Bob Dylan told Mikal Gilmore of Rolling Stone that he wanted to record a religious album, but instead came up with Tempest. On his new disc (released 11 years to the day after 9/11), Bob bursts forth with apocalyptical imagery reminiscent of Bruce Springsteen‘s angry Wrecking Ball, also released this big year for a presidential election. 

In any event, you can’t discount the mystical overtones of the opening words on Dylan’s 35th studio album.

Listen to that Duquesne whistle blowing,
Blowing like it’s gonna sweep my world away.

Thus begins “Duquesne Whistle.” The whistle of the train is a recurring image in Dylan’s catalogue. (Check out “Freight Train Blues” on his eponymous debut, the home recording of “I Was Young When I Left Home,” and “Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here With You”). In fact, train whistles in songs predate Dylan–going back at least as early as “I’ve Been Working On the Railroad” (“Can’t you hear the whistle blowing?”).

There’s something savoring and exciting about this whistle (and the song’s lovesick lyrics hint at it–as does the beginning of the song’s gradually violent music video), but surrounding it, there’s also something deeper and darker in the sound of the whistle. Something profoundly mysterious.

For Dylan, so many of these sounds that call upon people are Biblical pronouncements from God. In 1989, on Oh Mercy, Dylan penned “Ring Them Bells” with the following words:

Ring them bells so the world will know
That God is one.

Awfully Deuteronomic of Dylan. This is the Shema: “Listen, Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is One” (Deuteronomy 6:4)–the Jewish declaration of faith recited every morning and evening.

It was upon walking home last night after hearing the election results when I decided to listen again to Tempest. 

For the first time, I heard dispair in the timbre of the clean yet muggy guitar that opens the album. The filtered sound, removed from the center of my headphones, suddenly felt incredibly empty: stride striving to bring cheer to no avail.

After a long, deceptively quiet intro, a drumkit brings in the band with a blast; the whole band enters with a blast. And Dylan says to us, “Listen.” Shema.

But, listen for what? To what?

Listen to that Duquesne whistle blowing. Yes, but also, listen for far more than just the whistle of a train.

Aside from his gospel album Slow Train Coming, Dylan has recorded over 50 songs that mention a train. It’s not just religious that he uses it; the train is a religious image. 

In an age when nobody says, “Hey, I’m going to take the chariot into town” (except potentially Amish people and other electric-transportation-dissuaded people), the Biblical image of the chariot is outdated.

Ezekiel saw the wheel, and mystics sought that Heavenly wheel in Ezekiel’s vision–hence, the development of Merkavah mysticism in Judaism (merkavah being Hebrew for “chariot”). Later, in the 19th and early 20th Century–when the construction of the American railroads was championed by a demographic occasionally associated with singing spirituals while working–when the workers saw the wheel, it was no longer the wheel of a chariot. It was the wheel of a train.

The train traveled at a speed beyond human imagination. And it drove to places far from home–far from the toil of the land the construction crew knew. The train’s destination was not only Somewhere Far Away and Somewhere Better, but a train carry take you away to Redemption, or to Paradise.

Randy Newman‘s Faust opens with the invitation for everyone to ride on the “Glory Train,” and Dylan’s Tempest tells us that Redemption and Paradise might be around the corner. Or it might not be. In fact, this hesitation echoes the skepticism, the bad weather, and the Jewish imagery of “Jokerman,” the opener on 1983′s Jewishly influenced Infidels:

Standing on the waters, casting your bread,
While the eyes of the idol with the iron head are glowing.
Distant ships sailing into the mist,
You were born with a snake in both of your fists while a hurricane was blowing.
Freedom just around the corner for you–
But, with the truth so far off, what good will it do?

Casting bread at waters–as if performing Tashlikh on Rosh Hashanah. Yet idolatry is so tempting. We see “distant ships sailing into the mist” because we see someone off to an unknown fate–with the hurricane blowing in the distance. A Tempest, anyone? (After all, Dylan’s song “Tempest” recalls the tale of the Titanic.)

