"Love Stuff"
Love is only what you think of where your heart has been
Let’s face it, love does a number on your head.
And your heart.
And your hormones.
If you’re lucky, it hits all three at the same time — but however it touches you, one thing’s certain: love immediately jolts you off-kilter and no matter its trajectory, you’re just never the same again.
I wanted to write about that with “Love Stuff.” It’s really more a song ABOUT love than what we traditionally think of as a love song.
Oh, I’ve kicked out a few love songs in my day — if you’ve slogged through any of my Substacks, you may’ve read about my tune, “Wouldn’t It Be?” for example. I’ve only written a handful of those because of that dreadful line you walk — go left of center, and you’ve got a sappy, saccharine mess. I fear that line; I’m always cognizant of it.
“Love Stuff” digs into what love can do to you when it’s good, when it ain’t so good and when it’s just plain crazy:
WHEN IT’S GOOD:
Love can make your heart race, baby;
Love can ease your pain.
WHEN IT’S CRAZY:
Love, it can erase
All conscious thought within your brain.
The bottom line of the tune is that no matter how nonchalant or jaded we become about love threading through our lives, we are always wildly compelled to chase it:
I’ve been through all of that love stuff;
I’ve been through all of that —
And I keep coming back.
There’s a bit of an inside joke thrown in the mix here, as well — it’s a lyrical snippet of intertextuality hiding in plain sight — a namecheck intended as a tip of the hat to Bob and one of his tracks, “Dry Soul,” from our previous disc:
Love can make you shiver, baby;
Love can take its toll.
Love can shake you down
Within an inch of your dry soul.
This project was a first for us — a full 10 tracks of original music we called “60 Watt Rock.” So, it was our first full-length LP.
“Love Stuff” is the lead-off track. It’s a simple blues exercise in “D,” just juggling around a 1-4-5 chord progression. Bob’s drums, as always, relentlessly drive the tune forward — listen to his heavy recurring break every time we take a turn into the chorus with the line “I’ve been through all of that love stuff” (to check it out, roll about :49 into the track). He punches some great crashy cymbal splashes during the choruses. Never gets old for me.
Of course, I’d want the drums much higher and more prominent in the mix of the disc. But oddly, this was the only time in our studio experience that we had no input into the mixing process, a chafing point for me even 20+ years later. Not sure how or why that happened. Echo House was kind of a project studio with pro gear located in the basement of the engineer’s house. We finished all the tracks and tried for weeks to re-connect with him to schedule mixing to no avail. But the next thing we knew, we were sent a completed mix, and that was that. At that point, we just wanted to move the project forward — and we were already well into working up a new batch of tunes for our next go-round.
WHOLE LOTTA LOVE
All told, the word “love” crops up around 100 times in “Love Stuff,” if you include the fade. That’s a lotta love in a three-and-a-half minute tune.
The vocals were double tracked, which was our standard operating procedure. No automatic double tracking, either — we always performed both vocal tracks live in the studio. You can hear me run through the main vocal a second time (which I believe wound up being the take that was used as the main vocal) at about 1:05:00 in the video below; Bob tracks up the backing vocal immediately afterwards:
The song enumerates some of the things love does to us, but what exactly IS it? How do you define love?
I certainly won’t presume to wax poetic on that point — too many truly beautiful and eloquent words have been written, said and sung about love throughout the ages that you can, and should, explore. From empirical evidence I’ve experienced and witnessed, I can only give you my humble take on this point in the song’s last verse:
Love is worth the battle, baby;
Even if you sin.
Love is only what you think of where your heart has been.
NEXT TIME: “Baby Talk (To My Dog).” We’ve all done it. But why? Something here is very wrong.