I believe in Father Christmas

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I believe in Father Christmas
Cover
Greg Lake
publication 1975
length 3:36 min.
Genre (s) Progressive rock , Christmas carol
text Peter Sinfield
music Greg Lake
Label Manticore Records

I Believe in Father Christmas is a Christmas carol from the British rock singer Greg Lake from 1975. It was written by him together with Peter Sinfield and is one of the best known and most successful Christmas carols from Great Britain - and is one of the few successful progressive rock singles with Christmas reference.

Background and publication

Greg Lake and Peter Sinfield wrote the music and lyrics for I Believe in Father Christmas . Lake and Sinfield had played together in the band King Crimson until Lake's departure in 1970 , and Sinfield was also the lyricist on several early songs by Lake's later band Emerson, Lake and Palmer . The single was released by Manticore Records in 1975; the B-side was Humbug , also by this duo of authors.

  1. I Believe in Father Christmas - 3:31
  2. Humbug - 2:25

The Christmas carol was the first song that Greg Lake released as a solo musician. The occasion was the planning of the album Works Volume I by Emerson, Lake and Palmer, for which the band members worked on solo pieces. Lake initially developed the characteristic guitar riff , but he and lyricist Sinfield remember differently who first came up with the idea of ​​turning it into a Christmas carol. Keith Emerson came up with the idea of ​​inserting a Christmas-sounding Prokofiev melody between the stanzas .

The piece appeared in a slightly different version in 1977 as a recording by Emerson, Lake and Palmer on the band album Works Volume II .

contents

music

I Believe in Father Christmas is a progressive rock -Song in D major and 4 / 4 -Stroke , which is written in English. In the original version, the musical accompaniment consists of an acoustic guitar. At the suggestion of Keith Emerson, Greg Lake also resorted to the fourth movement of Lieutenant Kishe's score by Sergei Prokofiev , which was recorded as an instrumental between the verses.

For the album version, Godfrey Salmon conducted the orchestral accompaniment and a thirty-piece background choir. The recording is from August 1975.

text

Greg Lake (1978)

The text is made up of three stanzas with eight lines each without a refrain. The first two lines of each stanza, however, build a certain regularity due to their similar structure and the same line beginnings (They said, they sold, I wish) . Formally, a rhyme scheme with orphans is used in which only every second line ends with a rhyme (xaxaxbxb xcxcxdxd ...). The rhyming lines end with the word Christmas more than average .

A tension arises between melody and text: While the basic musical mood, apart from the Prokofiev interlude, is more that of a “delicate, acoustic folk ballad”, the text describes - depending on the reading - the loss of the childish, innocent Christmas faith, the Christian religion as a whole or the "true" meaning of Christmas. The third level is the music video that ends with scenes from the Vietnam War and / or the Six Day War .

The content of the first two stanzas is directed towards the past and reflects memories of childhood. The third stanza, however, looks partly into the future. In the first stanza, for example, a lyrical self laments disappointingly that a white Christmas and peace on earth had been promised to him, instead it would rain - namely “a veil of tears for the virgin birth”.

"They said there'll be snow at Christmas
They said there'll be peace on Earth
But instead it just kept on raining
A veil of tears for the Virgin birth"

There is also a rather clichéd description of a Christmas morning: with the sound of bells and choir singing, Christmas scents and tinsel .

In the second stanza, the fictional speaker says, even more disaffected, that he was told a fairy tale until he believed in Jesus ("the Israelite"). He also believed in Father Christmas , known in Great Britain as a Christmas gift bringer, until he looked behind his mask one early morning. It also shows consumer criticism, because in the episode it is no longer "they told me" as in the first verse, but "they sold me" (they sold me).

"They sold me a dream of Christmas
They sold me a Silent Night"

The last stanza, despite all disappointment, contains cautious wishes for the future: a “hopeful” Christmas and a “brave” (or excellent, brave) New Year - not without mentioning negative feelings. Two lines almost have the shape of a blessing, translated roughly: "[May] all pain, all anguish and sadness leave your heart and the way in front of you be free".

