Song six on the DVD is “Nobody’s Girl”, a very beautiful song written by Larry John McNally, a songwriter based in Nashville, USA. He’s had quite a bit of success in getting other artists to cover his songs. Probably the biggest two are “For My Wedding”, which was covered by Don Henley and “Nobody’s Girl”, which was covered by Bonnie Raitt.
That’s where we came across it. I say we because it was actually Rudy (bass player with Albatross) who introduced me to it and basically kept insisting that I should sing it.
This story played out in the south of France, but several years later than the “Fine, Fine, Fine” story in my other blog. We spent the best part of the summer – for several years – playing there with Albatross. It was fun to do and as all the clubs were closed for the summer it kept us sharp playing night after night.
Well, we did have the odd night off here and there but they were few and far between. On one such evening, Rudy mentioned “Nobody’s Girl” to me. I wasn’t aware of it and he played it to me (off the “Nick of Time” album by Bonnie). I thought it was ok but to be honest it didn’t really hit me at that moment.
Later that evening, well in the middle of the night actually, we all headed down to the beach to chill out a bit and Rudy brought his acoustic guitar along. At one stage he played “Nobody’s Girl” and this time I got it. Maybe it was the stripped down version that did it or maybe it was the fact that we’d all had some wine and lying around on a beach in the south of France is a great way to listen to a song!
I worked on it me the next day and the more I ran through it the more I got to like it. Rudy thought we should add it to the set and that suited me fine because I’d been thinking about introducing an acoustic segment to the set because I always enjoyed it when Rory (Gallagher) did it.
Around this time we were scheduled to play the Waterpop Festival in Holland. This was in 1991 and we headlined it to 23,000 people. We were really hitting our stride in Europe at that time and this would be our biggest crowd yet to play to.
It was also the moment I finally introduced an acoustic part to the set and so without any planning or rehearsal or anything, I plugged in an acoustic guitar, stood on stage on my own and played “Nobody’s Girl” for the first time. Nothing like jumping in at the deep end, right? Deep end, water-pop…get it? Nevermind!!
I don’t remember much about singing it (big gigs like that often pass you by in the blink of an eye) other than it sounded really ‘big’ because there was a great echo on the vocals and it sounded great. I also remember the crowd liking it and in fact it became a staple part of the set for a good while after that.
I hadn’t played it for quite a while prior to the show in Rucphen, so it was fun, and felt fresh, to play it again. Ralph actually played on the version we recorded in the studio, so he had all his parts worked out already. I still like it as a song. Lyrically I think it’s really strong and it has a nice chord progression too (slightly unusual). Personally I think it’s a song that works best in a stripped down version, so I hope you’ll enjoy this week’s effort. You can view the video here
I’ll talk to you next week when I’ll be writing about the next song on the DVD – Talk To Your Daughter.