Okkervil River "The Stage Names"
This is about a month or two overdue, but you must understand my totally rational fear that my head would explode as Will Sheff sang the whole of two chunks of genius to me while I took them in with something akin to near-complete understanding. If this blog goes unfinished, my brain undoubtably splattered across the computer screen. But that's okay, because I will have saved you from the same fate.
That said, I have to do this in two parts because there are two albums and because taking it all in at once will cause your brain to combust.
Firstly, Okkervil River is an Austin band. At this point, I advise you to look up their MySpace and return to me when you are ready. Will Sheff is the lead vocalist and songwriter. I believe he is also the only constant member of the band. His touring group and recording group are not entirely the same, in any case. The literary rock genre (Sheff won't say he's lumped in this category, just so you know) is characterized by its prose nature. This is most accurate when discussing their first major release, Black Sheep Boy, but not absent in the following albums. For this reason, when I include lyrics, there will be no slashes for line-breaks.
In short, they rock and Will Sheff is an excellent storyteller (and a genius, but I'm getting ahead of myself). Onto the meat of the matter.
The Stage Names
Okkervil River has a slew of albums, but one might consider this their major sophomore attempt. It follows the genius of Black Sheep Boy. Sadly, I am lazy and have no release years for you. This one came out in 2007. It is album one of two. Stage Names was allegedly supposed to be a double album (this is actually very hard to explain so I'll let you read Sheff's Pitchfork interview here, which disputes everything I'm in the middle of telling you: http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/news/43377-will-sheff-talks-okkervil-rivers-stage-names), but sources have relayed that Sheff was not confident enough with disc 2 to let it into the world. The best way to illustrate the thought in this album is as it is set out: track by track.
1. "Our Life Is Not a Movie or Maybe"
Track one, just as a chapter in any well-written book, sets out the premise for the album. In this case, Sheff tells us there is no particularly exciting story (as with Black Sheep Boy, a true conceptual album, some may say), no exact plot for this album: "it's just a life story, so there's no climax". No one is throwing anyone any parades, there's love, there's hurt, but only for a moment. It's life. We're talking about real people who really existed and who endured a lot of hurts and joys in their lives. Life is not a movie.
There are literally a hundred more things I could write about this song. He references acting cues, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, and there's a lot of talk about fire that may warrant some exploration, but I'm just sticking to the elements that punctuate the theme of the twin albums. You really just need to listen to it. It's the song that introduced me to this band (I think it's the one that finally hooked Brian, too, though nearly at the end of the set...it was the hand clapping thing they do live, it gets everyone).
2. "Unless It's Kicks"
So there's no exciting climax. What's left to listen to? Life isn't that boring now is it? What makes life worth living and what makes these lives in the album worth listening to? Kicks. Sheff mentions songs, sweat, lies, love, fiction as examples of "kicks" and some mini-stories too. There may not be any huge climax in anyone's lives, but that doesn't mean no one is interesting. Towards the end of the song he points out exactly who he finds interesting: "What breaks this heart the most is the ghost of some rock and roll fan floating up from the stands with her heart opened up. I wanna tell her, 'Your love isn't lost.' Say, 'My heart is still crossed.' Scream, 'You're so wonderful! What a dream in the dark.'" Enter: The Groupie. Don't forget her.
There is one more lyric of note here. We get the sense that this is a traveling band ("towns flyin' by"), so this is possibly autobiographical (Sheff won't write autobiographically, but entertain this notion anyway). The lyric I find so interesting won't play much role in this album, but will be important to recall for the next blog. "And on a seven-day high, that heavenly song punches right through my mind and talks through my blood. And I know it's a lie, but I'll still give my love. Hey, my heart's on the line for your hands to pluck up." He's singing a song he knows is a lie...hmmm....
3. "A Hand to Take Hold of the Scene"
Here's a kick in Sheff's own life. He begins the song with two instances in televeision shows during which Okkervil River songs were played: Breaking Bonaducci and Cold Case. The Cold Case scene invovles a "boy being buried alive [...] by a criminal, but with a sensative soul and a set of raccoon eyes. And there's a scene in the show where the hustler knows he's gonna die. The ground opens. He climbs inside." The hustler's last line in the show pops an idea from the hustler's mind and Sheff "pick[s] it up right through the TV", which plays out in the rest of the song. I believe the shows hold greater meaning for the song as well. After all, we care enough to watch a real celebrity marriage fall apart on TV and we care enough about people who don't even exist to watch their stories pan out on TV, but we forget the more important things, which is where the woman in the dream enters.
