Guest Blog: Honky Tonk Women by The Rolling Stones

Last Saturday the Northwestern Wildcats faced the Indiana Hoosiers winning by three points in Big Ten football action. One of my favorite blogs, Two Penny Opera is written by a Indiana fan. The author Ian and I decided we would guest post on each other's blog to honor of our teams.

We both wrote about "Honky Tonk Women" by The Rolling Stones, bellow are Ian's thoughts on this classic.

As the probable prologue to this post indicates, this article is the spoils of the first ever Purple Reaction/Two Penny Opera Trophy game. As you know, Kingsley is a Northwestern alumnus and I attended Indiana University. On Saturday, the Northwestern Wildcats beat my Indiana Hoosiers, 20-17 in my adopted hometown, Bloomington. It’s not as if this will be an annual game anymore, as the new Big “10” alignment will have this game happen about once every three or four years.
About a month ago, we agreed that the alum of the losing school would write about “Honky Tonk Woman” by the Rolling Stones.



In a way, it’s almost fitting that this song was chosen, as it has a lot in common with my Indiana Hoosiers. The team that IU has is a middle of the pack team in a talented conference. If this team were in the MAC or any other mid major, they would be conference champions. But they have to play Michigan, Ohio State, Penn State and Northwestern.

If another band had written and produced “Honky Tonk Woman”, it would be the best song that band would have done. With a portfolio containing “Paint it Black”, “Satisfaction”, “Gimme Shelter” and “Sympathy for the Devil”. In fact, “Honky Tonk Woman” wasn’t even the best song from the single (the B-Side was “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”). Plus the song will always have the distinction of being Brian Jones’s swan song. He died the day before it was released in the UK.
The song spins a tale about the sexual adventures of a guy who likes to find drunk and vulnerable women. Ranging from a gin-soaked barfly in Memphis to a divorcee in New York, the storyteller is trying to get over a woman who had wronged him. He tries to imply that he is unwilling to lay down with these women in both stories, but he seems to be all about the honky tonk women.

The song certainly lacks the depth of meaning that most of the early Stones songs had, but it’s one of the more fun and upbeat songs that they created. They went from social commentators that talked about manipulative advertising (“Satisfaction”), drug usage (“Mother’s Little Helpers”) and mourning the loss of a loved one (“Paint it Black”) to party band that’s really into inconsequential sex. “Honky Tonk Woman” is all flash, but has very little substance and isn’t to be taken seriously.
Just like the Hoosiers.

Feels Like Home by Randy Newman

Linda Ronstadt recording
Chantal Kreviazuk recording

When I left home to go to college I never imagined that there would be any other place that I would call home.

I grew up in Mercer Island, Washington, which is a small suburb of Seattle that lies in the middle of Lake Washington. There's a tradition in my family of moving away from home. My mother and father came to America from Taiwan, my brother went to college at New York University and it only seemed to make sense that I would take opportunity to explore another part of the country. My brother went to a great American city so I chose Chicago to be the city that I would explore and I applied and got accepted to Northwestern University.

My freshmen year, I missed home a lot. I met some great people through Marching Band and my parents visited as much as they could but it was hard. I remember some nights feeling lonely and lost. My home seemed so far away and at times it seemed to physically hurt how much I wanted to feel the comfort of being at home. At those times, I would think about my parents coming over to a country in which they didn't even know the language, leaving all their family and friends and I would tell myself, if they could handle that, then I can make it at Northwestern.

As time went on, I joined a fraternity and lived in a frat house for three years. Slowly without thinking about it, I noticed that I would refer to my dorm room as "home." Sometimes people would ask if I was talking about my "home, home" which referred to my home in Washington or my "home" which was my dorm room. I don't remember the moment when I started thinking about my fraternity house as my home and when that happened I didn't seem to miss my "home, home" as much.

Maybe it was because I had made great friends and knew the town of Evanston and Chicago better, but I missed home less and less as my years at Northwestern progressed. I found that this happened again when my wife and I moved in together to Downers Grove another suburb of Chicago. When we first moved there I found myself missing home but as I began to know the town and feel comfortable in my surroundings I started calling it home and missing home less as the time passed.

After two years in Downers Grove, my wife and I moved back to Evanston and somehow our condominium felt like home quickly. I had lived in that same condominium during graduate school but something while Diana was finishing up her undergraduate degree at Northwestern but it never really felt like home during that time.

What my made condo feel like home so quickly? What was it that turned my Downers Grove apartment, my fraternity house and the house in Mercer Island a home? Is it about the building itself, the surroundings or is it something closer to the heart? Maybe the answer to this questions lies in “Feels Like Home” by Randy Newman.

