Blowing in the Wind with Jean-Yves Ragot.
Retired French Literature teacher and musician, Jean-Yves Ragot, raises the curtain on some of his songs. As his thoughts go “Blowing in the wind”, they land on my desk. However, I quickly discover that you need to do more than just “Listen to the music” to understand about “The way we were”.
In these gloomy times and context, a bit of lightness and a big step back with my first guitar chords.
I was 14 years old, and every time my big brother Claude was away, I hurried to go and play on his superb jazz guitar like the one :
I strummed my first chords. MI RE LA. The simplest ones. So many songs have been made with these three chords!
I remember perfectly to have, for example, strummed for hours the MI LA RE of “La poupée qui fait non” by Michel Polnareff:
Souvenirs, memories…guitarists have to recognise each other…
But at the same time, from these chords, quickly enriched by others, I started to compose my first songs. And I can’t say why. The guitar, so practical to animate the singing as an instructor in the airy centre, to set the atmosphere with friends. And sometimes I slide one of my compositions.
In 1968, inspired by my muse of the time, and while everyone still had in mind the Beatles’ song which had won the Grammy Award for “Song of the Year” the previous year (although it had been released at the end of 1965) :
I composed what was soon to become a “tube” in our little band.
By the way, you should know that the word ‘tube’ was invented by Boris Vian in 1957, then artistic director at Philips.
“Tube” refers to the expensive cylinders of our old phonographs, and therefore reserved for future successes. But also, for Vian, “tube” was for those songs with hollow lyrics like a “hit”. But he himself, a gifted writer and musician, wrote several of them.
Before this word “tube”, people in musical circles used to talk about… “sausage” to designate these melodies composed by the kilometre to be cut into slices.
So, with my lover and the title of the Beatles in mind, I composed the song you are about to discover. In 2016, I had fun orchestrating and recording it, and Raymond Scheu, a childhood friend, surprised me by having fun putting it into pictures.
Good discovery under this link:
Wishing you form, energy and good morale.
Jean-Yves