon.

Leng describes the song as "musically an homage to the spirit of the Band",[5] who epitomised the late-1960s embracing of pastoral values,[6][7] and with whom Harrison had spent time in Woodstock over the 1968 Thanksgiving holidays.[8] Author Ian Inglis views "Sunshine Life for Me" as a demonstration of Harrison's "love of country, folk, and blues".[9] In keeping with the rustic theme,[10] Harrison states in the song's third verse that he would prefer to associate with trees than with humans,[11] since "most folks just bore me / Always imposing ..."[12]

In the second verse, Harrison addresses a lawyer named Raymond:[13]

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There's a good life had at sea ...
That's the life for you
Sail away Raymond, sail away.

Harrison explains in I, Me, Mine that Raymond was hired by Beatles manager Allen Klein to represent him, Ringo Starr and John Lennon during Paul McCartney's lawsuit against the three of them,[12] as fellow partners in Apple Corps, during the early months of 1971.[14] Inglis writes that Harrison's suggestion that Raymond "sail away" is "perfectly apt, given the song's likeness to a traditional sea shanty".[9]

Leng groups "Sunshine Life for Me" with "The Pirate Song", a sea shanty written with comedian Eric Idle in 1975, in which Harrison sings of wanting to be a pirate rather than a celebrity.[15] Another Harrison biographer, Dale Allison, views the track as an example of how its composer's work "often revels in the natural world".[11] The same "easy romanticism about nature", Allison writes, returns in "Blow Away" and songs from Gone Troppo (1982), while also contrasting with the "ecological anxiety" Harrison expresses in tracks such as "Tears of the World", "Cockamamie Business" and the Monty Python-influenced "Save the World".[16]

Recording

According to Starr biographer Alan Clayson, Harrison "shelved" "Sunshine Life for Me" rather than attempt to record it himself.[1] In March 1973, following the completion of his album Living in the Material World,[17] Harrison offered the song to Starr for inclusion on the latter's first rock solo album, Ringo.[18][nb 1] The main sessions for Ringo took place in Los Angeles[22] and coincided with a spirit of reconciliation among all the former Beatles,[23] now that Harrison, Starr and Lennon had grown disaffected with Klein as a manager.[24][25] As well as "Sunshine Life for Me" and individual contributions from Lennon and McCartney, Starr received co-writing assistance from Harrison on "Photograph",[26] which became Starr's first number 1 hit in the US when released as the album's advance single.[27]

Author Robert Rodriguez describes "Sunshine Life for Me" as "a rustic song demanding a rustic backing",[10] which included accordion, mandolin, banjo and fiddle.[28] The musicians at the Richard Perry-produced session included multi-instrumentalist David Bromberg,[10] with whom Harrison was working at the time on Ravi Shankar's Shankar Family & Friends album,[29] and four members of the Band – Levon Helm, Robbie Robertson, Rick Danko and Garth Hudson[30] – who were in Los Angeles recording their Moondog Matinee album.[31][nb 2] A friend of the Beatles since their years in Hamburg,[35] German musician Klaus Voormann played upright bass on "Sunshine Life for Me",[30] which Harrison recalls in I, Me, Mine as "a fun session and a good track".[4] Both avowed fans of the group,[36] it was the first time that either Starr or Harrison recorded with the Band;[10] in Starr's case, the association continued with his appearance at the Last Waltz in November 1976 and subsequent live performances with Helm and Danko in 1989.[37][38][nb 3]

Working at Sunset Sound Recorders, Starr overdubbed his lead vocal onto the basic track,[40] while Harrison and Vini Poncia, Starr's regular songwriting partner during much of the 1970s,[41] added layers of backing vocals.[30] Leng views these multiple harmonies as both a "shared inheritance" of the Beatles and the Band, as well as a precursor to Harrison's later work with the Traveling Wilburys.[5]

Release and reception

"Sunshine Life for Me (Sail Away Raymond)" was issued as track 4 on Ringo in November 1973,[42] sequenced between "Photograph" and another song that would become a RIAA gold single for Starr, "You're Sixteen".[43] In his book The Beatles Solo on Apple Records, Bruce Spizer describes the first five tracks on Ringo as "one of the strongest album sides produced by any ex-Beatle".[28] The album cover featured a painting by Tim Bruckner on which Harrison, the four members of the Band and all the other musicians on the recording appear, alongside Starr.[44]

