"I Will Be": The Horror of Harry Chapin's "Sniper"
Published October 06, 2003
Chapin's vocals multitask in a similar fashion. After an introductory chant of the phrase "She said 'not now'" (words whose significance will be made clear later on), Chapin begins singing as a third-person omniscient narrator, quietly setting the scene while peppering it with ominous foreshadowings: "It is an early Monday morning. The sun is becoming bright on the land," he sings, firmly in his previously established singer-songwriter sunshine mode, before adding, "No one is watching as he comes a-walking; two bulky suitcases hang from his hand." Later, the narrator begins taking on some of the sniper's angry, mocking swagger: "So much to do," he deadpans, "and so little time."
When the music takes on its mock-(and mocking-)newscast tone, Chapin switches to a nasal vocal style redolent of bad radio reception or megaphone announcements, posing as several acquaintances interviewed about their now-infamous friend who respond with helpless we-didn't-know platitudes like, "Always sorta sat there--he never seemed to change." At other moments he adopts a matter-of-fact, tough guys doin' a tough job delivery--"They set up an assault team. They asked for volunteers"--before raising his voice to mimick the rising panic of the city and its people--"in appropriately sober tones," he says in anything but an appropriately sober tone, "they asked, 'who can it be?'"
But Chapin's greatest achievement with "Sniper" is getting inside the labrynthine maze of self-pity, self-hatred, and self-aggrandizement that is its title character's mind. Chapin frames the entire killing spree as a "conversation" the sniper has decided to have with "the city where no one can know him," a conversation he initiated the only way he felt he could. "You won't pay attention," the sniper says, "but I'll ask anyhow." The question? "Am I?" The people of the city answer the sniper by dying at his hands. "The first words he spoke took the town by surprise: One got Mrs. Gibbons above her right eye," Chapin informs us, stopping to fill in the gruesomely poetic details: "Reality poured from her face, staining the floor." But even this sudden success in getting a response from the people he felt had ignored him is not enough to assuage the sniper's misery, the source of which, of course, is rejection by Mother. At this point I feel I'm familiar enough with people in therapy, myself included, to know that this isn't nearly as reductive a hypothesis for mental illness's route cause as it's made out to be. Chapin understood this, and in a lyrical triplet takes the sniper from abject infantile adoration to resentful murderous hatred, a journey one can assume the real-life sniper took himself, seeing as he killed his mother (and his wife) the night before the tower shootings.
- "I Will Be": The Horror of Harry Chapin's "Sniper"
- Published: October 06, 2003
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- Section: Music
- Filed Under: Books: Crime, Books: Horror, Books: Nonfiction, Culture: Media, Music: Classic Rock and Oldies, Music: Folk, Music: Pop, Music: Rock, Video: Horror
- Writer: Sean T. Collins
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I've evolved a grudging respect for Harry (and his backing musicians!) over the years, but I'm more familiar with Kinky Friedman's "Ballad of Charles Whitman", which takes a very different approach to the narrative. There's still a lot of Eagle Scouts around...
I always liked "Sniper," but could never figure out the title of the album "Sniper and other love songs." Sniper is about love, or lack of it. And Harry did that specifically, just like his album "Verities and Balderdash," which is basically "truth and fiction." If you are a dedicated Harry Chapin fan, you will understand how Harry takes a true story and relates it to every day life, and people. One of the best songs Harry ever wrote was "The Mayor of Candor lied!" There are so many twists and turns, at the end of the song, everything comes together, and it all makes sense. Just like in Sniper. At the end, you realize that the shooter only wanted fame, and not "fame and fortune," because he knew he would die at the end. His mother never loved him, because he says, "Mama, won't you nurse me?" and them screams, "I hate you!" One can only assume that he only had one parent, which also shows lack of love, as a child, and as a young adult in school, "I didn't really know him, he was kinda strange. Always sort of sat there, he never seemed to change." This song can be disected line by line, and that is why Harry Chapin had so much talent, but was never given the appreciation he desearved! He was given the "Congressional Medal Of Honor" for his efforts to stop "World Hunger," but was not ever recognized as the truly great "singer-songwriter" that he was!
I'm glad to see that I am not alone in my deep appreciation of Harry's writing styles and in particular, his ability to communicate the raw emotion of a lonely killer in this great song. I have never been able to listen to it once and move on, programming "repeat" and listening to it over and over is standard procedure for me whenever his CD makes it into my player. Lately I've dug it up, quite out of coincidence, and have not been able to stop thinking about it. The more you listen to "Sniper" and the more you pay attention to the words, the more you appreciate the talent this man possessed and the more I wish there were more talented song writers out there with the same distinct sense of what makes "art"-ful music. The song paints a vivid picture of a man who never had an identity (A lover that's never been kissed, a fighter who's not made a fist, if I'm alive then there's so much I've missed, how do I know I exist?! Am I?) as well as the path his life had taken to get him on top of that tower. Harry screams in this song, something he never does in any of his other songs, making it really stand out among the rest of his catalog. I love any music that can communicate to me an emotion, whether it be love, hate, sadness, whatever. At the point in the song where the Sniper screams at the city "Are you listening to me?!?!" has got to be the part I can appreciate the most. Harry sings it in just such a way that it makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up straight, sounding exactly as the Sniper probably felt: depraved, resentful, angry, helpless, desperate. Something I'm sure many people could relate to. God Bless you, Harry.
I saw Harry once and was totally amazed by how freakin LOUD they were. I went in expecting folk songs and love ballads and they actually ended up blowing up the right channel of the PA until it was cutting in and out and pretty much ruined the show.
I love Harry's lyrics to: "Circle" and "W.O.L.D"
and also "Cat's In The Cradle". I miss Harry alot. The people on our "home" planet Earth misses Harry to. Harry is the world's maginifcent musician who ever lived. Dear god please pray for The Chapin Family as the loss of Harry please help them remember Harry's songs that he had written.
Wrong Harry's best lyrics are contained in the song "Taxi"
Thanks for the great breakdown of the song. I heard it today and it made me think of my mother. She always had Harry and other story telling song writers playing on the record player. I think it is one of the reasons I could never really get into music that didn't really have something to say.
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Great job Sean - who would have thought Harry Chapin?? Just shows you you never know and art can instruct and edify when we least expect it.