"I wish you a hopeful Christmas
I wish you a brave New Year
All anguish pain and sadness
Leave your heart and let your road be clear"

After repeating the two opening lines, the last stanza finally ends in a hymn-like " Hallelujah " - yet again cynically and soberly concluded with "Heaven or hell, we get the Christmas we deserve."

"Hallelujah Noel be it Heaven or Hell
The Christmas we get we deserve"

Peter Sinfield recalls the genesis of the text as follows:

“Some of it was based on an actual thing in my life when I was eight-years-old, and came downstairs to see this wonderful Christmas tree that my mother had done. I was that little boy. Then it goes from there into a wider thing about how people are brainwashed into stuff. Then I thought, 'This is getting a bit depressing. I'd better have a hopeful, cheerful verse at the end. ' That's the bit where me and Greg would've sat together and done it. And then I twisted the whole thing with the last line, "The Christmas you get, you deserve", which was a play on "The government you get, you deserve". "

“Some of it was based on a true story in my life: I was eight years old and came downstairs to see this wonderful Christmas tree that my mother had decorated. I was that little boy. Then from there it went into a larger context - how people are brainwashed. Then I thought, 'This is going to be a little depressing, I'd rather have a hopeful, happy verse at the end.' This is where Greg and I sat down and did that. And then I turned the whole thing over with the last line, 'You get the Christmas you deserve', an allusion to 'You get the government you deserve'. "

- Peter Sinfield : Uncut, January 2011

Video

The band's tour manager, Andrew Lane, also organized the video shoot. He knew Israel from the Six Day War and, as far as he can remember, suggested the country as a location for the video because it seemed "a relevant location for the song". The film was shot with 16 mm film material in the caves of Qumran , among other places . According to Greg Lake, the war scenes were free archive material.

The video begins with a calm close-up shot of the hands of Greg Lake playing the intro. When the first stanza begins, the frontal cut is made to his face; in the second half of the stanza the camera zooms out so that a desert landscape with Bedouins becomes visible. The scene is framed by camels and palm trees in the background.

The next cut takes place with the Prokofiev interlude: Before a sunrise or sunset in the desert, a Bedouin leads a row of camels one behind the other on the horizon, perhaps on a dune, behind palm trees. In the second verse, the shot of Greg Lake's face appears to be repeated, the camera remains focused on his face for almost the entire verse. The last lines of the verse are faded gently to Greg Lake, who is standing playing the guitar in front of a rock cave, and this scene is quickly zoomed out so that the cave landscape is visible as a long shot.

The second Prokofiev interlude is illustrated with Lake's hands on the guitar and his face alternating. In the last stanza the inclusion of a fire comes into play: First, the transition to the last stanza fades across the flames to Lake's face, this time in front of a black background. With the lines of text “be it heaven or hell”, the flames appear again in front of the face. The finale - with the third Projofiev interlude - consists of various, quickly faded war scenes in black and white and color, which lead to a multiple cut counter-cut between an Israeli soldier and a boy who run towards each other and hug each other. At the end the camera takes a low position and pans up to the two and into the backlight of the bright sun.

resonance

Charts and chart placements

Chart positions
Explanation of the data
Singles
I believe in Father Christmas
  UK 2 December 06, 1975 (13 weeks)
  US 95 December 20, 1975 (3 weeks)

I Believe in Father Christmas went into the UK singles charts on December 6, 1975 and climbed to number 2; The Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen had taken the charts since 23 November court first

“I've got beaten to No. 1 by one of the greatest records ever. I would've been pissed off if I'd been beaten by Cliff ... "

“I was knocked out of place 1 by one of the greatest records of all time. I would have been pissed off if I had been hit by Cliff ... "