I don't know this as a fact, but the woman with a rod in her spine seems to be our Groupie (there's mention of his heart splitting "like a jaw, like an eye" which may be how our Groupie became deformed in a car accident...we're getting there) speaking to him, saying, "We were so far from right when we're losing the fight, we're letting the light weaken it's beam." Then she asks him (because mankind is "too weak to stand on our two feet") to be the "hand to take hold of the scene".
He's establishing himself as narrator of this tale. It's specifically this Groupie's tale, but leads to similar stories. It's another example of life not having any big climax, yet having interesting kicks, but usually no one is there to see the little things, important or not (unless you are Bonaducci). Sheff's world filled with possiblities when he heard his band on national television, but no one cared enough to write about it...except Sheff, who realizes there are other people (fans, flops, and Miss Groupie) who ought to have their stories written down too.
4. "Savannah Smiles"
Here's the Groupie's story: Savannah Smiles is a movie, the favorite movie of one Shannon Wilsey: The Groupie. When she got into pornography, she took the stage name Savannah. This song is from the view point of her biggest fan: one of her parents. The parent (the lyrics suggest Mom, but it's pretty unclear, I think) finds Shannon's diary and can't believe what she's gotten herself into. Either that, or her alleged childhood abuse is revealed. When Shannon comes to visit she doesn't do anything but "sleeps and lies around and then she goes out." At the end of the song, all the parent sees is Shannon's face on the television because (we, the knowledgable listeners, know) she killed herself after she survived a terrible car accident because she was too deformed to be the star she had been. Naturally, the parent doesn't know if he or she should have or could have done anything. We'll come back to Shannon/Savannah.
Note the fan-view. We'll see everything from here on out from one of two views: fan and star. In theory.
5. "Plus Ones"
My favorite song on the album. Sheff wrote it while brainless, apparently (http://blogsarefordogs.com/?p=482), but it still very much applies to the theme and tone of the record. I would love to be half as clever as he is when things don't make sense anymore, but I digress.
On the surface, this song is exactly as the title suggests: Sheff takes lyrics from other songs which have numbers in them and adds one (go back to that link if you skipped over it, plus you'll have to read the lyrics as I won't write them all down). It's more than that too. Sheff is still talking about the life of a groupie, this time from the star's point of view (I'll admit it's debatable, so please debate). He says, quit crying, no one wants to hear it, you're one in a million (or in 100 Luft Balloons), "the 51st way to leave your lover" is the messiest, "the party's over" so here we are in the bar, drinking and drugging the sorrows away.
I say the subject of the rebuke is a groupie based on the 8 Chinese brothers lines. You tell me. The lyric "and in just one year, this straight world could pay to see what they have been missing" clearly points to Savannah again in any case. Also note: "you were once a lionness, they cut your claws out." Rockstars are not kind to groupies. As we shall see (though proabably more so next album).
6. "A Girl in Port"
Here is another song written from the star's point of view. I like to think that this is Sheff himself speaking, but I can't say that because he doesn't write autobiographically. It begins with the speaker telling a girl to take off her clothes, but he asserts that he's "not the lady-killing sort enough to hurt a girl in port" (note sailing metaphor). My opinion is that he's a typical rockstar telling this girl that he is not a typical rockstar so he can get into her...well...skirt.
Sheff mentioned wanting to sound like an ass in this album. This song may be best interpreted on that fact, but you judge.
He then begins to talk about girls he knows. These girls are in varying stages of "groupiedom", if you will. Marie is a lost girl who "don't know who she wants to be". The perfect target for a guy who knows exactly who he wants her to be (the slip right into the chorus illustrates this perfectly). We will see Marie again in a bit. Cindy is a groupie. I am still not sure whether she is "someone's plus one" or if this "plus one" is in her room. I'm too lazy to pull the lyrics out to check punctuation. I'm sure it's the former (because up in her room is the worn record she's listening to), though I don't suppose the implication changes either way. What's important is that Cindy is still having fun. Then comes Holly: she went "over the sea and far away" after she told the narrator she "lost it there", "fell from Hell, cut some fresh pieces from" herself. Holly is the groupie who was cut the 51st way (this reminds me of a girl who dated Ace Freely of KISS for a long time). The narrator told her to get out.
