In fact, Pernice recalls, “I actually submitted a song to him a few years ago. One of the industry magazines said he was looking for songs, so I submitted a tape. But I don’t even know if he ever heard it; probably not.”
The writer of Garfunkel’s 1973 “All I Know” hit is another of Pernice’s primary influences: Jimmy Webb, writer of “Wichita Lineman”, “MacArthur Park”, “Galveston” and several other classics. (The Scud Mountain Boys covered “Wichita Lineman” and Webb’s “Where’s The Playground Susie” on their first and second albums, respectively.)
“We were thinking Webb on a lot of the string arrangements for this record,” Pernice acknowledges, and later he reveals that “I did just write a song I want to record for my next record that’s my tribute to Jimmy Webb.”
Other moments on Overcome By Happiness reveal connections to other classic pop tunesmiths. A 1-1/2 minute snippet titled “Sick Of You” has a distinct “Close To You” vibe about it; Pernice readily admits having a soft spot for the Carpenters and Burt Bacharach. And then there’s “Wait To Stop”, which sounds like one of Brian Wilson’s long-lost outtakes from the height of the Beach Boys’ purest pop phase.
When I mention this, however, Pernice says that song actually grew more out of a fascination with Alex Chilton — which brings up the flip side of Pernice’s palette. As much as he has been influenced by ’60s classicists such as Webb and Wilson, he also lives in the here and now, and the calling cards of more contemporary writers are apparent as well (though probably on a more subconscious level). The opening track — at least before its string-laden coda kicks in — is akin to the irrepressible pop smarts of Freedy Johnston, while the melancholy closer “Ferris Wheel” sounds like a page from the Mark Eitzel songbook.
Lyrically, Pernice definitely falls more in line with the modern crowd than with the old school; indeed, he suspects that one reason submitting a song to Garfunkel was such a longshot is that “sometimes I think my songs could get a little too grotesque for the mainstream.” He’s probably right: The simple sentiments of “Close To You” are more likely to connect with the masses than, say, the Overcome By Happiness track “Chicken Wire”, which deals with a friend who committed suicide by breathing car exhaust fumes.
And then there’s the matter of a new song he’s written about Bjorn Borg, the Swedish tennis star who won five straight Wimbledon titles in the late ’70s. Bjorn Borg? What on earth would possess someone to write a song about Bjorn Borg?
“Oh, I think he’s a great character,” Pernice says, brimming with an enthusiasm for the subject that reveals much about the off-kilter nature of his lyrical inspirations. “Here was a guy at the height of it all — and I’m not really sure of his mental wellness at the time, I think he had some issues — but he was at the height of his powers, and then the love of it, the passion of the thing that always meant a great deal to him, just sort of died away. And he dropped out. I mean, how many times in life do you reach that kind of pinnacle of whatever it is you’re doing? It’s an intriguing kind of American theme.”
Even though Borg was…”Swedish? Yeah.” Well, okay, we’ll buy that.
There is, to be sure, a certain fascination with his home country’s culture that drives Pernice’s expression. When discussing exactly what kind of music he has created on this new record, he suggests at one point that it’s “American. Just American.”
It’s not, however, Americana — a big-top tent under which the Scud Mountain Boys’ music fell, and where Pernice will probably take up at least partial residence initially simply by previous association. But there’s really nothing countrified about Overcome By Happiness. Not that that matters one whit to him.
“I have a real hard time with figuring out what kind of music is what,” Pernice says. Ultimately, I suggest, his new record is just pure and simple pop. “It all comes out of melody,” he acknowledges. “I think strong melodies are common in all the music I like, no matter what it is, really.”
That leaves him a potentially difficult path to follow in today’s musical environment, where classic pop doesn’t really have a home anymore. A style of music once literally defined by the word “popular,” it’s now lost amidst an ever-fragmenting musical marketplace littered with genres and sub-genres as far as the ear can hear.
Then again, such matters are beyond the artist’s reach. “I don’t have much concern with that, because, if I were going to be on a giant major label that was gonna pump a ton of money into a giant radio campaign, then it would happen,” he says with a laugh. “They would do that, and then that’s why it would get played, not because it fits into any type of format. If they choose to do it, they’ll break it….So you’ve just got to follow your instincts and play the kind of music you want to play, and make the records with integrity. I really believe that.
“It would really depress me to be insincere about playing music. You know, it’s hard to go on tour, and if I was doing something I didn’t like, it would even make it worse. And for what — the chance to make a lot of money? If I wanted to be unhappy, I could go work at a bank, and make a lot more money, and have a lot more free time. So, if you think it through — if you really think it through — it doesn’t make sense to do it any other way.”
Though a self-confessed Jimmy Webb nut with over 600 versions of Webb-penned songs in his record collection, No Depression co-editor Peter Blackstock has never been so obsessive as to actually write a song in tribute to the man. Yet.
