my parents didn't listen to too much music in the house, but they did have a few things, mostly from the late 70s and early 80s. i remember a Placido Domingo record featuring Willie Nelson (the one with "To All The Girls I've Loved Before," which was one of the first pop songs i remember playing over and over on the record player), i remember a record of disney songs, i remember Let It Be (the title track becoming the second song i would play on the record player over and over), i remember a record of John Williams' music written for the 1984 summer olympic games. and i remember the first cassette tape i stole from my mother: Chicago 17. music was fun, and i loved it. i loved singing to all these songs, and i was becoming aware of how important music was to me right at the moment when my parents were going through a rough divorce. i was 8. my mother favored more sentimental music (the Placido Domingo was hers) and i started by sharing her tastes, as i suppose all children do. i liked songs that made me feel good, or made me feel like god would protect me (like Let It Be).
i remember the first song i ever wrote, in the backseat of my parents' car. it had to be before i was 8, but i don't know how much earlier it was; my memories of life before that time are conflicting and unreliable. the song was called "Loving You," and it was about loving someone, since love appeared to be the subject of all great songs. the lyric was:
loving you:
it's just a habit that i cannot break [totally cribbed that line from Chicago, obviously]
and i do not think that i can take
not loving you.
i believe there was another stanza, but that's all i can remember of the lyric. i remember the melody perfectly, though.
songs, to me, were about feeling good, or making you feel good when you were feeling blue. as my parents' divorce progressed, music slowly began to mean something different.
the first song that made me cry, and still does to this day, is "Saying Goodbye," from the film The Muppets Take Manhattan. my parents were separated, and we were temporarily staying in a motel. actually, i'm not sure of this -- they might not have been separated yet; my memory is still unreliable for this period. but i knew things weren't good. i and my younger brother and sister were routinely sent into the backyard while my parents fought, and the piercing sound of my mother screaming at my father is one that i will never be able to forget. i had never heard anyone make a sound like that. anyway, i remember sitting in the motel, watching the Muppets say goodbye to one another for what seemed to be no good reason at all, and singing a heartbreaking song describing their departure. one line always pulls the trigger for me, and it's this:
somehow i know
we'll meet again
not sure quite where
and i don't know just when
you're in my heart
so until then
it's time for saying goodbye.
it was at least 10 or 15 years later when i connected my reaction to that song with the events in my life. this is a familiar sentiment in the American songbook (explored in "We'll Meet Again" among others) but it was my first exposure to the concept. after all these years, i still am drawn to songwriting that expresses the same conflict between hope for the future (or just as often, wistfulness for the past), and the harsh realities of the present. this is as rich a vein as any in the history of songwriting, and everything i've written since has contained some element of that conflict.
the second song that made me cry was similar: "Grandpa," by The Judds. here was the lyric that wrecked me:
Did lovers really fall in love to stay
And stand beside each other, come what may
Was a promise really something people kept
Not just something they would say
Did families really bow their heads to pray
Did daddies really never go away
Woah oh, grandpa, tell me 'bout the good old days
this is a thoroughly excellent lyric, one that i would be proud to have written. it is as plain as growing up, and just as universal. the line about "daddies" etched itself onto my brain more than the rest, but every line is beautifully wrought.
when i was a bit older -- 5th grade -- i spent a hell of a lot of time at my friend Paul's house, and his parents had an honest-to-goodness hippie/sexual revolution/protest movement/psychedelic record collection, a big one. Paul's house was where i first heard practically every classic 60s rock record worth listening to -- Abbey Road, and Richie Havens opening the Woodstock festival with "Freedom", and Aqualung, and Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit", and Joan Baez singing about the robin's egg eyes of her lover Bob Dylan.
...and Bob Dylan.
i remember Paul pulling out the Dylan record (it wasn't Freewheelin' -- it was the Best Of, Volume II) and told me the name of the song he was going to play me: A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall. i had never heard it, or any other Bob Dylan song that i could recall, though he reminded me about the one about getting stoned.
as the song played, Paul sang the lyrics, and offered me his interpretation of their meaning -- his description of "one hundred drummers whose hands were a-blazin'" signifying soldiers firing machine guns on a battlefield still seems to be a remarkable insight for a junior high kid's mind, and i am as impressed with it now as i was then.
the song was, in so many ways, a revelation for me. first, the lyric was a serious piece of writing: there were deep patterns and structures built into it (the continuing conversation between the father and the blue-eyed son); there were stunning images that stood alone but also built to a final verse that projected hope in spite of hardships (there's that theme again); there were deep, sometimes inscrutable metaphors that invited contemplation; and there was the balance between plainspoken vernacular and poetic profundity ("Where black is the color and none is the number" always blew my head off as a descriptor). i had always loved music and i had always loved words and ideas -- i was devouring both fiction and nonfiction books from age 4 -- but the two had never seemed so connected as they did that evening.
the image of the blue-eyed son haunts me. though i would never, ever claim to be the songwriter that Bob Dylan is, i feel touched by that lyric in particular, as though he and i shared something that perhaps other people didn't quite relate to. i have always felt like i was watching, observing, in the world but not of it; not quite sure of how to do basic things like speak to cute girls and figure out the coolest sneakers to buy (we called them tennis shoes in San Antonio, actually), but constantly trying, in my adolescent way, to unlock the mysteries of life and injustice and human nature. i was a pretty lonely kid, but i guess this isn't uncommon among writers and musicians.
so, i'm calling my band Blueyed Son. the combined words were borne of necessity -- i wanted the url for my band to be completely mine, and there's already a Blue Eyed Son out there, so i started playing around with other options. i'm very happy with what i came up with; the "Blueyed" is aesthetically pleasing to me, and it is not exactly quoting Dylan but rather inspired by him, which is what i hope my music is as well.
[UPDATE 2/24/09: another reason for wanting this name occurs to me: my brother. it's funny how the motives for doing something are often buried while you're in the moment making the decisions, but the main event that prompted me to write the material for this album was seeing my brother in Texas after he had just been released from prison. i'm not going to go into too much detail, because the 2nd verse/chorus of "Cocaine Cocaine" tells the story of that encounter rather completely. i didn't think of this at the time i wrote it, but it's no coincidence that in the song i chose to be the album opener for my Blueyed Son debut, i refer to my brother as being the blue-eyed son. you never really know all the reasons for doing things in this world, but this band and this album is turning out to be as much about him as it is about me.]