At the end of the song, the narrator redeems himself, or at least explains himself. He says: "Oh I'm a weak and lonely (lowly?) sort, though I'm not sailing just for sport. I've come to feel out on the sea these urgent lies press against me. I'm just a guest. I'm not a part. My tender head, my easy heart...these several years out on the sea made me empty, cold, and clear. Pour yourself into me." Here I take sailing as a metaphor for touring. It is these lyrics too that make me think this is Will Sheff himself speaking (it's not, but entertain me). I don't think that Okkervil River consider themselves more than guests to the touring musical scene. They are a humble Austin band, yet touring for so long has gotten to them (Sheff here, or whoever our narrator is) and turned them a bit to the dark side. A.k.a. assholes.
7. "You Can't Hold the Hand of a Rock and Roll Man"
This song features you (yes YOU) as a rock star. Sheff takes you into the life of a rockstar. You've got "this week's catch" and everyone's "gassed and trashed and smashed", you're "livin' on air", there's a million bucks flying around, and then there's Marie "passed out in a chair with her once-fussed-over hair all mussed into an I've-just-been-fucked shape." Sheff tells us that before she passed out, she chewed you a new one, you ugly, old bastard you. She's finished with you because she knows she's nothing more than a passing fuck (even though she's been your passing fuck "since '98"). He also sugests that she only stuck around for the "several mil." After all, your romance didn't mean shit to her anyway.
You don't care. When you're on the road again, you find someone new in a flash and you're just as reckless as usual. Then there's the whole bit about the lawyer that I can't make out, but whatever he "makes you wear" that destroys your chances of every being "repeatedly engaged" is the best part of the song, if only because of Sheff's mocking laugh. This song doesn't exactly make the rockstar life sound appealling. To me anyway.
8. "Title Track"
This track is an interjection, not really a view from either a fan or a star, but Sheff's little reminder that these characters, whether fans or stars, are people like everyone else. These people may suffer greater hardship than some of your average people, though, (drug addicts excepted) because fame is a chemical high and one of two things happen to these kinds of addicts: "Either they kick off too soon or stick 'round to late to be far too dear or too cut-rate." This is a tribute to the victims of stardom. The ones who are still living, anyway. The narrator joins a bike-a-thon for breakdancers in beds with "bags hanging over their heads."
He talks about turning "this thin, broken-down circus clown reject" into a queen. I see this as another reference to Shannon, who, after being tossed around by so many musicians, was nothing but a broken girl. She turned into a porn queen afterward. Further proof: "Don't I know her from the Mezzanine? She didn't look like no princess to me. But with the proper words bestowed and with her morning shoot, her evening clothes....Don't call her a prostitute. She ain't one of those. Just call her a proper little statue come unfroze." I wrote in my notes that this last line has a dual meaning, but I can't for the life of me remember what I meant. Something about how she's nude for "art" and...perhaps how she was dressed up and paraded around by the likes of Tom Petty, among others?
I say this is a tribute to the still living (the ones who "stuck 'round too late") because at the end of the album, we won't have had any stories about those people. He just wants us to know they exist. We'll see one (sort of) next album around.
9. "John Allyn Smith Sails"
Google the name John Allyn Smith and you will find the Wiki entry for John Berryman (his stage name, if you will), a writer from the mid-20th century. It will tell you that he killed himself in '72, which this song tells you quite plainly. Berryman's father (John Smith) killed himself when he was 12 ("when my mom and John came in" refers to his step-father John Berryman), thus leaving him somewhat obsessed with the notion (the kid holds his breath to appear dead to his parents). As you hear in the song, the alcoholic depressive threw himself from the Washington Avenue Bridge in Minneapolis and died.
This is the view of the star again. Whether he stuck 'round to late or kicked off too soon is for you to decide. He was fairly widely acclaimed (and razzed). He was a professor here at the Iowa Writer's Workshop in Iowa City for a while (as a side note Will Sheff visited Prairie Lights here a very short while ago and picked up the book containing the story from which Okkervil River takes its name. I have a link of him reading said story, if you are interested. I'm pissed I didn't bump into him on the street). He was an alcoholic who hated his father for killing himself, yet turned that route himself.
Before, when we heard "sailing" I told you it meant touring. Here, I think it's pretty clear that "sailing home" is dying. Remember these two sailing metaphors for later. This is where things get clever. The tune in the song changes about halfway through (after John kills himself and is sailing) to a sample of the song "Sloop John B.", an old song about (guess what?!) sailing. Okkervil River's song title contains the writer's real name. The sample's title contains his writing name (or initial).
