But the end comes too soon, and everybody wishes they had time or energy for a few more. You want to get one last song in, but there’s always more you have lined up in your head, songs that you’ll just have to save for next time. You have to trust there’ll be a next time. You know there’ll always be more songs to sing.
In September 2006 I asked Ally to marry me. I’d been biding my time while she finished up her dissertation and got her degree; she was back down in Charlottesville the summer before, deep in the lab. Back at home, I was plotting my own kind of endgame, because I wanted to spend my life with her but wanted to do this right. I didn’t know how she felt about marriage. Maybe she was against it as an institution. We’d never discussed it. We’d often shared fond fantasies of what we’d do when we were old together, but for all I knew, she wanted to leave this to chance. While she was in Charlottesville wrapping up her graduate work, I was planning a strong and convincing pitch. As my friend Carrie urged me, “You have to give her a story.” This was no time to be half-assed. Pretending you arrived at things by coincidence and good intentions, bumbling into them without a plan: This is the way of tender-hearted, apple-cheeked youth. Pretending to do things by accident is what you do in your twenties. That pretense consumes a lot of your energy then. And it makes sense in your twenties, because it gives you a degree of plausible deniability in case you fuck it up or get fucked over. It gives you the Pee Wee Herman “I meant to do that” escape clause. But in your thirties, when you’re confident about what you want, it’s harder to talk yourself out of making the bold move that will help you get it. I had no desire to talk myself out of this at all. So I needed a plan.
Ally got her degree in August; we celebrated by going out in Charlottesville to Baja Bean’s karaoke night, where she did Depeche Mode’s “Master and Servant.” A few weeks later we took our celebratory trip to Palm Springs, California. I had a ring in my bag, which I sweated over every step of the airport security process, every hour of the journey. On Saturday we drove up to Joshua Tree National Monument and stopped for lunch at a Del Taco in Desert Hot Springs. There was a sticker on Ally’s french fries indicating she was a winner for a free burrito. The sticker proclaimed, TASTY NEWS! YOU’RE AN INSTANT WINNER!
We drove around in the desert, with the top down, basking in the afternoon sun, the welcoming waves of the yucca trees and chollas and ocotillos. We blasted the Sirius radio, switching back and forth between the Elvis station (it was “Soundtrack Saturday,” this one dedicated to the music from Elvis’s 1963 film Fun in Acapulco) and 1st Wave, the vintage new-wave station. Ally was relaxed; I wasn’t. I was at the wheel, looking around for the right place to execute my plan. I had a ring in my pocket. I was wearing a Yeah Yeah Yeahs T-shirt, with little Y’s all over it, which must have been an unconscious attempt to send a subliminal “yes” message.
We stopped and hiked a few trails, but none of them was secluded enough or serene enough. We climbed a hill, yet this wasn’t a job to do on the side of a hill. There were a few hours to go before sundown, and it was still blazing hot, but I was sweating in agony. We rolled onto a dirt road through the Queen Valley and Morrissey came on the radio singing “Suedehead” and I knew this was the place. I pulled over and we walked to look at a particularly inviting Joshua tree, the gnarls of its branches reaching up into an infinitely blue sky at all kinds of skewed angles. We could see miles in all directions, all the way out to the snowcapped San Bernardino mountains, knowing we were the only human beings anywhere near here. The air was so silent we heard a desert raven flapping its wings as it slowly crossed the sky over our heads. The ring was still in my pocket and the soil was barely steady under my feet. The idea that I could still chicken out and put this off for another time throbbed in my brain. But there were so many yuccas and Joshua trees reaching up and spreading their arms to form a Y, we were wrapped in a million yesses. Five minutes later, the ring was no longer in my pocket, and all the trees seemed to be waving their arms in the joy of it all.
After an hour or so, we saw a dust cloud in the distance growing bigger. It was a park ranger who had spotted our stopped car. He just wanted to know if our car broke down or if we needed help; we didn’t. We did the wedding fast, just three months later, on December 30 (birthday of Michael Nesmith and Davy Jones). We had fun reviewing the candidates for our first wedding dance—“Heroes”? Too long. “There Is a Light That Never Goes Out”? Too somber. We went with the Jesus and Mary Chain’s “Just Like Honey.” And a month later was the bachelorette party, with Ally belting Nirvana’s “About a Girl” to the break of dawn.
