3/10/07 — Every last line of the song was pertinent in my early teenaged life. I don’t know what I thought of it the first time I heard it. This was an era of music — popular — that truly lived up to its name. Nary had a dissonant note tipped the speakers.
Post-punk wasn’t born yet, but somewhere across the country other teenagers were wriggling into leather and building pyres out of disco records. In our culturally-delayed corner of the country, we listened to songs that tasted good immediately, including this one.
My big sister and her husband first spun this disc for me. It must've seemed a little hard, because I was still listening to my lilting Olivia Newton John records at the time. But it started sweet, with an acoustic guitar playing an altered arpeggio. After a crystalline lead in, the chorus got crunchy and loud, and I kind of liked that.
I had a moment last weekend. Neil was flipping around the radio stations as usual, looking for the best possible song on at that moment. He hates the big hits, but I heard mine playing, and made him stop to listen, telling him the same story I’ve told at least a dozen times since we’ve been together. He told me about misunderstanding that line about drinking Coke, which always makes me laugh. I said that, even though I’m not much for learning guitar solos, maybe I should learn this one because it would really just be cool and corny. Put aside the Tom Verlaine and play the completely unhip, hackneyed rock solo. After all, if it weren’t for learning the picked arpeggio in the song and making my folks listen to me play along one night when I was fourteen, my dad would not have taken me out the next day and bought me my first guitar.
As the rest of the song played and we silently bobbed our heads, or at least I was bobbing mine, I actually tried incredibly hard not to cry because at that moment, I really missed my pop, the crazy old sonofabitch, and I felt lucky to have connected to a song I loved and lucky that he recognized I was serious about playing, and lucky that I was so sentimental that the whole thing was doing this to me. I didn’t tell Neil I don’t think, because I’m easily given to fits of blubbering. I did mention — again — that this song is one of my favorite rock anthems ever.
This week, I’ve taken to learning “Julia” from a Lennon/McCartney acoustic instructional CD Neil lent me. It’s hard as hell, and my left fingertips are throbbing as I type this. Between it and “Dear Prudence,” I feel like I’m learning how to play guitar all over again. But to have picked up the guitar more seriously again—after a few years of not playing daily—gives me confidence and makes me believe I’m on my way to learning other people’s songs. Writing my own is easy. When no one knows how it’s supposed to sound, I can do anything I damned well want. When everyone knows what note is supposed to come next, the song is suddenly everyone’s property.
Tonight, after a couple rounds of practicing the two White Album pickers and dinking around on my own whatever-the-hell, I decided to start accumulating lyrics off the web to add to the cover repertoire. I checked my email afterwards, and found something from Neil with the last words of the subject line cut off. I just knew when I read “LEAD SINGER OF THE BAND” that something was wrong.
He was only 55, found in his home, foul play not suspected. On his band’s home page, their site now only bears the words “We’ve just lost the nicest guy in rock and roll.”
All I can think of is the first verse of that song, which he, in his curly-headed glory, delivered in complete earnestness. I listened with every blade in my ear to that debut album, cover resting on my lap as the cord from my headphones dangled over, wondering what guys did at MIT that they couldn’t talk about, not thinking they were the least bit foxy, but admiring this thing they made and feeling kinda cool that I finally really liked hard rock.
Revised 9/2008. ©1999-2008 R. Pelikan unless otherwise noted.