Month: April 2017

Jim Morrison and The Doors

I recall, a while ago, that I told a friend I was unable to write about the Doors’ music. But as usual with me when it comes to writing, I challenged myself and I did it. So I know I did it before but I’ll do it again. How can you have a blog called “We Had The Music” without the Doors?

I consider The Doors as being heavily responsible for drawing the definitive line between our parents’ music and ours. Of course there were others! But if you sit and listen to Glenn Miller and his band playing “Moonlight Serenade” and then think about the Doors you’ll either laugh or cry. “Moonlight Serenade” is so lyrical, so yearning and romantic–you picture your parents as very young adults, standing in the moonlight, holding hands, and maybe kissing once. Then you hear Jim Morrison shrieking–Come on baby light my fire?! In only one generation…

A girlfriend I had in those days called Jim “father/brother/lover.” The craziest part is that I understood what she meant! All male, his lips were sensuous, his hair long and curly–the devil incarnate.

The band was really great…gloomy, spiky, a perfect backdrop for Jim. I had all their records. Some of my favorite songs: Back Door Man, the song about being strange and to be honest, I experienced that song; I went through a period of definitely being odd and strange and in a black place. So, so many. But I had a close personal relationship with “Light My Fire.” The words: You know that it would be untrue/you know that I would be a liar/if I was to say to you/Girl we couldn’t get much higher….the time to hesitate is through/no time to wallow in the mire/try now we can only lose/and our love become a funeral pyre.

I was in love for the first time and I, as the Doors said, couldn’t hesitate. I was on fire. If I hesitated my love would become a funeral pyre!!! It was a warning that came straight from the deepest middle of my being. And I’m glad it happened like that; permission from that place where Jim lived to…be more human, I guess.

Car Songs/Jan and Dean & The Beach Boys

If you lived at the end of Commercial Road in Pittsburgh you knew all too well about Dead Man’s Curve. Especially in the winter. The way I saw it–if a boy wanted to come and pick up you for a date and you lived at the end of Commercial Road and it was winter–you could measure his devotion by the way he responded to that particular situation. One terrible winter night there was a lot of ice and snow everywhere and I was howling because Commercial Road was really too awful for my boyfriend to come and get me–SO MY MOTHER DROVE ME TO SQUIRREL HILL to see my boyfriend and we had fun and then I spent the night on the third floor of my Aunt Esther’s house.

I am wondering how the car culture came to be on the West Coast. There probably isn’t any particular reason. But from where I sat it seemed that every teenager had a car there. In the movie American Grafitti everyone had a car. I didn’t even get my drivers’ license until I was 18.

Brian Wilson and his Boys sang so beautifully about cars–with passion and tenderness. It was something so new and mesmerizing, almost. I didn’t know what a pink slip was until I asked Peter; I had no idea of the meaning of “tach it up” either. “Shut him down…” I didn’t know that at all. There’s actually a whole album of Beach Boys’ car songs. But I loved listening to them singing. Bombarded from the West with car songs, bombarded from the East with the British Invasion…and here was sad little Pittsburgh, just soaking it all in.

Favorite car songs: Little Old Lady from Pasadena/Jan and Dean
Don’t Worry Baby/Beach Boys

You might think that Don’t Worry Baby isn’t a car song but listen to the lyrics:

I guess I know I should have kept my mouth shut when I started to brag about my car
But it’s too late to back down now because I pushed the other guy too far..

She said now when you go and race today you take all my love with you
And if you knew how much I love you baby nothing could go wrong with you..

Sam the Sham and the Pharoahs

And now for something completely different.

If you’re a goofball or you are just in a goofy mood, think about “Hey There Little Red Riding Hood..”

You sure are looking good
You’re everything a big bad wolf would want…OWOOOOO

Or Wooly Bully in which the words are so mushed up you can understand what they’re saying…

But the best song was “I’m in With the Outcrowd.”
Try listening to this group if you’re not in a good mood.

Rock and roll–our rock and roll–was like a plastic fantastic running suit. Room for everybody and everything and definitely one size fit all of us.

The Early Beatles

Some time ago I was watching a documentary about the Beatles and how they affected young people in other countries. It was spell-binding. Many cried as they talked about the Beatles’ music and what it meant to them. Even in countries we hated then–people still loved them.

When John Kennedy swept into office in 1960 with his beautiful, elegant, intelligent young wife, it was as if a cool breeze swept away all the old fogies to make room for these people who knew how to dress and who made Robert Frost Poet Laureate. Same with the Beatles–everything about them was new, different, fascinating. They wore impressive clothes, their hair was different, their accents intrigued us. To be young then was like spreading wings and flying over the Cathedral of Learning and the steel mills.

