You and Your Perfect Life
(playing time 5:18)
music by David Palmer / words by David Palmer (except *from Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby)
This song was inspired by the Nick Hornby novel Juliet, Naked. The story involves, among other things, an American singer/songwriter named Tucker Crowe, who mysteriously disappeared from the music scene in the late 80s after the release of his legendary breakup album Juliet. Over the years a cult following has developed, and twenty years after his disappearance, a CD labeled Juliet, Naked arrives in England at the home of Duncan, an avid fan and blogger, with a note claiming that this is the guitar and vocal demo Crowe recorded when he first wrote the songs. I won’t tell you what else happens in the book (there are reviews on Amazon), but I found it to be quite a page-turner.
Tucker Crowe is compared by his fans and the media to Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and Leonard Cohen. The album Juliet is described in great detail in the book, along with a track list, but there are no songs. So I thought it would be fun to go ahead and write some of them. I started with the final track on the album, You and Your Perfect Life, which chronicles the end of his affair with a married San Francisco model and socialite. There are three lines of lyrics for this song in the novel, so I used those as a starting point and wrote the rest of the song around them. My guitar. vocal and harmonica recording is in the spirit of Crowe’s demo. All of the lyrics refer to situations and events in the book.