It feels strange to remember how I used to think it was too late for me. I thought I’d had my shot. Maybe I would be able to re-create some of the things in my life that had been lost, but the surprise, the urgency of being that happy would be gone for good. Now I have the experience of being a husband, at a different time, as an adult. And yet everything seems new. The experiences of marriage are still surprising for me, and while this means I am often confused about what the hell I’m doing, it means I’m continually awed by how different it is.
Trying to live in the past didn’t work for me, and it’s only now that I fully realize I’m incredibly lucky it didn’t. Because it would have been all too sad to miss out on right now. That would have turned the past into a fraud. It would have meant all my happy memories were a lie. It would have meant all that time and all that love was a waste, leading up to a wasted future. It would have been the ultimate betrayal of everything I thought my whole life was about and everyone I cared about. All the people who loved me, in all the times and places of my life—all the people who made a lover out of me—they would have all been wrong about me. And it could have happened easily, just like that. It’s scary to think of how I could have gotten stuck pining for the past. I was lucky to get a second chance. I thought I was too late, but it turns out I was just in time.
I have gone from feeling right at home in my twenties to feeling like I’m nowhere at all, and then back to feeling at home, but a totally different home. So I love with a different heart. I’m a different person in a different place. Like a record, baby, right round round round. A second chance is more than anyone deserves, but a second chance is what I have. Many people get to this place, via death or divorce, and none of us exactly planned to get here, but here we are.
Ally and I have made our home together. We love it here in Greenpoint, the place where Polish dudes in convertibles pull over to try to pick up Ally in the mother tongue. I don’t speak Polish, but I’m pretty sure they’re saying, “Is this skinny Irish dude bothering you?”
We love everything about this place. The neighborhood even has a record store where the clerks still have that hilariously unreconstructed old-school “your taste sucks” attitude. I love that. I never thought I’d miss that aspect of record stores, but now it makes me all gooey and sentimental, even when it’s directed at me. These days, encountering record clerks like this in real life is like meeting a butler who says “Very good, sir,” or a criminal henchman named Rocko. Let me share some verbatim dialogue from my local record store. Me: “Where do you keep the James Brown albums?” The clerk: “Yeah, we’re not that kind of record store.” Verbatim! Once upon a time this would have infuriated me. Now it makes me feel excited, like I’m a little kid visiting the Indie World exhibit at Epcot.
By now Ally’s been here almost as long as I have. We’ve been here long enough to see the deli around the corner go from Lucky Seven to Beer Mania to Kestane Kebab. We run into friendly people everywhere, including people who drifted up from Virginia; my first set of neighbors in Brooklyn heard my voice through the walls and recognized it as one they’d heard on the radio in Charlottesville. In retrospect I know that my previous failed attempt at making a home for myself was my fault, not that neighborhood’s. I guess that place was a crate I packed myself into so I could mail myself to a saner, safer moment in the future. And I guess this is it. Ally and I have made a crate full
of memories here. We have heard a lot of music here, seen a lot of bands. We make new memories in new songs. We hear the old songs and we tell each other stories about places we’ve been and strange things we’ve seen. All those people, all those lives, where are they now? They’re in us and here we are.
IF ALL MUSIC DID WAS bring the past alive, that would be fine. You can hide away in music and let it recapture memories of things that used to be. But music is greedy and it wants more of your heart than that. It demands the future, your future. Music wants the rest of your life. So you can’t rest easy. At any moment, a song can come out of nowhere to shake you up, jump-start your emotions, ruin your life.
You might be tempted to feel it’s too late for you. But ultimately, that’s what karaoke is there to remind us. It’s never too late to let a song ruin your life.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Writing a book is a journey, and as they say, a journey of a thousand miles begins with one step. Then another step. Then about twenty minutes of sitting on the ground saying, “Steps suck. Where’s the bus?” The point is, journeys are complicated and friends are the best. So thank you to everybody who has helped me.
