Tim Hardin
1

THE REVIEW

Well, this time I'll try to restrain the ecstatic tones that usually pervade these reviews.

Hardin was 25 years old when he recorded this debut. Why did I mention the tones usually adopted by those who talk about this music? Because with this album, he joined the company of Tim Buckley, Fred Neil, Dylan, Van Zandt. Their songs evoke tears and absorbed thoughts, and they all departed from the safe harbor of folk to explore horizons that turned out different for each of them. Tim Hardin, no.

I once read (must have been Bertoncelli) that he didn’t like that label too hastily slapped on; he considered himself more completely a jazz musician, a bluesman, or at least an aspiring one—and this would become clear only a few years later. And then, songs like Misty Roses, How Can We Hang On to a Dream, Never Too Far, and the well-known Reason to Believe denote a hasty sensitivity, close yet different from those mentioned above. Songs written on the spur of the moment, unrefined: they seem like demos, and very often they are. As for jazz, While You’re on Your Way, How Long, Part of the Wind are there to speak a soft language, often mixed with blues or country and whispered by Gary Burton's vibraphone.

In 1969, Hardin had his door to glory: among the large ensemble of folk singers on the Woodstock stage, he was there too. He was supposed to open the festival, but another stage crisis delayed the performance to late at night. Few images remain of him, wandering around the park once again high, mumbling incoherent phrases. Bertoncelli also wrote that after the last notes of If I Were A Carpenter, it started pouring rain on the vast countryside: and the circle was complete.