Inside Tracks #1: Tim Moore, "Second Avenue" + Covers by Art Garfunkel (1974) & Colin Blunstone (2009)
Under the covers with musical arrangement analysis of Tim Moore's original, Garfunkel's immediate cover the same year, plus Blunstone's cover 35 years later. Vote for your favorite in THE POLL!
For “Inside Tracks,” we put a couple of cover versions under the audio microscope, and compare them to the songwriter’s original version. How similar or dissimilar are they? What did the songwriter intend with the original, and how were the featured covers crafted?
For this “Inside Tracks” episode, Front Row & Backstage is enlisting the impressive musical knowledge and experience of fellow Substack-er, Michael Acoustic, who will provide deep, exclusive dives into the charts and, when available, sheet music. He’ll give us insight into keys, chords, time signatures, and basic differences in each cover’s arrangements!
This inaugural “Inside Tracks” kicks off with Tim Moore’s “Second Avenue,” written, recorded and released in 1974. We’ll look at Tim’s original, the immediate cover by Art Garfunkel, and the 2009 cover by Colin Blunstone.
Tim Moore
A self-taught musician (and a self-described polymath), Moore was already heavily musically-connected before he signed his first solo recording contract. He grew up in Philadelphia, and rubbed musical elbows with the likes of fellow Philadelphians, Todd Rundgren and neighbor, Daryl Hall. In fact, Tim and Daryl were in Gulliver together, a band that released one album on Elektra Records in 1970.
It didn’t take long before industry insiders, like Keith Richards, Jimmy Webb, James Taylor and Michael McDonald, were singing Moore’s praises.
Moore signed with ABC/Dunhill Records, which issued his first single in 1973, “A Fool Like You,” on which Donald Fagen of Steely Dan sang backup (Fagen and Dan cohort, Walter Becker were ABC/Dunhill staff writers at the time). In return, Moore sang backup on the first Steely Dan single, “Dallas,” a song that did not make the final track listing for Dan’s 1972 debut, Can’t Buy a Thrill.
That rare “Dallas” song and a deep look into the beginnings of Steely Dan can be found here:
Moore’s self-titled debut solo album came out in 1974 as the first release by a label called A Small Record Company, owned by the Famous Music Corporation, and distributed by Paramount Records. First single? “Second Avenue.”
It charted in the US (peaking at #58), Canada, and UK, but just as it was headed up the US charts, Famous Music closed its record operations. Asylum came to the rescue and re-released the album shortly thereafter.
A simple, piano-based ballad, Tim shows a natural ease for ear-pleasing melodies, matching this lyrical tale of loss with an equally heartbreaking tune, and an appropriately swelling bed of strings (arranged by Moore’s Gulliver bandmate, Tom Sellers). How Barry Manilow missed the stop at “Second Avenue” is anyone’s guess.
Michael Acoustic: “This is great song, especially lyrically, even more so in terms of rhyme structure and meter, maybe even unique in those terms.
“Musically it’s rich and complex; it leans heavily on the piano accompaniment to do that - a guitar or different instrumental approach would not do it justice. In fact, I would love to hear it with just a piano, or maybe joined only with some very muted bass and drum.
“Dynamics and orchestration: Drums and bass guitar come in big on 2nd verse, orchestral strings come in on lead-in to the chorus and through the chorus and instrumental break, fade back on verse, as does drum, bass stays present, but not overwhelming overall. Less heavily-orchestrated than Garfunkel’s version.”
“My friend, Kit, had visited and written, ‘I am you’ in the frost on my kitchen window pane.”
“It’s good to know that so many people find themselves in ‘Second Avenue,’” Tim told Al Rocheleau of the Florida State Poets Association in the summer of 2021. “It’s a poignant song about loss that some folks have returned to all their lives. Is it biography? Partially.
“I wrote it in the winter. I was living on the third floor of 106 Forrest Avenue in Narberth, PA. There was a landing there. I may have broken up with a passing girlfriend, but I wasn’t sad.
“My friend, Kit, had visited and written, ‘I am you’ in the frost on my kitchen window pane. I was learning Chopin’s Waltz in C sharp minor, so Chopin’s voicings were in my hands. I moved the scene to the Second Avenue apartment of a woman I’d had a short affair with in New York.
“Her flowers and birds? That’s probably Bob Dylan’s ‘Just Like a Woman’ sneaking in. Elton John’s ‘Your Song’ was in the air then, too. I was reading [Austrian poet/novelist, Rainer Maria Rilke]. Some of my other songs are tied to real events.”
Michael Acoustic: “Really interesting and evocative lyrics, definitely place the audience emotionally ‘in the song’ - the first person aspect is descriptive of a ‘love struggle/love-lost’ event, and while the lyrics seem personal to the imagined narrator/singer, we understand the writer/vocalist is chronicling a fictitious event or period, albeit one that may have had some basis in the artist’s real life.
“This is storytelling in song at it’s best, where we identify with the mood, descriptions of the surroundings, scenes and emotions we can imagine and identify with, but at the same time don’t feel like the narrator is ‘just whining, asking for our help, or describing something that can only be felt by him.’
“It’s not personal to our own experiences and circumstances, but instead universal enough that we can identify and place ourselves in our own similar story within the song - fabulous - we wanted someone to commiserate with us, and we got it!”
