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RALPH, ALBERT & SYDNEY
GLEN CAMPBELL

Harry Chapin: an eye for losers
Author: Derek Jewell

Publication: Sunday Times

Date: April 10th 1977

It is scarcely possible to rank Harry Chapin among contemporary singer- songwriters, for he stands virtually alone. It is also hard to believe it has taken so long for so sparklingly original a talent to play a solo concert in London.

He managed it triumphantly after thirty-four years and six superb albums at the New Victoria last  Thursday. The hall was not quite full, which will not happen again. No one who was there can fail to persuade six other people along next time.

Chapin's gifts are liberally in evidence on his albums, of which the last three (all Elektra) reveal the most: Verities and Balderdash, Portrait Gallery and On The Road To Kingdom Come. They show how his inspiration springs from the daily encounters of American living, yet also how the situations he depicts are often allegories for the universal modern condition. 'Cat's In The Cradle', about a father-son relationship, is typical Chapin. The son worships the father, wants to grow up like him. The father is too engrossed in business. 'There were planes to catch and bills to pay, he learned to walk while I was away.' Suddenly the boy is grown, married; the father is alone. Now the son is too busy to visit. 'He'd grown up just like me, as the painful punchline observes.

As dramatic narrative alone, that song is compelling. Similarly, Chapin observes a meeting between an old man and a waitress in a cafe, a chance encounter of old flames in a taxi; a crucifixion by metropolitan critics of a singer from the sticks who never opens his mouth in public again. 'Music was his life,' sings Chapin. 'It was not his livelihood.'

Chapin has an unerring and pitying eye for life's losers; not heavily tragic losers, but those for whom the pieces never quite fall together. Simultaneously, he celebrates the strength of the human spirit which survives loneliness, discovers the comic moments of episodes with which his listeners can continually identify. In that coincidence lies the secret of the best popular songs.

Chapin sings in a clear, pleasant voice, using unfussy melodies and arrangements played by a small backing group within which a cello provides haunting counterpoints. His stage personality is captivating. He did as he wished with Thursday's audience. As he hunched dumpily in his chair, tousling his hair, talking wittily and relevantly about the circumstances of his songs, himself, and his musicians, not a soul stirred, except to laugh or applaud. The final standing ovation was spring-heeled and genuine. London will see no more absorbing concert this year.

Earlier last week, at the Albert Hall, Glen Campbell and Jimmy Webb had a larger audience, without stirring them so deeply. Campbell is excellent at what he does, in intonation and style as true to his Western roots (born in Delight, Arkansas, once a cotton-picker) as Chapin is to his Greenwich Village background. Yet where Chapin gets inside every song he sings, Campbell seems too often a spectator, smoothing out tunes and meanings alike. Few shocks, few insights - just a pleasant flowing countryish sound.

He can, it seems, do anyone's music. Still slim and lithe, he was once a Beach Boy (I965), and revived their hits fluently. He imitated Elvis. He rocketed through the William Tell Overture on guitar with the finesse of a computer print-out.

He has the great good fortune often to sing Webb's fine songs - 'Wichita Lineman', 'Galveston', Macarthur Park' - and here performed several. Webb himself sang 'Didn't We' which, like the others, is already a modern classic. But the gloss of Campbell's breezy performance will not endure like the grittier I50 minutes of Harry Chapin's.

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