Comparing "Sunshine Life for Me" with the devout lyrical content of Living in the Material World, author Nicholas Schaffner opined that with this song Harrison had "managed to be amusing for the first time in years".[45] NME critic Bob Woffinden noted the track as "a sort of update of 'Mother Nature's Son'" on an album that conveyed "a zestfulness, an unashamed joie de vivre".[46] Less impressed, Alan Betrock of Phonograph Record dismissed "Sunshine Life for Me" as "muzak without definition",[47] and Ben Gerson of Rolling Stone viewed it as a "modal banjo tune" that "never manages to transcend its idiom, much less to fulfil it".[48]

Alan Clayson terms the song "a hootenanny hoe-down",[1] while authors Chip Madinger and Mark Easter admire it as "a hoedown stomper which was as country as any of the tracks on Beaucoups of Blues".[49] Ian Inglis writes of "Sunshine Life for Me": "The result is a convincing piece of folk-rock that would have been at home on Fairport Convention's groundbreaking album Liege & Lief, which was itself hugely influenced by the spirit of the Band's Music from Big Pink ... [T]he impression lingers that the track was as much fun to make as it is to hear."[50] In the 2005 publication NME Originals: Beatles – The Solo Years 1970–1980, Paul Moody included "Sunshine Life for Me" among Starr's "ten solo gems", describing it as a "[j]oyful hillbilly romp".[51]

In 1975, London-based recording engineer David Hentschel covered the song, along with all the other tracks on Ringo,[52] for his album Sta*rtling Music.[53] The latter, an experimental work featuring Hentschel on ARP synthesizer,[54] was one of the first releases on Starr's short-lived record label, Ring O' Records.[55]

Personnel

Notes

  1. ↑ Starr's previous solo albums, Sentimental Journey (1970) and Beaucoups of Blues (1970), embraced the musical genres of pre-rock 'n roll standards and country, respectively.[19] His only forays into rock or pop as a solo artist had been two Harrison-produced singles, "It Don't Come Easy" and "Back Off Boogaloo".[20][21]
  2. ↑ The fifth member of the Band, singer and pianist Richard Manuel, was incapacitated for much of this period due to his deepening problems with alcoholism and drug addiction.[32][33] In the group's usual set-up for songs where Helm switched from drums to mandolin or guitar, such as on "Rag Mama Rag" and "Strawberry Wine", Manuel played drums.[34]
  3. ↑ In addition, Robertson contributed the lead guitar part to "Snookeroo",[30] a song written by Elton John and Bernie Taupin that appears on Starr's 1974 album Goodnight Vienna.[39]

