Song
A song I last heard maybe forty years ago had me howling this afternoon. I used to listen to it a lot, and then one day, I didn’t anymore. It’s not that famous a song. It had its time in the sun in the early 1980s, when every pop musician worth his name was writing about the murder of John Lennon. The song sounds vaguely off key in the first verse but that might be the minor chord that this songwriting duo use so effectively to underline their lyrics. I didn’t know until today who or what the song was written to mourn, but hey, that’s the best thing the Internet does – contributes to my ongoing music and music trivia education.
I cried because the lyrics, the refrain in particular, suddenly made sense. Talking at a book event at a college recently, I mentioned that one part of my brain was still fifteen years old, waiting for my brother to come home from college. To fight with, to listen to music with, to live my life with. I saw the pity in the young eyes, as they listened to a stout, grey haired woman talk about her brother, dead a lifetime ago. I saw their thoughts. I heard the unsaid refrain: Let it go. Let it be. Let him rest.
I wrote the damn book. It was supposed to have been enough. I put down my grief on paper. It was meant to be for the ages. I was supposed to leave it behind. Hey hey Johnny….the silliest things still bring it all back, roaring anger and clawing grief and pitiless guilt. Today, on a sunny afternoon, it was the words of a forgotten song: Hey hey Johnny can’t you come out and play?
I was laughing as the tears hit. Like a fucking rainbow. Laughing at the maudlin words, at my brain stuck on sentimental street, at these hormones playing havoc with my common sense. But still, that refrain hit where it hurt, said what I still can’t always articulate: how much I miss the long ago crazy times with my sibling that I took for granted, until they were gone and I had no way to bring them, or him, back. A friend wrote a piece today about wanting what we don’t have. And then this song came along – you know how your brain remembers the words and the chords like it was yesterday?
I listened to the song all afternoon. Singing along, cranking up the volume to drown out my voice. The tears stopped but not the need to get it out of my system. When I was a kid, listening to the same song again and again would have involved repeatedly and patiently setting the turntable stylus back on the record groove or rewinding the cassette tape. Not to mention the shouts from parents that the record would get scratched, the stylus pin would need replacing or that the tape would get chewed up. Now, it only needs a click of the remote. I listened to a live version at Madison Square Garden, the studio version and a remastered version…I watched the emotion on the singer’s face as he sang about his murdered friend. It got him a standing ovation from the packed house.
This constant cynicism is tiring. It felt wonderful to just sob my guts out, give in to the melancholy and the pity party. Afterwards, I sat down to write, the five hundred words a day I’m thankful for, even if they’re disappointing most days. Then I read my friend’s piece again. I heard the song again. I may have had a short conversation with my late rocker brother. Or not. Finally, I began to write this piece.
The new writing hasn’t been going well – it feels a bit like blood sport, inventing scandals and gossip to mask the far more unbelievable reality. The writing feels false, hollow, without roots. I think that it was weighing me down, the restless ghosts mocking my need to sleep. Maybe today’s meltdown was partly about the power of words: the two-line refrain was enough to send me spiralling back to the 1980s. And yet my own writing is so far from powerful right now. I might have been crying out of envy and frustration. Anyhow the brief afternoon storm in my living room seems to have helped clear my head.
Now, if only the earworm of a song would fade before it adds to my sleepless nights. Hey, hey Johnny…