I want to breathe when you breathe
When you whisper like that hot summer breeze
Count the beads of sweat that cover me
Didn’t you show me a sign this time…
I want to come when you call
And I’ll get to you if I have to crawl
They can’t hold me with these iron walls
We’ve got mountains to climb
Man oh man, they don’t come much more passionate than that.
A singularly beautiful and meditative love song from Robbie Robertson’s eponymous first solo album, released in 1987, Broken Arrow received less attention than companion tracks Showdown at Big Sky and Somewhere Down the Crazy River, but it’s my favourite. A lush studio arrangement wraps itself around a gorgeous, yearning melody, accompanied by musical and lyrical elements suggestive of Robertson’s First Nations heritage (his mother was Cayuga-Mohawk, and Robbie spent his early years, and many a subsequent summer, on the land of the Six Nations of the Grand River, Canada’s most populous Reserve, located about 15 miles south-west of Hamilton). The narrator’s romantic emotions are certainly intense – this guy really, really desires that woman, no two ways about it – yet the mood is more contemplative than urgent, as if he means to win her over through what he reckons is the gentle yet irresistible power of calm persuasion. Reviewing the critical commentary, as I always do before writing my own, I found that listeners react to it in different ways. For some, it’s a straightforward love song, something expressed at the beginning of a courtship, while others hear a sadder, more plaintive message, as if the narrator is hoping to win the woman back, or still pleading his case, deflated but still hopeful after being turned away. I’ve got a foot in both camps, depending upon my own mood when I listen. Sometimes it seems positive, optimistic, even soothing, and others it’s more melancholy, as if he took his best shot but failed to move her, and now he’s making his forlorn case to empty space, the repeated question “who else”? perhaps suggesting that she’s already found him wanting, and now he’s imagining what he’d say, if only she’d listen: but who else will ever love you like I do? Either way, it sure does tug at the heart strings.
It’s curious, isn’t it, even a little mystical, how a given piece of music can make you feel a certain way, sometimes tapping into your deepest emotions of hope or anxiety, joy or sadness, and you can’t explain how. It just does.
I’ve been writing these Songs of the Day pieces for almost seven years now, and as time’s passed, and I’ve strained to articulate exactly why certain songs seem to be a cut above, whether in their apparent complexity, harmonic sophistication, melodic range, clever key changes, or rhythmic novelty – whatever strikes me – I’ve grown more and more fascinated with music theory, about which, sadly, I understand next to nothing. It’s complex, sometimes seeming impenetrable, yet even a little bit of investigation reveals that there’s a science to it, as precise as mathematics, and almost as elaborate. Approaching the subject is like learning a new language, and let’s be clear, I haven’t learned much; it’s as if I’m taking a course in German, and so far I’ve learned the words for “fast” and “slow”, and the phrase I could use to get a passer-by to direct me to the nearest public washroom. Scales vs. keys, majors vs. minors, modes, diatonic vs. pentatonic, harmonic vs. melodic intervals, the circle of fifths, tones vs. semitones, it’s all mind-boggling, and one can’t help but stand in awe of the composers and musicians who fully understand it, and know how to exploit its secrets.
In essence, if I’m understanding correctly, the emotional quality of a piece, the mood it somehow evokes, all comes down to surprisingly minor variations in intervals, the distance between tones – or, more fundamentally, how many piano keys you skip between, say, the notes in a chord – and it’s amazing to realize even a little of how the magic works. An example: a basic chord consists of a three notes struck in unison (a “triad”), and whether it’s a major or minor chord depends on the intervals between the first and last notes. In the Music for Dummies version, you start at any root note – say, C – count forward seven more piano keys, or “semi-tones” (including the black ones) – so a spread of eight keys in total – and you’ve got the beginning and ending of a chord, what they call a “fifth”. Having started at C you’ll end up on G, two notes that sound delicious when blended. Next, you choose the note that comes between; starting again at C, skip two keys before selecting the middle note (which is therefore three semi-tones above C), thus leaving a gap of three more before completing the fifth (thus another four semi-tones), and you’ve got a minor chord. Reverse that, skipping three and then two, and presto, it’s a major. It works in much the same way for keys (which are particular sets of notes, each progressing from, and named after, its root note, not to be confused with scales – a whole other topic, whoo boy), and the wonderful thing is that these seemingly trivial changes create dramatic harmonic differences that stir much different emotions, pretty much universally. Minor chords and keys are associated with feelings of sadness, while majors evoke happiness and optimism. Watch this:
Sorcery! Tell me that isn’t magical! It’s all the more fascinating when you discover that the whole range of possible keys can be categorized by the particular shades of joy or melancholy which they’re generally perceived to represent. For example, the key of C Major is said to have the character of purity, innocence, and child-like naïveté. D Minor creates a mood of anxiety, and brooding despair. E Major, by contrast, is described as “noisy shouts of joy, laughing pleasure and not yet complete: full delight lies in E Major”.