Dylan had us stand with freedom just around the corner. But it is at best a metaphor. Not the full truth or reality.

And now we stand again with Dylan. Attentive. Listening to that Duquesne whistle blowing. “Like it’s gonna sweep my world away.” Elijah‘s world was not swept away by a chariot; the chariot swept him away from the world. The Duquesne whistle is not here for Paradise.

“Listen to that Duquesne whistle blowing–/Sounding like it’s on a final run.” A frightful end may be in store. And approaching fast. She’s “blowing like she ain’t gon’ blow no more.”

Dylan is not on AC/DC‘s “Highway to Hell.” He’s on a railway to Hell.

“You old rascal, I know exactly where you’re going.” Listening for Dylan’s dark twinkle in his croaking voice–you and I can hear what Dylan is saying: “Go to Hell, you old rascal.” Lucky for us, Dylan will lead the way. “I’ll lead you there myself at the break of day.” He doesn’t even need a train.

When we go down, Dylan will come with us. The whistle is “Blowing like it’s gon’ kill me dead.” We are sinking at the command of a whistle, “blowing through another no-good town.”

On Election Day 2008, at a concert in Minnesota, Dylan introduced his bassist Tony Garnier, “wearing the Obama button.” “I was born in 1941,” said Dylan. “That was the year they bombed Pearl Harbor. I’ve been living in darkness ever since.” He paused between each sentence, like it was poetry. “Looks like things are going to change now,” he proclaimed.

While Dylan had spoken positively of Obama before 2008, in his latest interview with Rolling Stone, Dylan had very little to say about our President who awarded him the Medal of Freedom. Dylan evaded questions about Obama, and the poet came across as nervous and confused when Gilmore asked him if he even votes.

Yesterday, I voted for Obama, and I imagine that his reelection will serve the USA well. That being said, I am not convinced that this is a country where sweeping change is possible in the hands of any one leader. This is a country so big and so divided that changes that come most often come at a level smaller than anything our president can single-handedly herald.

So, it was a pretty tiny spark of excitement I felt last night upon hearing the news. That excitement, accompanied by some skepticism.

Have Democracts like me placed our hope in a false Redemption? When the Duquesne whistle blows, is the next stop Heaven or Hell? Or maybe Minnesota?

“Listen,” commands Dylan. We have to listen to the message of the whistle.

The Chasidic commentator Netivot Shalom (a.k.a. the “Slonimer Rebbe“) once said that the shofar–the ram’s horn blown on and in the days surrounding Rosh Hashanah–plays notes that translate into a secret language only for Jews. The shofar is ineffable and can only be understood by those engaged in it, those who listen to it.

And it is the same thing with the Duquesne whistle in Dylan’s midst. You’ll have to really listen to understand the calling. There are no words.

Dylan once said, “Something is happening here. / But you don’t know what it is. / Do you, Mr. Jones?”

We’re moving forward, but where are we going?

Whatever the number is, the point is this: for a long time, it’s been really important for Jews to be concerned with the well-being of strangers.

Though he often claims to be an agnostic, Randy Newman never denies that he’s Jewish. And he has never denied that he’s a stranger in America.

In fact, you could say Randy Newman has built an entire career out of being a stranger in America.

Last year, Newman released the Randy Newman Songbook Vol. 2: a sequel of sorts to Randy Newman Songbook Vol. 1 from 2003.

Whereas the earlier CD offered listeners new recordings of some of Newman‘s best-known music, Vol. 2 is far from a Randy Newman Greatest Hits collection. Vol. 2 is the same idea of the previous collection: just Randy Newman singing and sitting at a piano–no band and no orchestra, and all the rough edges showing.

But Vol. 2 is composed of more obscure songs. Few of them ever had any sort of radio promotion behind them.

Beyond that Randy hand-picked all of them, it’s tough to say what unites the Vol. 2 songs. Perhaps you could say though that most of the songs touch on the theme of being a stranger, a foreigner or just exotic.

