Joanie Carboni

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The guantlet thrown down by McCartney's song "Eleanor Rigby" was not merely in the archaic stretto of the strings, or in the eloquent modality of the melody. Eleanor Rigby was the first time that a pop song, using the aesthetic of the pop song, created an image that was the diametric opposite of what pop songs were "supposed" to be. The dark imagery pulled empathy out of the listener, while the story, though completely bleak, was extraordinarily vivid, possibly the most vivid and powerful image ever depicted in a pop song. In my response, instead of a British spinster, the protagonist is a junkie, a stripper, a self made myth, a West Coast story. Instead of a single image, compassionate irony. This is not a pop song.

Joanie Carboni

Joanie Carboni died under a tree
   in the park up on hippie hill.
The other junkies didn’t know what to do so they ran away.
   A gardener called it in the morning chill.
Her body stiff as the ground she was lying on.
   Cops said another o. d.
It was 1966 and she was 31.
   Did she even have a family?

Days of Peace and Love.

Joanie Carboni, her arms full of needle marks,
   ended up blue as the wind.
The hippies she lived with thought she’d moved on
   since she never ever’d really moved in.
She was a hooker and a stripper. She’d brag how she and Lenny Bruce
   shared needles in a Broadway hotel.
Sometimes she’d sing a little tune to herself,
   “I love you baby but you’re hard to tell.”

Days of Peace and Love.

Joanie Carboni, her ashes were scattered
   in the air out at Fisherman’s Wharf.
5 people came but only 3 of ‘em knew her,
   one of them let go an old silk scarf.
And it blew in the wind to the water,
   floating like seaweed to the arms of the pier.
“Peace and love,” they said. “Peace and Love forever bless.
   May your soul fly to heaven. May your troubled heart find rest.”

Days of Peace and Love.

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