Ryan Adams – ‘In My Time Of Need’

I’ve seen too many of my good friends crying this week. It’s a very unsettling thing, being around the distressed when you’re still so young. Sadness and grief, particularly in regards to death, are the kind of emotions we typically imagine we won’t have to deal with until we’re much, much older. Only two days ago, I lamented the fact that in these situations I really felt like I didn’t know what to do only a few days ago and believe you me, while I haven’t found the golden answer, I may have stumbled on the only temporary fix a young man can offer when his oldest friend has lost a loved one. The very wise Hugh Robertson, whose work you may have read on this site while I was overseas, offered this remark earlier this week as we tried to figure out how to help as best as we could in an environment that was ultimately foreign to us. It comes from the great Woody Allen, and reads: “Ninety per cent of life is just showing up.”

And really, when you think about it long enough, that’s all a twenty-something who isn’t in the family but knows them very well can do; show up. Being there in the cold windy chasm of a cemetery when everyone else around is old, when you know that all you’d ever want to see is a familiar face, is possibly the best thing you can offer someone. This is especially important, I feel, when in my case, both parties involved are male. Whereas (jesus, what an awful week) the previous loss involved a female friend, this was the opposite, and unfortunately society sets up all kinds of rules about how males are supposed to act in potentially emotional situations. Like, they’re not supposed to cry. They’re meant to hold the women. They can’t tell each other how they feel. And other such bullshit.

I have never believed in that philosophy and so help me God I’m not going to start now. That’s one of the reasons I love Ryan Adams so much; he’s a tough motherfucker from North Carolina who can drink anyone under the table and probably has had more bar fights than I’ve had hot dinners, and yet he knows, intrinsically, that the best kind of man is someone who can be there for the ninety per cent of time, with no bullshit. ‘In My Time Of Need’ is a song so beautiful and so fitting for the horrible run my nearest and dearest have had in the last 72 hours that it could only have come from a man whose most popular song is about an underage prostitute and two years ago, quietly married Mandy Moore. “When we need it most, there’s no rain at all,” he sings, and that could mean any number of things, but it could also be saying something about tears. Watching someone cry is sometimes as difficult as being the person who’s crying; it cuts you up to see that person in such a state. But being there in that time of need, the same thing that Adams is asking for in one of his many fantastic ballads, is the most important. There are so many overdone, 6/8 let’s-throw-in-the-orchestra-for-added-effect three minute pop songs around at the moment which attempt to wrench the same kind of sentiment from listeners’ souls, but they just never get there. The subtle truth is that all you ever need (something of which Bob Dylan is living proof) to communicate this to someone is a functioning guitar and a really, really good set of lyrics.

Will you say to me a little rain’s gonna come

When the sky can’t offer none to me

‘Cause I will come for you

When my days are through

And I’ll let your smile just off and carry me

There are lots of ‘how to be a man’ things I obviously don’t know anything about, like how to get into fights or drink two beers and crush the can on my forehead. But what I do know is that any man brave enough to tell his friend that he loves him and that he’s there for him, not only in his time of need but all the time, is certainly on his way there.

Ryan Adams – ‘In My Time Of Need’

More Mr Adams here.