Watching these YouTube tutorials for beginners, and reading the introductory primers, I feel like the Amazing Randi is letting me in on where the rabbit actually was before he pulled it out of his apparently empty top hat. Oh, so that’s how it’s done! Great, that’s a start, but I’m still a long, long way from learning how he always knows which card I picked, let alone how he saws those women in half, their toes wriggling the whole time. I’m wading into a very broad, frighteningly deep ocean here. As usual, the more you know, the more you realize how much you don’t know, and will probably never understand. End of the day, how much can the poor rube in the audience really comprehend about the wizardry on stage?
All you can do is try, to which end, here’s a little more musical sleight of hand – this is a description I found for G Major: “Everything rustic, idyllic and lyrical, every calm and satisfied passion, every tender gratitude for true friendship and faithful love – in a word every gentle and peaceful emotion of the heart – is correctly expressed by this key”. Broken Arrow is written in G Major (and no, I can’t discern that by ear, I had to look it up!). It pretty much fits the description, doesn’t it? Yet there’s still something more, and were I to spend hours upon hours delving into it I might discover how Robertson adds those undertones of sadness to all that faithful love and gentle emotion.
Like I say, magic.
I’ve done a little on-line searching, trying to nail down the metaphorical significance of the broken arrow and bottle of rain he holds out as the tokens of his love, without finding anything definitive. Some sources say these are traditional indigenous offerings, which sounds plausible, if vague, but being as that’s the view of some white guys who likely don’t really know, it’s hard to take as gospel. I also found this:
Well, I don’t know how reliable it is, but according to this site (http://www.fanfiction.net/s/1755444/1/), “the phrases ‘Broken Arrow’ and ‘Bottle of Rain’ are Native American expressions, meaning (respectively) ‘Peaceful End of Conflict’ and ‘Good Prospects/Good Fortune.’ For one to actually give another a ‘broken arrow’ in concert with an entire ‘bottle of rain’ (more than one drop of rain), would actually signal the intention to have or develop a lasting strong relationship with the other party, a wish for both peace and happiness.
That sounds good, but since this explanation’s prefaced by saying “well, I don’t know how reliable it is”, I guess I still have my doubts. I like the idea, though. It certainly fits the song’s general sentiment, so what the heck, let’s run with it.
If the big studio sound reminds you of the contemporary albums of U2 and Peter Gabriel, that’s because it was Daniel Lanois manning the booth, who was also the producer on Gabriel’s So and U2’s Joshua Tree, both landmark albums of the era. That’s also Gabriel on keyboard. The similarity to both U2 and especially Peter Gabriel is even more pronounced on another nice cut from the album, Fallen Angel, which also features backing vocals by Gabriel:
Some might find the production a little too slick and polished, but I’m not among them. I like slick and polished. I like the attention to detail.
Robbie Robertson was a big seller, and was generally received rapturously by the music press, but after that Robertson, never terribly prolific, faded into relative obscurity. There were three more solo albums, the last as recently as 2019, but none of them had anywhere near the impact of his first. Still, Robertson’s musical legacy is secure, and enviable. With The Band, he wrote such classics as The Weight (an enigmatic tale of personal debt and the taxing assumption of burdens, which nobody seems to understand), Up On Cripple Creek, Life is a Carnival, The Shape I’m In, King Harvest (Has Surely Come), and perhaps most moving, the iconic, anthemic lament of the fall of the Confederacy, The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down, controversial these days on account of being misunderstood as some sort of endorsement of Lost Cause mythology, when it’s really a bitter account of a horrified Southerner coming to grips with how very much the ill-conceived rebellion has cost both him and his breakaway nation (I swear, I have to reach for the Kleenex when Virgil relates how his kid brother was just nineteen, proud and brave / but a Yankee laid him in his grave). These are masterful examples of the songwriters’ art, and Broken Arrow takes its worthy place among them.
Robbie Robertson died last year, aged 80. The Six Nations were among many who released tributes to mark his passing:
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This came in from a reader identifying as “Zippy”:
A Broken Arrow is an iconic Native American real life offering to make peace between warring parties. Seems it’s a major symbol as the title of Robbie’s song representing a “make up” plea to his ex. Especially given the added gesture of giving her a bottle of rain, to say “please let’s start over”.
the needlefish 