1969 The Move: Blackberry Way

'Blackberry Way' is another of those songs I seem to have known for almost as long as I've been conscious of music. And why shouldn't I - it's got a chorus that only an iron will wouldn't get taken in by and it dominates the song the way the Eiffel Tower dominates the Paris skyline. I think if I'd heard it played on the radio any time between the age of one and ten then it would have stuck.

But more than that, it's opening line "Blackberry Way, absolutely pouring down with rain. It's a terrible day" always struck me as so defiantly, almost mockingly English in its trading on the country's obsession with the weather to the point that I question whether any other nationality could have come up with it? As such, I tended to see it as part of the love/hate nostalgia beloved of other contemporary English bands like The Kinks (writer Roy Wood has himself acknowledged its probable debt to the equally nostalgic 'Penny Lane'). On a superficial level, these are probably fair observations, but peer below the surface and 'Blackberry Way' has more to offer than a hummable tune.

For a start, nothing about the song feels 'right'- the shrill way Wood sings each line as if it's a question plays tug of war with the dragging drum beat and minor key cello drones that constantly threaten to stop the song dead in its tracks and start pulling it under; 'Blackberry Way' plays out like a dream with only one foot in reality like a smeared watercolour left out in that 'pouring rain'.

And I think that's important - though there are overtones of psychedelia here, this rain here is literal. It's not the multicolour drench of The Beatles 'Rain' and neither has it the optimism of The Move's own previous 'Flowers In The Rain' - 'Blackberry Way' is all about the self pity. The skewed presentation reminds of an aural Expressionistic film, a waterlogged Dr Caligari landscape that the narrator aimlessly wanders with no direction home, pondering the recent split with his lover (hence the "terrible day") and self flagellating all the while. "I'm incredibly down" whines Wood, comparing himself to boats on the park lake "Just like myself they are neglected" in the kind of self centred, pointed/meaningless observation that's born of the hypersensitive misery the broken hearted know so well. And all wrapped in that bow of a chorus. Self pity never sounded so good.