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I read somewhere that this song was written about a brother of Lucinda’s who killed himself. Is there any truth to that?
No, that’s not true. While it is indeed a true story, she actually wrote it about a poet & friend of her family’s named Frank Stanford who committed suicide in the 1970’s while she was living at her folks’ house in Fayettevile, Arkansas. The one fact that she took poetic license with and changed in the song was that the family was Pentecostal – in reality, they were Catholic. As she tells the story, she changed it in the somg to make it more of a “Southern Gothic” theme.
You can read more about Mr. Stanford in this Wikipedia article. Notice in the article it mentions “Pineola”…
Tom
I read somewhere that this song was written about a brother of Lucinda’s who killed himself.
You and/or the author of what you read might have been thinking of Little Angel, Little Brother, which is about Lucinda’s brother, but not about his death. Lucinda talked about the song – I think on one of the live albums from last year, but maybe it was someplace else – and how people always assumed her brother was dead because of the line about him being curled up in the backseat, parked outside a bar, and how she had to reassure them that no, he wasn’t dead, he was just drunk. 🙂
The more I think about it, the more I think Pineola is the best song Lucinda has ever written. Although it was written about Frank Stanford, there’s a universality to the song, too. I remember thinking of the verse about gathering at a friend’s house and sitting in a chair in the corner, unable to speak or even really think straight, when there was a death in my family (of completely different circumstances, mind you) several years ago. And there’s not a single wasted line in the song. From the beginning that shocks the listener in its directness (and the perfectly-placed crack of the drum like a gunshot after “Sonny shot himself”) to the little details that set the scene like the image of the sheets being taken from the bed, and from the image of the gravesite that I see in my mind’s eye every time I hear the song to the image she leaves us with of dust falling over his grave, I can’t think of a single thing that could improve the song.
It’s interesting; I have a recording of a radio show she did in 1981 where she performed Pineola with an extra verse at the end that she ended up dropping. There wasn’t anything particularly bad about the verse, but it was superfluous and I think the song is better off without it.
BTW, thanks for the link to the Wikipedia article. I didn’t know anything about Stanford previously beyond his suicide inspiring Pineola.
in another thread (about that infamous bill buford new yorker profile, which describes Frank Stanford’s influence), Rachel posted the following:
I heard an early, early version of ‘Pineola’ from about 1985 or thereabouts, and there’s a verse she left out of the version we all know, which really blew my mind when I heard it. By now, the general consensus is that she was, in fact, dating Frank Stafford at the time he took his life, and he was messing around on his wife with several women, including Lucinda, while telling all of them that he wanted to be with them, so none of them actually thought they were doing anything wrong, since he was telling the women on the side that he was divorcing his wife, while telling his wife that he only loved her:
With a wife and a lover and another on the side
His world fell apart around him
On the last day before he died
They all three threatened to leave him
Some say he lied himself to death
How was I to know it?
He was a fool to pull that trigger
But he sure was a damn good poet.I don’t think i’ll ever be able to pick Lucinda’s “best” song, but Pineola is definitely rotating around up there at the top of my list, too.
Yes, that’s the verse I was thinking of. Come to think of it, the radio show I referred to was from 1985, not 1981. “He was a fool to pull that trigger / But he sure was a damn good poet” is a good enough closing couplet, but the verse just cements the song in specificity in a way that diminishes it, I think.
I agree with the universality of the song, and had that feeling brought home to me when I was sitting in the back seat of a car after my father died. It had been expected, but there was still that feeling she was talking about of sitting in the corner with all of the friends and family, and having nothing to say as I rode back home. Death, whether expected or not, does the same sort of things to the ones left behind. I’d have to put Pineola pretty high on my list of favorite Lucinda songs if I were making a list, just for the fact that she totally nailed the feeling of being left behind in the wake of someone’s passing, and that’s something most, if not all of us will face at some point in our lives.
Thanks for asking the Question and posting the truth…
I did not know about Pineola until last thursday night… Now for reasons that I do not wish to disclose… It is now probobly my most favorite song as it has touched my soul…
Joe
I have my copy now…And in my honest opinion, the song Pineola was not really about one person, but the feelings of others that have to deal with suicide. But it’s just my view…
I also have read all the links to the articles… Very interesting.. I put Lucinda at the Age of about 25 at this time. The Poets, her father teaching at the U of Arkansas at the time etc… All these things speak about how that Frank was close to the family…
Now I could go on about the realtionships and this and that, but I sort of make this post about Lucinda as a Songwriter… She has a way being able to… to…. Exspress the emotons through music… While I cannot speak for Lucinda, nor the reason that she wrote the tune… I would like to exspress my thoughts.
One article made mention of “Pineola” as a tribute to Frank Stanford, and this verse.
In the song “Pineola,” for example, news of a family friend’s suicide plays out in plaintive, understated lines, fitting for a piece about the death of poet Frank Stanford, who was a staple in the Williams household in the 1970s. Notice the detail in these last lines describing the large crowd at the funeral, much to Stanford’s mother’s surprise, as if revealing the hidden life of a clearly popular and mysterious person.
we drove on out to the country, his friends all stood around
Subiaco Cemetery is where we lay him down
I saw his mama, she was standing there and his sister she was there too
I saw them look at us standing around the grave and not a soul they knewBUt I view thing a little differently and this I guess is my whole point of even posting this… and again I cannot speak for Lucinda… But I believe the song was written not about the life of one, but the feelings of many others…
But what I pick up on is this… Her way of expressing the sense of stunned hopelessness.. I know that hopelessness is not the word that I am looking for here. but bear with me…
In such a situation, it is a shock, like a blur.. and everyone one wants to do the right thing, but in reality, there is nothing you can do and nothing you can say…
She heard the news and could not say a word.
Her parents went to the house to help, but there was nothing that they could do.
The friends meet, and not much they could say.
The Mother and Sister were at the funeral and I think more shocked at the amount of people that loved him as much as they did, not for the legecy of a poet, but the person.and the last line… Lucinda says… “Some of us we stood in silence, some bowed their heads and prayed,
I think I must’ve picked up a handful of dust and let it fall over his
grave.”There is my whole point… In her state of shock, and that dream world of such an event, when you look back through the fog… That was all that she or anyone could do or say… Nothing.. Just deal with it…
I will not go on a Pineola dogma, nor make this my Lucinda petistle [sp].. But I did want to respond to this, and let it be known that I feel Lucinda was able to make her emotions of that event come so freely in her music, that she should have won 4 grammies instead of 3, and the Louisiana/Arkansas connections are almost too profound…
I won;t be posting too much on this site, but I will be part of it and will always await news of new shows, albums, tours and etc…
And forgive me for taking this thread into a tangent… I may delete it tommarow… But for some reason, she made me relate…
RIP – My Little Brother…
Joe
edit- I would like to add this… This kinda reminds me of “Ode To Billy Joe” by Bobbie Gentry… Years later Bobbie made a statement that so many people misunderstood the whole meaning of the song. “Ode” was not written to relay the cause of the boys death, but that fact that the family had such a casual non-chelaunt conversation about his death at the dinner table in front of his grieving girlfriend.
“So Your boyfriends dead, pass me them mashed tators.”
Please don;t feel threatened to reply to this thread…
Joe again
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