The Weaver's Answer

The Weaver's Answer is a song by the British progressive rock band Family that is the first track on their 1969 album "Family Entertainment".

History

"The Weaver's Answer" was composed by the two leaders of Family, guitarist Charlie Whitney and lead vocalist Roger Chapman, in the late sixties. It was performed live frequently before being properly recorded in the studio. Family also performed "The Weaver's Answer" for the BBC's Radio 1 station in September 1968. "Family Entertainment" was issued the following February.

Once it was widely available on record, "The Weaver's Answer" became Family's signature song, becoming their most popular stage number. When the band performed their final concert on October 13, 1973, "The Weaver's Answer" was the last song in the set.

Lyrics

"The Weaver's Answer" is one of Family's more straightforward songs; it's about an old man asking for the "weaver of life" to show him the pattern of his life on his tapestry. As the song gets underway, the old man recounts his childhood, his first love, and the day he took a wife; he wonders aloud how it looks on the fabric from the weaver's loom. He goes on to ruminate about his sons and how they grew into adulthood to take wives of their own.

After an instrumental break (see below), the old man grows more sorrowful, remembering the day his wife died and being unable to see his grandchildren after age has robbed him of his sight. Suddenly, he regains his sight to see the weaver's loom drawing closer. Realizing that he's about to see his life as a tapestry, the old man understands the reason why - because he's about to die.

Some Family fans have suggested that the "weaver" is the Lord, but to state that the "weaver" is the Christian God is unlikely. The weaver is thus an unspecified poetic device; the weaver's answer is, in fact, death itself. "The Weaver's Answer" portended a trend toward songs about mortality such as "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" by Blue Öyster Cult.

Commenting on the meaning in his own web guestbook, Roger Chapman said "The 'Weaver' in question comes from mythology, folk lore & a bit of acid! Include any 'MARVEL' hero, Aesops Fables, anything simply written with a moral & a story I could understand & make sense of. All the stuff I was interested in as a kid, read about & later included in my story telling"

Music

As performed by Family and produced by John Gilbert and Glyn Johns on "Family Entertainment", "The Weaver's Answer" is a stately, polite rock song slowly and quietly opened by Whitney's guitar and Ric Grech's violin. The drums of Rob Townsend come into the mix to propel the song at a faster tempo, with Grech's bass providing a strong undercurrent and Chapman's vocals giving a desperate voice to the old man's sentiments. The music gets heavier and more intense while remaining understated, slipping into an instrumental break punctuated by Jim King's brooding saxophone and Whitney's biting guitar. The song slowly continues to build into intensity, with Chapman's bleating vibrato becoming inescapable and unsettling, up to the revelation of the old man's death. With that the song slips back to where it began, with Grech's violin more prevalent as it represents the old man's passage into the next world.

Live performances

Charlie Whitney and Roger Chapman were never satisfied with how "The Weaver's Answer" came out in the studio, finding the arrangement too mannered. When bassist/violinist John Weider and multi-instrumentalist John "Poli" Palmer respectively replaced Grech and King, Family redid "The Weaver's Answer" as a loud, violent song in concert. Palmer offered a fiery flute solo in the instrumental break that replaced King's saxophone, and Whitney's guitar became more vicious; both of these changes in the arrangement brought the song into Jethro Tull territory. The most notable differences were Chapman's voice, as he punctuated his delivery with bloodcurdling screams, while Townsend's drum patterns became more devastating. Subsequent personnel changes after 1971 forced Family to alter this arrangement slightly - Weider's departure that June precluded them from employing the violin that had become integral to the song - but "The Weaver's Answer" never lost its popularity with Family fans.
In June 2006 Roger Chapman performed the song with a new orchestral arrangement. It was especially written by the german composer and arranger Ingo Laufs for the open-air concert "Bridges to Classic" at Haendel-Festival in Halle/Germany.

Radio play

"The Weaver's Answer" still gets airplay in Great Britain, most notably on Bob Harris's weekend broadcasts on the BBC's Radio 2. Though it is a natural "classic rock" number, Family's signature song gets little airplay in the United States - an indication of the band's lack of success in that country.

External links

* [http://members.aol.com/songforme Strange Band: The Family Home Page] (includes lyrics sheets for all Family songs)
* [http://www.dippyrecords.com/bandstand Family Bandstand] (includes video of The Weaver's Answer live)