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Hi all,
How certain are we that Jake’s Leeds address was 8 Old Oak Close? I have seen 8 Old Oak Drive on another site, and having been in Leeds recently and looked at both I’m not convinced the Old Oak Close house is old enough to have been where his mother lived in the early 60s – unless it was demolished and rebuilt, or had the whole facade redone?
With apologies to the current residents, this is what Close looks like from the outside: https://photos.app.goo.gl/VbJ7jsCYEk8tJPKdA
And this is Drive, which seems to me more age-appropriate: https://photos.app.goo.gl/BaznwQS7YW4D3wCz5
Any thoughts welcome!
Great to hear from you, Paddy, and thanks for your interest. I ought to do ‘The Kiss’ soon – I’m always amazed at how earthy, how explicit, it is. As well as being so, so densely written. Good steer…
Hello, and thanks to everyone who’s commented so far. I just wanted to let you know, despite a couple of months’ apparent hiatus, this is very much still going and as of today I’m now up to my fifth post, on ‘The Hair of the Widow of Bridlington’. They’re all on the site here – https://www.gatherabud.wordpress.com – and I’d be delighted to hear any comments you have about the readings I offer, especially anything I might have missed. And do feel free to subscribe if you want to know when the next update is out!
I’d love to hear any updates on this as well – it feels like a missing piece of the story, really. Has John Watterson come across anything relating to this in his biographical research, do we know?
Hi Judith, this probably isn’t the right way for me to have gone about things but I actually did the translation already, just because it was fun – here it is, for what it’s worth. Quite a free version in places, but then I like to think Jake would have done the same..
A F#m A D E
Heaven knows that I’m decent deep down
A F#m B7 E
I never wish a body underground
A A7
But if Death hung up his scythe
D C#7
I could barely keep alive
F#m E D E A
It’s a dog’s life digging gravesIt’s a living wage, making my bread
And butter off the backs of the dead
Some say it gives me a thrill
But I work against my will
It’s a dog’s life digging gravesIf I let myself shed a tear or look sad
It’s a good old laugh for all the lads
They say ‘Hey old boy, chin up,
Sometimes you look like death warmed up’
It’s a dog’s life digging gravesFor all I tell myself ‘all things must pass’,
I don’t understand why that’s the case
And I’ll never be someone
Who just takes death as it comes
It’s a dog’s life digging gravesThough we never met, friend, fare thee well
If you meet the Lord halfway to Hell
Tell him how dearly I’ve paid
For a pickaxe and a spade
It’s a dog’s life digging graves
It’s a dog’s life digging graves(Some of the chords, and chord placements might be a bit off, but if you play then feel free to try it out!)
Michel, I wasn’t aware that Sheila Thackray had passed away – sad news if so. I would be interested to hear/read your French versions of Jake – you could email me on richardtobrien [at] gmail [dot] com. As I’ve posted here (http://www.jakethackray.com/forum/2-jakes-music/3486-shakespeare–brassens–thackray.html) I’m very interested in the line of reception from Brassens to Jake’s work. Do you know much about Brassens’s own literary/writing influences?
Hi Michel, I wanted to draw your attention to this post: http://www.jakethackray.com/forum/2-jakes-music/3486-shakespeare–brassens–thackray.html – I’m working on a conference paper which looks at ‘The Gravedigger’, which seems to be a tribute or homage to Brassens’ ‘Le Fossoyeur’, though not a direct translation – as someone familiar with both, do you have any thoughts on the specific relationship between them, particularly from the point of view of the translation of ideas rather than language?
Nathan, this is great! I’ve retweeted it, for what good it’ll do… Larkin talks about marriage as ‘dilution’ somewhere, I think, but I guess ‘Lah-di-Dah’ is almost the opposite – the ceremony is the dilution, and the marriage itself the distillation of the real thing. ‘To Do With You’ feeds into this as well.
