FIRST POSTED: 30/05/20

The song ‘Gustavo’, from the 2013 album “Perils from the Sea” by Mark Kozelek and Jimmy LaValle, is a first-person narrative of a musician who has a little money and buys a small house in the mountains, presumably to get away from the pressure of the music business.

To find peace of mind, to get a piece of the rock;
A place to put my mental clock;
And my old guitars and gently rock,
Back and forth in my front porch chair,
Without a worry, without a care.

He hires an ‘illegal immigrant’ called Gustavo and a couple of his friends to carry out a complete renovation of his house. They originally live a fair distance from the house and so to cut down on travelling time they ask to stay there while the job is in progress. He cuts them a key and buys them a microwave oven. It’s clear that life in the mountains is boring, especially being away from their families so they spend evenings looking in shop windows.

Walking into town, browsing the windows,
Looking at rifles, looking at ammo,
At night when everything’s closed.

When they have a little money they head for Lake Tahoe to spend some time in casinos and strip joints, and the narrator occasionally goes with them. One such trip doesn’t turn out so well because Gustavo gets drunk, and then arrested, when a highway cop finds an ounce of pot on him and he is deported back to Mexico. He calls the narrator from a pay-phone in Tijuana and asks for an advance on his money in order to pay a coyote to get him back into the USA. The narrator refuses, …

Asking man, could you wire me money?
2500 for a border coyote,
He needed work and he missed his family
But I hung up and I said I’m sorry
But I hung up and I felt uneasy
I hung up and my heart was heavy…

The lyrics show the increasing unhappiness, repeating the ‘I hung up’ line, but increasing the intensity of the sentiment he feels on hanging up: from being sorry, feeling uneasy, and finally to having a heavy heart. The rhyming of the final syllables in these 6 lines here is a prelude to the song’s finale, which will use a similar, though extended, device.

The narrator hires a new contractor to continue the work but that goes wrong when he quits because his wife is dying. The house remains unfinished but the musician’s ok with that.

My house ain’t done, but it’s alright.
Floors ain’t level, but I ain’t some suburbanite
who cares about bathroom tiles, straight lines and building codes and Chinese wind chimes.
My house ain’t done, but it’s fine.

The work never gets completed but the narrator feels ok with that as he only comes out to visit the house occasionally. In the song’s final part there are 16 lines ending with the same vowel sound but as the repetition increases, tenderness enters the narrator’s memory. The gardener asks about Gustavo but nothing has been heard from him since the phone call from Tijuana. The narrator’s girlfriend asks about ‘that guy from Mexico’, and she is ‘corrected’; he’s not ‘a guy from Mexico’; he has a name and it is ‘Gustavo’, but no, I haven’t heard from him recently. The girlfriend’s question gets the narrator thinking and he sings’ “Really I don’t give much thought to Gustavo”. Here’s the sequence:

In December for the snow,
And in July to watch the roses.
My gardener asks had I seen Gustavo?
I just laughed and I said, “Fuck no,
not since that night he left, his hair combed back, headed for Tahoe”.
My girlfriend asked had I heard from that guy from Mexico?
I said you mean Gustavo?
And I just laughed and I said no,
not since he called from the Tijuana pay phone.

Really I don’t give much thought to Gustavo.
I love to go out to the mountains, though.
And in the fall, feel the breeze blow.
And in the winter, watch the falling snow.
And in the spring, love the rainbows.
And in the summer smell the roses,
White and red and yellow…

The music of this seven-minutes-plus song is mostly an electronic click-track and very simple keyboard lines but in the final, lyrical section, and with very little change to the music, a crescendo of emotion seems to come over the narrator as he recites – almost like a Robert Macfarlane spell – the pleasures he gets from his visits to the unfinished house. Joseph Heller describes a similar situation in his novel Catch-22: [The officers’ club on Pianosa] “… was a truly splendid building, and Yossarian throbbed with a mighty sense of accomplishment each time he gazed at it and reflected that none of the work that had gone into it was his”.

The narrator of Gustavo may claim not to give much thought to Gustavo per se, but, as in Yossarian’s case, one man’s pleasure is clearly derived from other people’s efforts, and in this case, the person who had – literally – laid the groundwork for the pleasurable feelings described in the song’s coda was the very same person that the narrator inexplicably refused to help when his help was sorely and surely needed.

Full Lyrics below. YouTube track here.

I wrote a check and I bought an old house.
I got a TV and a worn-out couch.
Hired a guy named Gustavo and his friends
to fix it up from the foundation up.
Oh god, those motherfuckers drove me nuts
with their electrical saws and mariachi music.
But they really stepped it up man
and put their backs into it.
But they lived pretty far away.
They wanted to stay for a couple of months
‘til the work got done and I said sure,
made ‘em a key and got ‘em a microwave.

Gustavo was an illegal immigrant.
He took the money that I gave him
and he went and spent it
on strippers and casinos
and every once in a while with them I’d go.
It gets boring out in the mountains, you know,
chopping wood, falling asleep to the TV snow,
making ground beef tacos
on the top of a potbellied stove.
Eating noodles from a Styrofoam cup;
waiting for a ride that never shows up.
Walking into town, browsing the windows
looking at rifles, looking at ammo
at night when everything’s closed
In my wet boots, in my winter clothes.

One night they were headed for Tahoe.
They asked me along but I said fuck no.
‘Cause I was tired and my money was tight
and they just laughed and said alright.
And on the way back they got stopped
by a redneck sunnyside highway cop.
Gustavo was drunk and had an ounce of pot
and spent the night on a jailhouse cot.
They deported him back to Mexico.
He called me collect from a Tijuana pay phone
asking man, could you wire me money?
2500 for a border coyote
He needed work and he missed his family.
But I hung up and I said I’m sorry.
But I hung up and I felt uneasy,
I hung up and my heart was heavy,
I hung up and my back was aching,
Picking up the work they’d left in front of me
The demoed walls and the pulled up floors
The busted up cabinets and the broken drawers
The kitchen sink was laying in the backyard.
And I looked down and my hands were trembling.
And I looked up and my roof was leaking.

Now I still sleep on my beat-up old couch,
in the living room of my unfinished house.
I got a licensed contractor,
but he quit cause his wife was dying of cancer.
But what the hell, I’m just here trying to find answers,
to find peace of mind, to get a piece of the rock,
a place to put my mental clock,
and my old guitars and gently rock,
back and forth in my front porch chair,
without a worry, without a care.
I’m doing alright but I’m still not there.

My house ain’t done, but it’s alright;
Floors ain’t level, but I ain’t some suburbanite,
who cares about bathroom tiles,
straight lines and building codes and Chinese wind chimes.
My house ain’t done, but it’s fine,
come out here from time to time.
In December for the snow,
and in July to watch the roses.
My gardener asks had I seen Gustavo?
I just laughed and I said, fuck no.
Not since that night he left,
his hair combed back, headed for Tahoe.
My girlfriend asked had I heard from that guy from Mexico?
I said you mean Gustavo?
And I just laughed and I said no,
not since he called from the Tijuana pay phone.

Really I don’t give much thought to Gustavo
I love to go out to the mountains, though.
And in the fall, feel the breeze blow.
And in the winter, watch the falling snow.
And in the spring, love the rainbows.
And in the summer smell the roses.
White and red and yellow.

There is also a post on a concert by Mark Kozelek in Barcelona. It appears here.