“The Salvific Power of Music”
My adolescence was, as most are, a lonely period of my life. I was used to being my own best company, but the longings of unrequited romance and friendship made that time of budding adulthood painful. I filled most of my hours with the repetitive activities of academic and athletic work, but it was the long ones on Friday and Saturday nights, especially, that caused me to look out the icy window of a middle-class Ohio house onto an empty lamplit street and feel deeply isolated. My escape was in music. I would close the bedroom door, put the album on the turntable, turn off the lights, lie down on my bed, and close my eyes. I only owned three albums, but they proved to be my salvation. These were the works of all-male bands with fine tenor singers who dedicated themselves to harmonizing about the elations and traumas of teenage love. If I needed a more upbeat romantic escape, I played the Turtles “Greatest Hits.” “Can I Get To Know You Better” held out some hope that I might actually meet a girl in the flesh. “Happy Together” went even further, promising that a phone call would result in a date and then the proverbial “happy ever after.” And the album also provided me with a rebel song that advocated for personal freedom, “Let Me Be,” “to think like I want to that’s all I ever can be.” For my more common, more introspective, and frankly more pained hours, I would turn to the Young Rascals’ “Groovin’” album. Why not just admit it? I was a diehard romantic, a love-idealist, a dreamer and visionary in the incensed halls of youthful romance. The Rascals were ideal for setting the auditory milieu for my frustration and angst. “A Girl Like You” brought me into the arms of my fantasy girl. “Every time I’m holding you close to me, trouble’s gone, it’s gone, I’m in ecstasy.” “How Can I Be Sure” posed the problems of relationship uncertainty, allowing me to move past the lack of having one into the issues of managing one. And this assumption was pleasant! And, of course, the pièce de resistance was “Groovin’,” that heavenly and dreamy stroll down a spring, musical lane. “I can’t imagine anything that’s better. The world is ours whenever we’re together.” The songs were carrying me the entire way through a romance, from seeking the first date on a phone call to enjoying the perfect bliss of togetherness. But the purest shot of romantic serum lay in the Association’s “Greatest Hits.” Those young men had succeeded in distilling young love down to its essence. They gave me the initial moments of romance in “Along Comes Mary,” a song about a girl who lifts the singer out of his thoughts of loneliness. “Cherish” embodied my dreams of offering up a pure and sacred love to some as-yet-unknown maiden. “Cherish is the word I use to describe / All the feeling that I have hiding here for you inside.” And when the lead singers extended the last syllable “ibe” for seven additional beats, my soul soared on the wings of their voices. The sheer thrill of being coupled, its pure exaltation, was perfectly expressed in “Everything That Touches You.” “In my most secure moments, I still can’t believe / I’m spending those moments with you / And the ground I am walking, the air that I breathe / Are shared at those moments with you.” When the Association got to the part where they simply repeated the word ‘love” (“love, love, love, love, love, love”), my heart would open in sympathetic rapture. “Never My Love” was the song of reassurance, the profession of that eternal untruth of young love: “This will never end!” And the album wrapped up with the fun, upbeat sounds of “Windy,” in whose lyrics I and my friend Tom Highton, who was then romancing the prettiest girl in town, would substitute the name “Chris” for “Windy.” Windy bent down to give me rainbows; she smiled at everyone she met; she captured the precious moment and had wings to fly above the clouds. Tom and I would sing the song together, he envisioning Chris and I imagining some as-yet-unmet romantic partner. Thank God for music, my friends!