In 1993, Randy Newman, most known for the music he composed for the Pixar films Toy Story and Monsters Inc. presented a musical he composed based on the story of Faust by Goethe and also utilized elements from Milton's Paradise Lost. The story is based in modern day with God and the Devil fighting for the soul of a University of Notre Dame student Henry Faust. The character of Martha who is trying to trick the Devil sings “Feels Like Home.” The setting and purpose of the song is to deceive but the emotional truth describing how people can bring us to the feeling of home is intimate, honest and genuine.

This song is about intangibles. Emotions that we can’t describe in words, so instead of trying to explain these emotions, Newman illustrates specific moments and situations that helps us feel theses magical and indescribable moments.

The song begins describing the emotional meaning that physical aspects can bring. Newman describes “something” in the eyes that makes him want to lose himself in his love’s arms. He hears something in her voice that touches his heart that makes him feel an emotion that he hopes will last forever. It has been said that love songs make sense when you finally fall in love and unless you have seen and heard that “something” that is being described it’s impossible to really know what Newman is singing about.

It is all of this that Newman sings “Feels Like Home.” This is a feeling of comfort, warmth and being safe. It is something that we see in each other eyes and feel in each other’s presence. It’s in our pain and in our happiness, which we work to express to each other. Though it is impossible to completely understand each other’s emotions through this struggle, we begin to better understand each other and even more so ourselves.

I don’t think home is just a building and I don’t think it’s just the people. It’s the joy in our lives, the struggle in the dark and a place in our heart. Home is a feeling that represents the best parts of ourselves and this feeling reminds us that no matter how far we travel, home will always be with us.


"Home is the one place in all this world where hearts are sure of each other. It is the place of confidence. It is the place where we tear off that mask of guarded and suspicious coldness which the world forces us to wear in self-defense, and where we pour out the unreserved communications of full and confiding hearts. It is the spot where expressions of tenderness gush out without any sensation of awkwardness and without any dread of ridicule."

~Frederick W. Robertson

Go U, Northwestern! by the Northwestern University "Wildcat" Marching Band

"Go U, Northwestern!" audio clip

9 wins and 3 loses.

Not since the year 2000 when the Wildcats went 8-3 in the regular season has Northwestern University had such a phenomenal football season. To end this season, the Wildcats will travel to the Alamo Bowl in San Antonia just as they did eight years go and just like eight years ago the finest band in the land, the Northwestern University “Wildcat” Marching Band (NUMB) will accompany the team on this historical trip.

In 2000, I was a freshmen alto saxophone player in NUMB. That season I rejoiced as the ‘cats beat Michigan (which after this year may become a trend), I survived the bitter cold marching during an away game in Iowa and I went to the Alamo Bowl. It was a phenomenal season but it wasn’t until the following years when the team did not do so well, that I developed my love and respect for Northwestern.

The song that was the soundtrack and the soul of that experience is a song that I’ve play more then any other piece of music in my life, “Go U, Northwestern!” I’m not going to make the argument that Northwestern has the best fight song ever. There are imperfections in the song, for example in the lyrics. Well-placed lyrics in songs have the melody accent the same syllables one would emphasize when speaking and no one would normally say “Break right through THAT line.” However, I do believe that “Go U, Northwestern!” is a quintessential and amazing American college fight song that uniquely expresses the spirit of Northwestern.

The song follows the standard form of most college fights. There are two main sections, the first part (first strain) and the instrumental interlude (break strain). The first strain is broken up into four 8-measure phrases:

1st phrase-Go U Northwestern! Break right through that line.
2nd phrase-With our colors flying, We will cheer you all the time, U Rah! Rah!
3rd phrase-Go! U Northwestern! Fight for victory,
4th phrase-Spread far the fame of our fair name, Go! Northwestern win that game.

The 1st and 2nd phrase present different material while the 3rd phrase is a repeat of the 1st phrase with an altered ending. The 4th phrase features material derived from earlier parts of the song and completes the first strain.

“Go U, Northwestern!” inspires people with a feeling of momentum and spirit. If you are trying to solve the problem of how to give music a feeling of direction, the easy solution is to have a piece start slow and speed up but that would not work with a marching band. So it is creating that same rush of energy when the tempo is staying constant that require a high level of musical invention.

One way composers create momentum is with rhythm. Simply following a longer note by shorter notes creates the illusion that the song speeding up. The 1st phrase starts with a long note that is followed by two shorter notes that drive into “-wes-“ of “Northwestern.” This occurs again with two shorter notes on “break right” which follow the longer note values of “-wes-“ and “-tern.” This pattern continues with the shortest note of the phrase on “through” which is followed by an off-beat accent on “that” which holds the listener in suspense before landing on the next downbeat.

