“Don’t sit under the apple tree with anyone else but me Anyone else but me, anyone else but me, no, no, no
Don’t sit under the apple tree with anyone else but me Till I come marching home.”
Mother’s Day is just around the corner as I write this short story about mine. Ironically, it’s not the holiday that reminds me most of my mom. Except for the one right after her passing, when I stood in a Hallmark store picking out a Mother’s Day card for my mother-in-law and burst into tears, then hurried out the door to grieve somewhere privately. My mom wasn’t one for overly sentimental greeting cards. A simple love you for no particular reason, on any given day, was enough to make her smile. She also appreciated a shocking story, a sarcastic joke, a sharply recited limerick.
Once I caught her singing a bawdy tune about Buffalo Bill to my newborn daughter while rocking her to sleep. I reminded her how inappropriate that song was for a child and she said it won’t be remembered, anyway. I pointed out that we can’t be sure what babies remember and she added, “Well, I hope I’m remembered fondly.” I suggested she sing my daughter the one about sitting under apples trees that she used to sing to me as a kid. As a teenager too, until I begged her to stop. It’s a wartime song, but one she remembered fondly because her dad used to sing it at the top of his lungs if he’d had too much to drink. It’s a catchy tune, more silly than tender, yet it still gives me goosebumps when I hear it, which is next to never now. I have to go looking for it, and I did that when I flipped over the calendar to May and saw that past me had already circled Mother’s Day, lest I forget.
I read somewhere recently that music gives goosebumps to those who are hyper-sensitive. I’ve always been a sensitive type. More so than I remember my mom being. More like my dad in that way, I suppose. Sometimes when Mom’s humour got too risqué, Dad would tell her to quit pushing the envelope before she offended somebody or hurt their feelings. I miss hearing old sayings like “don’t push the envelope”. “Don’t step on my pink elephant” popped into my head the other day when someone was being a killjoy–another fun word rarely heard anymore. My dad often wanted things to be calm and perfect, including me. It was Mom who reminded us both that it was okay to be perfectly imperfect. To tell a bad joke to lighten an even worse mood. To sing a silly song too loudly, just for the heck of it.
To honour her memory, I chose the Mother’s Day weekend as the grand opening for my yarn store when I opened it in 2007. I spent a lot of time with my mom in the retail shops she managed over the years and I knew she would’ve got a kick out of me having a shop of my own. I also knew she was with me in spirit when I decided to close it fourteen years later. “Onward and upward,” she used to tell me after I’d made a tough decision or if my heart was broken. Onward and upward: another good, old saying. I’m sure it’s what I told myself that day in the Hallmark store.
Don’t Sit Under The Apple Tree – a song made famous by Glenn Miller and the Andrews Sistersduring World War II. This silly stage version makes me smile.
“If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.” ~ Scottish proverb & nursery rhyme
I have a story that began last week and also a very long time ago. I wasn’t going to share it, but when I told a friend about it and saw her reaction, I realized I wanted to write it down to think about it some more. First I need to give a bit of backstory to (hopefully) help it make more sense for anyone who hasn’t read my previous posts about why I started writing again after thirty years. It’s complicated, but to keep it short: I now have the space and time in my life to allow the creative process to take over because that’s what it does for me. It completely takes over. In the space of a year I wrote a novel, and then I rewrote it several times more. Finally satisfied, I sent query emails to a couple of literary agents along with the first chapter. And then I started writing a second novel that’s a spin-off from the first one. About halfway through the second novel, I realized this story could not exist until I was truly happy with the first one. Confusing, I know.
It was summer by then and I decided to step away from my desk to get out of my head and spend more time outdoors. The younger writer I used to be would’ve told myself to quit overthinking the process and press on. This older version understands after living a long time that creativity is not a race to the finish line. It’s a marathon of uphill climbs. Something wasn’t working for a reason and I needed space to figure out why. By fall, I was itching to write again, but still not ready to revisit the two novels. So instead I read insightful memoirs about writing written by published authors. One of those was Stephen King’s “On Writing, A Memoir of the Craft”. I’d read it once before when it was published about twenty years ago and can’t remember what I thought about it then. This time, however, I found myself dog-earing pages and highlighting paragraphs to read again and again. Above all else, one idea of his particularly inspired me and I’m paraphrasing it here: if two separate stories aren’t working, try combining them into one. It was as if a light turned on in my imagination. And so begins a different (yet familiar) novel…
I borrowed a character from each of my two novels and I made them sisters. I made them my age. I took a lake from one story and a small town from the other and I relocated it and combined it under one made up name. The setting is loosely based on two places I spent a lot of time in during my late teens and early adulthood. Hope, B.C. where my parents had their retirement house, and on Cultus Lake where I spent many long summer days hanging out with friends. I made the two sisters complete opposites, telling their story from very different perspectives and outlooks on life. In other words, one chapter is told by one sister and the next one is narrated by the other one, and so on. In order to create and keep track of their unique voices, I’ve had to mentally envision them as Nice Sister and Mean Sister. Not their names, of course, just their attitudes. And not surprising, Mean Sister’s perspective has become the most fun to write.
It’s a story as old as time. Siblings who must confront a shared past while temporarily stuck together in the present moment. It’s summertime in a small, lakeside town. There’s a cast of quirky, secondary characters–the townsfolk–who have secrets and troubles of their own. The sisters grew up here, abandoned by their superstar mother in the early seventies so she could freely chase her rock and roll dreams. Then they’re reunited with her as teenagers in the late seventies to become her backup singers for one summer tour. Now in their fifties, the sisters are forced to reconcile the past in order to move forward in their present lives. And because this is written by me, there must be humour to even out the drama, and great background music to give it a dreamy, nostalgic feel. My comfort tunes, mainly from the sixties, seventies and eighties. The music that has shaped my own life and inspired me to dream. The first chapter begins at the present time, with Nice Sister about to take a shower when the doorbell rings….She answers it to receive an unexpected gift package from an unknown person. While this has no meaning right now, it does later on in my real-life story–which I will get to very soon, I promise.
Chapter five, at exactly 13,793 words, I mopped one of the sisters, figuratively speaking, into a corner and I had to wait for the floor to dry for the next scene to unfold in my mind. I was as stuck as she was. While staring at a blank page, the cursor blinking at me, I suddenly typed this from the character’s perspective: “If wishes were horses, beggars would ride. My grandma used to say that, I think. Or maybe I’d heard it in a song.” My paternal grandmother did used to say that to me often when I was a kid. I’d tell her I wish I had this or I wish I could do that and she’d give me that horses line. It’s a Scottish proverb and a verse in a very old nursery rhyme. I had no idea why she was calling me a beggar because all I’d done was state the truth. My own sisters have said that as a toddler I used to tell them, “I wish I was a mouse so I could climb into your pocket and go with you.” A storyteller, even then. As for the song part, it was also familiar to me in a warmly nostalgic way, but I couldn’t place it. So I went on a Google deep dive, as the curious tend to do when avoiding work. This is what I remembered…
In seventh grade there was a song that played so often on local radio station CFUN that I ended up making a poster of it in art class. “Roxy Roller” by the Vancouver glam rock band Sweeney Todd. Nick Gilder was the front man of the band at that time. He left shortly after ST became successful to pursue a solo career–also a story as old as time. That was when local boy Bryan Adams, at only sixteen, became the front “man” for a short time and he’s featured on Sweeney Todd’s album “If Wishes Were Horses”. It’s considered a very rare album now because not many are still in circulation, or so I’ve discovered. Kind of niche, and only something Canadians, more specifically British Columbians that were teens in 1977 might still fondly remember. For reasons unknown, it’s nearly impossible now to listen online to Bryan Adams’ full version of “If Wishes Were Horses”. Trust me, I did the dive. Bryan’s voice was very different then and not at all the raspy, familiar voice of the eighties and onwards. He also had a solo disco song in his late teens that I used to dance to with friends called, appropriately, “Let Me Take You Dancing”. He had the voice of an angel then, although he may beg to differ now.