So, just as Sheff promised in the beginning, this is a life story with its kicks, but it ends as all lives do: with death. See you soon.
(Stay tuned for round two: The Stand Ins.)
That said, I have to do this in two parts because there are two albums and because taking it all in at once will cause your brain to combust.
Firstly, Okkervil River is an Austin band. At this point, I advise you to look up their MySpace and return to me when you are ready. Will Sheff is the lead vocalist and songwriter. I believe he is also the only constant member of the band. His touring group and recording group are not entirely the same, in any case. The literary rock genre (Sheff won't say he's lumped in this category, just so you know) is characterized by its prose nature. This is most accurate when discussing their first major release, Black Sheep Boy, but not absent in the following albums. For this reason, when I include lyrics, there will be no slashes for line-breaks.
In short, they rock and Will Sheff is an excellent storyteller (and a genius, but I'm getting ahead of myself). Onto the meat of the matter.
The Stage Names
Okkervil River has a slew of albums, but one might consider this their major sophomore attempt. It follows the genius of Black Sheep Boy. Sadly, I am lazy and have no release years for you. This one came out in 2007. It is album one of two. Stage Names was allegedly supposed to be a double album (this is actually very hard to explain so I'll let you read Sheff's Pitchfork interview here, which disputes everything I'm in the middle of telling you: http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/news/43377-will-sheff-talks-okkervil-rivers-stage-names), but sources have relayed that Sheff was not confident enough with disc 2 to let it into the world. The best way to illustrate the thought in this album is as it is set out: track by track.
1. "Our Life Is Not a Movie or Maybe"
Track one, just as a chapter in any well-written book, sets out the premise for the album. In this case, Sheff tells us there is no particularly exciting story (as with Black Sheep Boy, a true conceptual album, some may say), no exact plot for this album: "it's just a life story, so there's no climax". No one is throwing anyone any parades, there's love, there's hurt, but only for a moment. It's life. We're talking about real people who really existed and who endured a lot of hurts and joys in their lives. Life is not a movie.
There are literally a hundred more things I could write about this song. He references acting cues, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, and there's a lot of talk about fire that may warrant some exploration, but I'm just sticking to the elements that punctuate the theme of the twin albums. You really just need to listen to it. It's the song that introduced me to this band (I think it's the one that finally hooked Brian, too, though nearly at the end of the set...it was the hand clapping thing they do live, it gets everyone).
2. "Unless It's Kicks"
So there's no exciting climax. What's left to listen to? Life isn't that boring now is it? What makes life worth living and what makes these lives in the album worth listening to? Kicks. Sheff mentions songs, sweat, lies, love, fiction as examples of "kicks" and some mini-stories too. There may not be any huge climax in anyone's lives, but that doesn't mean no one is interesting. Towards the end of the song he points out exactly who he finds interesting: "What breaks this heart the most is the ghost of some rock and roll fan floating up from the stands with her heart opened up. I wanna tell her, 'Your love isn't lost.' Say, 'My heart is still crossed.' Scream, 'You're so wonderful! What a dream in the dark.'" Enter: The Groupie. Don't forget her.
There is one more lyric of note here. We get the sense that this is a traveling band ("towns flyin' by"), so this is possibly autobiographical (Sheff won't write autobiographically, but entertain this notion anyway). The lyric I find so interesting won't play much role in this album, but will be important to recall for the next blog. "And on a seven-day high, that heavenly song punches right through my mind and talks through my blood. And I know it's a lie, but I'll still give my love. Hey, my heart's on the line for your hands to pluck up." He's singing a song he knows is a lie...hmmm....
3. "A Hand to Take Hold of the Scene"
Here's a kick in Sheff's own life. He begins the song with two instances in televeision shows during which Okkervil River songs were played: Breaking Bonaducci and Cold Case. The Cold Case scene invovles a "boy being buried alive [...] by a criminal, but with a sensative soul and a set of raccoon eyes. And there's a scene in the show where the hustler knows he's gonna die. The ground opens. He climbs inside." The hustler's last line in the show pops an idea from the hustler's mind and Sheff "pick[s] it up right through the TV", which plays out in the rest of the song. I believe the shows hold greater meaning for the song as well. After all, we care enough to watch a real celebrity marriage fall apart on TV and we care enough about people who don't even exist to watch their stories pan out on TV, but we forget the more important things, which is where the woman in the dream enters.
