I learned the truth, the hard truth, only a couple of years ago.
“If I never hear Bruce Springsteen, the Grateful Dead, or Jim Morrison ever again,” my mom announced, “it’ll be too soon.”
This was in front of my whole family. We were hanging out at her senior high rise for some holiday or another. The conversation had turned to the early ’90s, when my mom and I were the only family members left at home –– Daddy had just died, and my three siblings had already moved away to start their own lives. I had only recently outgrown the prog-rock, rap, hair-metal, disco, and grunge that soundtracked my life from elementary school through college. To make my unemployed twentysomething college-degreed self more hirable as a “cultural reporter,” because getting the heck out of 309 Taylor Street and having my own place had become my mission, I began reading the books, watching the movies, and listening to the CDs deemed “important” by my holy trinity of tastemakers: The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, and The New York Times. My to-listen-to list was soon topped by Born to Run, American Beauty, and The Doors (and A Love Supreme and Rumours and Wish You Were Here and a few other obvious choices). As described, these albums appealed to my rock soul. My poor mom became my captive audience.
On Saturday afternoon, she and I were sitting in the living room of 309 Taylor, “The End” twinkling and thundering from the portable light-beige egg-shaped CD player on the, um, end table. “It’s Oedipal,” I declared. “Did you know this song’s Oedipal? Like Shakespeare?” (Ed. note: Oedipus Rex was written by Sophocles.) My mother, her gaze locked on her copy of yesterday’s Post-Gazette, simply murmured, “Mm-hmm,” and continued leafing through the news. “He went into the room where his sister lived, and then he.” I just really thought the song was great and wanted to share it with someone, someone who, I believed, understood its multifarious meanings –– that death surrounds us, that life is but a dream from which we’re all rudely awakened before we’re ready, that poetry says so much more than prose –– because, as William Least Heat-Moon said in Blue Highways (I’m interpreting here), good stuff is always better when you can share it. “Paid a visit to his brother, and then he.”
I remember wanting my mother to appreciate the song every time it came on, and it came on at least once a day at home or in the car, out of respect for my spirit, one that longed to be understood and to understand, one that desired to communicate artfully, one that wanted nothing more than to not be so damn lonely. And so unemployed.
I also respected my mom’s opinion. Every summer as a teen in the 1950s, she would join up with her friends to drive to New York City to hang out at Birdland and the Village Vanguard. In our hometown, she partied with the Four Lads and the Freshmen. Next to my tower of CDs on the end table sat a small stack of my mom’s faves: Seal, Whitney Houston, Santana. Not bad, especially for a sixtysomething-year-old.
The truth was hard to hear, but back at the senior high rise, I managed to cough up a laugh along with everyone else.
“I had to sit on my hands,” my mother continued, “to keep from pulling my hair out every time I got in the car with Anthony or let him have the CD player.”
Born the same year Morrison died, I was relegated to The Back Doors for the live experience. And don’t think I didn’t see them every time they came to town. I loved the hell out of every second of every Back Doors show, probably more than I would have loved seeing a Doors-Doors gig –– based on a few bootleg recordings, Mr. Mojo Risin’ and company’s concerts appeared to have been hit-or-miss affairs. And while I’ve never heard or heard of The Doors Hotel, I am seriously considering plopping down some coinage for their July 16 concert at the Granada Theater opening for the Led Zep tribute act Swan Song. (The Granada continues the throwback vibe on July 30 with Grateful Dead coverers Forgotten Space.) An odd pairing, certainly, Zeppelin and The Doors, but as easily as Zep defied simple categorization –– blues-rock? heavy metal? folk? all of the above –– The Doors were dynamic, producing more color than bands with twice as many instruments without ever seeming forced or calculated. And no two songs sounded alike. I love The Doors, and I will continue defending them until I take the highway to the end of the night.
As my mom used to say, “The best bands are the ones where as soon as you hear the first few notes of their song, you know it’s them.” Can you think of a classic-rock outfit that fits that description better than The Doors, Ma? I sure can’t.
Contact HearSay at hearsay@fwweekly.com.
