The dolphins seemed like a metaphor, when first Fred Neil sang about them in 1967. In his gorgeous, profound baritone — over music that swung lazily in a secret place where jazz and folk and psychedelia danced together — he told someone, everyone: “I’ve been searching for the dolphins in the sea / And sometimes I wonder, do you ever think of me?” “The Dolphins” was a song as fathomless as the ocean itself, ebbing and flowing, a never-cresting wave that spoke of a sadness as old as life.
It was more than a metaphor, though. In 1971, after just three remarkable solo studio albums, Fred Neil left music. There would be no more hanging out in Greenwich Village. He had already moved to Florida, and there he resolved to stay, spending the years until his death in 2001 working for dolphin conservation. He barely re-engaged with music, surfacing to put together some all-star benefits for the Dolphin Project, where he worked, and to play at the Whale Day celebration in California in 1976, where Joni Mitchell duetted with him on “The Dolphins”. There was never another album, never a tour. Neil left music with mystique not just preserved but enhanced.
“The Dolphins” wasn’t Neil’s only popular song, or even his most popular. When Harry Nilsson re-recorded “Everybody’s Talkin’” for the movie Midnight Cowboy, it became an international hit. “Other Side of This Life” was a psych-rock staple for Jefferson Airplane, The Lovin’ Spoonful and The Youngbloods. But “The Dolphins” is the song that sang most clearly down the years.
It was perhaps little surprise that both Tim Buckley and Richie Havens should cover it. Buckley and Neil shared management; Havens had been a friend of Neil’s in New York. Buckley recorded it on his penultimate album, Sefronia, but the version to seek out is the one on the live album Dream Letter, recorded in London in 1968, on which Buckley’s voice stretches out across the syllables, and his band — perhaps the greatest pick-up band ever, with Pentangle’s Danny Thompson on upright bass, Lee Underwood on guitar and David Friedman on vibraphone — improvise behind him. Havens’s version adds twists to the arrangement — for all its emotional weight, “The Dolphins” is a song so slight it’s barely there — but neither version dares slip Neil’s moorings.
Perhaps they had heard Dion’s version of the song, released in 1968, and realised that messing with it was likely to result in disaster. The second half of the 1960s was a fascinating period for Dion (his 1965 album Kickin’ Child is electric Dylan at the exact same time as Dylan was going electric), but when he missed, he missed by a mile. And he missed “The Dolphins” by a mile. His phrasing is so eccentric as to be baffling, and the orchestral arrangement is as sugary as sherbet.
Harry Belafonte didn’t do a much better job in 1969: the phrasing is back in place, but the backing is one of those awful Don-Draper-in-lovebeads things — harpsichord and MOR strings — that proliferated as yesterday’s stars tried to adapt to tomorrow’s music. Better just to sing the damn song, as Linda Ronstadt also did in 1969.
A song as good as “The Dolphins” never gets forgotten. And sometimes it can reappear in the most unexpected ways. In 1991, two British artists revived it. Billy Bragg is an admirable artist and a brilliant songwriter, but I’m not wholly convinced his was the best voice for a song that depends on the singer for its impact — though it was the first version I heard, and good enough to send me in search of the original, so that probably counts as a victory. Meanwhile, The The recorded a version for the “Shades of Blue” single. Again, it’s a question of voice: there’s no tenderness in Matt Johnson. He sounds instead as if he’s warning that the dolphins have developed opposable thumbs and are about to take over the world. For something less anxious, try Beth Orton’s version, made with Terry Callier, in 1997, and swim in their harmonies.
Fred Neil might have given up the music industry, but he hadn’t forsaken music down in Florida. He had just found a new audience. “Rather than doing concerts, he preferred to take his guitar to the lagoon and play for the dolphins,” his former manager Howard Solomon told Mojo magazine in 2000. “Or we’d go sailing, and he’d bring a comb and rub it against the side of the boat to bring the dolphins. Then he’d pull out a harmonica or a guitar and play to them. That was what he enjoyed.” He’d been searching for the dolphins in the sea.
What are your memories of ‘The Dolphins’? Let us know in the comments section below.
‘The Life of a Song Volume 2: The fascinating stories behind 50 more of the world’s best-loved songs’, edited by David Cheal and Jan Dalley, is published by Brewer’s.
Music credits: Capitol Records; Manifesto Records; Five Star Recordings; Special Markets USA; RCA/Legacy; Old Stars; Cooking Vinyl; Deconstruction/Heavenly
Picture credit: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images