“Out by Sandy Cove
Just a mile beyond the strand
There stands an ancient tower
On a rocky point of land.”—Jimmy Webb, “Sandy Cove,” from his Suspending Disbelief CD (1993)
Recently, reading novelist and James Joyce aficionado Peter Quinn spurred me to write this post on a famous songwriter tipping his cap to the author of Ulysses.
In a prior post, I compared Jimmy Webb, composer of “MacArthur Park” and other hits too numerous to mention, to a fellow boundless romantic, Thomas Wolfe. But I forgot that there was another, more tangible connection that Webb has alluded to more strongly in both his songs and interviews. For evidence, I refer you here to his evocation of the Martello Tower, the setting of the first chapter of Ulysses.
On this date four years into the century he set on its ear with his great experiments in literary modernism, James Joyce moved into the Martello Tower in Sandycove, eight miles south of Dublin on a coastal road. Sharing living quarters with him was Oliver St. John Gogarty, whom he immortalized in the very first phrase of his masterpiece as “stately, plump Buck Mulligan.”
In a book group nearly 20 years ago, I met an elderly lady who met Gogarty in the 1940s, when she worked in a New York publishing house that was publishing the memoir of Joyce’s former friend. She described him as a gregarious sort, and I’ll bet he was—as a doctor, politician and writer, he was the one-man Facebook of his time.
Notice that I referred to Gogarty as Joyce’s “former friend.” That relationship had one too many strains placed on it when they resided in Sandycove. (Their abode, incidentally, was one of a series of towers that the British built to defend against an invasion by Napoleon.)
Recently, reading novelist and James Joyce aficionado Peter Quinn spurred me to write this post on a famous songwriter tipping his cap to the author of Ulysses.
In a prior post, I compared Jimmy Webb, composer of “MacArthur Park” and other hits too numerous to mention, to a fellow boundless romantic, Thomas Wolfe. But I forgot that there was another, more tangible connection that Webb has alluded to more strongly in both his songs and interviews. For evidence, I refer you here to his evocation of the Martello Tower, the setting of the first chapter of Ulysses.
On this date four years into the century he set on its ear with his great experiments in literary modernism, James Joyce moved into the Martello Tower in Sandycove, eight miles south of Dublin on a coastal road. Sharing living quarters with him was Oliver St. John Gogarty, whom he immortalized in the very first phrase of his masterpiece as “stately, plump Buck Mulligan.”
In a book group nearly 20 years ago, I met an elderly lady who met Gogarty in the 1940s, when she worked in a New York publishing house that was publishing the memoir of Joyce’s former friend. She described him as a gregarious sort, and I’ll bet he was—as a doctor, politician and writer, he was the one-man Facebook of his time.
Notice that I referred to Gogarty as Joyce’s “former friend.” That relationship had one too many strains placed on it when they resided in Sandycove. (Their abode, incidentally, was one of a series of towers that the British built to defend against an invasion by Napoleon.)
Within a week, Joyce had left. Eighteen years later, he’d have his revenge against Gogarty through his acid-tinged portrait of Mulligan—loud, obnoxious, and late with the rent.
A longtime admirer of the Irish novelist, Webb began composing “Sandy Cove” in a Joyce notebook that a friend had recently bought for him. His song is about finding oneself psychologically at sea.
Joyce felt these emotions as a 22-year-old who had recently lost his mother and his Roman Catholic faith; Webb found himself adrift in his 40s, after initial wild success as a songwriter had failed to yield greater dividends as a solo artist in his own right.
Anyway who thinks that visiting the tower where Joyce slept or the pubs where he drank would be enough to help one channel his spirit doesn’t understand the creative process well. Central to both the songwriter and the novelist (such a good singer in his own right that wife Nora would later believe he had taken up the wrong career) was a sense of loss needed for a change of direction and heart, as in the following lyrics from “Sandy Cove”:
A longtime admirer of the Irish novelist, Webb began composing “Sandy Cove” in a Joyce notebook that a friend had recently bought for him. His song is about finding oneself psychologically at sea.
Joyce felt these emotions as a 22-year-old who had recently lost his mother and his Roman Catholic faith; Webb found himself adrift in his 40s, after initial wild success as a songwriter had failed to yield greater dividends as a solo artist in his own right.
Anyway who thinks that visiting the tower where Joyce slept or the pubs where he drank would be enough to help one channel his spirit doesn’t understand the creative process well. Central to both the songwriter and the novelist (such a good singer in his own right that wife Nora would later believe he had taken up the wrong career) was a sense of loss needed for a change of direction and heart, as in the following lyrics from “Sandy Cove”:
“I would pay a sultan's ransom
If only I could place
The ship back in the bottle
The ship back in the bottle
Or see my mother's face.”
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