This is a series of posts about the music I listen to while writing. This time I’m up to a Harry Chapin song, Cat’s in the Cradle. This song was released in 1974 as a single and was on Chapin’s album Verities & Balderdash. It topped the US Billboard Hot 100 chart in December 1974 and was nominated for a Grammy in 1975. I was a freshman in high school when I first heard it and it immediately resonated with me in kind of a weird way — I didn’t particularly like the music of the song. The lyrics seemed a bit obvious, but still I knew it was an important lesson and figured a lot of people didn’t understand.
For those who’ve never heard this song, it’s the story of a father who’s too busy to spend time with his son. The song ends with the father as an old man and the son being too busy to spend time with his father. A bit of a morality tale – don’t have time for someone, they won’t have time for you. This is the exact opposite of the relationship I had with my father. My father was always there and I can’t think of a time when I needed him that he failed to do his best. He didn’t always do what I wanted and sometimes his help was more of a burden, but if I called, he showed up. We always managed to find time for a phone call or visit. I’ve heard from many people that this song speaks to them because it speaks to the pain and feelings of abandonment they have with their parents.
Still there is something about this song that makes me always want to listen to it again and again. Chapin doesn’t waste time getting into the story when in the third line we hear, “But there were planes to catch and bills to pay.” The last verse of the song is a turnabout when we find that son now is too busy to spend time with his father. This is foreshowed in the first verse when the son says, “I’m gonna be like you dad …”
Interestingly Chapin based this song on a poem his wife, Sandra Gaston, wrote about an awkward relationship between her first husband and his father. Chapin then turned this into a speculation about his relationship with his young son, Josh. Gaston and Chapin often shared each other’s writings and often inspired each other. In the research I’ve done, I can’t find anything to suggest that Chapin was anything but a good father. Chapin is quoted as saying that this song scares him to death.
That’s what attracts me to this song — the notion that how we treat others is exactly how they’ll treat us. That’s kind of scary if you think about it too much. The other thing that attracts me to this song is the quality of the writing. It’s good solid poetry. Take the chorus. He starts with two lines that reenforce the feeling of childhood with the lines, “And the cat’s in the cradle and the silver spoon / Little boy blue and the man in the moon”. All four phrases are childhood things, cat’s cradle — a game, silver spoon — a gift given to babies (and a hit at being a privileged child), little boy blue — a nursery rhyme and finally man in the moon — a reference to things we tell children about the moon. Note that some covers of the song change “man in the moon” to “man on the moon”. The last three lines tell the whole story and make it clear that the son wants the father to come home, but everyone knows this is never going to happen, a classic case of dramatic irony. “When you comin’ home, Dad? / I don’t know when, but we’ll get together then / You know we’ll have a good time then”
That good time never comes. The chorus stays the same until the last two when dad and son are reversed and we hear, “When you comin’ home son … we’ll get together then Dad …” and then the circle is completed.
Chapin has plenty of other places in this song when he has a way of telling volumes with just a single phrase like, “What I’d really like, Dad, is to borrow the car keys.” Here the son is clear that he doesn’t want to spend time with his father and is likely acting in just the same way his father has. You can feel the hurt in the line.
This song ends up on my writing playlist because of the quality of the writing and it’s strong story telling plus the way it disturbs my mind when I hear it. It’s a reminder to me that not all stories are happy and that in writing we have to confront the disturbing and uncomfortable aspects of our world.
Sadly, Chapin died young in 1981 as the result of a car accident and a lot of creativity died with him.
Here’s a YouTube link to Chapin’s original version of the song:
Not too many people have covered this song, Johnny Cash did one along with a few others, but interestingly the most popular cover was in 1992 by the hard rock Band Ugly Kid Joe:
I still prefer Chapin’s version, but Ugly Kid Joe brought something to the song so it deserves mention.
