Everything is All Right

"Won't you look down upon me, Jesus;
You've got to help me make a stand
You've just got to see me through another day.
My body's aching and my time is at hand,
And I won't make it any other way."  Fire and Rain, James Taylor 1970

There's a lot to a song,  isn't there?  There's the song itself--the lyrics, the melody and the instruments, but there is a universe of things swirling around those elements. There is much more to a song than the music itself.

I can remember where I was the first time I heard certain songs. Like the time in 1991 when I was sitting in my car in front of Walmart in Ft. Oglethorpe, Georgia. My wife had gone in to grab something so I was parked on the sidewalk just in front of the store. The radio played, for the first of many times, "Walking in Memphis" by Marc Cohn. I love that song on so many levels. I have the CD. It's on a Spotify playlist. I've listened to it over and over,  but I never hear it without going back to Walmart. Whenever you read what a song means, it's what the song means to the person writing. What a song means to that writer is totally different than what the song means to me.  And what the song means to me is totally different than what the song means to you. Any song has as many meanings as the persons listening to it.  "Walking in Memphis" may take you to Memphis; it takes me to Ft. Oglethorpe.

Or where I was in 1969 with my brother when I heard "Spinning Wheel" by Blood, Sweat and Tears for the first time. For you this song might be about riding a carousel or "an intriguing metaphor for the cycle of events  we go through in life" (Songfacts). For me, it's mostly about being with my brother at 102 Glenn Street in Enterprise, Alabama.  The music is just the beginning of what a song means.

If you listen to "Fire and Rain" and learn of its history, you will find a multitude of things. You'll learn that James Taylor had just gotten out of five months of drug rehab for his heroin addiction. You will learn that he had spent some time in a mental institution.  You'll find out that a good friend of his had just been killed. The  song begins with, "Just yesterday morning they let me know you were gone. Suzanne, the plans they made put an end to you. I walked out this morning and I wrote down this song, I just can't remember who to send it to."  According to online sources, Suzanne was his friend who Taylor  just learned had killed herself six months prior. This was a whole lot for a twenty two year old singer/songwriter to deal with. All of this had a profound impact on  James Taylor and he poured all of it into his song. And the song had a profound impact on me.  Just like "Walking in Memphis" takes me to Walmart, "Fire and Rain" takes me to a specific time and place. A few years ago at a real estate closing for some land my siblings and I sold in Enterprise, the title attorney asked us, "Did you know that at one time your grandfather owned nearly half of Enterprise, Alabama?" No we didn't know that. Our grandfather died before any of us were born. We knew he had "done well for himself". When knew that our grandmother who lived into her nineties, and our aunt, never worked another day in their lives,  but we  didn't know that he had owned half our hometown.  Burt Redmon knew how to turn dirt into money. Besides property he had developed all over town, on the property of his own house on College Street,  he built two different apartment buildings. If that wasn't enough income off your own property, he and my grandmother rented out a room in their house.  In other words, he leveraged every piece of real estate he bought and owned. One of those apartment buildings was a garage apartment on a slab just behind their house.  My friend Rick lived there and rented from my grandmother.  But he wasn't my friend, exactly,  he was my best friend's older brother.  I have no idea why I was there. In 1970 I was a junior at the Enterprise High School where my friend was a senior. I didn't hang out with many "upper classmen" and I certainly didn't hang out with their older brothers, so again, I don't remember why I was there.

But on that fall Alabama afternoon,  I was there. And while I was there he dropped the needle on "Fire and Rain". People tell me that I'm good with words, but I have no words for that moment. The song spilled out of those stereo speakers and wrapped around me like a warm blanket. And this was many years before the song and some of Taylor's experience landed close to home.  In the time it took for me to listen to that song,  I understood that it was good to be standing in an apartment my grandfather had built years before. I understood that it was good to be a high school student in Enterprise, Alabama.  I understood that it was good to have a friend with a brother who rented from my grandmother. I understood a lot of things.

Earlier this evening when I listened to "Fire and Rain" on my Spotify 70s playlist, I thought, "I understand." I understand that with all the weight of emotion that I feel for so many people and so many events, it's good to be here.  It's good to be on I-75 north on my way home to see my wife after a good day, a good week. It's good to be in a nice car, with a nice Bose stereo system, with a good air conditioner, listening to music from a cell phone. And it's good to remember when I was seventeen years old living in, of all places on earth, Enterprise, Alabama. And that night when I left Rick's apartment, I would have gone home to Mom and Dad, my kid sister, my funny looking dog Radcliff and my black and white cat Cherry.  "Fire and Rain" meant much to me the first time I heard it in Enterprise, Alabama and forty seven years later it meant much to me on I-75 north in Ringgold,  Georgia. A good song compresses time and space to a singularity, to a single moment.

On Sunday night August 7, 2005 Marc Cohn was leaving his concert in Denver, Colorado. As he was getting in his van a man tried to carjack them. The assailant shot Cohn in the head at point blank range. Instead of killing him instantly, the bullet lodged in his skull. He was treated and released from a local hospital. What was the singer's name who he was touring with?  Suzanne Vega. I'm so very sorry James Taylor lost his friend Suzanne. I'm so very thankful Suzanne didn't lose her friend Marc  "Won't you look down upon me Jesus. You've got to help me make a stand."  James Taylor.(1970). "And Reverend Green will be glad to see you when you haven't got a prayer. But boy you've got a prayer in Memphis." Marc Cohn(1991).  "If everything is going to be all right, then everything's all right."  David Helms, age 19 (1972)