I don't know this as a fact, but the woman with a rod in her spine seems to be our Groupie (there's mention of his heart splitting "like a jaw, like an eye" which may be how our Groupie became deformed in a car accident...we're getting there) speaking to him, saying, "We were so far from right when we're losing the fight, we're letting the light weaken it's beam." Then she asks him (because mankind is "too weak to stand on our two feet") to be the "hand to take hold of the scene".
He's establishing himself as narrator of this tale. It's specifically this Groupie's tale, but leads to similar stories. It's another example of life not having any big climax, yet having interesting kicks, but usually no one is there to see the little things, important or not (unless you are Bonaducci). Sheff's world filled with possiblities when he heard his band on national television, but no one cared enough to write about it...except Sheff, who realizes there are other people (fans, flops, and Miss Groupie) who ought to have their stories written down too.
4. "Savannah Smiles"
Here's the Groupie's story: Savannah Smiles is a movie, the favorite movie of one Shannon Wilsey: The Groupie. When she got into pornography, she took the stage name Savannah. This song is from the view point of her biggest fan: one of her parents. The parent (the lyrics suggest Mom, but it's pretty unclear, I think) finds Shannon's diary and can't believe what she's gotten herself into. Either that, or her alleged childhood abuse is revealed. When Shannon comes to visit she doesn't do anything but "sleeps and lies around and then she goes out." At the end of the song, all the parent sees is Shannon's face on the television because (we, the knowledgable listeners, know) she killed herself after she survived a terrible car accident because she was too deformed to be the star she had been. Naturally, the parent doesn't know if he or she should have or could have done anything. We'll come back to Shannon/Savannah.
Note the fan-view. We'll see everything from here on out from one of two views: fan and star. In theory.
5. "Plus Ones"
My favorite song on the album. Sheff wrote it while brainless, apparently (http://blogsarefordogs.com/?p=482), but it still very much applies to the theme and tone of the record. I would love to be half as clever as he is when things don't make sense anymore, but I digress.
On the surface, this song is exactly as the title suggests: Sheff takes lyrics from other songs which have numbers in them and adds one (go back to that link if you skipped over it, plus you'll have to read the lyrics as I won't write them all down). It's more than that too. Sheff is still talking about the life of a groupie, this time from the star's point of view (I'll admit it's debatable, so please debate). He says, quit crying, no one wants to hear it, you're one in a million (or in 100 Luft Balloons), "the 51st way to leave your lover" is the messiest, "the party's over" so here we are in the bar, drinking and drugging the sorrows away.
I say the subject of the rebuke is a groupie based on the 8 Chinese brothers lines. You tell me. The lyric "and in just one year, this straight world could pay to see what they have been missing" clearly points to Savannah again in any case. Also note: "you were once a lionness, they cut your claws out." Rockstars are not kind to groupies. As we shall see (though proabably more so next album).
6. "A Girl in Port"
Here is another song written from the star's point of view. I like to think that this is Sheff himself speaking, but I can't say that because he doesn't write autobiographically. It begins with the speaker telling a girl to take off her clothes, but he asserts that he's "not the lady-killing sort enough to hurt a girl in port" (note sailing metaphor). My opinion is that he's a typical rockstar telling this girl that he is not a typical rockstar so he can get into her...well...skirt.
Sheff mentioned wanting to sound like an ass in this album. This song may be best interpreted on that fact, but you judge.
He then begins to talk about girls he knows. These girls are in varying stages of "groupiedom", if you will. Marie is a lost girl who "don't know who she wants to be". The perfect target for a guy who knows exactly who he wants her to be (the slip right into the chorus illustrates this perfectly). We will see Marie again in a bit. Cindy is a groupie. I am still not sure whether she is "someone's plus one" or if this "plus one" is in her room. I'm too lazy to pull the lyrics out to check punctuation. I'm sure it's the former (because up in her room is the worn record she's listening to), though I don't suppose the implication changes either way. What's important is that Cindy is still having fun. Then comes Holly: she went "over the sea and far away" after she told the narrator she "lost it there", "fell from Hell, cut some fresh pieces from" herself. Holly is the groupie who was cut the 51st way (this reminds me of a girl who dated Ace Freely of KISS for a long time). The narrator told her to get out.