I decided one evening at around ten o’clock–the perfect time to make rash decisions–that I needed to get my hands on that old album again for the sake of my writing. Somehow it had written itself into my story and I needed to understand why. I’d already found one available for sale on Etsy that was being sold by a local seller in Vancouver. This person, a woman I later discovered, has very good reviews and a ton of used vinyl sales. It was reasonably priced. It was in excellent condition. It was local. I used to love it. All signs pointed to go! I paid for it and that was that. I was about to shut my laptop and go to bed to read when, almost instantly, I got an email notification from the seller. I thought about leaving it until the morning, but I wondered if there was a problem with the sale. So I read the long message and I was surprised by all of it. Astounded, actually. I decided not to respond until morning in order to process what I’d just read. I stayed awake for a long time thinking about it. About life, about being young, about how our best dreams rarely change, and how we sometimes take the long way to get to where we’re meant to be. And by two in the morning, how just one message can lead to a very long, restless night.
What the seller told me was that she laughed when my album purchase came in late at night because she’d just been coincidentally in my area shopping earlier that same day. It’s funny how life goes sometimes, isn’t it? Yes, it is, we agreed. We’ve had more email conversations since that first one and this is where the story turns from haha to are you kidding me? Turns out she is a writer and music lover like me, who recently started writing again after closing her business, also like me, shortly following the pandemic. She now lives in the very place I am currently writing about–Cultus Lake. We are around the same age and both grandmothers. We love books and vintage finds. She sells her found treasures online, I just collect mine. Oh, and by the way, she was Bryan Adams’ high school girlfriend right before he left to join Sweeney Todd to be on the album I’d just purchased.
I’ll let that sink in…
Early in the morning, two days later, I was getting ready to take a shower when the doorbell rang. A package was left by our Canada Post carrier on the doorstep. Sound familiar? Unlike my character’s gift package that I wrote about several weeks before this day, my gift package was from myself. The “If Wishes Were Horses” album. Tucked inside was a postcard note from the seller giving me her best wishes on my story and a few other personal tidbits I’ll keep to myself. For some reason I was nervous about playing the album, specifically that song. Was I expecting too much? Had this gotten so blown out of proportion that I was romanticizing it into something more than it is? The answer is, it’s everything I needed to hear at exactly the right moment.
When I finally sat down to listen to Bryan’s much younger, angelic voice sing the lyrics I believe he co-wrote at a time when he was probably hoping all of his music dreams would come true, it made me unexpectedly emotional and even more introspective. I thought about my own dreams at fourteen. I saw myself so clearly, listening to this same song. Maybe I was thinking about the singer, imagining who he was because nobody really knew him then. Maybe I was thinking about my grandma too, who used to say the same thing to me. If wishes were horses, beggars would ride. I’d lost her at thirteen, yet here she was again in a song. Now, after thinking about it some more, I’ve come to realize that my younger writing self is reminding this current self to keep believing in the creative process, no matter how long it takes to sort the story out. That’s why I’m sharing it now, just in case you need a reminder to keep following your story.
If Wishes Were Horses, Sweeney Todd lyrics
“Come with me you can wish upon a star You can do all the things that you’ve longed to And you won’t have to wonder who you are You can be anybody you want to In a land full of promises and kings All your best laid dreams are for catchin’ You can have the world to tie up on a string Just close your eyes and imagine If wishes were horses Beggars would ride All dreams and desires would ride along side Worries and troubles would fall off behind If wishes were horses, beggars would ride
To a land far or near come along There’s an all new-round everyday glow Like the young girl sang in the song ‘Somewhere over the rainbow'”
If Wishes Were Horses (featuring Bryan Adams) Sweeney Todd – back cover photo of Bryan Adams
“What’s magical, sometimes, has deeper roots than reason.” ― Mary Oliver, Blue Horses: Poems
This year marks a milestone birthday for me. I suppose every year is a marker of some kind, first marking our starting point and then where we are now. This new marker has me feeling particularly nostalgic and I’m not sure that would be the case had the events of the past few years gone differently and made me less introspective. In any case, I have a story about nostalgia and it begins with music, yet again.
One Saturday in November my husband and I decided to visit a vintage holiday marketplace. We were there mostly for the retro atmosphere, to get into the festive spirit, and perhaps find some one-of-a-kind gifts. Most of the vendors were selling new and used Christmas decor, and we enjoyed ourselves for an hour or so, laughing over the many antique decorations we recalled seeing in our childhood homes and other people’s harvest gold or avocado green living rooms in the seventies. There was a lot of “do you remember this?” And “my grandma had one just like that!” Items we might have considered tacky as children were now whimsically magical and worthy of a second look. So on we went, browsing here and there, and sometimes gasping in unison at the elevated prices of those same tacky knickknacks. Eventually we grew tired and were heading for the exit door when a small booth caught my eye. It immediately drew me in like a magnet because it was filled with cardboard boxes of used records. That was it, nothing else, and not one sparkly holiday decoration in sight. Just a few portable tables lined with open boxes of vinyl. I flipped through one stack and the first album I happened to pull out for a closer look was Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours.
I held it in both hands and read all the song titles, probably with a sappy grin on my face. I have fond memories of that album. I heard it for the first time in an all-girls, junior high school gym class by way of a young and therefore cool female teacher, who played “Don’t Stop” on a portable record player at the start of every class, while we performed warm up exercises to it before heading outside for the long distance run we all dreaded. Even now, hearing that uplifting song makes me think about sideways stretches, jumping jacks, and high kicks in terry cloth gym shorts. Some administrator with a mean streak decided in the second semester to make us fourteen year old girls share gym time with grade twelve boys. They quickly took to stretching with us to Fleetwood Mac and only because our young teacher was attractive. Awkwardness ensued, mostly for the already awkward girls like me, who had no idea where to look and suddenly forgot the sequence of every move. One day the guys had a substitute teacher show up for their class. I heard all about Mr. Hot Teacher ahead of leaving the change room. The second I did, I spotted him and then excitedly called out his first name as I ran across the gym to envelope him in a fierce hug. He was my big brother’s best friend, ten years older than me, who’d first started hanging around our house when I was still in diapers. I didn’t stop to think how it must look to everyone gaping at us. Then I made it worse by loudly announcing in the echoing gym how much I missed him coming over to the house. Let’s just say there were whispers, raised eyebrows, and sidelong glances directed at me during that particular warm up. My brother’s friend and I laughed about it when we saw each other again several years later. Vivid memories like these prove that music is the soundtrack of life. At that time, a magical kind of marker made of shiny vinyl.
Strangely, I considered buying the record while standing in the marketplace booth. It was only five dollars for a bit of nostalgia that made me smile. I couldn’t remember the last time I looked at an LP, much less bought one. Yet there I was still gripping it with both hands, reluctant to let it go. The vendor was a woman about my age and for a moment we warmly reminisced about our favourite rock bands. She told me that she’d hung onto her teenage albums for many years. Then one sad day, she was involved in a highway motor vehicle accident in the Fraser Canyon while in the middle of moving house. Her box of records flew out of the back of her truck on impact and tumbled a long way down to the river at the bottom of a steep, rocky hillside. Lost forever. She said she was physically fine after the accident, but was sure her heart had broken a little that day, just like her records. Over the years since then, she’d rebuilt an even larger vinyl collection, but had far too many now and felt it was time to let some go. My husband was patiently waiting for me, so I tucked Rumours back inside the box, telling her I didn’t have a turntable. She told me that was easily fixable. Is it? I wondered. Then I thanked her for her time and carried on, thinking it might be kind of fun to have a turntable again. Silly, though. Why would I bother when I already had the ability to listen to Fleetwood Mac anytime I felt like it? What was the point of going back in time? Why add unnecessary clutter to a home already filled with too much stuff? So that was that. End of story. Until it wasn’t.
