ALL I REALLY NEEDED TO KNOW I LEARNED IN MUSIC.
When I was seven and had the chicken pox, my tutor was the Starland Vocal Band, endlessly looping. At age 18, my tutor was Alice Cooper’s “I’m Eighteen,” upstaging every other record on the college radio station shelves—Megadeth, the Butthole Surfers, Jane’s Addiction. Even as I type these words, I’m getting schooled by Nina Gordon’s mosh-pop anthem “Hate Your Way”: “Had to sell my soul but you were so rock and roll / I’m a fool for you.”
The music of my life isn’t just in my head; it’s set in my spirit and rings in my soul. For good or for ill, the damage is done. Like Rich Mullins says of the Truth, “I did not make it / No, it is making me.” So, in a moment of autobiographical exhibitionism, here are some of my most influential musical tutors and what they taught me:
Age 2 | Carpenters — Close to You (1970)
My parents must have worn out the groove on this album. Just like you don’t get to choose your name, you don’t choose the music you listen to when you’re little. And, frankly, I could have been exposed to a lot worse. The combination of Karen’s flat, calm voice and Richard’s hyper-lush arrangements, together with their lyrics, taught me on some fundamental level that this whole ride called life was going to be OK. If “Close to You” promised a sunrise, “We’ve Only Just Begun” guaranteed a brave new world. “I’ll Never Fall In Love Again” was so full of cheer and good hope, how could evil triumph? Can anybody post-9/11 listen to this album without a cynical rolling of the eyes? No matter. I was two, it was 1970, the peace got in me—and it can’t be undone. White lace & promises, baby!
Age 8 | James Taylor — JT (1977)
I could have picked any James Taylor album from Mud Slide Slim to Flag, but this one stands out because it’s both confessional and polished, both sad and beautiful. In “There We Are” and “Secret O’ Life,” Taylor dares to place his life and his wife in the context of the entire universe, but he’s not dwarfed because he knows that human existence is pretty darned deep, and human relationships are veritably unfathomable. He sings to Carly Simon, “And though we are as nothing to the stars that shine above, you are my universe, you are my love.” In “Looking for Love on Broadway” and “If I Keep My Heart Out of Sight,” love is a sad-making, tricksy heartbreaker. Still, with that silky string section, those enveloping ninth chords, and the chiming acoustic finger-picking dancing through it all, even the bitterest of bittersweetness can taste wondrously strange. “Try not to try too hard, it’s just a lovely ride.”
Age 10 | Michael Jackson — Off the Wall (1979)
Fifth grade, with all the confusion of puberty coming in on waves like nausea. What better way to dissipate the sexual tension than funk? “There’s a steam beat, and it’s coming after you.” Off the Wall demonstrated that at any given moment, life can erupt into a celebration. Life is no longer smooth and calm; it’s sparking, snare-cracking, and zoot-horn funky. Quincy Jones is at the top of his production game, and Michael can’t sing straight without an irrepressible ejaculation of “eeh’s,” “wooh’s” and “a-heeeeaia’s.” With each new spin of the disc, life shows itself a lot less tame than I ever suspected. That beat beckons—an undeniable double-dog dare that shan’t be denied. And as often I give myself over to the locomotive groove (usually several times per evening), I’m taken for a ride. The groove is a punch-drunk conductor, and I’m hanging on for dear life, shaking that skinny white caboose like a raggedy chew toy! “Keep on with the force, don’t stop! Don’t stop ‘til you get enough!” Whoa! Geez, Mom, doesn’t anybody knock around here? Yes—I already did my homework. OK, OK—I’m turning it down …” (Needle returns to groove.)
Age 11 | Yes — The Yes Album (1971)
Listening to The Yes Album for the first time transported me into some overblown Norse myth, one mapped by Bill Bruford’s ornate drum work at a vertiginously erratic pace. From The Yes Album, I learned that alternate worlds are as near as a pair of over-the-ear, noise-canceling headphones. This music taught me nothing about reality—it transported me out of it. While my peers were watching MTV and listening to Flock of Seagulls, I retreated into the soundscapes of prog rock yesteryear. My ticket to ride wasn’t a tie-dyed magic carpet or a heavy history with hallucinogens, but rather a simple interest in the music and a willingness to familiarize myself with its melancholy intricacies. I reckoned that if this baroque planet existed, there were probably thousands more equally exotic worlds to visit. And off I went to purchase every Yes album from 1969 to 1980.
