Falling down gracefully

Let’s not mince words here — The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face, ori­gin­ally penned by folk singer Ewan McColl for his wife Peggy See­ger, is one of the greatest songs ever writ­ten. No con­test. I was lucky enough to see Ewan McColl in con­cert in the heart of rural Somer­set when I was about eight years old, accom­pan­ied by Peggy and a very young Kirsty McColl (in fact, most of the exten­ded McColl and See­ger fam­il­ies played on that tour). Our par­ents dragged my sis­ter and I along because they were going through their earn­est folk music phase at the time (hand-knitted pullovers and soya sub­sti­tute, mostly), and were keen to edu­cate us in the musical art of protest and consciousness-raising. Sadly, being so young and prob­ably pre­fer­ring Showaddy­waddy at the time, all I saw was an old bloke with a beard and a lurid sweater groan­ing away about social­ism, accom­pan­ied by acous­tic gui­tars and the occa­sional accor­d­ian. Don’t worry, years later I have come to real­ise that for one night in a small local theatre, I was in the pres­ence of genius. The memor­ies are hazy at best, but even I remem­ber the final encore from that winter even­ing — a sparse, hushed rendi­tion of that song:

“The first time ever I saw your face
I thought the sun rose in your eyes
And the moon and the stars were the gifts you gave
To the night and the empty skies my love
To the night and the empty skies.”

The word ‘romantic’ is used in far too many dubi­ous con­texts these days, many of which often bor­der on vomit-inducing. But just how romantic is that? Love song and a half.

Every­one knows the Roberta Flack ver­sion, but a quick skim through Google reveals that George Michael, Elvis Pres­ley and Engel­bert Hump­erdinck have all taken their turn at put­ting it through the wringer. Yet the real hor­ror is dis­cov­er­ing that Celine Dion has also pain­fully murdered every last drop of gut-wrenching emo­tion from this beau­ti­ful song. I sin­cerely hope that I die without ever hav­ing to tor­ture my ears via that par­tic­u­lar musical travesty.

But tonight — lying in a darkened room with a head­ache from hell beat­ing on the inside of my skull — I have been listen­ing on repeat play to Johnny Cash singing The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face. I’ve lost count of the num­ber of times I’ve heard it this even­ing. It lasts just under four minutes, and I listened to it for about two and a half hours in total — so you do the maths. I’m no Johnny Cash fan — too many memor­ies of a cer­tain alco­holic uncle who used to wail along to records by The Man In Black late at night, caus­ing untold misery to the neighbourhood’s cats — but I have a lot of time for his stark, bare and none-so-dark cover ver­sions, as I dis­covered when (prob­ably against good advice) I spent an entire day at work listen­ing to his ver­sion of U2’s One.

If I were even a little in charge of my senses at this point, I would be temp­ted to make a list of songs that Johnny Cash should cover (has he done any Nick Cave? He’s got to have covered a Bad Seeds song, surely?) As it is, I’m far too emo­tion­ally over­whelmed. There should be laws against songs that instantly bring a tear to your eye.