Opening with “Dixie Flyer,” Newman laments his life as a Jewish youth in the South: “Christ, we wanted to be gentiles too. / Who wouldn’t down there? Wouldn’t you?”

“Yellow Man” is one of Newman’s earliest musical impersonations of bigots: this time, a bigot trying to teach and to be open-minded about Chinese people.

With “Laugh and Be Happy,” we hear a sarcastically false explanation of US immigration policy: “Now the country that we’re living in… It’s never been about keeping you out. / It’s about inviting you in and letting you play.” To Newman, the real policy hints at American xenophobia, especially the fear of jobs being taken away by foreigners: “Pretty soon, you’re gonna take their place.”

Fear is replaced by entertainment as “The Girls In My Life (Part 1)” digs deep into the exoticism of the foreigner. “A pretty young French girl” and a “girl at the bakery” who takes Randy’s car “down to Mexico/ [and] ran over a man named Juan” are just 2 of the women who make Randy’s love life so fascinating.

And the objectifying of Mexicans continues as “My Life Is Good” tells of the “young girl” that the Newmans brought back from Mexico. Now “she cleans the hallway. / She cleans the stair. / She cleans the living room…” Their Mexican souvenir does all the hard work around the house, and whenever Newman hears the news he doesn’t want to hear, he can turn to her and to all others willing to be exploited. He can relax and sing his refrain: “My life is good.”

But when Newman steps out of sarcasm, life can be far from good. “Losing You” is based on a family who once visited Randy’s brother, a doctor. Randy puts to music the grief of those parents who lost their son to cancer. “I’ll get over losing anything,” they would have sung to their dead son. In fact, these parents got over the relatives they lost in extermination camps in Poland. “But I’ll never get over losing you.” It’s a shocking moment when Newman indirectly calls the Holocaust unforgivable but forgettable. Yet the loss of a son is both unforgivable and unforgettable. (Newman deftly covers up the background of the characters in the song. In Newman’s America, the past does not matter as much as the present and future.)

Echoing the populist leader Huey “Kingfish” Long, “Kingfish” speaks ill of the “hundred thousand Frenchmen in New Orleans” who have no compassion for “little folks like me and you”–the working-class Americans. In the chorus, Newman quotes the late Long’s campaign slogan: “Every man a king.” Whether Randy is sarcastic here is tough to say. Both “Birmingham” and “Baltimore” similarly tell the stories of common folk trying to be significant in the big city. While “Birmingham” allows the Alabaman to kid with the listener about the dullness of life, “Baltimore” is dark and “dyin’” (“Man, it’s hard just to live”).

With “Dayton, Ohio – 1903,” Randy offers an actual glimpse at American peace sans racial–or even interpersonal–tensions. It’s just a sweet invitation: “Would you like to come over for tea / With the missus and me? / It’s a real nice way to spend the day.”

Concluding his romp through a perverse America (we didn’t touch on the the stalker in “Suzanne,” the necrophile in “Lucinda,” etc….), Newman concludes this collection with “Cowboy,” an ode to a long-gone vocation. “Too late to fight now,” Newman sings of the contemporary cowboy. “Too tired to try.”

Cowboys like Newman–people who have traveled America in search of an idealism they never found–are bound to get tired. The best they can do is sing their refrains over and over.

Perhaps Dayton, Ohio in 1903 captured a moment of serenity, but many American cities are dying from racism. In the American South of Newman’s youth, it was no virtue to be Jewish, and today there still is great appeal to be a gentile: to be not a stranger.

Mexicans and other Spanish speakers in the United States are widely known to be treated often as second-class citizens. To that end, it’s not clear that things have improved since the decades when Newman first penned these songs.

Given how little the country has changed from the vantage point of the Randy Newman Songbook Vol. 2, it’s easy to see why Newman is such a tired cowboy. He has exhausted himself trying to explore that mythical American frontier of tolerance. But we are all still very far from the end of that journey.

