Berkeley Girl, the new video of Harper Simon is filmed like a home video you would keep for yourself, with intimate scenes inside a house, bike rides, garden dinners with friends… the retro look of the setting and the scenery definitively belongs to Echo Park, the LA neighborhood where it was shot. Everything in the video evokes good times, nostalgia about great times spent with friends, a sort of happiness that may have gone, but it may just be the melancholic melody that gives this impression.
Hey, there is a Berkeley street in Echo Park even though Harper Simon has said the song was about a girl from the Berkeley everybody knows about. But as this LA neighborhood is well known for its bohemian feeling and its large population of artists, musicians and painters, the song gives that legitimate Haight-Ashbury feeling to Echo Park.
And if the melody on the line ‘And she drives a car in gear/Through the streets of Silver Lake’ has some ‘Dangling Conversation’ going on, the tune is nevertheless delightful and the video truly evocative.
The song is from his self-titled album, which was released in 2009, and the ‘Berkeley’ girl is the actress/musician Jena Malone in the video filmed by Benjamin Kutsko.
And about this for a nostalgic wink, if you look at the red car the girl seems to escape with at the end of the story, it is very reminiscent of the red Alfa Romeo Duetto Spider of Benjamin Braddock-Dustin Hoffman!