Art Garfunkel
“It’s Called a Cover Battle”
Barry Manilow’s miss was Garfunkel’s Top 40 hit. In what might’ve literally been a matter of days, Art Garfunkel (billed on the label as simply, “Garfunkel”) rushed out his cover of “Second Avenue” on Columbia Records. With Garfunkel and Roy Halee co-producing, Ernie Freeman provides the string arrangements.
Tim, on the immediacy of Garfunkel’s release: “Then we heard that Garfunkel had recorded a version. That’s legal in music, because once a song is publicly for sale, anyone can record it. To add to the problems, my record label decided they didn’t want to be in the record biz while my single was climbing the charts.
“Suddenly I was a free agent with a charting record. David Geffen called right away and wanted to sign me to his label, Asylum, the dream label of singer-songwriters: Joni, Jackson, even Dylan at the time were on his roster. I signed with David. Asylum started promoting ‘Second Avenue,’ but by that time Columbia had also released Artie’s version, and our two labels went to war. It’s called a cover battle.
“What happens is the radio stations and record sales get split up, diluting what would have been a hit into two minor chart records. Neither record gets critical mass. Artie’s version peaked at 35. We killed each other” […Another way of saying the versions cancelled each other out].
Art’s familiar “gentle” phrasing brings another layer of pathos to his reading that eclipses even Moore’s version for pure rain-drenched angst, especially when he jumps the octave on “kissed.”
“I am the problem”: Art was responding to a fan’s question wondering why “Second Avenue” wasn’t included on his 1975 Breakaway album, and why he never performed the song live. “Roy Halee brought the song to me. I never loved it, but recorded it at his urging. It’s very well-liked by my fans,” he told fans on his website in 1998.
Michael Acoustic: “Both Moore and Garfunkel versions are in the Key of E Major, though I originally considered that they may have been written in the relative minor key of E Major, (which is C#minor) since the song is sort of sad and conveys a darker mood. After charting, and some evaluation, I’m sure both are written in E Major. Both have a ‘common time’ 4/4 time signature (4 beats to the measure, quarter note gets the beat).
“Tempo is close, but slightly different: The Moore tempo is 111 Beats Per Minute (BPM) which is pop song range, or also in the fast ballad range. The Garfunkel version is 107 BPM, not enough of a difference to be apparent, and it’s not really; in fact, I would have bet the Garfunkel version was slightly faster, but now I think that may be due to the snappier drum line, where the snare is more muted in the Moore version.
“Both use the same chordal structure which uses a number of ‘non-diatonic’ chords, and I presume, without knowing the associated piano arpeggios used, follow a non-diatonic melody line in those places.”
Colin Blunstone
While a handful of artists recorded covers over the decades, it wasn’t until 2009 that former Zombie lead singer, Colin Blunstone, decided to dust off “Second Avenue’s” charts when he was 64.
A newly-inducted (2019) Rock’n’Roll Hall-of-Famer with his Zombies, Blunstone included the song on his The Ghost of You and Me album on Ennismore Records:
Still piano-driven, the song was produced by Jon Sweet, with strings arranged by Christopher Gunning. I’m hearing Blunstone use his decades of singing experience to breathe some new life into the song: He’ll echo Garfunkel’s gentle delivery at times, while using his considerable vocal range to go full voice on high parts to accentuate the song’s urgency. No falsetto for Colin, thankyouverymuch.
Michael Acoustic: “The Blunstone version is in the Key of F Major (chordally, one semitone higher in root pitch throughout), though the chordal intervals, lyrics (with slight changes), phrasing, meter and rhythm are the same.
“Tempo is 111 BPM, the same as the original Moore version. The same stylistic differences in the vocals make it similar to the Moore and Garfunkel versions, but with the artist’s unique vocal characteristics. I assume the key change fit his singing voice better, but it may be some other reason, including just wanting to differentiate it from the original Moore key.
“The Blunstone recording is much more ‘digital’ sounding, maybe a little too much (highly-compressed?). Vocals are expansive, breathy, and a little sibilant with reverb, upfront and wide, more so than with the Moore and Garfunkel recordings, which likely started analog, then were converted to digital for CDs/YouTube (algorithms for YouTube? - probably).
“[His cover is] piano dominant and heavy underneath vocals, no bass guitar that I can hear, bass is intermittent (and kind of choppy in and out - less dynamic and more episodic - kinda distracting) in the sections, probably cello/upright bass (though now I’m wondering if the bass isn’t a MIDI or synth-created track due to the somewhat unnatural choppiness - could be just drop-in/punch-in editing during mixing, though), back and left in the mix, strings are present, not overwhelming - above and behind the vocals. Same sort of dynamics, but not as smooth or pronounced (or effective) as Garfunkel or Moore.”
Thank you for spotlighting a wonderful songwriter who’s name should be placed alongside the likes of Jimmy Webb, Randy Newman and many more. Second Avenue is a beautiful song no matter which artist is smart enough to cover it. Great job highlighting this gem and it’s creator.
I only knew Art's version all these years, from "Angel Clare"...now about to see Tim Moore perform in Woodstock,NY's Byrdcliffe Theatre! I'm sure he will sing it! À great song!