The first time I sang on a stage was in the auditorium of Annunciation Grade School in South Minneapolis. I was in the choir. I stood at attention on the second riser as Timmy O'Rourke, one of the hundreds of kids from our baby-boomed neighborhood, stood center stage and lent his amber voice to an acapella version of "Where Is Love?" from "Oliver!"
The spotlight shone on him, his gentle schoolboy voice quieted even our rowdiest classmates, and it was there, standing behind him that spring evening, looking at his silhouette and having his voice drip into me like honey through an IV, that I suspected for the first time that I might be a better listener than a singer.
Keith Richards once said that the best way to learn how to sing is to be a back-up singer, the way he did. And even though I can still hear the sound of Timmy O'Rourke's falsetto rising full-moonish over that evening, I couldn't tell you what songs I sang, but I can tell you that I wanted to sing forever, and it had nothing to do with him or anyone else. It had everything to do with me, which is how it has been with every one of the many great singers I've heard.
When my band started in 1979, I was inspired by a lot of people. Marty Marrin, for one. We grew up together. One night when we were juniors in high school, before a dance, a bunch of us got drunk for the first time-on Southern Comfort and large orange pops from the Lake Street Burger King.
We went to De La Salle High School, behind Nicollet Island, which sits by the Mississippi River in downtown Minneapolis. It was the epitome of '70s Catholic liberal education, rife with brains and burn-outs and jocks and classes like "World Religions" and "Jesus" and, thank Allah, "Math Minimum Essentials." It was run by good people, including some good Catholic priests and brothers and nuns who cared about kids, families, books, art, writing, music, God, and looking out for each other.
The night of our Southern Comfort adventure, I started yelling at everyone, stupidly-loudly suggesting that we jump the train as it roared over the tracks behind the island. There was Marty, with his high-pitched cartoon yelp, squealing as we ran in the dark towards these flying sparking boxcars, "No, you crazy fuckers, no!!" We didn't do it, but whenever we get together we still laugh about it, in part because we now know that we could all easily be dead right now and that we aren't because Marty was looking out for us. He went to St. John's in Collegeville after high school, moved away to Seattle for a while and taught. A few years ago, he moved back to Minneapolis with his wife and daughter, to be closer to home and to teach at De La Salle. Smart guy.
Which is what he was one night in 1978 at Duffy's, the great unrecorded, unlamented rock club of the early Minneapolis rock scene. One year out of high school, he and I stood at stage left, watching Flamingo--one of the least-appreciated rock bands that Minneapolis or any other town has ever produced. They were on their third set of the night, and everybody talks about what a great live band the Replacements were, which is true, but almost every night I saw Flamingo, they believed. They wanted it.
Robert Wilkinson was scissors-kicking, Johnny Rey was searing, Jody Ray was thumping, Bob Meide was shimmering, and the late, great Joseph Behrend was doing his best marionette-leg dance behind the keyboards. The place was wild; I was in total awe. So was Marty, who yelled in my ear: "Wouldn't it be a hard-on to be in a band?!"
Ouch, yes. No one had ever said it before. My whole body blushed, and I was happy to be in the dark so he couldn't see me. But he was right: What else could a kid do in the late '70s, when all that revolution was coming out of places like New York and London and Minneapolis and Los Angeles, 'cept to sing in a rock 'n' roll band? That is what young men and women do when they're desperate, when they've come to a crossroads in their lives and find that they can't express themselves in any other way, because everything else feels obsolete.
Not long after Marty nudged me at Duffy's that night, I dropped out of college and sang in a band for seven years. Then I stopped singing and married my rock-scene sweetheart Jean and started writing for newspapers and went back to college. Then we had two kids and I wrote non-stop for newspapers and then I stopped writing and went back to college and started singing again.
Which is where I find myself tonight. Yesterday, I and the kids delivered to some friends a few copies of a love song I wrote for/about said friends, who come from Korea, Israel, Michigan, California, China, Africa, Iowa, India, Pakistan, North Carolina, Italy, Texas, New York, Paraguay, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Chicago, and Mexico. I hope they like it as much as I do.
Today, my wife and kids and I attended what some are calling the biggest anti-war rally in San Francisco since the '60s. We drove there, had no trouble parking, and walked up 10th Street towards City Hall, the gilded doors of which are imprinted on me forever, from the scene in "The Times Of Harvey Milk," where the rioters storm the building screaming, "We want justice! We want justice!"
As we walked towards the rally, Henry, who sang "We Shall Overcome" at a school program yesterday and who encourages me to sing and who is also the most critical music critic in the family, heard the far-off sound of a shrill speaker coming from the podium.
"Dad?" he said, holding my hand.
Yep?
"Is this supposed to be about peace?"
Yep.
"It doesn't sound like it."
We followed a guy carrying an "Imagine" sign into the mix. We read more signs. "Buddhists For Peace." "Remember When Presidents Were Smart and Bombs Were Dumb?" "No War!" "More Books Less Guns." "Hybrid Owners For Peace." "Burn Pot Not Oil." "Go Solar Not Ballistic." "Republicans For Peace." "I'm 84 and Against The War." My favorite was "Stop Buying Shit." One woman wore a devil's mask and held a sign that said, "War Is Hell." One girl wore a black armband with the word "Bush" that had a swastika in place of the "S."
We took pictures. We had our family portrait taken in front of City Hall. I hummed Soul Asylum's "Black Gold" and wondered if I might run into some of the other students from my Noam Chomsky class. We grinned at some people who had painted themselves green. We couldn't really hear Joan Baez. I clapped after Martin Sheen said something I don't remember but it was inspirational. And it felt good to be with everyone, but also pretty toothless, like Armageddon is inevitable, and all 100,000 of us were riding a castrated bull into the tar pit of history, and we were meeting at the town square one more time to do the hippie do-re-mi.
As we left, I gravitated over to a group of young punk rockers with fluorescent mohawks and freshly skinned heads. Some had masks over their faces, Sandanista-like, and were holding a banner that said, "No War But A Class War." I guess some SUVs got spray-painted as the rally wound down, and from what I saw, these guys were more than up to the task. One was wearing some Anti-Flag garb. He almost ran into Helen, who loves singing along to her dad's new song, and when he did, this polite punk said, "Excuse me."
I nodded and made deliberate eye contact with him through my sunglasses. His eyes trailed down to the front of my black T-shirt, which says, in circular military typeface, "Old Skool Punk-Walk It Like You Talk It." In the center of the circle is a picture of the late, great Joe Strummer, with "Uncle Joe" scrawled underneath it. The kid's eyes lit up, though I don't think out of recognition, which made me want to stop and give him a history lesson on the Clash. I didn't, because the kids were tired and punk rockers don't take music tips from anyone, much less somebody's dad. But I could feel the kid's eyes following me as we walked down the street, reading the back of my T-shirt, which says, "Billy Bragg O.S.P."
All of which is a long-winded, California-dreaming way of saying that Paul Wellstone is dead. Joe Strummer is dead. Joseph Behrend is dead. T.C. Punk is dead. But you and me and the Internet and Timmy O'Rourke and Marty Marrin and Billy Bragg and Anti-Flag and their fans and my wife and brothers and sisters and our kids and all their teachers and coaches and spiritual guides are not. Yet.
When I started singing, one of my old girlfriends' college friends asked me, very innocently, "How long are you going to do this band thing for, Jim?" I'd been waiting for this. My first interview. We were in the lobby at Perkins. I remember exactly what I said. I remember looking at my shoes, and thinking about Chuck Berry.
"I want," I said, "to change the world."
Ahem.
Amen.
Shalom already, motherfuckers.
