11. Honey ConeTake Me With You
So, this is a direct contrast to what we just heard with Doris Duke. In soul music a lot of women tend to be pretty meek, the narrative in a lot of the songs by women is of being done wrong to, wondering why men don’t like them and stuff and in Honey Cone there was an attitude that is entirely different. It’s pretty much that men are dicks and go fuck yourself! And I would hesitate to describe them as feminists for a few reasons, but the songs, like ‘Girls It Ain’t Easy’, have the underlying message that men are fucking useless. Having said that, there are some very tender moments on the album like ‘The Feeling’s Gone’.
On this album there are all these songs that sound like they are very empowering for women, and they were ostensibly written by Edith Wayne but it turned out this was a pseudonym for Holland-Dozier-Holland, the guys who wrote the songs for Motown. I think it’s interesting because they obviously realised that these songs wouldn’t have been appreciated in the same way if it were known that men had written them. I only found this out a couple of weeks ago and I was absolutely floored by it. They sound like such strong, independent, feminine songs, so to find out they were written by one of the biggest songwriting teams in pop history was quite devastating in a way but I also thought what a brilliant move, they must have been pretty brilliant guys as well; not only did they want to write songs from a different perspective but they were willing to be quiet about it. Obviously there’s still a level of male control in that, but when you hear the songs they belong to the women. This song I’m going to play you, ‘My Mind’s On Leaving But My Heart Won’t Let Me Go’, I was on my way to have a fantastic holiday in Madrid and I was in the airport with this in my earphones and I burst out crying and I had to have a sit down in the airport. I took a wee seat and just wept for the two minutes and fifty-six seconds that it lasts and when that stopped I played the fucker again and continued to weep, hence being late to meet my friends who were waiting to pick me up in the car. I think I blamed the flight but the truth of the matter was I was just sat weeping because it’s just absolutely encapsulating; I mean not everybody has lived with someone who they want to leave but to me it just fucking spoke to me.
