As well, it nearly took him that long to find his own style. Hiatt began his solo career in 1974, and over the next decade he ran through a number of different styles from rock & roll to new wave-esque pop before he finally settled on a rootsy fusion of rock, country, blues, and folk with his 1987 album 'Bring the Family'. Though the album didn't set the charts on fire, it became his first album to gain some major commercial success, and several of the songs on the record became hits for other artists, including the aforementioned Raitt and Milsap. Following its success, Hiatt became a reliable hit songwriter for other artists, and he developed a strong cult following that continued to gain strength into the mid-90s.
While he was growing up in his hometown of Indianapolis, Indiana, Hiatt played in a number of garage bands. Initially, he was inspired by the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan, and the music of those two artists would echo strongly throughout his work. Out of all the bar bands he played with in the late 60s, a group called The White Ducks was the one that received the most attention. Following his high-school graduation, he moved to Nashville, Tennessee at the age of 18, where he landed a job as a songwriter for Tree Publishing.
For the next several years, he wrote and performed at local clubs and hotels. Within a few years, his songs were being recorded by several different artists, including Conway Twitty, Tracy Nelson, and Three Dog Night, who took Hiatt's "Sure as I'm Sittin' Here" to number 16 in the summer of 1974. Eventually, his manager secured him an audition at Epic Records, and the label signed him in 1974, releasing his debut album, Hangin' Around the Observatory, later that year. Despite their critical acclaim, neither Hangin' Around the Observatory nor its 1975 follow-up Overcoats sold many copies, and he was dropped by the label. By the end of the year, Tree Publishing had let him go as well.
Following his failure in Nashville, Hiatt moved out to California. By the summer of 1978 he had settled in Los Angeles, where began playing in clubs, opening for folk musicians including Leo Kottke. With Kottke's assistance, Hiatt hired a new manager, Denny Bruce, who helped him secure a record contract with MCA Records. Slug Line, his first record for MCA, was released in the summer of 1979. Where his first two records were straight-ahead rock & roll and folk-rock, Slug Line was in the new wave vein of angry English singer/songwriters like Elvis Costello, Graham Parker, and Joe Jackson, as if Hiatt was vying for the role of the American angry young man. The new approach earned some strong reviews, yet it failed to generate any sales. Two Bit Monsters, his second MCA album, faced the same situation. Although it was well-received critically upon its 1980 release, it made no impression on the charts, and the label dropped him.
Apart from working on Two Bit Monsters, Hiatt spent most of 1980 as a member of Ry Cooder's backing band, playing rhythm guitar on the Borderline album and touring with the guitarist. Hiatt stayed with Cooder throughout 1981, signing a new contract with Geffen Records by the end of the year. Produced by Tony Visconti (David Bowie, T. Rex), his Geffen debut All of A Sudden was released in 1982, followed by the Nick Lowe/Scott Matthews & Ron Nagel-produced Riding With the King in 1983. As with his previous records for Epic and MCA, neither of his first two Geffen releases sold well. By this time, Hiatt's personal life was beginning to spin out of control as he was sinking deep into alcoholism. Around the time he completed 1985's Warming Up to the Ice Age, his second wife committed suicide. Following the release of Warming Up to the Ice Age, Hiatt was dropped by Geffen. By the end of 1985, he had entered a rehabilitation program. During 1986, he remarried and signed a new deal with A&M Records.
For his A&M debut, Hiatt assembled a small band comprising his former associates Ry Cooder (guitar), Nick Lowe (bass), and Jim Keltner (drums). Recorded over the course of a handful of days, the resulting album, Bring the Family, had a direct, stripped-down rootsy sound that differed greatly from his earlier albums. Upon its summer 1987 release, Bring the Family received the best reviews of his career and, for once, the reviews began to pay off, as the album turned into a cult hit, peaking at 107 on the U.S. charts; it was his first charting album. Hiatt attempted to record a follow-up with Cooder, Lowe, and Keltner, but the musicians failed to agree on the financial terms for the sessions. Undaunted, he recorded an album with John Doe, David Lindley, and Dave Mattacks, but he scrapped the completed project, deciding that the result was too forced. Hiatt's final attempt at recording the follow-up to Bring the Family was orchestrated by veteran producer Glyn Johns, who had him record with his touring band, the Goners. Despite all of the behind-the-scenes troubles behind its recording, the follow-up album, Slow Turning, actually appeared rather quickly, appearing in the summer of 1988.
Slow Turning, like Bring the Family before it, received nearly unanimous positive reviews and it was fairly well-received commercially, spending 31 weeks on the U.S. charts and peaking at 98. Within the next year, Hiatt successfully toured throughout America and Europe, strengthening his fan base along the way. Inspired by the success of Hiatt's two A&M albums, Geffen released the compilation Y' All Caught? The Ones That Got Away 1979-85 in 1989. That same year, other artists began digging through Hiatt's catalog of songs, most notably Bonnie Raitt, who covered "Thing Called Love" for her multi-platinum comeback album, Nick of Time.
In 1990, Hiatt returned with Stolen Moments, which was nearly as successful as Slow Turning, both critically and commercially. "Bring Back Your Love to Me," an album track from Stolen Moments that was also recorded by Earl Thomas Conley, won BMI's 1991 Country Music Award. By the time "Bring Back Your Love to Me" won that award, it had become a standard practice for artists to cover Hiatt's songs, as artists as diverse as Bob Dylan, Ronnie Milsap, Suzy Bogguss, and Iggy Pop all covered his songs in the early '90s. In 1993, Rhino Records released Love Gets Strange: The Songs of John Hiatt, which collected many of the cover versions that were recorded during the '80s and '90s.