I’ve never counted to see how many songs by Randy Newman deal with racial tensions or tolerance, but it’s a pretty high number (perhaps greater than 36, or even 46).

Whatever the number of times it is that he’s said it, Newman’s repertoire leaves us with a mind-bogglingly simple imperative: deal kindly with foreigners.

Through our history, we have known what it’s like to be foreigners. We have wanted to be citizens. We’ve wanted to be equal to all those surrounding us. We’d all like to fit into the larger picture.

Wouldn’t you?

Just wondering.

I’m pretty sure my iPod doesn’t talk to me, but here’s a cool story.

NOTE: Please feel free to insert your own cool flashback special effects!

Last night, while working on a final paper I had been working on all day (and prior to yesterday as well), it occurred to me that, if I kept going at the rate I was going, I would never finish the paper.

Just to be clear, I have never EVER pulled an all-nighter. (However, I have pulled a-lot-of-the-nighters.) I was worried that last night was going to be my first all-nighter (and hoping it would be my last).

So it was around midnight that I realized I couldn’t keep this up, and I took a break from writing the paper to floss my teeth (hey, everybody needs a hobby, right?). For a little atmosphere as I flossed, I turned on my iPod shuffle and the following three songs played in this exact order: “Change Your Way” by Randy Newman, “Hayyom [Today]” by Ehud Banai, and “Ye Shall Be Changed” by Bob Dylan.

It was almost as if the iPod was nagging me to take care of myself a bit better at that very moment. It was as if the ancient sage Hillel himself had programmed a playlist on my iPod called “Ve’im lo akhshav, eimatai?” (“If not now, when?”) or “Im eyn ani li, mi li?” (“If I am not for myself, what am I?”).

I felt these sayings from Pirkey Avot 1:14 all shouted out at me by the titles alone of these songs.

Working so tediously under a tight deadline is good for nobody, and if I don’t change now, who will? And how will the paper get done? Randy Newman says, “Change Your Way.” When? Ehud Banai says “Hayyom.” That sounds really daunting. But, look Bob Dylan’s blessing me, saying “Ye Shall Be Changed.” Sweet! I’ma change!

After I finished flossing my teeth, I ran back to the computer and furiously wrote the paper. (By furiously, I mean: I finished it around 6 AM. Trust me: that was an improvement! Things were moving really slowly before…)

I know that the iPod shuffle doesn’t really speak to me. (Right?) But it’s amazing how much a song—even its title—can remind us of the values we keep in the back of our minds. We tend not to take out some of those old tricks and values unless we actively shuffle through our memory.

But I have great respect for talented indie musicians. As you may have guessed, that category includes Steve Mossberg, a keyboardist and singer/songwriter whom I’ve never met but have loved since 2005. During that summer, I met another incredible indie musician by the name of Geo Poor, and I came across a bizarre blog entry of his.

Geo wrote that his friend Steve Mossberg was accepting ideas for songs to compose in a project dubbed 31 Days, 31 Songs. The idea behind it was simple¸ but not easy: each day, for 31 days, Steve Mossberg would write and record one new song. Great songwriting is a spark that can easily die out (which might explain why Mossberg solicited suggestions for songs during these 31 days), yet Mossberg persevered and created an impressive body of work. Moreover, the fact that both songwriting and sound engineering usually take time for most pros to develop and to perfect makes Mossberg’s product all the more remarkable.

Steve Mossberg’s “31” songs are replete with dry, witty lyrics akin to those typical of Randy Newman, They Might Be Giants, or Jonathan Coulton. The song that introduced me to Mossberg’s project was the one written at Geo’s request: a song about a guy who goes on a date with a girl who turns out to be, not only his cousin from Iceland, but also a spy who is out to get him. And aside from the fact that “Icelandic Spy Cousin” is a catchy, jazzy song with a piano hook as memorable as Warren Zevon’s “Werewolves of London,” the song is particularly captivating because Mossberg delivers these oddball lyrics while he very convincingly plays the part of the duped cousin. The song could easy make any first-time listener burst out laughing hysterically (or at least I did).

