Remembering Richard Harris (1930-2002)
Oct. 27th, 2002 12:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poltr12-day-old news by now, I know.
Actor Richard Harris passed away Friday, due to Hodgkin's disease. There will be a private funeral ceremony, after which his ashes will be spread by his former home in the Bahamas.
Many of the young kids will know him as Professor Aldus Dumbledore in the first two Harry Potter movies. Their parents may remember him as King Arthur in Camelot. And some of you may remember a rather unusual pop song from 1968 on which he sang. It was written by Jimmy Webb, and made it up to #2 on the chart that May. That's right -- I'm talking about the one and only......MacArthur Park.
The lyrics are nonsensical and disjointed (supposedly it is about lost love), the song structure is rather unusual (ABABCCBDDB) and also a bit disjointed, but everyone seems to remember the chorus -- "MacArthur Park is melting in the dark / All the sweet green icing flowing down / Someone left the cake out in the rain", etc. etc. The folks at Pop Culture Madness rated it the #1 worst song of all time. Maybe it's those one-measure full-orchestral instrumental breaks in the first two verse -- they're in 5/4 while the rest of the verse is in 4/4 -- which makes it almost impossible to dance to. Or maybe because it works more like a suite instead of a typical pop song. Or maybe because it runs about 7 minutes -- way too long for a pop song. If it was on an album, it might get some airplay on an album rock station.
But I kind of like the song, and the instrumental parts, especially the instrumental "verse" near the end. (I hated the Donna Summer version, by the way, and laughed out loud when I heard Weird Al Yankovic's parody, "Jurassic Park".) Songwriting genius or the result of a bad acid trip? You decide. Here's a link to the lyrics.
Actor Richard Harris passed away Friday, due to Hodgkin's disease. There will be a private funeral ceremony, after which his ashes will be spread by his former home in the Bahamas.
Many of the young kids will know him as Professor Aldus Dumbledore in the first two Harry Potter movies. Their parents may remember him as King Arthur in Camelot. And some of you may remember a rather unusual pop song from 1968 on which he sang. It was written by Jimmy Webb, and made it up to #2 on the chart that May. That's right -- I'm talking about the one and only......MacArthur Park.
The lyrics are nonsensical and disjointed (supposedly it is about lost love), the song structure is rather unusual (ABABCCBDDB) and also a bit disjointed, but everyone seems to remember the chorus -- "MacArthur Park is melting in the dark / All the sweet green icing flowing down / Someone left the cake out in the rain", etc. etc. The folks at Pop Culture Madness rated it the #1 worst song of all time. Maybe it's those one-measure full-orchestral instrumental breaks in the first two verse -- they're in 5/4 while the rest of the verse is in 4/4 -- which makes it almost impossible to dance to. Or maybe because it works more like a suite instead of a typical pop song. Or maybe because it runs about 7 minutes -- way too long for a pop song. If it was on an album, it might get some airplay on an album rock station.
But I kind of like the song, and the instrumental parts, especially the instrumental "verse" near the end. (I hated the Donna Summer version, by the way, and laughed out loud when I heard Weird Al Yankovic's parody, "Jurassic Park".) Songwriting genius or the result of a bad acid trip? You decide. Here's a link to the lyrics.
