A while back I replaced the battery in my 1965 Chevy truck. I attached the cables, sat down in the cab and turned the engine over. After a couple of attempts, the engine cranked and Bessie (that’s her name) started up. As I put my foot on the gas pedal, I decided to turn up the radio. Yes, it’s a sweet Alpine stereo with a cassette option hooked up to 2 cheap speakers from the early 90s. I didn’t install this “booming system”, it came with the truck when I bought it off of Ebay a few years ago. Try not to be jealous.
The song that came on, starting from the first note as I turned on the radio, was “Sweet Child Of Mine” by G-N-R. If you are too young to know the song, I am sorry. I’m not going to write a paragraph on the history of the band. Let’s just say, a good stretch of my adolescence was spent trying to scream and hold the word “home” as I sang “Paradise City”. You know I’m not alone and you are doing this in your head as we speak.
Some of the best memories from childhood were of watching my brother Michael play pool and video games at the Eagles Nest. It was a fast food restaurant/arcade that was right across from the high school we went to in Johnson City, Texas. Like the coolest guy in the world, my brother Michael would slide a few quarters in the jukebox, grab a pool stick and break the rack almost to the beat of “Sweet Child of Mine”. Like Axl Rose grabbing the mic to sing, my brother began to run the table; knocking ball after ball into the pocket as he chalked his cue while constantly surveying the table, looking for his next shot. All the while, mouthing the words to the song. Straight out of a movie. Some people had The Fonz or Tom Cruise. I had Michael James Francis Murphy-the coolest mother fucker on the planet.
I couldn’t help but tear up, smile and laugh at the same time. As I revved the engine on my old Chevy truck, I could feel my brother sitting next to me in the passenger seat. Believe in God, don’t believe in God, that’s your call. My brother was with me at that moment, giving me some sort of reassurance and reminding me how important music was and still is in our relationship.
When we were kids, we devised ways of screwing over Columbia House with those “16 albums for a penny” deals. With every penny sent in under a different fake name, our music collection grew. We never paid for the 2 albums you were supposed to buy at regular price. I’m sure the Murphy kids were the ones that put that place out of business!
I can sync up most of my childhood memories with a song or an artist. I’m sure you can too. A few examples….my dad insisting that we serenade my mom on Friday nights with Beatles songs and the perfectly choreographed Murphy kid version of “Breaking up his hard to do” by Neil Sedaka. At age 8, I was the only kid allowed to move the needle on the record, when my father would have a few drinks and insist on listening to Hoyt Axton songs as loud as the speakers could go. Perhaps the start of my DJ career? Washing the truck in Iowa, while listening to “Guitar Town” by Steve Earle and “End of the line” by The Traveling Wilburys on repeat. County road hood surfing to “California Girls”. My brother and I were shocked one day when my dad came home and made us go buy a song he saw/heard on MTV during his lunch break. The song? “Fight for your right (to party)” by the Beastie boys. Dad liked rap music?! We didn’t question it, we just seized the opportunity to rock out with our dad and add another song to the collection.
That list doesn’t even scratch the surface on the importance of music and how we grew up. The songs don’t need to be grand or meaningful with lyrics, as long as they connect with you and a certain period of your life. Like many people in radio, I can hear a song from the past 20 years (about the length of my radio career) and tell you where I was working when I first played it on the radio.
Girlfriends each had a song attached to them-and it wasn’t always “our song”. Sometimes, it was a breakup song or a song that maybe they don’t know that we attached to them (“I used to love her, but I had to kill her”).
Songs change in meaning as you get older and life changes. Songs that were written with the original intent of how a guy feels about a woman, change after you have kids. I still have songs that make me think of my wife but, but since becoming a father, I have found more songs remind or cause me to reflect upon my children.
There are those songs that will always remind me of my brother. He will always and forever be tethered to all things G-N-R, but I can’t help but change the gender of the lyrics in the song to reflect my brother and how much we all miss him.
“She’s got a smile it seems to me
Reminds me of childhood memories
Where everything
Was as fresh as the bright blue sky
Now and then when I see her face
She takes me away to that special place
And if I’d stare too long
I’d probably break down and cry”
Axl Rose may have been a son of a bitch, but he sure could write a song.