Upon hearing that song, I downloaded the rest of the songs of 31 Days, 31 Songs. And that’s how I was first introduced to “Leah Horowitz…”

“Leah Horowitz” is the unusual story of a (nice Jewish?) girl of that name, who, instead of kissing on their first date, leaves the singer with a book by Woody Allen about the music of Arnold Schoenberg. Understandably, this action leaves the narrator confused (by the way, confusion is a recurring theme throughout 31 Days, 31 Songs). Is leaving Mossberg with this book a subtle compliment about the musician (“Does she think I’m kinda funny / Or a musical visionary? / What’s she trying to say?”), or is this an insult comparing him to one of these notorious legends (“[Schoenberg’s music] sounds a lot like noise in a sense. / Does she think I’m like that too?”).

But Mossberg also suggests that maybe the book transaction was a gift: “Does she think I’m… just into famous Jews?” The song is Mossberg’s attempt at interpreting Leah Horowitz, by interpreting the significance of Woody Allen interpreting Arnold Schoenberg.

At the chorus, Mossberg sings, “Girl, I’ve got to read you right.” Maybe it’s just a play on words, but it really sounds like the book incident perplexes Mossberg enough that he’s now confused Leah herself for a book. Now, he’s got to read her right.

But, equating the human soul with the books that speak to our souls is, as Rabbi Josh Hearshen has taught, an old Jewish practice. Rabbi Hearshen points to a passage in the Mishnah (Shabbat 16:1), where it is taught that, on Shabbat (the Sabbath), “Kol kitvey kodesh matzilin otan mippeney haddelekah” (“We may save all sacred books from fire”). Normally, we don’t carry items far distances on Shabbat, but we traditionally make exceptions to the rules of Shabbat when it comes to pikkuach nefesh (literally, “saving a soul”). So, when a fire threatens the “life” of a book we value as so important in our own lives, the book suddenly takes on the persona of a human, and, Rabbi Hearshen points out, we would take extreme measures to save the soul of the book just as we’d take extreme measures to save a human’s soul.

For Mossberg, the one thing on his mind—the one thing that is sacred to him in the moment—is the combination of Leah Horowitz and the Woody Allen book. To Mossberg, Leah and the book are equally human, and they are utterly exhausting his mental and intellectual capacity.

In the bridge, Mossberg begrudgingly bemoans, “I think that I’m expected / To measure up to you.” Of course, we know nothing about Leah Horowitz other than that she left Mossberg a book and doesn’t kiss on his first date, so whom is he addressing, and to whom is he trying to measure up? Woody Allen? Arnold Schoenberg? The book? Leah Horowitz? I think it’s all of them. Together, they form Mossberg’s ultimate Jewish pressure machine.  To him, they are each Jewish giants: the Jewess Leah, subject to his admiration; Allen, the Jewish comedic master of “dry, neurotic razor wit” (a rhetoric characteristic of Mossberg’s lyrics); Schoenberg, the “modern music great” whose progressive thinking helped earn Jews an important place in Western music culture; and, finally, a book by a Jew (Allen) about another Jew (Schoenberg), read by another Jew (Mossberg) trying to read yet another Jew (Horowitz).

“If you’re looking for a smart guy,” Mossberg hesitantly suggests, “I think that I can hang. / It’s what I have to do.” Mossberg never said he loved Leah, but he will “hang” because he feels obliged. It seems that there’s a little Jewish guilt at work here forcing him to feel that need to live up to those other Jews who reshaped Western culture. And, just as Horowitz is too hard for Mossberg to read, Schoenberg’s “music was so far advanced, / He made the critics groan.” It’s not easy, or fun, to read these Jews, but Mossberg is sure that he has to do so all the same.

