original and I thought Jackie did a fine vocal. This was one of the few times–maybe the only time –I felt like a songwriter!


SD: In 2007, you returned to recording with the anti-war single ‘16 Words’. What motivated you to do so?


pretty much stopped promoting my album when I refused to perform and I guess you could say it ‘tanked’. Isn’t it funny that the same Bell pressing of Take A Picture sold for $405 at the last Ebay auction I saw!


SD: One song on Thoughts that really sticks out is the fusion of lounge music and disco on ‘Hold Me Dancin’’. Did you ever write more in that vein?


MG: Nope! I loved the music in Saturday Night Fever and rhythms have always intrigued me. So I did that song for fun, and I admit I still like it!


SD: Your work has been very widely interpreted by other artists. Which versions do you like best?


MG: My very favourite is Jackie DeShannon’s ‘Think Of Rain’. I like it because my demo wasn’t copied. The arrangement was totally


MG: I was infuriated with the outright deceptions of our government. I had read Joseph Wilson’s op-ed article in the New York Times entitled What I Didn’t Find in Africa. And then, when his wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, was outed in seeming retaliation, I felt we were in the hands of a rogue administration. I took Wilson’s book and stared at the ‘16 words’ which represented, to me, all the lies we were being told. And I wrote the song. I was lucky enough to firstly get it recorded, secondly to get the wonderful animator James Reitano to do a video and finally to hear from Anthony Hall of Pure Mint Recordings in the UK who expressed a desire to release it. Anthony felt as I did about his own government, and hoped to get other people to understand that the loss of lives in both our countries, not to mention Iraq, was not necessary.


SD: What other songs of yours have been politically inspired?


MG: During the Nixon years, the last time I was this unhappy with our chosen leaders, I wrote a few Watergate songs. One of them, ‘The Hum’, was a description of what was going on at the time, each verse lapsing into a ‘hum’ that represented the eighteen minutes that were erased in the Nixon tapes. ‘Yes I Am’ also expressed my feelings about Nixon. And there was an anti-Vietnam War-song called ‘Four Letter Words’ that was recorded


The Essential Margo Guryan


TakeA Picture (1968, Bell)


From the opening twang of ‘Sunday Morning’ to the massive freak-out of the closer ‘Love’,


Margo Guryan’s only album proper is an astounding collection of songs that focus on the intricate joy and heartbreak of everyday life – coffee brewing, a fleeting smile, a snatched song heard through an open window. Margo’s lyrics and featherlight yet compelling vocals are balanced on a knife- edge between sorrow and elation. Although it’s not officially a concept album, there is a lilting unity to all the songs, cemented by the arrangements that expand into sweeping beauty one moment and then taper into pinpoint delicacy the next. Take A Picture is intimate, heartbreaking and affirming. A peerless album that still sounds as fresh and natural as it must have done forty years ago to those few discerning people who bought it on its release.


20


Thoughts (2002, RPM)


Largely a collection of Margo’s demos, Thoughts begins by providing a glimpse of the gestation and


development of Take A Picture. Songs such as ‘What Can I Give You’ never seem naked without their lush arrangements; instead they are a starker, more instinctual counterpoint to the finished songs. These are complement- ed by several other superb songs from the late ’60s, like the quiet longing of ‘I Don’t Intend To Spend Christmas Without You’ (originally intended for Claudine Longet). Thoughts also contains a number of Margo’s ’70s songs, never released at the time, of which ‘Timothy Gone’, with its sing-song unhappiness and the dramatic ‘California Shake’ are indicative of just how brilliant a second Margo album might have been. Thoughts closes with two songs Margo didn’t write – ‘Why Do I Cry’ and ‘Under My Umbrella’, showcasing her ability to interpret the work of others.


‘16Words’ (2007, Pure Mint)


This single, which uses only the words “The British government has learned that


Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa”, marks Margo’s return to the studio. In a world that now knows of the myth of Weapons of Mass Destruction, Margo uses only George Bush’s own words to denounce the hypocrisy of the US-led invasion. It’s classic Margo – subtle, intelligent and incisive. The CD single comes backed with her ’74 anti-Nixon song, ‘Yes I Am’, and the terrific animated video for ‘16 Words’.


by Miriam Makeba. It was made up of four- letter words like hate, dead, maim.


SD: How did you feel when your album started being rediscovered?


MG: Great! It dawned on us slowly that the album had become a collector’s item. First came a royalty statement from Japan listing all the songs from Take A Picture, indicating there had been airplay. We found out it was occasioned by a pirate release and we were paid for the songs, not the recordings. I didn’t care that we wouldn’t be paid for the record, since I finally had a CD! Then came a legitimate release in Japan on Trattoria Records [owned by the avant-garde Japanese pop artist Cornelius], followed by Siesta Records in Spain and Franklin Castle / Oglio Records in the United States. I still don’t know why it happened, but it certainly was validating!


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