- Greg Lake : Uncut, January 2011

In total, the song was represented in the charts for 13 weeks. In the American Billboard charts it was listed for three weeks from December 20, 1975, the highest ranking was number 95. In Great Britain, the Christmas carol remained the singer's only chart hit; in the United States he was able to bring two more titles to the Billboard charts with C'est La Vie in September 1977 and Let Me Love You Once in November 1981.

reception

The music journalist Garry Mulholland, who reconstructed the genesis of the song with its protagonists for Uncut magazine , described the ambivalent feelings he had as a child towards I Believe in Father Christmas in 2011 : no party mood like with Slades Merry Xmas Everybody from 1973, musically one Ballad in the style of White Christmas , a subversive political dimension in the text, and then in between the orchestral motif, which again reminded of “Santa with reindeer in Lapland” - was Christmas now great or a “soulless sham”?

In 2021, Ben Lawrence recalled the "wonderfully surreal moment in the mid-seventies" for the British Telegraph when progressive rock met Prokofiev. In retrospect, the song seems like a revenge on the “commercial theatrics” by Slade and Wizzard , and Greg Lake's plaintive warning “The christmas you get you deserve” could have made any child feel guilty about consuming while unpacking their View-Master on Christmas morning .

I Believe in Father Christmas was often characterized as an "atheistic" song, which the lyricist Peter Sinfield did not see, who understood it more as " humanistic ".

The book author Pete Tomsett described it in 2021 as a "subtle and clever song" that works as an antidote to the "otherwise bland seasonal food". However, the message of the piece would probably get lost when listening to it casually (also as department store music ...).

Cover versions

I Believe in Father Christmas was published as a popular Christmas carol in the version by Greg Lake as well as by Emerson, Lake and Palmer on numerous Christmas compilations and was also covered by various artists. Most of the interpretations are musically based on the original title, although there are also individual versions as reggae versions or as instrumental orchestral versions. Around 50 versions of the song were listed on cover.info in December 2021 (as of December 24, 2021). The cover versions of the song include:

supporting documents

  1. ^ Andy Bennett: Never Mind the B ..., Here's Three Minutes of Prog: Rethinking Punk's Impact on Progressive Rock in Britain During the Late 1970s . In: Chris Anderton, Martin James (Eds.): Media Narratives in Popular Music . Bloomsbury Publishing, 2021, ISBN 978-1-5013-5729-9 , pp. 131 .
  2. ^ Greg Lake - I Believe in Father Christmas at Discogs ; accessed on December 18, 2021.
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g Garry Mulholland: The making of ... I Believe In Father Christmas by Greg Lake . In: Uncut . January 2011, p. 28-30 ( uncut.co.uk ).
  4. ↑ Emerson, Lake and Palmer - Works (Volume 2) at Discogs ; accessed on December 18, 2021.
  5. ↑ a b c d Greg Lake - I Believe in Father Christmas , lyrics on songtexte.com; accessed on December 18, 2021.
  6. ^ Daniel Blythe: I hate Christmas: a manifesto for the modern-day Scrooge . Allison & Busby, London 2010, ISBN 978-0-7490-0967-0 .
  7. ^ A b Greg Lake - I Believe in Father Christmas. Retrieved October 7, 2021 .
  8. ↑ Greg Lake at chartsurfer.de. Retrieved December 18, 2021 .
  9. ↑ Ben Lawrence: Christmas songs advent calendar: Day 7. Greg Lake - I Believe in Father Christmas. In: telegraph.co.uk. December 7, 2012, accessed December 19, 2021 .
  10. ^ David Weigel: The show that never ends: the rise and fall of prog rock . WW Norton & Company, New York 2017, ISBN 978-0-393-24226-3 , pp. 205 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  11. ↑ a b Pete Tomsett: Fifty shades of Crimson. Robert Fripp and King Crimson . Guilford, Connecticut 2021, ISBN 978-1-4930-5102-1 , pp. 145 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  12. ↑ a b Greg Lake - I Believe in Father Christmas , cover versions on cover.info; accessed on December 18, 2021.

Web links