I Want To Hold Your Hand; She Loves you; And I Love Her; so many more early songs that I can’t even remember. I have a huge, thick piano book that has every Beatles song in “easy” piano and when I play them, Peter automatically begins to sing. It comes from our hearts.

When I came home in the morning after the night shift I would sing, every day, It’s Been A Hard Day’s Night.

Another song I always loved was “There are places I remember…” Sweet and pure.
“This Boy”–“I Don’t Want to Leave the Party but I’ll go”–“Love Me Do”–“If I Fell”-one of my favorites.

The Beatles set us free; the part of our hearts that was closed in responded to these working class young men who knew about love.

New Music from the East Coast
The Band

Pittsburgh is only about 300 miles from Philadelphia but it may as well have been another planet. In Pittsburgh we were behind on almost everything except maybe the Vogues who recorded “Five O’Clock World.” They were from Pittsburgh. I really hope I’m right about this.

Anyway, when I started going with Mark who was from South Jersey I realized how behind Pittsburgh actually was. Here was this boy who told me about Hermann Hesse but also told me about The Band.

It was explained to me that The Band were a back-up band for Bob Dylan. They had recorded Music from Big Pink and Mark showed me the album cover. He was a very big fan and I started listening with him. The words were weird and I couldn’t even pretend to understand them. But that was Mark’s passion, to understand things. He had a strong poetic side to him but he couldn’t just accept song lyrics for what they were.

After Big Pink there were other albums and oh so many songs to discuss and analyze. Too many to remember. Just parts of sentences remain: “I pulled into Nazareth, feeling about half way dead…” “Up On Cripple Creek” and “Stage Fright” are a few.

As Mark moved into madness his mind grew more and more frantic in its attempts to make sense of things, both in music and otherwise. I do remember seeing The Band at the Syria Mosque, with very low prices it seems now, and a nice calm crowd of people. I can’t think about The Band’s music without thinking about this young man who appeared in my life when I needed a friend and comrade more than any other time in my life.

Yesterday, Yellow Submarine, and my mom

Of all the Beatles songs–and I know I’m going out on a limb–Yesterday’s lyrics and melody are the most haunting. I got to see this for myself.

My father died in December of 1968. The protection, the dignity, the life patterns my mother lived by and enjoyed so deeply with my Dad–all was gone. She felt naked. She was only 43 and her life was over; that’s how she felt. However, at the age of 18 I was of no help. Infuriated, longing to be free and not have to face what happened, the weird suburb of Swisshelm Park becoming a tomb overnight—total horror. I was “totally into myself” as the kids say and I began plotting my escape. It was so much pain–so much expected of me–it was intolerable and I have to say that I wasn’t a nice person then. I felt nothing but hatred. I was so angry at my father because he left me here on earth without his quiet presence to guide me…

As the winter passed and spring came we all felt a little better. My mother, having been stripped naked, began to pay attention to other avenues of life. One of them was music, not “adult” music but OUR music, our generation’s. When she first listened to Yesterday her face changed and she told me that those words by Lennon and McCartney were about her. “…now I need a place to hide away…” Also, the movie Yellow Submarine came out and we all went and I remember that as being one of the few fun times we had. My mother was so happy; she thought the music was great; and she began to love the Beatles. Then she started liking Simon and Garfunkel.

I wish I had been nicer then. How completely futile. Years and years later I was given a chance to make it up to my mom when she got so sick with Alzheimer’s Disease. I have to be content with that and I eternally thank Lennon and McCartney for providing the key…

The Beach Boys

You can’t write a lot about all of your favorite Beach Boys songs in one blog. I guess it could be some kind of challenge. But I have just enough to say about them to fill my page.

In the song “Little Surfer” there is a line: “In my woody I will take you everywhere I go…”

I had a boyfriend who was my first love when I was in 11th grade. How did I know this was a first love? All I can say is that you know when you first fall in love. Up until that time I had plenty of male attention but it was the kind of thing where I’d go out on dates with boys–usually to the movies and out to dinner. It was a kind of cut-and-dried pattern without a lot of intimacy, although there were two boys I really liked a lot, one of whom I actually came close to marrying later on.

But more about first love and taking me wherever he went…the pattern of only doing things together as formal dates kind of fell apart and my boyfriend and I did things together all the time. His mother asked us to do errands for her. It was assumed that we’d be together…so thank you, Brian Wilson, for putting that line into your song.

Paul McCartney has been quoted as saying that “God Only Knows” is the best rock and roll song ever written. I can’t remember where I read this, but in the article many seasoned musicians agree. It’s so pure and the voices are like gold and you just want to cry, even if you don’t have anything to cry about. “God only knows what I’d be without you…”

Cold on The Shoulder/Court and Spark
Gordon Lightfoot and Joni Mitchell

Music to Muse By

When I was living on Ward Street in Pittsburgh, newly divorced and alone–my mother tried to make me find a roommate but my need for solitude was paramount–I listened to these two records at least once a day, more likely twice a day. I think a lot of people who live by themselves find themselves doing things like this.

