I am a big fan of The Lefsetz Letter, an e-newsletter in which Bob Lefsetz rants, raves, reflects and respects music issues on a semi-daily basis - a recent post spoke of the song Hard Sun featured in the soundtrack of Into the Wild, which he incorrectly attributed to Eddie Vedder. So, there was a follow-up blog in which hundreds of people wrote to unveil the writer of the original tune - fascinating stuff...
Shining light on Hard Sun
January 26, 2008
Carli Whitwell
Special to The Hamilton Spectator
When the 2008 Oscar nominations were announced this week, more than a few Eddie Vedder fans were left scratching their heads.
Their idol had given them a great new song on the soundtrack of the Sean Penn-directed movie Into The Wild, which stars Emile Hirsch as restless adventurer Christopher McCandless. The song was called Hard Sun, a spectacular piece of indie rock that exquisitely captured the central character's quest for enlightenment.
But the Academy ignored it.
There was a reason for that. Vedder, the famous Pearl Jam front man who sang the movie version of Hard Sun, didn't write it.
As a matter of fact, the track was composed by a relatively obscure songwriter from Dundas. His name is Gordon Peterson.
And he wrote it some 20 years ago, about a decade before publication of Jon Krakauer's 1997 nonfiction book on which Into The Wild was based.
Originally, Hard Sun was recorded as the first single off the 1989 album Big Harvest. Peterson wrote, sang and played many of the instruments on it, but it was released under the pen name Indio.
It was the only album Peterson made before turning his back on the music business and disappearing into anonymity.
So what happened to him?
The rest of the article can be found here...
Another wonderful article with more info...
SONG: Hard Sun by Gordon Peterson
BOOK: Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer
POEM: Oh Earth Wait for Me by Pablo Neruda
Return me, oh sun,
to my wild destiny,
rain of the ancient wood
bring me back the aroma and the swords
that fall from the sky,
the solitary peace of pasture and rock,
the damp at the river-margins,
the smell of the larch tree,
the wind alive like a heart
beating in the crowded restlessness
of the towering araucaria.
Earth, give me back your pure gifts,
the towers of silence which rose
from the solemnity of their roots.
I want to go back to being what I have not been,
and learn to go back from such deeps
that amongst all natural things
I could live or not live; it does not matter
to be one stone more, the dark stone,
the pure stone which the river bears away.
QUOTE: "The mind I love must have wild places, a tangled orchard where dark damsons drop in the heavy grass, an overgrown little wood, the chance of a snake or two, a pool that nobody's fathomed the depth of, and paths threaded with flowers planted by the mind." ~ Katherine Mansfield
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