A few weeks later, I was scrolling through online Black Friday deals when I came across a suitcase-style, portable turntable that was similar to the one I used to tote around with me when I was a kid. Only this new modern one was nicer and a much better colour than the plain, two-toned brown one that my parents gave to me one long ago Christmas morning. It was also on sale and a reasonable price by today’s standards for something frivolous. So I purchased it on a whim, then proceeded to forget about it over the days to come while busy gift buying for family and friends. It wasn’t until early December that I received a shipping notification for the purchase. I was surprised how quickly I’d forgotten about it, and then found myself daydreaming about setting up the turntable over the holidays to listen to the small collection of combined records that my husband and I had stored away…somewhere. I told him I remembered seeing them not that long ago, and he laughed at me because he said it had been years since we last saw them. Besides, he was pretty sure we’d sold them at a garage sale or donated them, he couldn’t remember which. I felt like an idiot and my embarrassment must have shown on my face because he made a valiant effort to go searching for what he knew had to be long gone. He wasn’t trying to prove a point. He was hoping that he was wrong about it. That maybe the years had blurred both our memories and somewhere a box was buried like a forgotten time capsule. No such luck. They were gone and I felt unreasonably sad about it. I was being silly again, no doubt about it. Clearly those records had meant little to me or they’d still be hanging around, just like the dusty, treasured books I’ve hung onto for years because I still can’t part with any of them.
So now I had a turntable on its way and nothing to play on it. I kept thinking about the Fleetwood Mac one I’d recently let slip through my fingers. My husband reminded me I could buy records in secondhand shops and even new albums, if I really wanted them. Problem was, I wanted my old ones back. I wanted to remember what I’d once decided to keep, even after there wasn’t a use for them anymore. The special ones. The soundtrack of my youth. But as hard as I tried, I couldn’t visualize the albums that were missing. Soon I realized this wasn’t about the lost records. It was about time moving too quickly to fully comprehend its swift passage. If I could forget about not holding onto those records, what else might I forget in the years to come? I thought about the woman who’d rebuilt her teenage album collection after everything had gone tumbling down a hillside. I didn’t want to rebuild my old collection. I didn’t even really want a new collection. What I was searching for was the girl who used to somehow balance a thick stack of albums under one arm, while also firmly clutching the handle of a suitcase turntable. Somewhere in time, she’s skipping her way to her best friend’s house to share the A side of a new record because every vinyl collector knows the A side has the best and most memorable songs.
As for the new turntable? It got lost in the mail over the Christmas delivery rush. Then it got rerouted and I forgot about it all over again. Miraculously, it showed up on my doorstep on New Year’s Day, of all days. A gift from past me to present me. And a reminder that everything important reveals itself again at exactly the right time.
“I think music is the greatest art form that exists, and I think people listen to music for different reasons, and it serves different purposes. Some of it is background music, and some of it is things that might affect a person’s day, if not their life, or change an attitude. The best songs are the ones that make you feel something.” ~ Eddie Vedder
Two years ago in the middle of everything going on in the world, my writing muse decided to talk to me again after many years of complete radio silence. It wasn’t the right time. There were a lot of scary things happening. I was fearful for the well-being of my family and my business that I’d worked hard at for fourteen years. Everyone was going through similar fears and some faced worse tragedies. It was a lot to wrap the mind around and I didn’t need extra voices in my head feeding me dialogue for stories I didn’t want to write. One day I’ll share why I think that happened, and where the voices of my characters keep leading me. Right now I want to tell another story that relates to Eddie Vedder’s quote at the top of this page, one I happened to stumble upon while doing music research for the plot of the novel I couldn’t not start writing.
I stopped writing after my mom died in the late nineties. Truthfully, I stopped doing a lot of creative things. The very essence of creativity is feeling. I couldn’t even read a book beyond the first page. I had only enough energy in me to keep moving forward because, like it or not, life went on and people expected you to show up for it. While still grieving for Mom, we learned that Dad’s cancer was back and this time it was horribly aggressive. As devastating as it was to lose a parent suddenly, seeing another battle terrible pain over a long period of time was emotionally brutal. It was a lot to deal with. The first thing I did was quit my job. It was a part-time job working in a bookstore. It was something I did mostly for myself and for the great discount on books, and I loved every minute of it. But I wasn’t sleeping properly and it meant a long drive to work. I wasn’t in the right emotional head space for it. I still tended to burst into tears without warning. So it was just one more enjoyable thing I let go because I was mentally exhausted.
Closer to Christmas, one of the managers at the bookstore called to ask me if I’d come back to help out over the holidays. I was honest and told her I could barely face myself most days, so how was I supposed to face customers? She told me this new temporary position only required me to work weekdays, early in the morning from seven to eleven, shelving books and creating holiday displays. Since the doors didn’t open for customers until eleven, I wouldn’t have to see anyone except a couple of other co-workers. I was tempted. The hours fit perfectly around my husband’s work schedule. He was able to get our kids ready for school each day and I’d be home in plenty of time to pick them up. I thought hard about it and realized I wanted to do it, if only for the distraction from grief. The manager had no idea what she did for me with that call. Or maybe she did because I ended up staying on for years afterwards, even moving to a new store location closer to my home and into full-time hours. That job eventually handed me back motivation and my confidence.
I had to leave the house by six-fifteen to get to work on time. Every morning I left with a big travel mug of coffee and the hope I’d get through the day without crying in public. I couldn’t listen to music during the drive in the predawn darkness. I’d move the dial from one radio station to the next, but every song made me feel something I didn’t want to feel. I tried different CDs I had on hand. It was the same thing. So I drove in silence until my thoughts got to be too much and I’d start all over switching stations again. One morning I settled on a hard rock station. A song came on and I found myself smiling at a memory from back at the start of the nineties.
One time while my mom was staying with me, we decided to take along my toddler and baby to go visit my sister and her family. This sister lived close to me, but I didn’t see her much then because she worked long hours and was busy with teenaged sons, and I was busy adapting to new motherhood. When we got there, I heard music blasting from one of my nephew’s bedrooms in the basement and I was intrigued by what I was hearing. I wandered downstairs by myself and knocked on his door. It took several attempts to get his attention because the music was so loud. Finally he pulled the door open with a sullen expression that instantly softened when he saw it was me trying to invade his space. He hugged me and invited me into his messy room. I’m thirteen years older than him and I’d spent a lot of time babysitting him and his brother when I was around the same age he was then. I was still the cool adult, I guess, and perhaps considered young enough to remember what it was like to want to hear angsty rock music at the highest volume possible. I asked him what he was listening to and he tossed me the CD of his new favourite rock band Pearl Jam. The album was called Ten. I read the song titles. Interesting, I thought. I’d never heard of them. I’d heard of Nirvana and knew about the Seattle grunge music scene, which I’d decided wasn’t all that different from the hard rock and punk rock I’d liked when I was about his age. It just wasn’t where I was in my life musically anymore. My playlist at the time was softer, calmer. Less frenzied.
“You gotta hear this one,” my nephew told me as he started a song over. I sat on the edge of his bed to listen. The song was “Alive”. The emotion and the raw intensity of how the lyrics were sung burrowed into my chest to grip my twenty-eight year old heart. I asked him to play it again, at a lower volume this time. Then I asked him, “Do you think it’s a true story?” It had to be true. There was no way it couldn’t be. It was just too intense. My nephew shrugged. He was focused on the driving beat, while the writer in me heard lasting pain in the songwriter’s words. I’ve since learned that it is indeed a true story about when Eddie Vedder was a teenager and his mother told him the man who’d raised him wasn’t his real father, and that his birth father had recently died. Even if he’d wanted to, it was already too late for him to come to grips with it. There’s other trauma in the song too. I don’t know if that part is real, only the songwriter does. We listened to some more of the album before I went back upstairs to my kids.
