No Crazier Than You

‘Only You Know and I Know’ was Dave Mason’s first charting single which he recorded in 1970 on his debut solo album, Alone Together and this single reached #42 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.  The song received a good deal of album-oriented rock radio airplay and was a major commercial success with the album getting to #22 on the Billboard album chart, the highest placement among Mason’s 14 albums to make that chart between 1970-76.  In 1970, Mason was 7,000 miles from his first home.  He was still new to America, and found himself working in one of Hollywood’s iconic studios, in a room full of session players who were learning his songs for the first time.  The whole experience was unfamiliar, and it shows at times.  Dave Mason performed with a roster of guest musicians, including Delaney and Bonnie Bramlett, Leon Russell, Jim Capaldi, Rita Coolidge, Carl Radle and Jim Gordon.  Billboard Magazine (1970) wrote, “Mason with help from friends Jim Capaldi and Leon Russell proves his mastery of the rock idiom once and for all.  The lyric content and music content of every song catches the senses of the listener and creates excitement.”  Bill Shapiro of the Rock and Roll Review (1991) says, Mason’s “reputation as a composer, guitarist, and singer of the first rank is both merited and in evidence here.”

Dave Mason re-released this album last year, fifty years after it was first recorded, because he said that he was never quite satisfied with how his vocals sounded.  He liked the songs, but he was so young and it being his first solo album, the older he got, the more the vocals bothered him.  He wanted to record them again the way that he first imagined them when he wrote them.  Mason said that this is a more accurate representation of what he thinks he sounds like, and the songs all gained a new depth because of this.  50 years later, Mason said that he is truly satisfied with all of these songs.  This song appears to be a conversation that Mason is having with his girlfriend.  They are in a good relationship and there no reason for either of them to doubt it.  He doesn’t want her to read too much into a recent argument they had, and he tells her to stay with him.  She likes getting her own way, but he tells her that she can’t have that all the time.  As they are a couple in this together, they need to work as a team to please each other.  He knows that she will have trouble believing this when she feels like she has been mistreated.  He admits to having done some crazy things, but he tells her that she has also been crazy at times.

Only you know and I know
All the lovin’ we’ve got to show
So don’t refuse to believe it
By reading too many meanin’s

‘Cause you know that I mean what I say so don’t go
And never take me the wrong way
You know you can’t go on gettin’ your own way
‘Cause if you do, it’s gonna get you someday, yeah

We’re both here to be pleasin’
Oh no no, not deceivin’
But it’s hard to believe in, aw yeah
When you’ve been so mistreated

‘Cause you know that I mean what I say so don’t go
And never take me the wrong way
You know you can’t go on gettin’ your own way
‘Cause if you do, it’s gonna get you someday

If I seem to mislead you
It’s just my craziness comin’ through
But when it comes down to just two
Aw, I ain’t no crazier than you

‘Cause you know that I mean what I say so don’t go
And never take me the wrong way
You know you can’t go on gettin’ your own way
‘Cause if you do, it’s gonna get you someday

Only you know and I know
Only you know and I know
Only you know and I know, oh yeah
Only you know and I know, oh yeah, get up

Written for MM Music Challenge #181 We Just Disagree.