Edward’s Diary Entry 132: An intelligent love song?

Almost… The composer of Nat King Cole’s No. 1 hit for 8 weeks in 1947, “Nature Boy”, was a vegetarian proto-hippie who lived on 3 dollars a day, born George Alexander Aberle, aka George McGrew, re-christening himself eden ahbez, in lower case, because in his opinion only God and Infinity were worthy of capitalisation. Here we have an enchanting kind of song in D minor with descending chromatics and an arrangement that made it a classic, with countless versions having been played and sung. Everything goes pretty well in the lyrics… almost.

Despite being “shy” and a “little sad of eye”, our hero is “very wise”, and makes for a magic encounter in which one could “speak of many things”. There’s enchantment and mystery, and it builds up to the clincher at the end. But here’s the problem. The premise that “the greatest thing” in life “is just to love…” sounds OK, if you don’t take it too sexually. Love is, of course, a noble sentiment, but do we really know how to love others, or do we just interpret it as finding a good lover (for a while), or having a nice fling? Why is the greatest thing in life “just to love”? Are we capable of doing that?

There was a boy A very strange enchanted boy They say he wandered very far, very far Over land and sea A little shy and sad of eye But very wise was he And then one day A magic day he passed my way And while we spoke of many things Fools and kings This he said to me The greatest thing you'll ever learn Is just to love and be loved in return (x2)

Then the song goes sour at the end, because although is it great to learn to “love”, the writer also wants to “be loved in return”. So I was going to classify the song as being just another cool untruth, and bordering on the schmaltzy, until I investigated it and found out the following…

The LA engineer who was given the final tapes and possessions of the songwriter at his death, said that ahbez had originally written and stated, "To be loved in return, is too much of a deal, and there's no deal in love.” But it didn’t fit the final melody and was re-written in its classic form. It seems that ahbez was pretty smart. He recognised that “being loved in return” is not necessary, and it’s not always going to happen. If you’re cool, you just concentrate on loving, and let others do their thing. And discovering that was a relief to me, thereby saving the song as worthy of praise after all.