A fun nineties photo – New York Times
I remember thinking I would’ve loved this band if I was my nephew’s age. Their music was emotional and honest and electrifying. I thought they were closer to his age than mine. I made that assumption based on the fact he related to them so well. I had no idea then that band members are my age and what I heard that day was many of the same rock band influences. The Stones. The Who. Pink Floyd. My beloved Led Zeppelin. More than anything, it had just felt good to be allowed into someone else’s personal space to hear what was currently most important to them. It reminded me of the times my brothers had let me sit quietly with them to listen to their rock albums. Or when they gave me a new cassette of older music because they thought my teenaged taste could use some fine tuning. It’s the feeling of belonging in a moment, just as you are.
“Alive” came on the radio that morning while I was driving to work, just before dawn lit up the sky for another day without my mom. I smiled tentatively and upped the volume to sing along. Who answers? Yeah. That is the question. It was the first time I’d heard a song in a long time that didn’t graze the edges of my grief and make me want to weep. I was only sad when it ended. I wanted that alive feeling back again, no matter how briefly it lasted. After my shift at the bookstore, I went and bought all the Pearl Jam CDs I could find. I stashed them under the driver’s seat and played them every time I was alone in the car. Alive brought me back to their music, but it was “Given to Fly” that reached my heart this time around.
“He could’ve tuned in, tuned in But he tuned out A bad time, nothing could save him Alone in a corridor, waiting, locked out He got up outta there, ran for hundreds of miles He made it to the ocean, had a smoke in a tree The wind rose up, set him down on his knee
A wave came crashing like a fist to the jaw Delivered him wings, “Hey, look at me now” Arms wide open with the sea as his floor Oh, power, oh
He’s flying Whole High, wide, oh…”
There’s many interpretations of what the song is about. Eddie Vedder has only ever said it’s a children’s fable. Recently I learned it might’ve been loosely inspired by my most loved Zeppelin song “Going to California”, which explains a lot. For me it’ll always be about accepting emotional pain and then not allowing it to overcome me. “And he still gives his love, he just gives it away. The love he receives is the love that is saved.” Hearing those words makes me feel stronger and reminds me how fortunate I am to have always been well-loved and supported throughout my life. For that alone I’d say it’s my favourite. Pearl Jam’s music helped me to get back to myself during a very hard time and I’ve never forgotten it. This is my thank you letter to them.
Flying! Photo credit to New York Times, Wrigley Field
I first saw Eddie Vedder sing “Black” live a long time ago in the MTV Unplugged series. He didn’t just sing it, he lived it. For me it’s the most deeply personal song about heartbreak ever written and performed. I can’t begin to count how many times I’ve rewatched that performance, and all the others in the set, since rediscovering Pearl Jam yet again in 2020. Coincidentally right at a time when I needed another emotional lifeline tossed my way. In 2020 I started on the path of making some crucial personal decisions. I was looking for signs that I was doing the right things at a confusing time. Those timeless MTV Unplugged sessions led me to more of their concert performances on Youtube, recorded at different times throughout their thirtysomething years together. I needed to hear these guys again and there they were. They’ve aged, of course, just like me. They’ve grown softer around the edges, less defiant. More mellow. Well, same here. They still have important stories to tell, and so do I.
They’re one of the few rock bands whose founding members have managed to stay alive (pun not intended) and together, with the exception of drummers until Matt Cameron came along, and the addition of Hawaiian-born keyboardist Boom Gaspar. They live in the Pacific Northwest and Eddie has a second home in Hawaii. I think their vibe might be warmly familiar to me because of that. Jeff Ament is the great bassist and Stone Gossard is a guitarist and co-lyricist. In my opinion Mike McCready is one of the best and most underrated guitarists of his time. Lead singer and songwriter Eddie Vedder has the soul of a poet and vocals that can be melancholy and exhilarating at the same time. Many of his lyrics are infused with references to the ocean (he’s a longtime surfer) and nature, and the need to be alone sometimes, yet always fully present in the lives of loved ones. All the things that feed my soul too.
Seeing them perform live in real time has been at the top of my bucket list for as long as I’ve had such a list. I don’t care that they’re well into their fifties now because so am I. For sure I wouldn’t have appreciated it quite as much had I seen them perform onstage at the very start. Can you imagine me getting knocked around in a wild mosh pit? Not likely. I always need the elbow room to dance. Rediscovering their music has once again pulled me out of my head, reminding me that things will eventually be okay and sometimes change is out of my control and sometimes it’s controlled only by me.
It was finding Eddie’s background music quote that first got me thinking about the singer-songwriters I loved the most during my youth and still love today. It’s what prompted me to journal those memories and then a little shyly share them in this blog series. All the music throughout my life that has made me want to get up and dance, to sing along, to celebrate, mourn, and weep. Lyrics that have healed my broken heart, filled my soul, and gave me confidence to stand up for myself, to take a sudden turn, and to bravely let go of things that no longer matter.
I could never pick just one of Pearl Jam’s albums as my favourite. I could never pick a most loved book either. For me it’s not just about one story, it’s all the stories I’ve ever read, the entire library of words and thoughts combined. I can tell you which of their songs have helped to ease more recent worries: Given to Fly, The Fixer, Sirens and I Am Mine. You should listen to them. Better yet, watch them because Pearl Jam always delivers a comfortable feeling onstage of living fully in the moment. I hope they make you feel stronger too.
Below, in no particular year order, are Youtube links to favourite performances, along with my thoughts and some interesting song facts I’ve uncovered. I’ve already shared my feelings about “Long Road” in my previous post titled Love and Loss in the 90s. That song belongs to my mother’s memory. These belong to me. The performances are best watched on a laptop or tablet, and, take it from me, their music most thoroughly enjoyed with headphones on. There’s strong emotions in the details.
It’s a wrap for this Background Music blog series. Thanks for joining me on the ride. Perhaps Pearl Jam says it best, “I know I was born and I know that I’ll die, the in between is mine.” ~ I Am Mine.
Given to Fly – One of my favourite performances of this song. Love the energy of the massive crowd in London’s Hyde Park. It’s one of Michael J. Fox’s favourite Pearl Jam songs too. They dedicated it to him and his struggle with Parkinson’s while they performed it during their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
The Fixer – A good reminder that if something’s old “put a bit of shine on it”.
Sirens – With all the turmoil in the world, hearing this one never fails to calm me.
I Am Mine – “The sorrow grows bigger when the sorrow’s denied”.
Daughter/It’s OK – This 2018 performance is in their hometown of Seattle, with some changes in lyrics to reflect turbulent times in American politics. I always believe Eddie when he tells me things will be okay. “Daughter” is about a parent’s mishandling/abuse of their child’s learning disability and the lasting effects that can have.
Black – In my opinion, still the most profoundly poetic song about heartbreak ever written and performed.
Release – “Oh, dear dad. Can you see me now? I am myself. Like you somehow.” xo
Alive – The song that made me first sit up and notice them. This early nineties performance was filmed in a British studio that probably took days to recover from all the angst and long hair flying around.
Better Man – A song about settling, not loving honestly. Fun fact: Bradley Cooper modelled his rock star character in the re-make of “A Star is Born” on Eddie Vedder. I knew it when I saw the movie. You’ll see it when you watch this amazing performance in Madison Square Garden.
Oceans – Eddie has said he wrote this love song to his surfboard. It gets me dreaming about walking the beaches in Hawaii again.
Wishlist – The image in my mind created by “I wish I was the full moon shining off a Camaro’s hood” delights me every time because of long ago summer nights spent cruising around with a friend in her brother’s borrowed Camaro.
Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town – Melancholy story about a woman who never left a small town and an old flame who did leave many years ago and by chance comes into her store one day. “Memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.”
Even Flow – A great rock anthem! This video performance of it is absolutely bonkers. Confirmation I wouldn’t have been able to handle their nineties concerts. Band members have said they’ve often feared for Eddie’s life during shows. If you’re interested here’s a video montage of some of his stage climbs and jumps that were captured over the years. Recently I read a funny comment saying that while many musicians were doing heroin, Eddie Vedder must’ve been doing CrossFit training.