My genius editor Carrie Thornton kept inspiring me to sing my life with her unbounded brilliance. My genius agent Daniel Greenberg brought all the relentless energy he exhibits while air-drumming along with Sticky Fingers. Thanks to all the great people at It Books, especially Cal Morgan, Kevin Callahan, Michael Barrs, Shannon Donnelly, Heidi Metcalfe, Tina Andreadis, Brittany Hamblin, Shannon Plunkett, and Jarrod Taylor. Thanks as well to Brian Tart, Phil Budnick, Amanda Walker, Christine Ball, Carrie Swetonic, Jay Sones, Monika Verma, Gregg Kulick, and everyone at Levine Greenberg.
Gavin Edwards read countless drafts of this book with all the wisdom, cheer, and patience he brings to listening to me sing “Hot Legs.” He is the Freddie Mercury in the “Under Pressure” duet of my life. Thanks, Gavin.
One of the smartest moves I made as a young lad was picking Joe Levy as my hero. I’m always aiming to make him glad he taught me to write. He offered sage advice on every line of this book and helped keep me sane, as he always has. Thanks, Joe.
Gratitude to all my comrades in song, especially Caryn Ganz, queen of noise. Nils Bernstein, for the rebellious jukebox in his soul. Jennie Boddy, for endless love as well as “Endless Love.” Marc Weidenbaum, for the ukelele. My friend, brother, and teacher Joe Gross, for knowing what to do. Jenny Eliscu, for the night we did “Let Me Blow Ya Mind.” Melissa Eltringham, for the night we did “Dim All the Lights.” Chuck Klosterman, who beats the drums of my brainpan like Alex Van Halen attacking a flaming gong.
My colleagues at Rolling Stone, past and present, are always an inspiration. Will Dana is both the Donald Fagen and the Walter Becker of magazine editors, and writing for him is a countdown to ecstasy. Sean Woods is the man. Alison Weinflash has profoundly influenced my thinking about Rush and much else. (Including the fact that David Coverdale had a brunette period. Don’t even.) Andy Greene combines endless erudition with endless curiosity, which in his case adds up to endless wisdom. Thanks to Bill Crandall, Alexis Sottile, Christian Hoard, Jon Dolan, Simon Vozick-Levinson, Monica Herrera, Nathan Brackett, Brian Hiatt, Jonathan Ringen, Josh Eels, Coco McPherson, Jonah Weiner, Tom Walsh, John Dioso, Eric Bates, Gaylord Fields, Marielle Anas, and David Fricke. Very special thanks, as always, to Jann Wenner.
Thanks to Jim Steinman for writing “Total Eclipse of the Heart.” Thanks to Bonnie Tyler for singing the hell out of it. And that guy in the video with the glowing eyeballs. You frighten me. But thank you. Rebecca Odes and Craig Marks for “99 Luftballons” in 2001. Alex Pappademas for singing “No Scrubs” at the same party. Everyone from Rock ‘n’ Roll Fantasy Camp, especially David Fishof, Ed Hill, and my bandmates in the Unfair Advantage. And the long-suffering yet impeccably professional staff of Sing Sing.
For checking my head in a thousand ways, I embrace Matthew Perpetua, Darcey Steinke, Kevin O’Donnell, Sean Howe, Chris Molanphy, Evie Nagy, Jeffrey Stock, Allison Frank, Sasha Frere-Jones, Tanya Selvaratnam, Sarah Durham Wilson (of Daily Do It Girl), Jen Sudul Edwards (for “White Rabbit”), Lizzy Goodman (I knew you were trouble when you walked in), Doree Shafrir, Niki Kanodia, Maria Sherman, Caryn Palmieri, Douglas A. Martin, Asif Ahmed, Bill Tipper, Michaelangelo Matos, Melissa Maerz, Phil Dellio, Julie Klausner, Ed Park, Nick Catucci, Andrew Beaujon (for his trenchant commentary on Rod Stewart), Brian Raftery (for his excellent and informative history Don’t Stop Believin’), Jonathan Lethem (did you read his Talking Heads book? holy crap), Robert Grossman (for “Highway to Hell”), Dr. Liz Leininger (for dropping frog science), Arun Amar, Alfred Soto, Mark Oppenheimer, Thomas Inskeep, Anna Mello, Mr. James Hejduk, Radha Metro, Stephanie Bird, Phil LaMarr, Katherine Profeta, Dan Snierson, Andrew Jaffe, John Gould, Marc Spitz, Sarah Grant, Tom Nawrocki, Laura Larson (she is the champions), Caitlin Wittlif, Rebecca Keith, Melissa Febos, Marisa and Dave Bettencourt, Ellen Carney White, Karen Spirito Augustyn, Stephanie Wells, Bernie Kaminski, Hilary Spiegelman, Amanda Verdon, Isabelle George Rosett, everybody at WTJU, everybody at Enid’s (where they like Sandinista! even more than I do), plus Tyler Magill (“cows are the silent jury in the trial of mankind”), Adam Busch, and Josh Krahn for letting me sing onstage with them at Tokyo Rose in the spring of 2000.