Citations

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Clayson, p. 242.
  2. ↑ Mark Paytress, "A Passage to India", Mojo: The Beatles' Final Years Special Edition, Emap (London, 2003), p. 12.
  3. ↑ The New Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll, p. 280.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Harrison, p. 232.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 Leng, p. 139.
  6. ↑ John Harris, "Into the Woods", Mojo, December 2003, p. 92.
  7. ↑ The New Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll, p. 50.
  8. ↑ Helm, p. 178.
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 Inglis, p. 55.
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 10.3 Rodriguez, p. 35.
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 Allison, p. 71.
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 Harrison, p. 231.
  13. ↑ Harrison, pp. 231, 232.
  14. ↑ Doggett, pp. 154, 156.
  15. ↑ Leng, p. 189.
  16. ↑ Allison, pp. 70–71, 153–54.
  17. ↑ Madinger & Easter, p. 440.
  18. ↑ Spizer, p. 306.
  19. ↑ Schaffner, pp. 129, 140.
  20. ↑ Rodriguez, pp. 42, 93.
  21. ↑ Madinger & Easter, pp. 498, 500.
  22. ↑ Badman, pp. 91–92.
  23. ↑ Schaffner, p. 160.
  24. ↑ Woffinden, p. 75.
  25. ↑ Doggett, pp. 192–93.
  26. ↑ Rodriguez, pp. 157–58.
  27. ↑ Spizer, p. 303.
  28. ↑ 28.0 28.1 Spizer, p. 307.
  29. ↑ Leng, p. 138.
  30. ↑ 30.0 30.1 30.2 30.3 Castleman & Podrazik, p. 212.
  31. ↑ Rob Bowman, booklet accompanying Moondog Matinee reissue (Capitol Records, 2001; produced by Cheryl Pawelski & Andrew Sandoval), p. 3.
  32. ↑ Helm, pp. 232–33.
  33. ↑ Nick Hasted, "To Kingdom Come", Uncut, April 2005, pp. 50, 66.
  34. ↑ Helm, pp. 155, 188, 215.
  35. ↑ Rodriguez, p. 83.
  36. ↑ Leng, pp. 52, 69.
  37. ↑ Clayson, pp. 345, 349.
  38. ↑ Badman, pp. 198, 426.
  39. ↑ Clayson, p. 252.
  40. ↑ Madinger & Easter, pp. 500–01.
  41. ↑ Clayson, pp. 244–45.
  42. ↑ Castleman & Podrazik, p. 128.
  43. ↑ Spizer, pp. 307, 313.
  44. ↑ Spizer, p. 308.
  45. ↑ Schaffner, p. 161.
  46. ↑ Woffinden, pp. 75, 77.
  47. ↑ Alan Betrock, "Ringo Starr: Ringo", Phonograph Record, December 1973; available at Rock's Backpages (subscription required; retrieved 22 January 2014).
  48. ↑ Ben Gerson, "Ringo Starr Ringo" at the Wayback Machine (archived 1 October 2007), Rolling Stone, 20 December 1973 (archived version retrieved 22 January 2014).
  49. ↑ Madinger & Easter, p. 503.
  50. ↑ Inglis, pp. 55–56.
  51. ↑ Chris Hunt (ed.), NME Originals: Beatles – The Solo Years 1970–1980, IPC Ignite! (London, 2005), p. 25.
  52. ↑ Clayson, p. 271.
  53. ↑ Bob Woffinden, "Ringo Starr: Everyone One of Us Has All We Need …", NME, 12 April 1975; available at Rock's Backpages (subscription required; retrieved 3 February 2014).
  54. ↑ Clayson, pp. 271–72.
  55. ↑ Woffinden, p. 78.

Sources

  • Dale C. Allison Jr., The Love There That's Sleeping: The Art and Spirituality of George Harrison, Continuum (New York, NY, 2006; ISBN 978-0-8264-1917-0).
  • Keith Badman, The Beatles Diary Volume 2: After the Break-Up 1970–2001, Omnibus Press (London, 2001; ISBN 0-7119-8307-0).
  • Harry Castleman & Walter J. Podrazik, All Together Now: The First Complete Beatles Discography 1961–1975, Ballantine Books (New York, NY, 1976; ISBN 0-345-25680-8).
  • Alan Clayson, Ringo Starr, Sanctuary (London, 2003; ISBN 1-86074-488-5).
  • Peter Doggett, You Never Give Me Your Money: The Beatles After the Breakup, It Books (New York, NY, 2011; ISBN 978-0-06-177418-8).
  • George Harrison, I Me Mine, Chronicle Books (San Francisco, CA, 2002; ISBN 0-8118-3793-9).
  • Levon Helm with Stephen Davis, This Wheel’s on Fire: Levon Helm and the Story of The Band, A Cappella Books (Chicago, IL, 2000; ISBN 978-1-55652-405-9).
  • Ian Inglis, The Words and Music of George Harrison, Praeger (Santa Barbara, CA, 2010; ISBN 978-0-313-37532-3).
  • Simon Leng, While My Guitar Gently Weeps: The Music of George Harrison, Hal Leonard (Milwaukee, WI, 2006; ISBN 1-4234-0609-5).
  • Chip Madinger & Mark Easter, Eight Arms to Hold You: The Solo Beatles Compendium, 44.1 Productions (Chesterfield, MO, 2000; ISBN 0-615-11724-4).
  • The New Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll, Fireside/Rolling Stone Press (New York, NY, 1995; ISBN 0-684-81044-1).
  • Robert Rodriguez, Fab Four FAQ 2.0: The Beatles' Solo Years, 1970–1980, Backbeat Books (Milwaukee, WI, 2010; ISBN 978-1-4165-9093-4).
  • Nicholas Schaffner, The Beatles Forever, McGraw-Hill (New York, NY, 1978; ISBN 0-07-055087-5).
  • Bruce Spizer, The Beatles Solo on Apple Records, 498 Productions (New Orleans, LA, 2005; ISBN 0-9662649-5-9).
  • Bob Woffinden, The Beatles Apart, Proteus (London, 1981; ISBN 0-906071-89-5).

External links

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