Again, songs from the past
This must be what it is to be getting old. Suddenly, out of nowhere, songs from the past just rush back into your head, with all their old meaning and more. It can be very disconcerting.
The first one running around my brain this week is Blondie’s “11:59”:Leaning in your corner like a candidate for wax.Sidewalk social scientist don’t get no satisfaction from your cigaretteIt’s ten to ten.Time is running out.Lock up all your memories.Get outa here, you know that we can run.Today can last another million years.Today could be the end of me.It’s 11:59, and I want to stay alive.It’s not that it’s deep or meaningful, but it has a certain beat, it invokes a certain time and feeling for me — it feels like the cool summer nights of youth, and after all this time it still feels that way to me.
The second is an old one that always gets me but that I haven’t heard in ages and ages, and then there it was, Rod Stewart’s “You Wear It Well”:I’m gonna write about the birthday gown that I bought in townWhen you sat down and cried on the stairsYou knew it didn’t cost the earth, but for what it’s worthYou made me feel a millionaireAnd you wear it wellFor some reason, those lines are just extremely evocative to me, and that was back when Rod was Rod, when that raspy voice still had an edge, and was put to good use.
My eldest says “I feel like The Beatles are the soundtrack of my life.” I think that’s an interesting thing for a 13-year-old in the oughts to say, but I certainly know how she feels. I always come back to The Beatles, and lately I’ve been coming back to them through my daughters’ discovery of them. (Made a little mistake and set the satellite radio to alert me every time there was a Beatles song — which meant it was beeping just about every five minutes.) They like trying to remember which was which, who married Yoko and who married Linda, and, sadly, which ones are still alive. This morning we heard the end of “Abbey Road,” and as happens from time to time, it was like I was hearing it for the first time, amazed at the odd little collection of strung-together songs that comprise the B side of that album, how well they work together to showcase their various talents, disparate little bits that all come back together in “The End.” Such a masterpiece.