Music Monday: “You Never Phone” a Song about a Troubled Father-Daughter Relationship
It’s Music Monday again. Apologies for the dearth of material, but I have an article in the works for this week.
This week’s song, You Never Phone, You Never Write, is by another Wainwright, Loudon Wainwright, III, father of Rufus and Martha, et al. Father and daughter admit to having had a rocky and troubled relationship for many years in various interviews. Loudon and Martha’s mother, the late Kate McGarrigle, divorced when she was very young.
Martha wrote BMFA (Bloody Motherf*cking A**hole), a song that expresses her anger at her father, which is on her debut CD, Martha Wainwright. This song is referenced in the beginning of the video as Loudon unsuccessfully tries to tune his guitar while Martha provides instructions on how to do so. Loudon cracks, “The child has become mother to the … f*cker,” and Martha quips, “I’m not going to do that song.”
The two appear to have worked out their differences and frequently perform together now. For those of you who have had your relationships with your children damaged by your exes and their campaigns of parental alienation (not saying this is the case for the Wainwrights) and suffer from your children’s snubs and other cruelties, you will probably be able to relate to the sentiments Loudon conveys in this song.
Loudon expresses his frustration and anger at being purposefully ignored, excluded and hurt by his daughter. In the lyrics, he seems to be taking the stand that he’s not going to beg to continued to be treated like crap by his loved one. Perhaps many of the fathers reading this who have become nothing more than doormats and wallets and emotional punching bags to your kids (including adult kids) can relate?
This performance at London’s Jazz Club occurred shortly after Martha gave birth to her first child and Loudon’s first grandchild. They seem to be having a wonderful time playing together as father and daughter. This song appears as a duet by the two on Loudon’s live CD, So Damned Happy, which you should have a listen to for better sound quality. Martha’s got some serious pipes. The YouTube video below is the best I can find.
embedded by Embedded Video
YouTube Direkt
You never phone, you never write
Hell, I stopped hoping that you might
You’re trying to hurt my feelings, right?
You never phone, you never write
You never write, you never phone
I’m sorry I gotta bitch and moan
I’m sorry I gotta pick this bone
You never write, you never phone
Sometimes I wonder
What you must think of me
My address and phone number must be
Misty in your memory
This year my birthday came and went
No call was made, no card was sent
But I got the snub, you must of meant
This year my birthday came and went
This year my birthday went and came
Last year what happened was the same
And your excuses sure are lame
This year my birthday went and came
Chicka, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow
Chicka, wa, wa, wa, wa, wa, wa
Chickiti, chick, chick, chicka, chicka, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow – It’s Peter Frampton time!
Chicka, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow
Sometimes I wonder
What you must think of me
Then I remember it’s you that you think of exclusively (*love this line)
But I’m not gonna bow and scrape
In every bunch there’s one bad grape
And I’m a little bit bent outta shape
But I’m not gonna bow and scrape
I won’t scrape or bow
Genuflect, beg or kowtow
Just singing this song is fine for now
No, I’m not gonna scrape
Chicka, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow
Shrink4Men Coaching and Consulting Services:
Dr Tara J. Palmatier provides confidential, fee-for-service, consultation/coaching services to help both men and women work through their relationship issues via telephone and/or Skype chat. Her practice combines practical advice, support, reality testing and goal-oriented outcomes. Please visit the Shrink4Men Services page for professional inquiries.
10 Responses to “Music Monday: “You Never Phone” a Song about a Troubled Father-Daughter Relationship”
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Yup!
That hurts.
Almost immediately after we separated more than seven years ago, my CBx completed her alienation job on my daughter (she had apparently been working on our kids from their births)and it was, as usual, 100% effective, I haven’t had any communication from her since then………except for a single letter. Two years after our separation, and after I had long abandoned any overtures to have a relationship with my daughter, she and her mother decided it wasn’t any fun to leave well enough alone, so they wrote me a letter that they sent via regular mail, and certified mail (just to be certain I received their venomous bite), the letter was in my daughter’s handwriting, and the envelopes were addressed with her mother’s handwriting. She started the letter out by addressing me by my nick-name, uncapitalized, not Dad or Father, obviously a childish dig meant to minimize me in her eyes, and the rest of the letter was this:
“______,
I want you to stay away from me and I don’t care if you think this is childish of me because I am afraid of you and don’t feel safe when you are around. I made up my mind in the meeting with the counselor Jeffery that I never wanted to speak to you again, and I still don’t.
Signed _____________”
Such a nice little note to get out of the blue.
She’s now 21, lives with her mother a few miles from me, and she’s possibly more BPD than her mother, and they might just as well be surgically connected, I doubt that either one of them could survive too long without the other. It’s a sick and twisted psycho symbiosis.