Yellow Ledbetter – The lyrics are intentionally incomprehensible to reflect the confusing loss of a brother during the Gulf War and it’s almost impossible to sing along with. In this early version in Mexico the lyrics “I don’t know whether I’m the boxer or the bag” were changed to “I don’t know if my brother is coming home in a box or a bag”. Mike’s guitar solo at the end of the song is always riveting. I love how they all step aside to rest and let him get on with it.
Guaranteed – Oh, this one speaks to me about the need to be on my own sometimes.
Love Boat Captain – “It’s an art to live with pain. Mix the light into grey. Lost nine friends we’ll never know.” Lyrics that include the nine people who were killed when the crowd surged during Pearl Jam’s set in 2000 at the Roskilde Festival in Denmark. Devastated, Pearl Jam quit after that and Eddie Vedder’s idol Pete Townshend of the Who reached out to him after the tragedy because of similar circumstances that happened to his band in 1979. According to Pete Townshend, “When Roskilde happened, I just sent Eddie a two-word message: ‘Don’t leave.’ And they did stay. And I think it was very important that they did.”
Come Back – Sharing the studio version in order to hear the beautiful lyrics more clearly. I can’t get through it without getting choked up.
The Waiting – I’m including this duet with Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers because I’m a longtime fan and it makes me very happy. Eddie’s “Long Way” from his new solo album Earthling is a tribute to Tom Petty’s style of songwriting. I sensed that the first time I heard it, so I wasn’t surprised when he confirmed the inspiration behind the song and many others on the fabulous album during a recently filmed conversation with Bruce Springsteen.
“Shout, shout, let it all out. These are the things I can do without.”
~ Tears For Fears“Shout”
Living alone for the first time in my life was not the exciting adventure I hoped it would be. As mentioned in my previous blog post Background Music II: Forever Young, my mature parents retired from their jobs and moved far away when I was in my early twenties. It’s then that I started living pay cheque to pay cheque in a small, sparsely furnished one-bedroom apartment, paying rent and bills and a monthly bank loan on a newer, more reliable car. “Why does it always feel like there’s more month than money?” I made that joke often, but a joke is never really funny when it’s the hard truth of things.
I liked my own company, loved nothing more than a solitary afternoon of reading or tapping my story ideas onto the worn keys of my electric typewriter named Dylan. But this felt very different because I was alone and lonely at the same time. All of my closest friends were married, except for one who was still casually dating like I was. Before the ink was even dry on the apartment lease, she up and moved away for a new boyfriend and a new job. She was supposed to be my roommate and then suddenly she wasn’t in my life very much at all.
My mother checked in with me by way of long-distance phone calls once a week, which always began with four words: do you need money? I never stopped telling her I was doing just fine, even when I wasn’t. The truth of the matter? I didn’t want her to worry about me because I grew up seeing life kick her down more times than you would think humanly possible to get up from. She was my best friend and I wanted her to be happy. More than anyone she deserved retirement and to finally be free of nagging responsibilities like me, her youngest child. Of course I didn’t understand until I became a parent myself that worry doesn’t suddenly disappear in the middle of reassuring chats with grown children. I’m sure part of her respected my fierce independence because she raised me to be that way. However, it wasn’t unusual for me to find a fifty dollar bill (a small fortune then) tucked inside a drawer after one of her visits to stock my empty cupboards with groceries and fill my freezer with home cooked meals. She never could take no for an answer when it came to her kids.
Out of my five siblings, only one sister still lived in the same general vicinity as me. She was very busy with work and a young family, but she made every Sunday a standing invitation for me to come to dinner and to do my laundry at her house to spare me the cost (and the sketchiness) of the basement laundry room where I lived. I had another standing invitation most Thursday nights for dinner and “Must See TV” with a married couple I went to high school with. They had cable, I didn’t, and I also had a key to their place because I was their dog sitter. I remember telling them somewhat jokingly one evening while eating pasta and watching MTV that if Bryan Adams personally sang “Heaven” to me then I could die a happy woman. I think they took that amusing confession as their direct mission to ask all the suitable single men they knew to join us for dinner on Thursday nights. Young men who were nothing like the guys I tended to date because, according to my friends, that was only ever going to keep me on the road to loneliness and heartbreak. Why do married people always think they know what’s romantically best for their single friends? Some of the worst, most uncomfortable dinner dates I have ever endured only took place because I happened to mention Bryan Adams while slurping spaghetti.
Not that I had much spare time to enjoy living up the single life. I was too tired and too broke for it. My new full-time “good secretarial job” paid better than most jobs at the time, but it was a Monday to Friday (and even some Saturdays) fast-paced walk through living hell. Rinse and repeat eight hours a day. I worked in a very busy, very prominent medical practise for five male General Practitioners, whom I was not permitted to talk to (much less look at) unless they asked me a direct question first. This was not their office code of conduct. All five of them, ranging in age from almost retired to fresh out of medical school, were always pleasant and professional, and most of them worked so many long hours that it wasn’t unusual to find one of them sleep-standing against a wall in the brightly lit corridor of exam room doors.
This particular rule (and so many others) was laid out in actual writing by the clinic’s longtime office manager, a humourless and physically imposing fifty-something mother of eight, who never wore anything but formal dress suits (because slacks were très gauche) and thick pantyhose that made a distinctive swish-swish sound when she tried to sneak up to catch the office staff slacking. Which, of course, never happened because we were too busy typing our fingers to the bone and hurrying through whispered conversations, less we provoke the fiery wrath of the Dragon Lady inside her glass-walled office across from the main reception area. Trust me to come up with that moniker my first week on the job. Even the co-workers who’d been held prisoner under her reign of terror since before I was born began secretly referring to her as the Dragon Lady (or DL for short).
I was the newest and one of the youngest employees, and I was positive the DL hated me the most. The feeling was mutual and up until then I hadn’t ever found a reason to hate anyone. Once she called me Irma La Douce when she came upon me leaning tiredly outside an exam room door waiting to get a doctor’s signature on an important document before I could go home. I snapped to attention, even though I couldn’t tell by her normally snide expression if it was an insult or not. It seemed nobody else knew either or if they did they weren’t telling. Of course there was no Internet to reference, so I later called to ask my mother. Turned out Irma La Douce was a French prostitute played by Shirley MacLaine in a comedy of the same name that was coincidentally, according now to Google, filmed around the same time I was born. How delightful to be compared to a funny hooker by your supervisor, which was actually one of her milder insults.
I told my mom every harrowing detail of the DL’s verbal abuse during that phone conversation. She listened for a long time, first responding with a string of expletives and ending with a detailed account of what she’d do if she had five minutes alone in a room with that you-know-what. Then she told me something I hadn’t really understood until that moment: not everyone I met was going to like me. Rise above it. Don’t ever let someone like that see you crumble because they tend to thrive on weakness. And when things got too hard, Mom advised me to do what she’d been telling me to do ever since I was a child—find the nearest outdoor open space (preferably far from the family home) and yell my frustrations straight into the wind. As strangely freeing as yelling into the wind is for a kid, a young woman screaming anywhere publicly tends to get the police involved. So shouting the words along with Tears For Fears’ “Shout” in my car during the drive home from work became my fight song. Even hearing it today stirs my inner prize fighter.
There was no human resources department back then. Even if one did exist, no doubt the DL would in charge of that too and it would just be her word against mine. I won my very first round with her by making a fashion statement. Office staff were permitted only to wear white medical dress uniforms, even though none of us were nurses. The doctors had a team of nurses who efficiently assisted them in the exam rooms at the far back end of the clinic. My job was to take care of the mounds of paperwork, billing, and the scheduling of both clinic appointments and hospital surgeries. The front reception desk was the first point of entry for patients and because we were wearing uniforms we were always mistaken for nurses. If I got through a day without fighting nausea after being forced to take a closer look at someone’s enormous boil or bleeding open wound, then it was a blessed day indeed.
