A downbeat tune, full of dark chords bleated from a vintage early ’90s keyboard, in some ways it’s the Walter Becker we all think we know and other ways it’s not. The pretty chord changes — and the actual use of more than four chords — is a mark of this master songsmith, as is original prose like,
Every little fool cracks wise
Wants to know what life is this
Comes on like a day in June and
Winds up like a week in Jersey
But in this song “Don’t Let Us Go Down” Walter is not in a wisecracking mood and his narrator feels foolish for letting “our deal go down that way.”
Walter Becker was never known as the confessional type of songwriter, though he could bring the goods when he set his mind to it. He was rarely autobiographical and though I’m not declaring this to be WB writing about WB, describing himself as a ‘beatnik’ (as he arguably was during his Bard days) could be a big hint.
It’s hardly his first tune about romance gone sour but the same guy who came up with the cold putdown line “I know you gave your little heart to me/I guess I threw the thing away” wrote a dozen stanzas here full of aching poetry.
Grab ya’ self a free download of “Don’t Let Us Go Down” at Walter Becker Media.
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