Human Flower Project
‘Let Her Dream, for She’s a Child’
‘Wildflower’ by two Canadians ‘still rings in midnight silence’ (whatever that means).
Skylark, 1972
Photo: David Foster net
One of our many guilty pleasures is a gushy ballad from 1972: ‘Wildflower” by one-hit-wonder band Skylark of Victoria, Canada.
“She’s faced the hardest times
you could imagine….”
Brimming with echoes, harpstrings, and a twangy reverb guitar solo, it never fails to thrill, a throwback to muttonchops and nights of AM radio. OKAY, so strangle us with macrame’!
The lyrics were written by Dave Richardson, then a young policeman in Saanich, Canada. He explains:
“In 1970 I was dating a nurse, whom I would eventually marry in 1971…. One night I went to pick her up at her apartment, as we had planned on going out. When she opened the door I saw that she was upset to the point of tears. She still had a housecoat on and had her hair wrapped in a towel after a shower. She told me that two elderly ladies she had been caring for in the hospital had died that day at work, and she felt terribly sad about it, as she had come to know them fairly well over a period of time. Anyway, she more or less vented her feelings and I just listened.
“After she was finished, she thanked me for listening, and said she would get ready for our date. She went into the bedroom and closed the door, and I sat and watched TV waiting for her to come out. When she didn’t return, I knocked on the door but she didn’t answer, so I went in to find her fast asleep on the bed, still in her housecoat and with the towel still wrapped around her head. I guess she was just exhausted after her emotional day. So, I put a blanket over her, being careful not to wake her, and went home and wrote the song in about fifteen minutes.”
“Be careful how you touch her
for she’ll awaken
for sleep’s the only freedom
that she knows
and when you look into her eyes
you won’t believe
the way she’s always payin’
for a debt she never owes
and the silent wind still blows
that only she can hear
and so she goes….”
Recently, we were out in California among some of our folklorist heroes and heroines, people who collect Wobbly anthems and songs from coal miners’ picket lines. After reading this
“ title=” dave richardson”>interview with Dave Richardson, we think “Wildflower” is a labor song, too, the poem of a cop in love with a hard-working nurse,
“Wildflower” has been covered by such Masters of Uncool as Johnny Mathis and Aaron Neville. We like the original version most. Richardson recounts that the spooky, slow-hand guitar solo that begins the song was Doug Edwards’ practice riff that a smart engineer managed to record. Edwards wrote the tune.
In case you’ve forgotten the song, hang on to your love beads—here’s how it opens.
Comments
Awww… now that’s a nice story. I’ve always loved that song, but the background behind it makes it extra special.
70’s… my childhood years! Those years were probably the only ones when flowers were giving the right attention and their power was felt better than in any other time in the modern history. I found out about Wildflower later, in the 80’s, but I enjoyed them even then.