At the time long pencil skirts and white high neck Victorian-inspired blouses with romantic lace details and loose, billowy sleeves were in style. I managed to find a pristine white denim calf-length pencil skirt to pair with my new pretty blouse and dangling white shell earrings, and then I dared to wear the blindingly white ensemble to work one morning. I know I turned heads walking into the building—admiring glances for my cool sense of style, but mostly wide-eyed trepidation for the storm that was about to blow through the office. No sooner had I sat down at my desk, then I was summoned by speaker phone into the DL’s office. She was so livid that she forgot to ask me to close the door. I was told later that pretty much every person in the clinic, even patients in the waiting room, stopped what they were doing to listen to her (literally) dress me down. She finished off her raging rant by telling me the doctors were going to fire me on the spot once they saw my attire. My face burning with embarrassment, I somehow found the gumption to dig deep and calmly inform her that one of the doctors had just told me I look like Stevie Nicks and he didn’t seem mad about it. I kept my job, my style, and I learned how to lock and load my backbone that day.
My only escape from office politics was an hour-long lunch break that we all had to take at the same time while the doctors were off doing their hospital rounds. I began eating my sandwiches in my car at the furthest spot in the clinic’s parking lot the moment I discovered that the lunchroom was where the Dragon Lady continued to hold court like she was Marie Antoinette looking to cut off the head of any lowly serf who dared to interrupt her running commentary on world events and her brilliant children. Sometimes I read or went for walks. Sometimes I knitted a few rows on the sweater a co-worker paid me to make for her. Other times I listened to music and danced a little inside my head while staring at the cement wall of the building next door. Is there anything worse than being stuck in a job you hate because there’s no other immediate alternative? “Manic Monday” was my theme song because I was relieved to know I wasn’t the only one perpetually wishing it was Sunday. “Kissing Valentino by a crystal-blue, Italian stream” sounded pretty nice too.
This photo perfectly reflects my feelings about Tom Petty. If I had to pick only one of his songs to listen to for the rest of my days it would be “Wildflowers“ Rest In Peace xo Photo from TomPetty.com
Whenever I needed a hug more than I needed to shake a fist at the world, I’d pull out something a little stronger from my glove compartment for the drive home—my Tom Petty cassettes. I don’t know exactly what it is about Tom’s voice and music that makes my heaviest emotions feel about a thousand pounds lighter. All I know is that Tom Petty is still my favourite balm for the blues. You don’t have to know someone personally to mourn their death. The songwriter in him sure seemed to know me and my heart broke a little the moment I heard he died. Many times his soothing lyrics have saved me from making rash decisions in the heat of the moment, like a pep talk with an old trusted friend over several cups of coffee.
One warm Spring evening at the end of a hard work week, I was sitting in backed up traffic at a red light with the car windows rolled down, thinking about plans for the weekend and seat-dancing along to Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers’ cheeky “Here Comes My Girl“. I know it was that song because ever since high school I used to play it, rewind and replay it, repeatedly telling “the whole wide world to shove it” right along with him. Distracted, I took a quick glance to my right at the car next to me and then did a double-take. I’m not sure if things happen the same way for everyone, but for me, more often than not, the universe likes to cast me a hi there, look what I’ve got for younow line whenever I feel like I’m sinking.
I hadn’t seen my first boyfriend since the day we broke up when we were nineteen. Now there he was four years later in the driver’s seat of his same car, looking exactly the same himself, with a stunned expression blinking back at me that wasn’t all that different from the one he had when I left him. I remember feeling a flash of uncontainable joy and then I started waving at him a little too enthusiastically, until the passenger to his right suddenly leaned forward to take a look at me. The passenger was me! Well, not me. A girl who looked very much like me. The senior high school version of me. It was unsettling, to say the least. I saw his mouth tighten as he dropped his arm out the open window to give me a small wave. Then traffic began moving and he was gone.
Once I recovered from the surprise of it, I had to laugh because, seriously, what were the odds? My amusement quickly spiralled into one of those stop-and-start fits of the giggles that lasted for a ridiculously long time. By the next morning I had overanalyzed the situation to the point of convincing myself there had to be a cosmic shift happening and I wished I had a crystal ball to figure it out. Don’t get me wrong, I suffered no residual teenage heartbreak over him, other than the usual nostalgic pangs of first love. We broke up after three years of going steady because we both agreed we were too young to get married and so much alike that even at nineteen we already seemed like an old married couple with not much left to learn about each other. While that might feel comfortable or comforting for some people, for me it felt stifling. Still, how could I not consider the what-ifs after that?
What if we were still together? What if we actually were married? Would I be happier than I am right now? Perhaps more settled? Or would there already be small cracks in our relationship, similar to the ones I was beginning to detect in some friends’ marriages? There was so much emotional unpacking going on with the help of Tom Petty that weekend, well, it was almost a relief to get back to work on Monday. Yes, Tom. “The Waiting” truly is the hardest part.
I had no clue then that this time was a significant milestone for me because I was learning how to keep my footing while taking a few solid punches along the way. Somewhere in the middle of all those what-ifs I developed a strong inkling that significant change was about to happen in my life. I worried about it too. I’ve always had a hard time dealing with change, even if it’s orchestrated by my own choices. Turned out I was right. Not long after that weekend’s existential crisis, I quite by accident met the guy I was going to one day marry. Problem was, I didn’t start off liking him much.
Stay tuned for more 80s stories, coming soon!
Below are the Youtube links to the songs or music videos mentioned (or thought about) during the writing of this post. If you only have time for a few, then make them Tom Petty’s recordings. You may visit the 70s and early 80s in my previous posts of Background Music.
Handle With Care – Tom Petty with the supergroup The Traveling Wilburys
Wildflowers (Home recording & video) This is the posthumous release of the home recorded and filmed version of the song—joyful for me to watch and at the same time profoundly bittersweet.
“Dearly Beloved, We are gathered here today, To get through this thing called Life.”
~ Prince “Let’s Go Crazy”
I mentioned in my previous post Background Music Part One that it was great fun to be a kid in the 1970s. To be in your late teens and early twenties at the start of the 80s, and to be in love with music and dancing, well, it was a whole other level of fun. It was totally rad! That window of time right after high school graduation is both exhilarating and frightening: What do I want to do with this thing called Life? I attended one school from grades eight to twelve where I gathered a very close network of friends and left with a small peer-voted scholarship for the many years I dedicated to writing articles for our school newspaper. It seemed most everyone but me was convinced I was going to be an investigative journalist, setting the world on fire (or at least our community) with truth, integrity, and flowery prose by way of my electric typewriter that I named “Dylan” in homage to both Bob Dylan and Dylan Thomas. Just recently I learned that Bob Dylan named himself after the poet. Now I’m wondering if perhaps I already knew that. No matter, I still carry deep feelings about their individual writings.
Big love for the two Dylans. Fun fact: my mom ran a leather goods shop during my youth and I think of her when I catch the scent of leather. Couldn’t resist a candle that smells like leather bound books.
My graduating class picked up diplomas and our freedom in the school gymnasium to the wistful “Time” by The Alan Parsons Project drifting in the background. While I struggled to figure out which college classes I should take to become an important writer, my mature parents were already at the age where they were talking about taking early retirement from their jobs. They were around the age I am now, which in my mind meant they were really old (longtime grandparents, for crying out loud!) and completely out of touch with what it meant to be young and idealistic. Never mind that on the brink of eighteen my dad enlisted in the RAF and headed off to years of war. This was all about me. So what if I was the last bird to leave the nest? I was eighteen and nowhere near ready to soar! Hell no, I didn’t want to make writing a nice hobby. I certainly did not want to find a “good secretarial job” in order to support myself, just so they could finally retire and leave for parts unknown. So I lived at home, worked a part-time job, and attended a local college full-time, while my parents begrudgingly stayed put and held on to their jobs for a couple more years.
