Given all this, it’s hard not to read the song’s climactic bridge - “Looks like nothing’s gonna change/ Everything still remains the same/ I can’t do what ten people tell me to do/ So I guess I’ll remain the same!” as a glum lament over the lack of support he received while attempting to evolve his sound.
“It’s time for my to change in my music,” he insisted in response. A recent Rolling Stone history on “Dock” reports that not only were Walden and Stax co-founder Jim Stewart wary of Otis’ new direction, but his own wife, Zelma Redding, was left unimpressed: “Oh, God, you are changing,” she told him in dismay. Indeed, the song could be read as Otis venting his frustration at folks like his manager telling him to stay in his R&B lane, and curtail his Fab Four-sized ambitions. And “pop” the song certainly was - but it was also possibly Redding’s richest composition to date, a mix of blissful Stax stillness and profound existential anxiety that showed a complex level of contemplative soul previously unexplored on the pop charts. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band to add newfound detail and depth to the lyrics and production of his music, and he started writing “Dock,” appropriately enough, while on the houseboat of famed rock promoter Bill Graham.īecause of its laconic vibe, accessible melody and whistling outro - which Redding didn’t originally intend to keep - manager Phil Walden worried the song would be seen as “too pop” for his artist, who’d made his name largely on fiery, horn-led stomps and frenzied vocal performances. He was inspired by The Beatles’ recently released Sgt. 8), was co-written by Redding and M.G.’s guitarist Steve Cropper as the soul legend was looking to expand his audience to the pop and rock worlds, a crossover he’d begun in earnest with his incendiary performance at the Monterey Pop Festival in the summer of 1967. “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay,” which was released as a single 50 years ago this Monday (Jan.
0 kommentar(er)
