Tuesday, October 17, 2017

Tom Petty (and more)

It always comes down to music with me.

Tom Petty's death caught me off guard. For some reason I had an image of him in my mind as a clean cut guy, a well behaved member of the rock community.

And he may have been that. I don't know.

But I have a dark cloud in my mind hovering over all the painful rock 'n roll deaths that have hurt me over the last two years.

Gotta believe the rock 'n roll lifestyle contributed to lives cut short.

Anyway, I wasn't a huge Petty fan. I knew just enough of his music and just enough of his lyrics to be obnoxious in my own unique way.

"Free Falling" and "I Won't Back Down". Two Petty songs that are forever burned into my heart and my soul.

When those songs came out I was working a shitty part time job as a temp. It was one of those bumpy points in my life. I don't remember what the hell was going on.

It was a time I met one of my good friends.

Alan.

A wild man. I have always been attracted to insanity. I always will be. I am proud of that.

We would blow out of work at lunch and fly down to a corner store. Buy a six pack and fly down the road to a camp site by a lake. Park right on the lake - facing the water.

Wolf our sandwiches down and fucking pound three beers each.

With the radio blasting.

When those two songs came on, especially "I Won't Back Down", we would scream them out at the top of our lungs.

Felt like we were fighting back.

We would then buzz back up the road, stopping once more at the corner store to pick up two 16 ounce beers, which we would pound on the two minute trip back to work.

Fucking insane. And a bit questionable as a strategy when the beer wore off mid afternoon.

But fuck it. We felt good about it. And those two songs meant everything to us.

Musical segue: Recently listening to the Billy Joel channel on Sirius. They have a hot line where people call in and leave a message about what Billy Joel's music meant to them.

He wrote a song called "You're Only Human (Second Wind)". A guy called in and said he served in the military (I don't know where; sorry). Said when he came home from war he had a very hard time adjusting. He was writing a suicide note to his family when "You're Only Human" came on.

It hit him hard and inspired him not to give up. He did not kill himself.

You might say "that didn't happen Joe. It is pure bullshit". I disagree. I believe in the power of music. I believe someone else's words can resonate with your soul and affect your life.

A woman called in and remembered back to when her kid was little and the mom was working a third shift job. Before she headed into work she sang "Lullabye (Good Night My Angel)" to her kid. It connected her with her kid at a difficult time and made the mom feel a little better.

The second story sparked a non-musical memory from my life. At one of many misguided moments in my life I was going to night school studying for an MBA.

When I got home on school nights Keith and Craig would already be in bed and asleep.

I would grab a beer, sit on the floor in their room with my back against the wall and silently cry.

Anyway, music is everything. It is a powerful and a mystical force.

It can be a tool. Get smart and use it to regain your sense of humanity whenever you are feeling beat down.

Requiescat in pace Tom Petty.

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