Two of my high school girlfriends attended a different college that was a little further away from where we grew up. Together they decided to rent an apartment that was close to their campus. It was a dump, but a glorious dump because it signified freedom from parental interference. The building was ancient and three-stories high with about eighteen units in total. Their one-bedroom top-floor no-elevator apartment was fairly spacious and we turned it into the best damn hangout in the whole world. There was a narrow hallway from the front door to the main living area. The first thing we pinned to that dingy hallway wall was a floor to ceiling black and white poster of James Dean with his finger pointing in the direction of the living room because that’s where all the fun began. Here it is –and it’s how much now? One more thing we should have hung onto instead of just the memories. But, oh, those memories.
Big hair, big dreams. I still love polka dots! Some snapshots from the early 80s taken with a poor quality camera of high quality fashion. I see now that I inherited my love of houseplants from my parents. Suntanning on the hoods of cars while blasting music was “a thing” back then…but on a mountaintop parking lot Après Ski? Crazy girls! (Yes, that’s me striking a pose on some dad’s poor old car)
MTV had just made its debut and for the first time we could actually see our favourite musicians instead of listening to them on the radio. There they were as if playing live in the living room, lip-syncing their lyrics, dancing provocatively, and acting out random movie-like scenes that often made little or no sense. Still. There they were! And there we were in that crummy apartment with MTV on in the background, dancing and singing and rightfully earning thumps on the walls from irritated neighbours. Saturday nights were for boyfriends or restaurant jobs, but Friday nights, at least in the beginning, were reserved for our highly sacred girls-only sleepovers. We’d show up to the apartment, anywhere from three to six of us, with bulging overnight totes, sleeping bags, and just enough pooled ingredients to make dinner and to inexpertly mix terrible drinks like Screwdrivers or the cheapest rum available to water down with ice and Coke. We thought we were so grown up and sophisticated. Ha!
We danced along to the Go-Go’s and sang our hearts out to Queen and Journey. Sometimes we’d make it a theme night and wear the clothing to best represent it. I remember two of those themes: come dressed as the first place you want to traveltowhen you have some money and your favourite song today. In the middle of winter I wore a flowered shirt, shorts and a plastic lei to the first party and to the latter a thrifted cat-print dress made out of faux fur and black pointy ears because “Stray Cat Strut” was my rockabilly jam that week.
Eventually things changed, as they always do. Some of the girls began making plans to marry their high school or college boyfriends, while a few more, like me, broke up with ours. The singles quickly grew bored seeing new stacks of wedding magazines every Friday night, so we’d leave the almost-newlyweds to walk several blocks to a college area night club. We just wanted to be young and dance the night away to really great music. I couldn’t imagine myself settling into marriage so soon because I didn’t know who I was or what I wanted to be. I’d seen my older siblings shoulder some pretty heavy responsibilities with wildly varying outcomes. The odds already seemed stacked against me, even while the expectation for most young women then was to figure it all out quickly and smartly. We grew up hearing we could have it all if we worked hard enough and made the right decisions. Problem was, my young adult life felt more like a multiple choice magazine quiz and the circled answer was always D: none of the above.
If I couldn’t afford to buy a drink I’d volunteer to drive us to the college night club in my first car that someone named the “Blue Bomb”. I think I was one of the first to have my own car. Most of the girls were still driving their parents’ vehicles. Mine was an early 1970s Datsun that I bought with graduation gift-money ($1,000 cash; it pays to have a large family) from a friend’s elderly neighbour, who was probably in her sixties. Everyone recognized that car for a few reasons: it was ugly, it was an electric shade of blue, and a bright yellow and black bumble bee stuffy hung on the rearview mirror, gifted to me by those same girlfriends who called me Sue Bee throughout high school to distinguish me from all the other Susans in our classes.
The highly visible Blue Bomb became a dilemma for us single girls. If we took it out then so-and-so (usually someone’s ex-boyfriend or annoying sibling) could easily spot it in the parking lot and come find us. I’d try to park my car as far away as walking in heels would allow. Inevitably we’d return to find a note stuck under a windshield wiper. Usually it was from other friends telling us which Denny’s to meet them for a one a.m. coffee or fries. One time there was a long, rambling (nobody recognized the handwriting) love letter to me from an anonymous writer that was stuffed inside a bouquet of pink carnations. I had no idea who left it on my car and, honestly, right then I couldn’t have cared less. However, my friends were convinced I had a stalker or maybe a romantic secret admirer, who knew me well enough to know I loved carnations. My argument was who doesn’t love them? Dying of curiosity, they hatched all sorts of ridiculous maneuvers called “operation flower boy” to flush him out of hiding. The plan only resulted in a bad case of road rash for one friend when she tripped while chasing down an innocent, and probably terrified, teenage boy out walking his dog, who made the mistake of stopping to tie his sneaker right next to my car.
The mystery was never solved and the ridiculousness ended there, thankfully. I didn’t receive another love letter or more pink carnations until I met my future husband, but that’s a story for later in the 80s. And no, he wasn’t the mysterious flower boy, although that would be the perfect meet-cute in a rom-com. Speaking of cute, while on our first date we discovered that we went to neighbouring high schools and moved in similar social circles. It’s even likely we were in the same local clubs at the same time. There weren’t many back then and they were always overcrowded with twenty-somethings. He was more likely shooting pool and causing trouble while I was trying to Moonwalk, which probably explains why we didn’t meet-cute off the dance floor until five years later.
When it wasn’t in the shop for repairs, the Blue Bomb kept motoring along, and was often spotted at local beaches, windows rolled down with the one and only Prince blasting, while we girls suntanned on the blazing hot hoods of our cars instead of more sensibly on beach towels in the sand like everyone else. At that moment in time I wasn’t interested in serious dating or anything that got in the way of weekend dance parties. I was like Cyndi Lauper in “Girls Just Want to Have Fun”, kicking up my heels in party dresses with big costume jewelry earrings. The original video for your viewing pleasure, in case you haven’t seen it. Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” album was also huge and guys started putting in a little more effort to woo the ladies by dressing up in oversized two-button pastel blazers with shoulder pads and baggy pleated trousers. As much as I liked to dress up, for some reason it was always the witty, untidy boys who first caught my eye. If my young life was an 80s John Hughes film, then it would co-star messy Judd Nelson instead of preppy Emilio Estevez with a soundtrack by Queen or Joan Jett because according to me and Billy Joel, “new phase, new wave, dance craze, anyways…It’s still rock and roll to me.“
A couple of years into the 80s, I’d finally saved enough money to take that longed for spring break vacation to Hawaii. It was everything I had hoped it would be and more. Aloha! The Hawaiian-themed dance parties were for real this time. I spent days walking on sunshine and nights dancing in the dark. I cut my long, layered hair to look like Olivia Newton-John in her “Physical” years, only minus the headband because I just wasn’t the sporty type. Upon my short-haired, suntanned return, my parents announced they were giving me six months to get my life in order so they could retire and move far away. That moment was the metaphorical needle scratching across the record for me. In their defence they’d already given me more than enough time to get on track and I can see how they thought I was wasting most of it. Still, it wasn’t the way I saw it then. I felt ambushed. My bank account was now down to single digits thanks to the vacation and there was barely enough time to build it back up. The Blue Bomb had to be traded for a newer, more reliable sedan with a hefty parental co-signed bank loan. I put college classes on an indefinite hiatus and I went in search of full-time work, which ended up being the dreaded “good secretarial job” that I hated with the same driving force that Aqua Net hairspray was to big hair.
I searched for weeks to find an apartment I could barely afford on my own while also having to make monthly car payments. I collected cast-off dishes and furniture from family members and newlywed friends, and for the first time in my life I was about to live alone. I wouldn’t admit, least of all to myself, that I was terrified about this big life change. Still, I was going to prove that I could make it on my own and I didn’t need anyone’s help doing it. Hand me an ultimatum and I’ll respond by digging in my heels wherever I land. I’ve always been too stubborn for my own good.
Hit the pause button for now–the late 80s years are coming soon!
