Its likely that I heard this song when it was a hit in the summer of '59, but if I did, it made no impression. For the way I remember it from the moment I *really* heard it I was sure that "Sea of Love" was about heroin and the sweet, dark, tidal pull of oblivion; and in '59 when I was pushing ten, these things were not yet dear to my young heart.
I honestly never heard the song as anything else, least of all a simple, tender love song. Well, a love song maybe, but to Magna Mater Bubbonia herself, not to any *earthly* chick. It seemed to perfectly an invocation, a seduction, a surrender to that black sea. I even heard it as "Come with me *into* the sea," not "*to* the sea." And only in that black sea could the dream of love exist.
God, how I came to love that song. Here, within reach, I've got the original, by Phil Phillips, I've got it by Cookie and the Cupcakes, and by Katie Webster - two covers that followed the original out of Louisiana. I've got the big strings-of-smack orchestral version by the Honeydrippers, and John Fahey's instrumental haunting of it. There are others, but these are the ones i listen to, the ones that possess that tidal pull.
But now I've come to perceive and accept "Sea of Love" for what it is - that simple, tender song I'd never heard it to be; the slow dance to end all slow dances, sure, but not with death. Now there are other evocations from other waves, other depths than those where the light of the moon and the sun and the stars don't reach. And that's cool, too. In life as in death, like religion or a decent pizza joint, "Sea of Love" delivers.
lyrics
"Sea of Love" by Nick Tosches
Its likely that I heard this song when it was a hit in the summer of '59, but if I did, it made no impression. For the way I remember it from the moment I *really* heard it I was sure that "Sea of Love" was about heroin and the sweet, dark, tidal pull of oblivion; and in '59 when I was pushing ten, these things were not yet dear to my young heart.
I honestly never heard the song as anything else, least of all a simple, tender love song. Well, a love song maybe, but to Magna Mater Bubbonia herself, not to any *earthly* chick. It seemed to perfectly an invocation, a seduction, a surrender to that black sea. I even heard it as "Come with me *into* the sea," not "*to* the sea." And only in that black sea could the dream of love exist.
God, how I came to love that song. Here, within reach, I've got the original, by Phil Phillips, I've got it by Cookie and the Cupcakes, and by Katie Webster - two covers that followed the original out of Louisiana. I've got the big strings-of-smack orchestral version by the Honeydrippers, and John Fahey's instrumental haunting of it. There are others, but these are the ones i listen to, the ones that possess that tidal pull.
But now I've come to perceive and accept "Sea of Love" for what it is - that simple, tender song I'd never heard it to be; the slow dance to end all slow dances, sure, but not with death. Now there are other evocations from other waves, other depths than those where the light of the moon and the sun and the stars don't reach. And that's cool, too. In life as in death, like religion or a decent pizza joint, "Sea of Love" delivers.
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