To the listener’s dismay, the song ends before Mossberg ever finds out how Leah Horowitz feels about him. The perfect fifths and octaves played on the synthesizer (like those opening notes of the famous Jeopardy! theme)—along with the quick high hats played throughout the song—remind the listener that the questions Mossberg is asking are aggravated further by the fact that time is of the essence. “I need another night,” pleas Mossberg in the chorus. “I know that it’s a chance to steal your heart.” Mossberg has a chance, but we don’t know if he takes the chance and takes her heart. We don’t know if Mossberg ever comes to feel validated.

He recognizes Schoenberg in the Woody Allen book. He sees Leah Horowitz as part of that book too. Maybe Mossberg’s not wrong though for seeing her in the book. But, maybe the that he does get wrong is that he doesn’t see himself in the book. After all, aren’t all four of them People of the Book? And, Judaism aside, aren’t they each fine, cultured people?

You don’t have to be famous to be Jewish, and you don’t have to be famous to be great or cultured. Somewhere around the turn from BCE to CE, the early Rabbinic sage Hillel taught, “Negad shema, avad shemeh” (“The seeker of fame destroys one’s name”) (Pirkei Avot 1:13). We so often hear of a celebrity whose work doesn’t measure up to all the attention that that celebrity earns. Mossberg in fact says regarding Schoenberg’s work: “His genius and his quirks ticked me off.” And, reviewing Allen’s book in one word, Mossberg says, “I thought it was okay.”

It’s so easy for us to have great expectations, and it’s so easy to feel pressured to become great in the pursuit of fame. But, sometimes when we don’t expect or pursue anything great, we find something fantastic. Five and a half years ago, I was only looking for one silly song, but I found 31 masterful compositions instead.

BONUS: Steve Mossberg’s website seems not to be hosting 31 Days, 31 Songs anymore, but the songs are still able to be downloaded on sites you can find off of Google. Here’s the order of the tracks just in case you’d like to download them and listen to the project in the order of the songs’ release:

1. Flying V Guitar
2. Relieved At the End of the World
3. Calculator Revolver
4. Supersize Sexual
5. Wonder Woman Understands
6. Sunday Ride
7. Go Go Final Battle!!!
8. If I Turn to Ash
9. The Wrath of Darcy Glen
10. Vegetable Ninjas
11. Cats and Cat Girls
12. Comer Un Bagel
13. Date Your Horse
14. The Coconut Van
15. Human Girl
16. The Guy On the 14^th Floor
17. Invisible Mice
18. Scissor Run
19. Sounds I Hate
20. Tedium
21. Leah Horowitz
22. Earth To Patricia
23. Here Comes That Song
24. The Show In My Dreams
25. Icelandic Spy Cousin
26. Rock ‘n Roll Action Figure
27. Murderer Of Polar Bears
28. Canned Soup Day
29. The Burning Road
30. Lovesick or Drowning
31. Warrior Drag Queen

I was not in love with it the first time I listened, but The Union has grown on me.

It’s both Elton John’s and Leon Russell’s first album in about 4 years, and I came in with the expectations of a CD full of pretty weak songs from two old guys trying too hard to be young and full of rock & roll. My initial response to the CD was that it’s decent. But, the other day, I began to understand it better. The opening track “If It Wasn’t For Bad” automatically started playing (The Union came up in iTunes right after Dave Matthews Band’s Under the Table and Dreaming) and my first thought was “God! What is this song? That’s a gorgeous intro!” The intro has an old-time feel of “Here comes a classic honky-tonk rag!” but what follows is the sound of classic rock, yet rocking only lightly and with a heavy sense of nostalgia that is aware of the lyrics’ tendency towards melodrama and corniness (“If it wasn’t for you, I’d be happy. / If it wasn’t for lies, you’d be true. / I know that you could be just like you should. / If it wasn’t for bad, you’d be good.”).

These words might look silly on paper today, but no fan of Leon Russell would have considered these binary-opposite lyrics to be stupid in the 70s when Russell’s voice was just slightly stronger. Opposite-words might be inane, but they’ve been popular for a long time. In the 60s, the Beatles sang, “Hello Goodbye,” and these days Katy Perry is singing “Hot N Cold.” It seems like, when you’re younger, you’re less likely to get criticized for being simple in the name of rock and roll.