Below are Youtube links to the songs or music videos mentioned (or thought about) during the writing of this post. Feeling groovy? Check out my previous post Background Music Part One: the 60s and 70s.
“Music is the soundtrack of your life.” ~ Dick Clark
September! It’s been a minute since my last blog past. I didn’t plan on taking a break. Lately I’m feeling the drive to write and research a novel I’m working on, so much of my attention has been wrapped up in that. Most of my current research is concentrated on the music industry, primarily from the 90s through the early 2000s. I feel less informed about this specific time period because back then I was preoccupied with babies and then busy school-aged children. That meant the background music was often Disney soundtracks and pop hits. I still remember the words to Spice Girls and a few boy band songs. And my grown children joke about remembering more 80s lyrics than they care to. Fair is fair.
While I’m not ready to share the plot specifics of the novel quite yet, I will say I’m having fun revisiting classic rock favourites and discovering fascinating tidbits of music trivia along the way. If you follow my Instagram stories, then it might make more sense now why I keep sharing music-related posts about rock band crushes and singer-songwriters I’ve long admired. I suppose, like many people during these troubling times, I’ve been living a little more inside of my head. Reflecting on and listening to music has kept me feeling grounded and warmly connected to memories of more carefree days.
My generation (and I feel about a hundred years old as I write that) forged tight relationships over sharing new record albums and dance moves in basement rec rooms. I’ve mentioned before that I’m the youngest in a large family. My eldest brother was sixteen when I was born, and the rest of my siblings all fall in line behind him, a year or so apart in age, with the closest to me being ten years older. My brothers used to tease me about being left on the doorstep as a baby and how they so generously took me in so I wouldn’t freeze to death because it was February. I went crying to my mom about it once and I still remember her response: “Do you really think we’d bring another kid inside this crowded household if you weren’t ours?” Point taken. So it meant I naturally entered that well-established and chaotic household of primarily teenagers by way of surprised parents, who were older than my friend’s parents. I didn’t know it at the time, but that broad age range greatly blessed me with a plethora of music experiences.
Before the older kids started moving out, I shared a bedroom with two sisters who were vastly different from each other, yet agreed on one important factor: The Beatles. Some of my earliest memories include giant wall posters of John, Paul, George and Ringo and the absolute conviction that their eyes were following me, so I’d better get dressed quickly behind the closet door! They were Team Paul and I was Team George because (wow those expressive eyebrows!) and he had the cheekiest smile. I spent many nights falling asleep to my sisters whisper-arguing while also harmonizing to Motown hits until our mother eventually stuck her head in the door to tell them to “cut it out”.
Down the hallway, my four brothers were squeezed into one bedroom with two sets of bunk beds that were so close together it was possible to jump from one top bunk to the other, which I did frequently and gleefully. They fascinated me because they were so much louder and wilder than my sisters, and their record collections clearly reflected that. I’m positive my deeply-rooted love of rock band music began in that very small room while listening to The Stones and hearing them trade insults, punch each there and then laugh it off. One brother with a gentler soul used to play Cat Stevens on repeat, and to this day hearing “Morning Has Broken” instantly lightens my mood.
My second eldest brother died when he was nineteen and I was four years old. The music and the laughter in our house disappeared for a very long time after that day. My memories of him are hazy, but I do remember his kindness and how sometimes he’d let me curl up with him on the mornings he was too sick to get out of bed to go to school. Many years later I heard “Unchained Melody”, The Righteous Brothers’ version, and my mind instantly connected the dots to my lost brother. At the time of his passing he was deeply in love with his high school sweetheart, and I wonder if perhaps that was their song, or maybe just his alone. It’s a tender, melancholy song. Today is his birthday and he would be turning seventy-three.
During the early 70s our household began to quickly downsize until only three of us kids remained. It was then that my parents decided to get rid of the ping pong table in the basement and turn our rec room into a more glamorous adult-friendly hangout. My dad built a very elaborate bar with mirrored shelves and colourful lights to illuminate the hard liquor bottles that lined them. Padded bench seats were built-in along the walls and speakers somehow got wired meticulously into posts and ceilings, long before surround sound existed. It was a rather strange thing to do because both of my parents rarely drank and Dad was the most unsociable one in the family. Regardless, for awhile they were downstairs until late most Saturday nights, laughing with friends, drinking out of cut glass crystal tumblers, smoking endless cigarettes and playing card games.
Dad spent countless hours taping a wide variety of music from our records onto his reel-to-reel tape recorder. Sometimes on weekend afternoons he’d play current hits like The Archies’ “Sugar, Sugar” in that basement barroom so that me and my friends could hold our own Kool-Aid dance parties. Ah, it was a great time to be a kid! Mom, who really loved to dance, finally had more free time to teach me how to jitterbug and hand-jive. I get my swooning fondness for crooners from my mother. She adored the Rat Pack, big band music, and she hero-worshipped Streisand–all of Barbra’s music and movies. My dad introduced me to the kind of country music that’s considered old-school now. The likes of Dolly, Loretta Lynn, George Jones, Johnny Cash and Charlie Pride, just to name a few of the greatest country singers who ever lived.
Me at 13 with my parents at a brother’s wedding, rocking the 70s vibe! I clearly inherited my dad’s dimples and my mom’s smile. My dad was 6’5″ so his head was often in the streamers at parties. Someone once paid me the sweetest compliment about me being the very best of both of my parents. Oh, how I miss them.
During my early teen years, when I always seemed to be at odds with my dad because either my cut-offs were too short or my makeup was too heavy, music magically kept us connected. I would roll my eyes at his 8 track country cassettes and he’d ask me, “what good is music if the volume’s so high you can’t understand the words?” Still, we firmly agreed on this: ABBA and Fleetwood Mac were (and still are) sublime. I credit the iconic Rumours album for getting me through the painfully awkward junior high years.
The first concert I was allowed to attend with a group of friends and without a parent in sight was April Wine. I’m a Canadian girl, so I feel pretty nostalgic about April Wine. The most memorable concert of my youth was Supertramp’s 1979 Breakfast in America Tour at the Empire Stadium in Vancouver. I was sixteen and hadn’t even gone on a real date yet, but I reluctantly agreed to let a friend set me up on a blind date (double date) with her boyfriend’s cousin who managed to score four concert tickets. All that trouble, just so I could see Supertramp and hear “Take The Long Way Home” live with about 40,000 other people. He turned out to be a nice enough guy, but by then I already had my eye on someone else…a broody, sharp-witted boy of Scottish descent with long feathery layers in his dark hair, just like mine. He ended up being my first love, and in my mind he still looks exactly the same as he did when we broke up three years later at nineteen for the second and final time. That day I ran a very long way home after stubbornly refusing a ride, while trying to lose him as he followed me in his car until the moment I breathlessly reached my front door. For hours I played “Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me” over and over and over until I felt completely, irrevocably done with him.
That first serious boyfriend introduced me to Pink Floyd, punk rock, and Scottish singer Gerry Rafferty. (What an eclectic mix!) Hearing “Right Down The Line” immediately stuffs me back inside a time capsule along with Bonne Bell Lip Smackers (root beer was my favourite and always the hardest to find), Love’s Baby Soft perfume, Seafarer high waisted flares, and the even higher drama of angst-fuelled teenage love. If you ask me, the rock band that readily springs to mind from that era is Nazareth, and only because I swear every girl I knew at one time or another sobbed out her poor broken heart to “Love Hurts”. My personal blast-it-until-you-get-past-it rock anthem was Heart’s “Crazy on You”. The ah-mazing guitar intro to that song still makes my heart race in anticipation.
Dust off your shoulder pads because here comes the 80s! To be continued…
In case you fancy a listen, here are Youtube links to the music mentioned (or thought about) during the writing of this post. Have you ever noticed that back in the day song titles could be very long? I hope watching and listening to the videos is an uplifting experience. Please leave a comment to share some of your memorable classics!
A Roaring Good Yarn 