The short-long rhythm on “through that” is called a Lombard rhythm or a Scotch snap. This is when a composers arrange a dotted rhythm so that the shorter note is firsts and on the beat. This rhythm manipulates the momentum of a phrase jolting it forward unexpectedly with the short note and creating anticipation with the longer note. In “Go U, Northwestern!” the Scotch snap moves around within the phrases creating unique twists in the first strain that play with our sense of direction. In the 1st phrase the Scotch snap is in the end of the phrase and in the 2nd phrase the Scotch snap is featured in the middle of the phrase.

The 3rd phrase mimics the 1st phrase placing the Scotch snap back in end of the phrase and then the 4th phrase starts immediately with the Scotch snap and features it twice before ending the first strain. This is unusual compared to other fight songs like Michigan’s “Hail To The Victors” which have a much more square and repetitive rhythms. This creates more militaristic feeling and opposed to the rhythmic invention in “Go U, Northwestern!” which express a mood of dance and celebration.

Within the anatomy of a fight song there are five roles that instrument groups play:
- The melody and the harmony of the melody (which in general have the same rhythm as
the melody) include the trumpets, mellophones, alto saxophones and trombones.
- The obbligato line, which is the higher and fast countermelody, features the flutes and
clarinets.
- The tenor saxophones, euphoniums, and baritones play the tenor countermelody.
- The sousaphones cover the bass line.
- The drum-line provide the percussion.

These roles change in certain places for example when the trombones double the bass line at the end of the 1st phrase and when the flutes and clarinets double the melody in the 3rd phrase of the first strain.

The obbligato line fills in motion whenever there is a long note in the melody so that the momentum never stops. For example, there’s a fast ascending scale “-wes-“ in the 1st phrase when the melody has a long note. Another example one is right before “U Rah, Rah” when the flutes and clarinets trill, (an un-metered flurry of the fasts note) which provide an explosive drive into the next measure.

The tenor countermelody, which I believe is the most overlooked parts of the song is the long smooth notes in the first strain which contrast the melody’s separated notes. This line outlines the contour of the melody, which is important in reinforcing the direction of the melody not only for the listener but also for melodic instruments in the band. It is easy when playing short notes to lose sight of the overall direction of the phrase and tenor line is essential in reinforcing the contour that gives this song a sense of direction.

The bass line in “Go U, Northwestern!” provides not only the foundation of the harmony but also acts as an expressive voice that supports the melody. The bass line plays the Scotch snap whenever it appears in the melody and provides interesting and dynamic transition material at the ends of phrases like in-between the 3rd and 4th phrases in the first strain.

I used to think of a drum-line like bunch of toy monkeys hitting every single beat. The drum line does keep a constant beat and drives the pulse of the band but like the bass line it does so much more. The clearest example of this is the cymbals. Listen carefully to when they play. They don’t play on every beat but instead highlight parts of the phrase. The bass drums, which are not as clearly audible, do the same thing and within snare drum and tenor line, this musical approach to playing provides and important layer of texture to an already rich musical landscape.

The break strains contrasts the first strain with three 4-measures phrases as opposed to the four 8-measures phrases. This sections creates momentum not with the rhythm but with the way the band is arranged into two different groups. They work together trading off measures like two groups of people within a crowd participating in a call and response cheer. The first two measures are the higher instruments on an ascending line, which the lower instruments respond to with a descending two-measure motif. The band repeats this pattern in the next four measures and then compressed the call and response into two beats groups instead of two measures groups. The lower instruments begin with a two beat pattern on beat 4 and beat 1 that is followed by the higher instruments on beat 2 and beat 3. The band is pulled apart first by 2 measures, then band comes closer together separated by only 2 beats and finally they play the same rhythm together as one in a glorious feeling of arrival and unity.

“Go U, Northwestern!” perfectly the spirit of Northwestern and what NUMB taught me in those years after the Alamo bowl is that it’s not about winning football games. It’s not about making fun other schools and it’s not about blindly following traditions.

It’s about the fact everyone can contribute. It’s about pride not only in ourselves but in each other it’s about finding the meaning in traditions and reinventing them for future generations.

Mr. Rogers, one of my personal heroes once said:

As you play together in a symphony orchestra, you can appreciate that each musician has something fine to offer. Each one is different, though, and you each have a different ‘song to sing.’ When you sing together, you make one voice. That’s true of all endeavors, not just musical ones. Finding ways to harmonize our uniqueness with the uniqueness of others can be the most fun—and the most rewarding—of all.

I found this true of my journey in NUMB, which was one of the greatest experiences in my life.

Go ‘Cats, Beat the Tigers! And if you don’t, no worries, we’ll still be here.

Oh, and Matt, my dear brother-in-law, congratulations man on being accepted to Northwestern. You already have the Northwestern spirit in your blood so I have no doubt that you will not only have a fantastic experience but that you will contribute great things to the people, the community and the tradition that is Northwestern.