So sad.
That’s incredibly spiteful and hurtful. Had you made any recent attempts to contact her or was this really done just out of spite and the desire to hurt you?
Many disturbed people like your ex cultivate cruelty in their children. It’s just sick. At that age, your daughter should know better. I feel sorry for her, but not that sorry for her, if you know what I mean. As an adult, she has agency and she is choosing to participate in this.
I hope you have ended all financial benefits and other perks of shared DNA.
Also, I am very sorry she did that to you, Swan Song. It’s gotta hurt.
Whoops, sorry. Just re-read your comment. The letter came out of the blue. Real nice.
She was 14 when we separated, she was 16 when she sent the letter, and no, I hadn’t done a single thing to warrant the letter, I had given up hope almost a year earlier.
Her little brother, who we share 50/50, once tried to tell his sister that Dad was really a great guy and that he loved her very much (he did this without my knowledge), and he told me she started crying when he told her that. When Mother found out what had made her daughter cry, she punished our son severely, physically and verbally. I told my son that although his heart was in the right place, he shouldn’t attempt to do that again. He hates the fact that his family is so fractured.
Jeebus, Swan Song. That’s gotta tear you up. Clearly, there are serious consequences for being “disloyal.” Do you think your son is in danger of succumbing to his mother’s hate?
There isn’t a hateful bone in his body, but he’s beginning to succumb to her obsessive effort to convince him that he’s in dire peril while he’s with me, she calls him constantly asking “Are you alright?”, or “Has your dad done anything to you today?”. She has caused him to be ultra-sensitive to the point that if I look cross-eyed at him, he’s been told that it’s abuse. On 7/11/12 I gave him a lecture about his accumulating misdeeds, I told him I was going to start clamping down on some of his developing bad habits, and that I was going to set some boundaries for him and that he needed to respect my boundaries if we’re going to live together. He left for his room in a huff (he’s 15). Half an hour later he came downstairs with his backpack and told me he was going to his mother’s for a while, she was waiting outside for him, and against my expressed wishes he left. When I emailed CBx to return him, she responded with her usual hyperbolic nonsense that our son was afraid for his physical safety, and with her typical phony high dudgeon, declared that she was going to protect her child from all harm. I didn’t get him back for eight days, and only after I filed a motion to the court to address her violation.
My son recently complained about the “conflict” between his mom and dad, and I asked him to consider which parent always initiated these little dram plays, and he admitted that it was always his mother, so I told him I hated the conflict also, but I’m always on the defensive end of the fight, I’m only reacting to her violations and mischief. My only other alternative is to just give him up.
I feel your pain Swan, I really do. I wonder if these monsters are ever punished in the afterlife…there’s gotta be some kind of justice somehow, somewhere.
Well, since she should punished in the afterlife, I can only hope that it happens very soon.
I’m new to this site and reading your letter is painful. There was a time in my life not so long ago that I thought I was one of only a handful of people who had a parent commit such cruelty upon by her alienation of me from my father. Your letter and Dr. T’s site have shown me that this an unfortunate epidemic!
I hope my words bring you optimism in the future: I WAS your daughter from 5-30. So incessantly, methodically, brutally indoctrinated to believe that my father was dangerous, had turned his back on me and cheated my mother out of “$100,000 in child support” that I allowed her to treat me badly, allowed her to misguide me, hurt me, and exploit me out of a twisted sense that she was all I had left and had sacrificed so much for me. Turns out 25 years of my life were a lie. Seven years later now, I have a relationship with my Father (I contacted him with my epiphany shortly after the realization). I will never have a “normal” relationship with my Dad (there were just so many years lost), but I do have him. I can tell him everyday how much I love him now and to me, that’s good enough. I hope you too have this experience. Your daughter’s mother can only keep up the charade without some collapse for so long and will turn on your daughter… then and only then, your daughter will see which of her parents are dangerous. Until then, best wishes.
This one leaves me cold.
When my mother dropped out of sight when I was about 9, there was no explanation. She just disappeared. Her weekly visitations just stopped. The odd thing was nobody was concerned as to what happened to her. That told me somebody knew where she was and what she was up to.
She reappeared when I was in HS. It was then I learned about her alcoholism and failed attempts at rehab. I wasn’t happy. As her only child, she was going to be my responsibility and I resented her for it. I don’t remember which birthday it was but she took me to a nice restaurant, got plowed, and went on a crying jag in the restaurant. It took the manager under one arm and me under the other to pour her into a cab and take her to my grandmother’s. She was far less hassle gone. She OD’d on placidyls and alcohol when I was 18. She may not have been much of a mother but at least she ended up not being a burden.
I named my daughter after her. My aunt told me it felt good to her that I had finally forgiven my mother. I’m still working on it.