Age 12 | Adam and the Ants — Kings of the Wild Frontier (1980)
This album has been called pre-New Wave, but at the time, who knew what it was? Posh Euro-dandies dressed up as hybrid Native American/British Redcoats playing fuzzed-out power chords over massive Burundi tribal drum beats … how awesome is that? Who’s heard its like before or since? My friends and I didn’t know where it came from or how to classify it—we just knew it was the coolest thing since early Devo, and we were all over it. Kings of the Wild Frontier proved that the world is laden with strange and quirky possibilities, that something mainstream and accessible can still be completely other. Odd can work, possibly even be desirable. So what if you have to spend half a day at the hair salon to pull it off ? All is forgiven. “And if evil be the food of genius / there aren’t many demons around. / If passion ends in fashion / Nick Kent is the best-dressed man in town.” Word.
Age 14 | R.E.M. — Murmur (1983)
My first band (the ill-monikered George and the Weedeaters) covered half the songs on Murmur. R.E.M. was from Athens, Ga., not too far from our hometown in Southern Alabama. Our guitarist’s big brother had even seen them in concert! Their tunes, though sometimes challenging, were never impossible, and the thrill of playing them live was nothing less than spiritually intoxicating. Murmur taught me that anybody can create brilliance, anywhere, anytime — maybe even me. I didn’t have to live in Los Angeles; I didn’t have to live in the ’60s; I didn’t even have to be that technically proficient. Hope was in season, and mysterious portent lurked within every kudzu-covered culvert of late-20th-century Southern America, as much as anywhere else in the world. Profundity lived in the woods behind my house, and she danced nightly on the dewy grass, dispensing cryptic moonlit wisdom in a barely decipherable Southern drawl. None of us had the slightest idea what Michael Stipe was even singing, much less what the words literally meant. But Murmur proved that you don’t have to say what you mean, as long as you’re able to show how you feel.
Age 15 | Velvet Underground — White Light/White Heat (1967)
Ouch! This was the beginning of the end for me. The more I listened, the more my defenses were assaulted, and gradually I was opened up to a world of noise as music and music as noise that has stalked and thrilled me ever since. White Light / White Heat taught me punk-rock lesson #1: You can get by on sheer guts and attitude, provided you have enough of it. You don’t need a tune, or good production, or good arrangements, or even a lot of time. If the spirit is right and the spirit is pure, it covers a multitude of sins. Abandoning craft altogether might even improve the spirit of a thing. After 17 minutes of “Sister Ray” relentlessly undermining my senses, I was ready to believe anything. White Light / White Heat was a big fat grease-monkey uncle opening the padlock to a vast, forbidden junkyard of rusted, mangled, marvelously multifaceted metal. Nothing I would listen to hereafter would ever seem too noisy. From this point on, there was no out of bounds. “And then I felt my mind split open.” Ouch!
Age 16 | The Jesus and Mary Chain — Psychocandy (1985)
Hüsker Dü — New Day Rising (1985)
Sonic Youth — Bad Moon Rising (1985)
Our R.E.M. cover band eventually acquired a blistering drummer and transformed itself into a punk-rock outfit called Voodoo Bar-B-Q. Hippies had their summer of love; 1985 was my summer of punk. Playing college bars until dawn on weekends, practicing all hours on weekdays, up to our ears in distorted feedback, loving every minute of it. Of all the music we listened to that season, three albums stand out: Psychocandy enshrouded bubblegum pop in a haze of monster distortion; New Day Rising added speed and screaming to the distorted equation. And Bad Moon Rising wallowed in the sheer convoluted bleakness of all things teen. Punk rock lesson #2: Brooding melancholy directed outward at breakneck speed knocks shit down. Punk rock lesson #3 (in the words of Surrealist André Breton): “Beauty will be convulsive or it will not be at all.”