It’s Only Love – Olivia Mancini
It’s Only Love
Original version recorded June 15, 1965.
Roger 3.0 version recorded April 20, 2011.
Olivia Mancini: Vocals
Roger Greenawalt: Ukulele
Produced by Roger Greenawalt at Shabby Road Studio, Brooklyn, NY.
Essay by Roger Greenawalt.
About the Song
“I get high when I see you walk by.”
The year I was 30 I decided to drive out to the Pennsylvania woods with my dad and his enormous extended family to go deer hunting. The season is brief, just a few days a year beginning on the the Monday after Thanksgiving. Any longer and the massive volunteer army of Pennsylvania Hunters would exterminate the species.
No women are allowed at camp. You are not supposed to talk about anything that happens there back in the real world. It is a haven of masculinity. I was hoping for a soulful Robert Bly-like male bonding experience. But guys don’t really talk about shit, we do shit together. Actually there was plenty of talk. 99% of which consisted of variations of “Have you seen the deer, is the deer dead yet?” Mainly we saw no deer, so the entire affair resembled a Beckett play.
I did see some does (Doe a deer a female deer, first note of the scale) the first morning, and was struck by what a shock of excitement, what a primal thrill it was to be a hunter in sight of prey. You can’t shoot does though, only bucks (male deer, money). So nothing happened. More Beckett.
I was walking through the forest later with my Uncle Bump and my Uncle Cork. Bump is 80 now, but because he was a clumsy toddler, he is still known 78 years later as Bump. Bump’s little brother Cork never stops talking.Hence, Cork, as in “Put a cork in it!” Bump and Cork were in their 60′s at this point. I turned to Uncle Cork and said to him;
“Golly Cork, I sure got excited when I saw the deer this morning. Does that feeling ever go away?” and he said,
“No son, you never get blase about seeing deer, it’s just the same as seeing a pretty girl. The feeling never goes away”
Now that was news to me. I just assumed old people, being gross and decrepit themselves, stopped being sexually attracted to people, that fancy was a function of youth. But now that I’m 50, I am here to tell you, that thrill of an accidental passing glance of one pretty person in a giant crowd of duds is what you live for. It’s true. I get high every time a pretty girl walks by.
And I always will.
Lennon hated this song. I think he was being hard on himself. Not for him the easy rhyme, the tossed away line. And at first glance, as prose alone, this song does not carry much water. But mirrored with the chords and melody and rhythms, it evokes an understated elegance.
There is a lovely opposition in the arc of the melody against the simple and true statement of the opening line.
“I get high” is a drug pun, ten points for that. And you would expect that line to rise in pitch, high is up after all. But the melody does not ascend, it cascades downward against a melancholic harmonic twist on the third (Flat 7 Major) chord creating a wistful and honest mood. Because yes, love is grand, it is a many splendored thing, but it robs one of your independence, of any hard earned singular autonomy; Love gives the other horrible power over you. And odds are it will end badly. At my age the reminders are constant, the message unmistakable, everything is temporary.
The connecting line and rhyme, “My oh my”, is cringing, I will give you that. Pure filler, lazy, icky.
“When you sigh my my insides just fly, butterfly.” Ouch. OK that is just awful also. Lennon does not get much weaker than this.
“Why am I so shy when I’m beside you?” Good question and good sounding, lyrical. The shyness is fear of rejection. Or even worse, once you are accepted, the shyness is the walking on eggshells negotiating the minefield of your lover’s mercurial moods. Especially when the only thing that will cheer her up is for you to disappear. Forever.
“It’s only love and that is all.” I like that lyric. and it is so hard loving you, whoever you are. The person that holds your heart in their hand might be a monster. You never can tell.
The second verse is in conflict with itself. “Is it right that you and I should fight every night? Just the sight of you makes nighttime bright, very bright. ” Ouch squared. Rhyming bright with bright? Weak. And once you establish that you are fighting, can’t we get some sex or violence going in here? A better second line in this verse would have been
“Then we make up till the morning light, very bright.” Because only two things can happen after the fight. You either have make up sex or eventually you break up.
There is plenty of love and rain in Beatles songs and not nearly enough mayhem, sex, and violence. Oh, and I’m still waiting for the Hotel Room Orgy 8 millimeter Beatles home movies to surface. They must be out there somewhere, those boys had every gadget.
It’s Only Love has aged badly in part due to shitty production. The acoustic guitar track, usually Lennon’s domain and typically solid as a locomotive, is double tracked and messy. The second guitar is not just unnecessary, it’s out of tune. Wince. George’s tremolo is not enough of a quality sound to hang the hook on. John’s double tracked vocal in the chorus is not tight rhythmically with itself. The bass is barely audible. Ringo plays a good part in the verse, but he should have come up with a variation in the chorus instead of leaving it to the tambourine to supply rhythmic drive.
The Roger 3.0 version of It’s Only Love gets back to basics, we have stripped the song down to it’s strong fundamentals. The chords and melody are lovely, our rendering stark and abandoned. Olivia Mancini has a plaintive voice, you can hear a lifetime of hurt inside her. But she’s broken a few hearts in her time too. Enjoy Darlings, we have some great tracks coming up in the weeks ahead.
Beatles freak Olivia Mancini plays guitar and sings in her band that just cut an EP with Roger Greenawalt. For show dates and info: www.oliviamancini.com.
Craig #
Great interpretation of a great song. John Lennon wasn’t much for “the high, fly, cry, sigh” kind of rhymes, was he?