Читать книгу The Mojo Collection - Various Mojo Magazine - Страница 84

Record label: Verve

Produced: Charles Koppelman and Don Rubin

Recorded: Hardin’s home studio, Los Angeles; winter 1967

Released: May 1967

Chart peaks: None (UK) None (US)

Personnel: Tim Hardin (v, g, p); Artie Butler (strings); Felix Pappalardi (b); Sticks Evans (d); Phil Krauss (vibes)

Track listing: If I Were A Carpenter; Red Balloon; Black Sheep Boy; Lady Came From Baltimore; Baby Close Its Eyes; You Upset The Grace Of Living When You Lie; Speak Like A Child; See Where You Are And Get Out; It’s Hard To Believe In Love For Long; Tribute To Hank Williams

Running time: 28.30

Current CD: Lilith LR107

Further listening: Suite For Susan Moore And Damion (1969) is a disturbing confessional in song and poetry of a man whose life is falling apart. Of his later albums Nine (1973) is probably the best; though his magical songwriting had deserted him, he proved himself a sensual soul-blues singer

Further reading: www.zipcon.net/~highroad/ hardin. htm; www.mathie.demon.co.uk/th/ (both fansites)

Download: Not currently legally available

Susan Yardley was a young actress making a name for herself in the TV series The Young Marrieds when she first met Tim Hardin in Los Angeles. Hardin, already a hardened drug addict, had a bad record with women and may have had dishonourable intentions towards Susan, if the lyrics to The Lady Came From Baltimore are anything to go by. Instead he fell deeply and irrevocably in love with the actress – real name Susan Morss – who became his wife and inspired virtually all the songs that flooded out of him and formed the basis of Tim Hardin 2.

He set up a studio in his house and recorded a series of songs of poignant wonder which detail not only his intense love for Susan but also the paranoia and neuroses that smothered him. Red Balloon is an anguished song about drugs; Black Sheep Boy confronts his sense of failure and alienation; Tribute To Hank Williams has him identifying strongly with the tragic, too-fast-to-live legend of the country icon. If I Were A Carpenter poetically relates his inferiority complex over his marriage to the well-connected Susan Morss, renamed as Susan Moore by Hardin for artistic purposes. If I Were A Carpenter went on to become his most celebrated song, a hit for Bobby Darin, Four Tops and many others. Not that it impressed Hardin, still unsuccessfully fighting his habit. It’s said that when he first heard Bobby Darin’s cover of Carpenter in the car, he screamed the car to a halt, jumped out and stamped on the ground in a rage.

There were no happy endings for Tim Hardin or Susan Moore. He eventually died of an overdose, 13 years after the release of Tim Hardin 2. He had a long, difficult struggle with his own numerous demons, which included a terror of live performance, low self-esteem, constant writer’s block, the emotional roller-coaster of his on-off marriage and various attempts to escape the clutches of the drugs that ultimately killed him.