by Kevin Burton
There was just one song that brought Dave Mason into my top-40-based musical awareness in the 70s, but that was enough to keep him there.
Mason died April 19, and tributes began to pour in from people who knew him as I didn’t, as a co-founder of the British rock band Traffic which had three top-ten hits in the UK, but never charted higher than 68 in the states.
The psychedelic “Hole In My Shoe” Traffic’s’ highest-charting single, number 2 UK in 1967, stands in stark contrast to “We Just Disagree” Mason’s biggest solo hit which reached number 12 US ten years later.
That song in turn stands in stark contrast to “Back In Love Again” by L.T.D., perhaps the quintessential disco song, which was at number 11 the week Mason peaked at 12 with We Just Disagree.
“This stripped-down song stood out in 1977 amid the disco offerings that proliferated on the radio,” SongFacts wrote.
Though I like the L.T D. tune, there is a bigger more comfortable place in my heart for We Just Disagree. It resonated with me as an old soul, or a young fogey, however you’d want to describe me back then.
How much an old soul? Somehow I related to “Heart Of Gold,” by Neil Young, even though it was released before I turned 10.
So you won’t be surprised to hear that We Just Disagree is one of the few songs I have covered in a recording studio.
“The song is about a couple who have parted ways, possibly via divorce, and have agreed to set aside their differences and stop assigning blame,” SongFacts wrote. “The song could describe any number of scenarios where a relationship goes sour.”
“Mason connected with the song based on his numerous conflicts with band members, love interests and record labels.”
I love the song as a whole, but two lines stand out for me.
The question “and do you think that we’ve grown up differently?” reminds me of my time growing up at the Ohio State School for the Blind and the time afterward. My thoughts are not of pointed conflict so much, but of a profound change in myself, so that by the 80s and 90s and beyond, I just wasn’t singing from the same metaphorical songbook as most of my blind school contemporaries.
We’ve grown up differently and it is what it is.
And the line, “I’m going back to a place that’s far away,” ties the whole song together.
That “place that’s far away” is not a place where an airline can take me. It’s a place at the very center of me where old friends commune as they once did, where love for and pride in them roars and sparks, comforts like a campfire, where I try to make sense of all the changes life has put me through.
“I’m going back,” is intentional, like, try to stop me! A part of me will always live there.
Inasmuch as anyone would care to decipher the me of today, it would surely help if you knew a little something about those days. For I am a product of those people and those times.
Mason recognized We Just Disagree as a great song upon first hearing from its writer, Jim Krueger.
“This song was written by Jim Krueger, a guitarist from Manitowoc, Wisconsin who joined Dave Mason’s band in 1974. Krueger became Mason’s trusted musical partner at a time when he sorely needed the help,” SongFacts wrote.
“I did it because I thought it was a great song,” Mason told SongFacts. “An unusual chord arrangement behind it. And it stood up – it was a song that when he sang it to me, it was like, ‘Yeah, that’s the song.’ Just him and a guitar, which is usually how I judge whether I’m going to do something. If it holds up like that I’ll put the rest of the icing on it.”
“I was going to cut it anyway,” Mason said, “but I frankly thought it was too good a song to be a hit. Sounds strange. And it wasn’t a huge hit, it got to number 12. But it’s been around. It’s a great song. It’s a timeless song.”
“When the singer’s gone, let the song go on,” wrote Jimmy Webb in “All I Know,” a song made famous by Art Garfunkel. So Mason lives on through his work, for which we can all be thankful.
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