I was more attached emotionally to Gordon Lightfoot. I could probably sing that album of his straight through. There was one song, Rainbow Trout, that stood out because it made me think of myself. It was a story of a lost girl in the form of a trout and is overtaken by a current of water. I felt like that then. But this isn’t self-pity–no way. I never, ever felt sorry for myself during those 18 months. I hated my job more than I hated anything else on this earth but I didn’t feel sorry for myself. I accepted the situation even though I hated a part of it. I was on a quest; I wasn’t a victim.

I didn’t like Court and Spark as much. It’s funny but I can barely remember why I liked it at all. Some of the songs were kind of abstract and one of them told a story about a hooker “sitting on her groceries” which I thought was funny.

I’m glad I did what I did, i.e., go off to toughen myself and to see how much I could take. My pleasures didn’t involve other people which is why I felt close to Gordon Lightfoot. His songs were like meditations and stories. It was a good time to be alone; rents in south Oakland were very low and I didn’t need a car. Best of all, on Fridays, when I got paid, I’d cash my paycheck, make sure I had enough for rent, phone, and food–then buy an album on Saturdays when I took my long walk through Oakland. When I left there to move to Philadelphia I gave all my records to my younger cousins. What ever happened to them God alone knows but they would be worth a fortune on e-bay now!!

Stevie Wonder

Stevie Wonder came on the rock and roll scene as a curiosity, an anomaly. A black, blind boy who could sing R and B really good and played the harmonica.

But this odd boy grew into a musical genius, made a place for himself despite his blindness, and not only succeeded in music but used his music to influence other walks of life.

When Michael was a little boy we’d be driving around here and there and we’d play the album called “Stevie Wonder’s Musicquarium 1.” Every song on that album is just plain GOOD. Some are love songs, sweet and melodic; others were pointed statements directed at the white establishment. Actually, we listened to Musiquarium and another album called “Definitives” I think, which was his best collection.

Anyway, Michael with his off-the-charts IQ and his rapidly developing social conscience was like a little sponge, soaking in Stevie’s lyrics. He liked ‘Front Line” which is about the deplorable practice of putting black soldiers in the front lines so that they would be killed first. Also, my favorite, “Higher Ground” where Stevie sings: “Sleepers…just stop sleeping” and “Learners…don’t stop learning.” Believe me, Michael absorbed this also.

Our favorite, though, was “You Ain’t Done Nothin'” which warns white people that they are making stupid decisions unrelated to people of color and not asking for opinions. Michael and I agreed that this song made us feel uncomfortable because it was true but we forced ourselves to listen, anyway. Why was it our favorite? Were we masochists? We liked the music, the energy, and the way Stevie sang it. I think it quickly became absorbed into Michael’s growing sense of responsibility to humanity. He’s working for the Congressional Black Caucus once a week…

Much later, I was still listening to these lovely songs and I found “Ribbon In The Sky.” Very smooth, melodic, just Stevie with his voice like honey, singing and playing the piano. It has since become “my” song for Peter and me:

“For so long for this night I’ve prayed/that a star would send you my way/and to give us this special day/with a ribbon in the sky for our love.”

Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones

A lot of people out there would want to see my head roll, combining those two musical groups. Too bad; in my young years they stood for the same thing.

When I would listen to Led Zeppelin I had this image of black hell or at least a black hole–someplace where you could only go in a nightmare. Sitting here thinking about it I can’t say that I blame myself. Jimmy Page making his guitar shriek and of course Robert Plant shrieking his guts out…scary stuff. They weren’t singing about Yellow Submarines or even a “ferry cross the Mersey.” And here they were, yelling about some poor woman needing love…What kind of love was on their minds?

But the funniest part is this. One time I was listening to Fresh Air on NPR and Robert Plant was being interviewed by Terry Gross. I expected to hear the voice of an aged maniac but that’s not how it was. Robert Plant was soft-spoken, kind, nice to Terry, polite. Finally Terry said: I expected you to be an old maniac but you’re not!! How come you could sound like the devil incarnate when you’re singing? And Robert Plant said: When I’m not onstage or in the recording studio I’m a nice middle-class working man with a wife and a family. My voice is what makes me my living!!! I still can’t quite believe it but that’s what he said.

As far as the Rolling Stones–I liked some of their very early stuff but they shared that “black hole” quality. In their world life was tough and women were no good. Women were there to be dominated; just check out the lyrics of “Under My Thumb” and “Brown Sugar.” When I worked as a medical typist my co-workers knew I hated those two songs and when they came on the radio they’d make me listen.