The first chords of Only Son of a Lady’s Man struck me with stars and spangles right in my spiritually war-torn teenage heart. O did that music grip me like a mystical fever, burning up every question and potential answer in me, sticking to my skin like the sweat from weeks of heated worship or illness.
I swayed ceremoniously to each chant like a lay person caught up in mass hysteria. He had me toying with the idea of tarot and charting planets at a time when faith was more of an ellipsis than the hard full stop it had always been. And then it was all gone one day. Simply swept away like the leaves on a main road, and I moved on with myself. Back to piety I slouched, but with a new & delectably warm sense of that sharp irreverence still nestled deep within me. It was a somehow holy irreverence - one that emboldened the embers of faith which remained, made them know that one day, any day, they could fan themselves back into the firestorm in less than a moment, should the command fall from his lips.Some things, like faith - or at least religion, the casings of faith - never leave you. They follow you like a lost and wailing kitten who has been rejected by its mother and needs your warmth to survive. Music which has been inspired by that viscous, tar-like relationship between faith and religion has always moved mountains in me. People trying to find faith, lose faith, change faith, or make peace with their mottled patchwork of it... that's what makes me dig a little deeper every time I turn to their songs.