At the end of the song, the narrator redeems himself, or at least explains himself. He says: "Oh I'm a weak and lonely (lowly?) sort, though I'm not sailing just for sport. I've come to feel out on the sea these urgent lies press against me. I'm just a guest. I'm not a part. My tender head, my easy heart...these several years out on the sea made me empty, cold, and clear. Pour yourself into me." Here I take sailing as a metaphor for touring. It is these lyrics too that make me think this is Will Sheff himself speaking (it's not, but entertain me). I don't think that Okkervil River consider themselves more than guests to the touring musical scene. They are a humble Austin band, yet touring for so long has gotten to them (Sheff here, or whoever our narrator is) and turned them a bit to the dark side. A.k.a. assholes.
7. "You Can't Hold the Hand of a Rock and Roll Man"
This song features you (yes YOU) as a rock star. Sheff takes you into the life of a rockstar. You've got "this week's catch" and everyone's "gassed and trashed and smashed", you're "livin' on air", there's a million bucks flying around, and then there's Marie "passed out in a chair with her once-fussed-over hair all mussed into an I've-just-been-fucked shape." Sheff tells us that before she passed out, she chewed you a new one, you ugly, old bastard you. She's finished with you because she knows she's nothing more than a passing fuck (even though she's been your passing fuck "since '98"). He also sugests that she only stuck around for the "several mil." After all, your romance didn't mean shit to her anyway.
You don't care. When you're on the road again, you find someone new in a flash and you're just as reckless as usual. Then there's the whole bit about the lawyer that I can't make out, but whatever he "makes you wear" that destroys your chances of every being "repeatedly engaged" is the best part of the song, if only because of Sheff's mocking laugh. This song doesn't exactly make the rockstar life sound appealling. To me anyway.
8. "Title Track"
This track is an interjection, not really a view from either a fan or a star, but Sheff's little reminder that these characters, whether fans or stars, are people like everyone else. These people may suffer greater hardship than some of your average people, though, (drug addicts excepted) because fame is a chemical high and one of two things happen to these kinds of addicts: "Either they kick off too soon or stick 'round to late to be far too dear or too cut-rate." This is a tribute to the victims of stardom. The ones who are still living, anyway. The narrator joins a bike-a-thon for breakdancers in beds with "bags hanging over their heads."
He talks about turning "this thin, broken-down circus clown reject" into a queen. I see this as another reference to Shannon, who, after being tossed around by so many musicians, was nothing but a broken girl. She turned into a porn queen afterward. Further proof: "Don't I know her from the Mezzanine? She didn't look like no princess to me. But with the proper words bestowed and with her morning shoot, her evening clothes....Don't call her a prostitute. She ain't one of those. Just call her a proper little statue come unfroze." I wrote in my notes that this last line has a dual meaning, but I can't for the life of me remember what I meant. Something about how she's nude for "art" and...perhaps how she was dressed up and paraded around by the likes of Tom Petty, among others?
I say this is a tribute to the still living (the ones who "stuck 'round too late") because at the end of the album, we won't have had any stories about those people. He just wants us to know they exist. We'll see one (sort of) next album around.
9. "John Allyn Smith Sails"
Google the name John Allyn Smith and you will find the Wiki entry for John Berryman (his stage name, if you will), a writer from the mid-20th century. It will tell you that he killed himself in '72, which this song tells you quite plainly. Berryman's father (John Smith) killed himself when he was 12 ("when my mom and John came in" refers to his step-father John Berryman), thus leaving him somewhat obsessed with the notion (the kid holds his breath to appear dead to his parents). As you hear in the song, the alcoholic depressive threw himself from the Washington Avenue Bridge in Minneapolis and died.
This is the view of the star again. Whether he stuck 'round to late or kicked off too soon is for you to decide. He was fairly widely acclaimed (and razzed). He was a professor here at the Iowa Writer's Workshop in Iowa City for a while (as a side note Will Sheff visited Prairie Lights here a very short while ago and picked up the book containing the story from which Okkervil River takes its name. I have a link of him reading said story, if you are interested. I'm pissed I didn't bump into him on the street). He was an alcoholic who hated his father for killing himself, yet turned that route himself.
Before, when we heard "sailing" I told you it meant touring. Here, I think it's pretty clear that "sailing home" is dying. Remember these two sailing metaphors for later. This is where things get clever. The tune in the song changes about halfway through (after John kills himself and is sailing) to a sample of the song "Sloop John B.", an old song about (guess what?!) sailing. Okkervil River's song title contains the writer's real name. The sample's title contains his writing name (or initial).
So, just as Sheff promised in the beginning, this is a life story with its kicks, but it ends as all lives do: with death. See you soon.
(Stay tuned for round two: The Stand Ins.)