During 1991, the group that recorded Bring the Family — Hiatt, Cooder, Lowe, and Keltner — re-formed as a band called Little Village, releasing their eponymous debut in early 1992. Based on the success of Bring the Family and Hiatt's A&M albums, expectations for Little Village were quite high, yet the record and its supporting tour were considered a major disappointment. Later, the individual members would agree that the band was a failure, mainly due to conflicting egos.
Hiatt decided to back away from the superstar nature of Little Village for his next album, 1993's Perfectly Good Guitar. Recorded in just two weeks with a backing band comprised of members of alternative rock bands School of Fish and Wire Train, the album was looser than any record since Bring the Family, but it didn't quite have the staying power of its two predecessors, spending only 11 weeks on the charts and peaking at number 47. The following year, he released his first live album, Hiatt Comes Alive at Budokan? Hiatt left A&M Records after the release of the record, signing with Capitol Records the following year.
Walk On, Hiatt's first Capitol album, was recorded during his supporting tour for Perfectly Good Guitar and featured guest appearances by the Jayhawks and Bonnie Raitt. Walk On entered the charts at 48, but slipped off the charts in nine weeks, indicating that his audience had settled into a dedicated cult following. Fittingly, after 1997's Little Head quickly came and went in the marketplace, Hiatt parted ways with Capitol, and his next album, 2000's Crossing Muddy Waters was released on the established independent imprint Vanguard Records. After a second album with Vanguard, The Tiki Bar Is Open, Hiatt alligned himself with another independent label, New West, for the release of his 2003 set Beneath This Gruff Exterior. Master of Disaster, along with CD and DVD versions of Live from Austin, TX followed in 2005.
Same Old Man followed in 2008; then The Open Road in 2010.
Ocean
John Hiatt Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
I am the sea gull.
I dance on the waves,
As they break on the shore line.
The moon is my sorrow.
The moon is my lantern.
I search for you so long,
Oh where can you be?
This restless sea,
These empty nights,
Have swallowed me.
Look for something
Softer illusions
Soothe these vicious schemes.
There is the old one,
The wise one, the gold one.
I am the hunger,
The ache of the fiction,
And nestles in bones,
That he left for the vultures.
Death is my secret,
A child my illusion,
And life is the suffering,
That brings men to (something?).
Oh, where can you be?
This raging age,
This rotting life,
Is misery.
Lost in your body,
Cave of you screeming,
Longing to be free.
Then you have broken,
The spine of your madness,
Come over here to me.
In John Hiatt’s song “Ocean,” the lyrics beautifully contrast and compare the natural elements of the world with the agony of human emotions. The singer takes on the persona of the west wind and sea gull, as if these forces of nature are the only things that can fully understand their pain. The moon is also personified as the singer’s companion in sorrow and a source of light in the dark, empty nights. The singer is tormented by the search for something or someone that they cannot find, and their yearning and desperation for this unattainable thing is palpable. The ocean is both a source of comfort and a reminder of the vastness of the unknown, a metaphor for the singer’s internal struggle.
As the song continues, the imagery becomes darker and more despairing. Death is portrayed as a secret, something to be kept hidden away. A child is seen as an illusion, and the suffering of life is what truly defines existence. The singer is stuck in a cycle of misery and madness, lost within themselves and searching for a way out. However, there is a glimmer of hope in the final lines of the song, where the singer implores the object of their search to come to them and break free from their own madness.
Overall, “Ocean” is a beautifully written song that muses on the complexities of human emotion and the inevitability of suffering. Hiatt’s use of metaphor and vivid imagery make the experience of listening to the song feel like a deeply personal and raw journey into the depths of the singer’s soul.
Line by Line Meaning
I am the west wind.
I am a powerful force of nature that moves and shapes the world.
I am the sea gull.
I am a free spirit that soars above the world, observing everything from above.
I dance on the waves,
As they break on the shore line.
I am in constant motion, a playful and unpredictable force that can be beautiful and destructive at the same time.
The moon is my sorrow.
The moon is my lantern.
The moon is my guide and my companion, both lighting my way and reminding me of the things I have lost.
I search for you so long,
These dark lonely beaches.
I am searching for something that has been lost, something that was once beautiful and happy but is now gone.
Oh where can you be?
This restless sea,
These empty nights,
Have swallowed me.
I long for something that is gone, and the pain of that loss is overwhelming.
Look for something
Softer illusions
Soothe these vicious schemes.
There is the old one,
The wise one, the gold one.
I am searching for something to ease my pain, but I know that some illusions are dangerous and can lead to even more suffering. I seek guidance from something old and wise that will give me hope and strength.
I am the hunger,
The ache of the fiction,
And nestles in bones,
That he left for the vultures.
I am consumed by a deep longing and pain that feels like a cruel dream. I feel as though my very bones are being eaten away by the pain and suffering that I have experienced.
Death is my secret,
A child my illusion,
And life is the suffering,
That brings men to (something?).
Death is always present, lurking just beneath the surface; and yet there is a part of me that holds onto the illusion of a childlike innocence and happiness. But life is filled with pain and suffering, and it is this suffering that makes us human and drives us to seek something more.
Oh, where can you be?
This raging age,
This rotting life,
Is misery.
The world around me is filled with chaos and decay, and it feels as though there is nothing left to live for.
Lost in your body,
Cave of you screeming,
Longing to be free.
Then you have broken,
The spine of your madness,
Come over here to me.
I am trapped in my own body and consumed by pain, but there is still hope. The madness that once consumed me is now behind me, and I am ready to move forward and find something new.
Lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC
Written by: HIATT
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind