Other people’s songs No 77: Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground

 

By Aaron Galbraith and Tony Attwood

Aaron: “Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground” is a song by Willie Nelson and released in 1980 on the Honeysuckle Rose soundtrack, and later as the soundtrack’s second single in January 1981. The single was Nelson’s seventh number one on the country chart as a solo artist and stayed at number one for one week and spent a total of fourteen weeks on the country chart.

Tony: As you’ll probably know by now after all the writing Aaron and I have done together, he’s in the USA and I’m in England, and sometimes we have a problem in that a video he selects which works in America, doesn’t work in the UK.   So if the first one here doesn’t work for you (as it doesn’t for me), there is a second video beneath.

Tony: So I don’t know if this is the same version as you have been listening to Aaron, but I’m hoping it is close enough.

Here are the lyrics

If you had not a-fallen, then I would not have found you
Angel flying too close to the ground
And I patched up your broken wing
And hung around a while
Trying to keep your spirits up
And your fever down

I knew someday that you would fly away
For love's the greatest healer to be found

So leave me if you need to, I will still remember
Angel flying too close to the ground

It is completely emotional – helping someone repair their life and letting them go even though it leaves a vast gap in one’s own life.   A song of self-sacrifice indeed.

Aaron: Bob Dylan covered the song during the recording sessions for his 1983 album Infidels. The song appeared as the B-side to four different international single releases in support of the album and later The Bootleg Series Vol. 16: Springtime in New York 1980–1985.

 

Tony: Bob plays it dead straight – as indeed is the only way to approach this song, along with the harmonies behind – until we get to the harmonica solo.  But Bob’s harmonica playing (covered so well and in so much detail in the Master Harpist series on this site) carries on its own so many implications and feelings that I was somewhat taken aback by the first introduction of the instrumental verse.

However by the second section of harmonica playing the emotions had risen so far that I guess it fits in better.  And indeed it seems that the whole point of Bob’s version is the coda in which the chorus is repeated several times.   In fact this almost seems to make the main body of the song irrelevant – which of course in the original it wasn’t.

I am really uncertain about this… I love Bob’s work for the musical and lyrical invention but here we have one line repeated over and over both lyrically and musically, and I just wonder why.   It seems very un-Bob-like to me, almost as if he was told to make the track, and did so, without much musical thought.

Of course Bob can do anything he likes, but I just wonder why he chose to do this song.  It is also (to me, and as ever it is just me) as if someone persuaded him to, and he agreed.   But of course, as always, these are just my thoughts, and could be completely out of place.

Aaron: Alison Krauss included it on the Target exclusive version of her 2017 release Windy City.

Tony: Now we are back to the original style and approach of the song, and I do think the piano accompaniment is emotionally appropriate and at the same time inventive.   Yes, I’ll go with this completely as the instrumental verse also fits in with the whole essence of the piece.    It’s not a track I would want to play over and again, but for me it has a coherence of music and lyrics which Bob’s approach loses.   (The track stops suddenly, but I am sure that must be a fault of the video, it can’t have been how the recording was made).

Aaron: Willie Nelson’s son Lukas Nelson recorded a version with Neil Young for the Paradox album and movie

Tony: What an amazing cover illustration on the record – but I am not at all sure of the point of the first 20 seconds of the music, nor indeed the first moments of the song… but it is delicate and sincere.  Although there are elements therein that do disturb me a bit at the start with the repeated notes and moments of the guitarist repeating notes and trying out virtuoso inserts.   Somehow the guitarist is, to me, occasinally showing off when in fact the recording should, in my view, be about the song, not about the technical ability of the instrumentalists.

Overall it is a strange interpretation – just as the cover illustration is strange.   But the vocals are beautiful – a perfect interpretation in my view.   So if we could have these vocals, and a backing in which the musicians just kept it dead simple, that would work for me.

Goodness, I think I am getting very curmudgeonly in my old age.

