Old musicLoudon Wainwright III

Old music: Loudon Wainwright III - Motel Blues

The life of the touring musician isn't all Rolls Royces in swimming pools, as this old nugget proves

Being a touring musician is just one big peripatetic piss-up, isn't it? A riot of adoring fans, free booze and women (or men) as you barrel merrily from one exotic location to the next. Trust a songwriter as singular as Loudon Wainwright III to do away with the glamour and focus on the less celebrated parts of the job.

Perhaps better known as the father of more exalted offspring Rufus and Martha (criminally, I think, though that's not to sleight their own output), and for familial songs of parenthood, domesticity, divorce and death, Motel Blues predates all that – this is Wainwright from 1971 when he was a rising star.

"In this town television shuts off at two/ What can a lonely rock and roller do?" it begins. At 2 mins 47 secs, with just Wainwright and his guitar, it's a bleak look at the life of a touring musician in need of companionship: "I don't want to stare at them ugly grass mat walls." It's funny, too, as Wainwright so often is: "Chronologically I know you're young/ But when you kissed me in the club you bit my tongue." He offers various reasons why this woman should come back to his motel room, none of which appear to be successful, before delivering a last, desperate plea. It's less trashing hotel rooms; more trashing a myth.

The clip above is faithful to the studio recording. Live, Wainwright's kneejerks, tongue waggling and pained faces can sometimes distract from the lyrics, but they can also emphasise the humour and heartache of his songs, and this 1978 performance is pitched perfectly.

Motel Blues has been covered a few times, one of my favourites being the Bombay Bicycle Club version. With Jack Steadman's wavering vocals, they manage to make it sound even more tragic. It was also revisited by Wainwright himself on 2008's Recovery, an album of "re-covers" of his own material from his first four albums. It's startling to hear a 60-something singer revisit a song written in his 20s about trying to get laid.

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