So, what happens when you’re older, but your job is still rock and roll? You might be aware of how The Wall Street Journal recently published a punchy article recommending retirement for these guys, but I say it’s not that simple. In fact, some late CDs are, in my opinion, among some artists’ best CDs: just to name a few, Bob Dylan’s Love & Theft from 2001, Paul McCartney’s Chaos & Creation In the Backyard from 2005, Randy Newman’s Harps & Angels from 2008, and Elton John’s Songs From the West Coast from 2000. Of course, the great late releases are the exceptions—not the rule. So, we’re still left with the problem of old rockers: what can they do to keep on rocking?

This was precisely Elton John’s question—not about himself (Elton still packs stadiums), but he asked this about Leon Russell. The story: Elton John got mad after an interview during which he realized that lots of young people haven’t heard of Leon Russell and don’t know his music, Elton suggested that Leon Russell and he record an album together, and then they did.

When I first listened to The Union about a month ago, I was surprised that there were so few songs that attempt to rock hard (I’d say maybe 4 out of the 14 songs aren’t slow). You might expect that at least the one song on the album featuring Neil Young (“Gone To Shiloh”) might be an intense rock song, but it’s also a pretty straightforward ballad. The Union is chockfull of slower songs and thinner walls of sound. Neither Elton nor Leon took advantage of the CD to mislead youngings into believing that either artist is as popular among teens today as Katy Perry. At first I was disappointed by this non-aggressive approach (after all, what is rock and roll without aggression?). But I’m thinking now that there’s something a little more mature and composed about the state of these aged rockers.

The second-to-last song on The Union, comes from Elton John (age 72) and his longtime collaborator lyricist Bernie Taupin (69). “Never Too Old (To Hold Somebody)” is a slow but inspiring piece of advice to an old folk with teetering ambition (“Don’t abandon the light. / Don’t step away. / Don’t give up that tune / That you never could play… You’re never too old to hold somebody.”). For Leon Russell (age 78), it is not too late to hold onto, or to take hold of, a friendship that can open up another opportunity in life.

The CD concludes with Russell’s “In the Hands of Angels,” in which the eldest of the duo sings, “I could have been sick. I could have died / I could have given up and not tried / To make it to tomorrow… But there was a brand new start, / And suddenly I was taken / New and far away places… / It was a whole new race / When I woke on that first day. / There was nothing I could say. / I was in the hands of angels.”

Both full of talent and both long past those moments in their careers when they made it big—two legendary artists stood together at a crossroads. It is not clear entirely what the phrase means, but the Babylonian Talmud recalls a millennia-old saying that—even though it might not have been Jewish in origin—was preserved by Jewish writings: o chevruta o mituta (“either partnership or death”). What exactly the phrase meant the first time it was said is unclear, and much has been said about it, but, most ways you look at it, these four words can be very powerful.

It seems to me that both Elton and Leon see themselves in the position of o chevruta o mituta: they can either partner up and have a good time together, or just prepare to die alone. Modern Hebrew has the phrase “la’asot chayyim,” which means “to have a good time” but literally means “to make life.” Instead of choosing mituta (death), they chose la’asot chayyim. They chose chevruta (partnership). They chose The Union.

I hope, and honestly doubt, that this will be the last album of either artist, but it’s a pretty touching way to acknowledge that their careers have been a good, long run. With releasing this last record, they’ve successfully avoided the psyche that Randy Newman describes in a song about aging rockers (himself included), “I’m Dead,” frequently subtitled “(But I Don’t Know It).” Leon and Elton aren’t dead. They’re very much alive. And they know exactly where they are in life.

This album does not bring out the synth-pop and try to steal away Katy Perry’s fans. It’s a sweet collection of new songs for Elton’s and Leon’s tried and true fans. Given the choice of o chevruta o mituta, Leon and Elton chose chevruta. They’ve still got some great time ahead of them and some great music to give us. I’m glad they got together and chose la’asot chayyim.