Meanwhile here are the previous editions…

1. Other people’s songs. How Dylan covers the work of other composers
2. Other People’s songs: Bob and others perform “Froggie went a courtin”
3. Other people’s songs: They killed him
4. Other people’s songs: Frankie & Albert
5. Other people’s songs: Tomorrow Night where the music is always everything
6. Other people’s songs: from Stack a Lee to Stagger Lee and Hugh Laurie
7. Other people’s songs: Love Henry
8. Other people’s songs: Rank Stranger To Me
9. Other people’s songs: Man of Constant Sorrow
10. Other people’s songs: Satisfied Mind
11. Other people’s songs: See that my grave is kept clean
12. Other people’s songs: Precious moments and some extras
13. Other people’s songs: You go to my head
14. Other people’s songs: What’ll I do?
15. Other people’s songs: Copper Kettle
16. Other people’s songs: Belle Isle
17. Other people’s songs: Fixing to Die
18. Other people’s songs: When did you leave heaven?
19. Other people’s songs: Sally Sue Brown
20. Other people’s songs: Ninety miles an hour down a dead end street
21. Other people’s songs: Step it up and Go
22. Other people’s songs: Canadee-I-O
23. Other people’s songs: Arthur McBride
24. Other people’s songs: Little Sadie
25. Other people’s songs: Blue Moon, and North London Forever
26. Other people’s songs: Hard times come again no more
27. Other people’s songs: You’re no good
28. Other people’s songs: Lone Pilgrim (and more Crooked Still)
29. Other people’s songs: Blood in my eyes
30. Other people’s songs: I forgot more than you’ll ever know
31.  Other people’s songs: Let’s stick (or maybe work) together.
32. Other people’s songs: Highway 51
33. Other people’s songs: Jim Jones
34. Other people’s songs: Let’s stick (or maybe work) together.
35. Other people’s songs: Jim Jones
36. Other people’s songs: Highway 51 Blues
37. Other people’s songs: Freight Train Blues
38. Other People’s Songs: The Little Drummer Boy
39. Other People’s Songs: Must be Santa
40. Other People’s songs: The Christmas Song
41. Other People’s songs: Corina Corina
42. Other People’s Songs: Mr Bojangles
43. Other People’s Songs: It hurts me too
44. Other people’s songs: Take a message to Mary
45. Other people’s songs: House of the Rising Sun
46. Other people’s songs: “Days of 49”
47. Other people’s songs: In my time of dying
48. Other people’s songs: Pretty Peggy O
49. Other people’s songs: Baby Let me Follow You Down
50. Other people’s songs: Gospel Plow
51. Other People’s Songs: Melancholy Mood
52. Other people’s songs: The Boxer and Big Yellow Taxi
53. Other people’s songs: Early morning rain
54. Other people’s Songs: Gotta Travel On
55. Other people’s songs: “Can’t help falling in love”
56. Other people’s songs: Lily of the West
57. Other people’s songs: Alberta
58. Other people’s songs: Little Maggie
59. Other people’s songs: Sitting on top of the world
60. Dylan’s take on “Let it be me”
61. Other people’s songs: From “Take me as I am” all the way to “Baker Street”
62. Other people’s songs: A fool such as I
63. Other people’s songs: Sarah Jane and the rhythmic changes
64. Other people’s songs: Spanish is the loving tongue. Author drawn to tears
65. Other people’s songs: The ballad of Ira Hayes
66. Other people’s songs: The usual
67. Other people’s songs: Blackjack Davey
68. Other people’s songs: You’re gonna quit me
69. Other people’s songs: You belong to me
70. Other people’s songs: Stardust
71. Other people’s songs: Diamond Joe
72. Other people’s songs: The Cuckoo
73. Other people’s songs: Come Rain or Come Shine
74. Other people’s songs: Two soldiers and an amazing discovery
75. Other people’s songs: Pretty Boy Floyd
76. Other people’s songs: My Blue Eyed Jane
77. That Old Black Magic (and a lot of laughs)