Robert Christgau and Greil Marcus, the greatest rock critics ever, must get weary of being mentioned in the same sentence so often but I guess that’s the price of being the greatest ever at something. They were the ones who made me want to write about music and all these years later they’re still the best. What a stroke of luck to discover their words at a young age.
Thanks to the gentlemen of Duran Duran: Simon Le Bon, Nick Rhodes, John Taylor, Roger Taylor, as well as Wendy Laister and Katy Krassner. The Beta Band, for giving me my opening line with “The Hard One.” Taylor Swift, for turning my nieces into guitarists and songwriters. The Brazilian guy sitting two tables behind me in the coffee shop who “couldn’t help” noticing I was typing about Neil Peart and spent twenty minutes telling me how many times he’s seen Rush. You epitomize that which is awesome in all of us. And Spandau Ballet, for urging me to take my seaside arms and write the next line.
Since the topic of alcohol comes up a time or two in these pages, a salute to my sober karaoke commandos for always putting the “riot” in “sobriety.”
Musicians are the greatest. Thanks to everyone who strums a guitar, bangs a drum, toots a horn, licks a flute, bothers a piano, presses record on a boombox. Thanks to every DJ who played that song that time and every band who demolished that room and every scribe who spread the word and every fan who showed up and shut their phone off and felt the noise. Like Joe Strummer used to say, we are the Clash. Silence is the bad guy and silence is gonna lose.
R.I.P. Adam Yauch, Teddy Pendergrass, Luther Vandross, Eugene Record, Poly Styrene, Alex Chilton, Davy Jones, Donna Summer—so many of the great voices I breathe in whenever I sing their songs. R.I.P. lots of cool people. Nobody’s forgotten you, trust me. R.I.P. Teena Marie and thanks for “Lovergirl.”
My deepest gratitude and love goes to my family. This book is dedicated to the three women who made me lucky: Ann Sheffield, Tracey Mackey, and Caroline Hanlon. My sisters were the first voices I ever sang with. I always hear their voices in my head and carry them in my heart. There is nobody else in the world like them, not even their rock-star daughters, and I thank them for their awe-inspiring love and support and patience. Thanks to my beloved mom and dad, Mary and Bob Sheffield, for giving me my sisters and the rest of the world. Thanks to Charlie, Sarah, Allison, David, and Bryant Mackey; Sydney, Jack, Maggie, Mallory, and John Hanlon; John Grub; Drema Gross; Buddy and Nadine Crist; all the Twomeys, Sheffields, Durfers, Govers, Courtneys and the rest of my family. Thanks to Donna Needham for “Super Trouper.” Thanks to Sean, Jake and Joe Needham; Jonathan, Karianne, Ashley and Amber Polak; Tony and Shirley Viera.
Most of all, thanks to Ally, my favorite thing ab
out the universe, for inspiring me, for never getting tired of watching the “Church of the Poison Mind” video, for sharing this planet and its music with me forever. I just wanna be your lovergirl. I just wanna rock your world.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ROB SHEFFIELD is a columnist for Rolling Stone, where he has been writing about music, TV, and pop culture since 1997. He is the author of two national bestsellers, Love Is a Mix Tape: Love and Loss, One Song at a Time and Talking to Girls About Duran Duran: One Young Man’s Quest for True Love and a Cooler Haircut. He also appears regularly on VH1. He lives with his wife in Brooklyn.
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ALSO BY ROB SHEFFIELD
LOVE IS A MIX TAPE
TALKING TO GIRLS ABOUT DURAN DURAN
COPYRIGHT
TURN AROUND BRIGHT EYES. Copyright © 2013 by Rob Sheffield. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-0-06-220762-3
EPub Edition June 2013 ISBN 9780062207647
Turn Around Bright Eyes Page 21
