The Soundtrack of Our Lives

Transcription

1 The Soundtrack of Our Lives The Beat Goes On Johnny was a schoolboy when he heard his first Beatles song Love Me Do, I think it was, and from there it didn t take him long. Like Johnny, I was a schoolboy when I heard my first Beatles song. In my case it was I Want to Hold Your Hand and it blew me away. It s hard to believe that a song that now sounds so simple, innocent and even sappy now could have had such a powerful impact. Like the rest of the kids growing up in Swedesville, I had listened to music occasionally. But before the Beatles stormed the shores of America, most of the popular music I d heard consisted of either schmaltzy love songs or silly ditties about Purple People Eaters and Itsy Bitsy Teensy Weensy Yellow Polka Dot Bikinis. It s not that there wasn t any good music around. Chicago was full of incredible bluesmen such as Muddy Waters, and Howlin Wolf. Seminal rockers like Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis

2 were also strutting their stuff, but in Swedesville we were more likely to hear Fess Parker singing The Ballad of Davey Crocket or Tennessee Ernie Ford singing 16 Tons. That was the kind of fare that normal people listened to. So when the Beatles and the following British Invasion hit the airwaves I felt a little like Dorothy stepping through the door of her black and white house into the Land of Oz. A whole new magical musical world opened up before my eyes and ears. Of course, it wasn t just the music that caught our attention. The clothes, the Beatle boots, and the hair were all exotic and enticing. I remember trying on a friend s Beatle boots and feeling so different (even though I probably just looked silly). It was the music, however, that drove everything and seemed to permeate the atmosphere of those times. And one of the good things about the British Invasion was that it sparked a second American Revolution. The shots fired in this revolution (also heard around the world) were fired, not by muskets and canons, but by electric guitars, basses, and drums. As radical as we thought The Beatles were, they were downright tame compared to what was to come. Nothing could have prepared us for the onslaught that came when Zeke Spencer returned from a trip to Hawaii with his parents and told Robbie the Rebel with evangelical zeal about a group that he had seen while on vacation. He ranted and raved about a power trio that created sounds,

3 unlike anything anyone had ever heard before. And the leader of this band of gypsy musicians played his guitar behind his head, behind his back, and even with his teeth! So by the time Jimi Hendrix and his Experience hit the stage of the Monterey Pop Festival and blew the crowd away by lighting his still-screaming guitar on fire, we were already living in a state of blissful purple haze induced by this god of the Stratocaster. Jimi Hendrix, however, as unique as he was, wasn t the only guitar god in the Pantheon of Rock. When I made my pilgrimage to England with my father as a 14 year old, the rumors of London subway graffiti proclaiming the Rock deity of Eric Clapton had already reached the shores of American. Indeed, I scoured the tube walls while in London in (vain) search of confirmation. Ironically, it was Clapton and other British rockers who turned many of us in the environs of Normal (and the rest of the States) on to American blues. Soon a seminally powerful blue wave washed over me as I discovered the Kings of America: Albert, Freddie, and B.B. King. None of them, however, touched me quite in the same way as one blues singer who had migrated many years ago to a relative stone s throw from where I lived the south side of Chicago. When I heard Muddy Waters play, it grabbed me by the throat, the heart, and somewhere else deep inside and never let go. It s been said that the sense of smell has the greatest ability

4 to evoke memories. That s probably true, but in my experience, music has to come in at least a close second. There are songs to this day that transport me back in time to specific places and events faster than any flying Delorean ever could. When I hear the James Gang playing Funk 49, I find myself in Ron Silver s second-floor bedroom talking about how to score girls or cannabis. Anything by Emerson, Lake, and Palmer takes me to Carl Jefferson s basement, while hearing Grand Funk Railroad puts me on Cow s bed underneath a poster of Jimi Hendrix, Noel Redding, and Mitch Mitchell on horseback, listening to music at volumes my parents never would have tolerated (and my speakers would never have produced). To this day, I can t hear Jefferson Airplane singing Somebody to Love without remembering being in the car with Wanda and Lars, as we were heading to tell Arthur Marx that his girlfriend had just dumped him. And Arthur himself tells me that one of his strongest memories is sitting in my small upstairs bedroom in the sweltering Illinois summer listening to Johnny Winter playing the blues. Likewise, it is hard for me to listen to Eric Clapton and Blind Faith singing Presence of the Lord without seeing Arthur singing along with his eyes closed and knowing that he had indeed,... finally found a way to live, in the presence of the Lord. There are probably hundreds of songs and thousands of memories associated with them that I could relate. And

5 every now and then, I ll hear a new old song that takes me back to another time and place. And still, the beat goes on.