Neal and Jack and Me

Absent lovers, absent lovers

It took a long time for me to "get" King Crimson's "Neal and Jack and Me", and to be honest I'm not sure I really do. It was last year, sometime whilst at work. I was doing my usual job stuff and I was listening to Beat, King Crimson's 1982 album. Until then I wasn't much a fan of it, but I'd occasionally give it a listen, just in case. I liked "Waiting Man" quite a lot though, but that was mostly due to the version on Absent Lovers: Live in Montreal 1984.

So anyway, I was working and listening to Beat. Opener "Neal and Jack and Me" starts, and for the first time I heard it. Think I spun the album again shortly after, then it was the song on repeat for the rest of the day.

"Neal and Jack and Me" has a narrative about Neal Cassady, Jack Kerouac and "Me", who is likely Adrian Belew. This trio journeys through different places as the song goes through differing forms. There's the excitement of travel, the tedium and strain it can carry, and it's almost like the song is looking at two truths of travel. As such, Belew's voice moves from passion to a coiled stress, and navigates the experiences whilst giving them all the focus they require.

The instrumentation also alternates throughout as necessary. During the first section it's more smooth and flowing. Later on it becomes herky-jerky whilst remaining smooth in flow. Like the lyrics, it changes from excitement to stress, and does so at the right moments. It moves with a breeze and it coils whilst trying to release.

Toward the end everything changes. A new melodic pattern comes in, small at first. It shifts the mood, or rather it allows the mood to shift. The chapman stick plays a secondary melody that allows the mood to further dig in. Percussion had stopped just before, allowing space, but it comes back in a diminished form, and the journey continues. Adrian Belew sings again, repeating the last lyric before this section started: "Neal and Jack and Me, Absent Lovers, Absent Lovers". He alternates elongation with each repetition and carries something that seems lonely as he moves along the road.

As said before, it seems that throughout "Neil and Jack and Me" Adrian Belew puts himself, or rather imagines himself as being part of Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady's adventures. It also seems like he tries to understand them and their experiences. Toward the end Belew expresses some sort of loneliness and longing. Cassady and Kerouac weren't exactly known as the most responsible of people, and it's this part where Adrian cannot extricate the self of himself to continue adventuring in the manner that the other two are. It's the end where he refers to the trio as "absent lovers". After all the fun and stress has had its time, a longing comes forward. It's through the examination of it all that Adrian finds himself missing his loved ones.

Perhaps Adrian Belew found his own experiences of travel reflected in Cassady and Kerouac's and he wanted to explore the line where they meet. At the very least the lyrics seem like a frank examination of the lifestyle and its ups and downs from within rather than from outside.

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Most of the above was written before I read On the Road to see if it changed what I saw in "Neal and Jack and Me". My understanding is that, whilst "Neal and Jack and Me" draws from a few Kerouac novels, On the Road is the main source that ties the lyrics and meaning together. It uses Kerouac's experiences of travel across America on his own and with his friends to create a fictional recount of life lived.

According to a letter to a student in 1961 that I can only find references to, Jack Keourac said about the novel:

“Dean and I were embarked on a journey through post-Whitman America to FIND that America and to FIND the inherent goodness in American man. It was really a story about two Catholic buddies, roaming the country, in search of God. And we found him.”

On the Road came after World War II and begins within a few years after it ended. I think it's worth noting that postmodernism (among other styles of art / criticism) took greater shape in the wake of that travesty; itself looking to understand meaning and meaninglessness, and what a "modern" life was. In a sense, it's similar to Beat material and its exploration of meaning.

I can't refute what Jack Kerouac said about his novel, but I think it's a small part. I felt it mostly explored a want for meaning, but its characters were marred by an inability to settle for it; an ongoing running and desire for a sense of freedom brought on by ennui. Going everywhere but at a standstill. Trying to fill a hole with experiences and intensity and excitement, and being unable to do so. A desire for meaning to justify continuing after horrific times.

When Adrian Belew sings about absent lovers whilst on the road with Neal and Jack, I wonder who he is referring to. I wonder how much of it is Belew missing his family and friends. I wonder if it's the same for the rest of King Crimson. Perhaps he's accepting the experience of being in a state of continuous travel with what is lost along the way. Perhaps Belew sees loneliness in Kerouac after following a thread throughout his writing. Maybe he sees Kerouac looking back, missing those adventures. Maybe he's just referring to Neal and Jack and himself as they keep moving and leaving lives behind.

At the end of On the Road, Jack Kerouac seems to start changing. He reflects on his travelling experiences as he settles down, and perhaps he thinks of himself an absent lover. Or maybe he thinks about the lovers who were no longer in his life. Neal Cassady was restless and he too was absent, but at the end he also started changing. He seems to find meaning, or at least something that causes him to stop running. However, at the end Kerouac misses the Neal he travelled with. As far as the novel is concerned, at the end that Neal no longer exists. That Neal is an absent lover.

After finishing On the Road, I thought about me. I haven't lived the same lifestyle as Adrian Belew, and I certainly have not lived like Cassady and Kerouac. I do enjoy being on the road, however. There's an idea of looking within whilst moving through changing landscapes that I appreciate. You know, think about who I really am whilst among an idea of the sublime, as though doing it whilst driving is any more deep than any other time I think about myself.

I prefer traveling and moving more than I do sitting still. Whilst I don't mind company here and there, I prefer to do it alone. Sometimes I get something out of it, but I miss my partner terribly when I'm gone.

When I was younger, I spent a lot of time traveling around New South Wales and Victoria. I saw towns, roads, bushland areas and animals. I remember passing through many places empty during busy hours. Many locations and infrequently able to experience them.

When I listen to "Neal and Jack and Me", I think about my partner and the friends I've traveled with. I think about how we've left Sydney in the still hours of the morning. I think about the places we've passed through and the lives we've seen. The long distances through nowhere in particular; a nowhere that means something to someone. The changing of the sky as time passes. I think about how the experience differs when seeing these things without someone else around.

I'll keep driving alone before sunrise. I'll drive under a changing sky and through a changing landscape, to see and think, and maybe to search for something that's buried by the noise of the city. I still desire that kind of solitary travel, but I miss my partner, and I miss my friends when I do. And I realise that, whilst on the road, maybe there's something of me that's absent.