Day After Day #133: It's Too Late

Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4).

It's Too Late (1980)

There are plenty of musicians who also write poetry: Dylan, Jim Morrison, Nick Cave, Tupac Shakur, John Lennon, Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, Kate Bush, Gord Downie, Leonard Cohen, Lou Reed, Patti Smith and Marc Bolan are examples. Hell, even Billy Corgan published a poetry collection. 

There aren't as many who went from poetry into music. Jim Carroll was a well-known poet and author in 1978 when he decided to start a band, inspired by his former roommate Patti Smith. He was traveling with Smith and her band when one night in San Diego, the opening band didn't show up; Carroll ended up performing his poetry while backed by Smith's band.

Carroll then teamed up with a San Francisco new wave act called Amsterdam. After changing their name to the Jim Carroll Band, they were able to score a record deal with Atlantic Records with some help from Keith Richards. They recorded their debut album Catholic Boy in the summer of '79 and it was released in early January 1980. 

Carroll wasn't much of a singer, but since when has that mattered in rock and roll? He was a strong performer and was able to bring his words to life effectively while his band provided a lean, twin-guitar-driven garage sound that fit right in with the CBGB scene at the time. Echoes of Lou Reed, Richard Hell and the Voidoids, solo Iggy Pop as Carroll sang about drugs and death and NYC street life. 

"People Who Died" became an instant hit, written about people Carroll knew growing up who died tragically. It has since been covered by everybody from John Cale to Drive-By Truckers to Gwar. It's a great song, but a few years after the album came out, I would hear "It's Too Late" played every so often on Boston's WBCN and it just resonated. It's dark and nihilistic, has a killer riff and honestly, it's just a  perfect punk song.

"It's too late/To fall in love with Sharon Tate/But it's too soon/To ask me for the words I want carved on my tomb/I think it's time/That you all start to think about gettin' by/Without that need to go out and find somebody to love."

Growing up in NYC in the late '60s, Carroll was a high school basketball star who developed a heroin addiction. He ended paying for his drugs by becoming a prostitute, and later published The Basketball Diaries, an edited collection of his high school diaries. So he knows what he's singing about here.

"It's too late/There's no one left that I even wanna imitate/You see, you just don't know/I'm here to give you my heart, and you want some fashion show/But it ain't no contribution/To rely on the institution/To validate your chosen art/And to sanction your boredom and let you play out your part."

I remember hearing this song for the first time and being shocked it was even on the radio. The band (with a young, shirtless Robert Downey Jr. on drums) played "It's Too Late" in the movie Tuff Turf (see below).

"It's too late/You know, when they got nothin' to give/They only part their legs for what's negative/They're so decadent/Until their daddy's money from home's all spent/So I think it's time, 'cause it's too easy to rely/On worshipping devils and strangers in bed/Though they do get good drugs, and they do give good head."

Catholic Boy was well reviewed and ended up hitting #73 on the Billboard 200. "People Who Died" made it to #103 on the Bubbling Under Hot 100 chart and has been used in many movies and TV shows, including E.T., the 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead and Mr. Robot. The Jim Carroll Band made two more albums in the early '80s; Carroll released a spoken word album in '91 and another album of music under his own name in 1998. The Basketball Diaries was made into a movie in 1995 starring Leo DiCaprio as Carroll; it got mixed reviews but the soundtrack featured Carroll backed by Pearl Jam performing the song "Catholic Boy." 

Carroll died of a heart attack in 2009 at the age of 60. He may have only been a part-time musician, but he left an indelible mark. You can definitely hear his influence on bands like The Hold Steady. 

I'm honestly surprised nobody else has covered "It's Too Late," but I suppose it actually isn't too late.