A Heart Upon the Wall

The Roman historian Tacitus once said the “unfair thing about war is that victory is claimed by all, failure one alone.”

Nearly 2,000 years later, John F. Kennedy put a modern spin on the idea when he described the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion.

“Victory has 100 fathers and defeat is an orphan,” he reportedly said.

This little history lesson is brought to you—in a roundabout way--by my dentist, who inadvertently sent me off on a musical expedition while he was preparing to put a crown of my tooth.

Last week was the second round on this biting tale and kicked off with me back in the dental chair, mouth pried open, suction tube going full blast and listening to the Sirius Sixties station while Dr. Joel worked his magic on my mangled molar.

Name That Tune

Once again, I heard some great tunes from my childhood, including “Mony, Mony” by Tommy James, “Kicks” by Paul Revere and the Raiders, and “You Got What It Takes,” a hit for Marv Johnson in 1959, but I think Sirius was playing The Dave Clark Five version from 1967--though it was hard to hear with all that drilling.

And then I landed the big one: The Left Banke’s 1966 hit “Walk Away, Renee.”

This is one of those songs that makes me stop whatever I’m doing and just listen—kind of like that guy in the “Seinfeld” episode who was obsessed The Eagles’ song “Desperado.”

Luckily my dentist doesn’t share that opinion, or I’d probably be writing this post from the ER.

And what’s even more amazing about “Walk Away, Renee” is that, prior to the internet, I couldn’t understand most of the lyrics.

Yeah, I got the chorus and that Renee--whoever the hell she is--is not to blame for…something. But after that I was in a total fog—and I never cared.

In fact, part of me prefers not knowing the words. I could feel the pain and loss emanating from this song without having it spelled out for me.

"Walk Away Renée”, which ranks No. 220 on Rolling Stones list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, was written by Michael Brown, Bob Calilli, and Tony Sansone. It spent 13 weeks on the U.S. charts, hitting a top spot of No.5.

The song has been widely considered “a quintessence of the baroque pop genre”--a term I confess that I never heard before in my life—that combines rock with elements of classical music.

There have been numerous cover versions of the song, with the Four Tops, Linda Ronstadt and David Cassidy joining the Renee chorus.

My Weary Eyes

I prefer the original beyond all measure, but Southside Johnny and The Asbury Jukes, a band I was always fond of, does a surprisingly decent rendition of Renee.

Now getting back to Tacitus and JFK, it seems that “Walk Away Renée” has two origin stories.

The first—and my favorite—has Michael Brown, who died in 2015, claiming that he wrote the song about Renée Fladen, the then-girlfriend of the band’s bassist Tom Finn and object of Brown's affection.

She must have been quite a woman, as Brown wrote several songs about her.

In Brown’s version of the story, Renée was looking on during the recording of the song, and her presence nearly derailed its completion.

“My hands were shaking when I tried to play, because she was right there in the control room,” Brown said in an interview. “There was no way I could do it with her around, so I came back and did it later.”

Oh, how I feel for that guy. If you’ve ever been in love and the feeling wasn’t mutual then you know what he was going through.

However, Tony Sansone has given a different version of the song’s origin.

He said that he wrote the lyrics, and randomly chose the name Renée because the Beatles used the name "Michelle" in their hit song of the same name; he likewise chose a French name, Renée.

People claiming credit for a classic is hardly surprising. But I’m struck by the contrast of these two accounts.

On one hand we have a heart-breaking tale of unrequited love and on the other we have a guy doing some market research and picking a name out of a hat.

You can decide for yourself, but you won’t see me follow you back home.