Music Lives Forever (and So Do We)

Lita Ford in concert at the McGrath Amphitheatre, Cedar Rrapids, IA. Living proof that Rock and Roll Will Never Die.

Music brings a sort of immortality, at least to those who write and perform the music. Each generation has brought its own genre of “musical rebellion” into our society and culture. The youth of the day claim the music as their own, despite protests by the older generation about the quality of the music or the lifestyles of the musicians.

When we are young and full of vigor and rebelliousness, we tend to lock onto anything that reinforces our sense that we are special, we are not going to end up like the older generation. We will be unique individuals who won't bow down to the expectations of convention. Rather, we will make our marks on society and history by following new paths, with our favorite songs being the anthems we sing along the way.

A big part of how we establish our individuality is by listening to and loving the same songs that thousands, even millions of others listen to and love to establish their individuality. Hey, we are all human, and humans are at essence social animals.

Yet those songs do establish the “us” as being somewhat unique. They become woven into our lives and our identities as surely as what we are taught in school or the things we learn from living every day with our parents. Perhaps more so, because there are times where the songs represent what we WANT our lives to be, not the reality we have to deal with. Music can offer an escape from the mortality of a life of boredom or worse, abuse. For the brief moments we listen to our favorite songs or albums, we are forever young and free and immortal.

We get to our fifties, sixties or seventies and listen to those same songs we loved in our teens, twenties or thirties and our minds are flooded with memories of our youth. Music is like that. It can set memories ablaze as few other sensory inputs can. Personally, every time I hear a given Moody Blues (my favorite group) song, images fill my mind of the first time I heard the song, or other events tied to the song in some way. Even some painful memories, soothed by the passage of time, become bittersweet when I listen to an old song that had an impact on my life.

This illusion of youth and immortality, on the part of both the musicians and their fans, is probably a big reason why many keep touring, even after their voices have lost some range and power, they can no longer prance about the stage as they used to, and they just plain look too much like grandpa or grandma to maintain the image of the musician our parents hated when we were younger.

Many of us embraced certain groups in our youth for the very reason that they represented some sort of rebellion against the staid, old culture and values that our parents and grandparents represented. We reveled in the idea that our parents hated our favorite groups, from the style of music to the way they dressed. We smiled in secret (or not so secret) joy whenever the words “I can't stand their music. Why do you even listen to them?” come from the mouths of our beleaguered mothers and fathers.

Now some of those Musical Icons of Rebellion look like the sort of people our parents would invite to dinner.

Sure, onstage they maintain the sort of persona that they did 20, 30 or even 50 years ago. But offstage, the wrinkles become more apparent, and they just can't howl at the moon like the used to. Age has caught up with them in most of their lives, except for their music. It's the fact that when we hear their songs, or see them perform, we can share in that sense of immortal, eternal youth that was part of the kernel from which their musical sensibilities arose.

Take Lita Ford as an example. When she and her fellow members of “The Runaways” hit the scene in 1975, they represented something that those in “proper society” frowned upon: hard rocking women who were not ashamed to be open about their attitude, their sexuality and their strengths. The looked the male-dominated rock scene (and society) square in the eye and said “F*** YOU”. The Runaways were scary and sexy and dangerous and reassuring all at once, letting us know that those “bad girls” were dug or were in high school and college were not the whores and misfits our parents and school principals and pastors portrayed them as.

The Runaways were women who decided to be who they were, not who others expected them to be. The rest of us realized that was a message we needed to hear and embrace in our own lives. Yes, that was the original intent of nearly every conic rock group, to declare that they were new, different and unique. Sometimes that message caught on and influenced an entire generations, and other times the uniqueness was only appreciated by a small body of fans.

Then we fast forward back to our own lives as middle aged, parents and grandparents. We realize we are the same sort of people we defied and made fun of when we were in our teens and twenties. We can watch our own kids or grand kids dig Lady Gaga and think “I can't stand her music. Why do you even listen to her?” and justify that odd sort of irony by digging out our favorite oldies and saying “Now this is REAL music.”

That, in essence, is what musical immortality and eternal youth are, immersing ourselves in an unchanging reality that for the few minutes that “Cherry Bomb” or “Nights in White Satin” or “Under Pressure” or any one of thousands of other hits is playing, WE are the young person tuning out the cries of our parents to “turn that crap down”. We are who we thought we would always be when we were young: ever the youthful, hip, rebellious types who would never end up like our parents.

That's why seeing our icons of our youth perform as though they-and us-are still in our teens or twenties is so important our psyches. Seeing Lita Ford give the same sort of show she gave 30 years ago gives credence to the idea that “you're as young as you feel”. Hearing her perform “Cherry Bomb” with the same sass and vigor she displayed 40 years ago makes people realize that just as she and others said years ago that they weren't going to change who they were to please anyone, they haven't. As Lita haughtily sang “Hello daddy, hello mom, I'm your ch-ch-ch-ch cherry bomb!” I realized once again that my parents WERE wrong about the sort of girl I should date and someday marry. Hell, they were wrong about several things that what would make my life “successful”.

It's the times that have changed. Rebellion became fashion, to become the status quo. That's what transformed the songs of Lita Ford, or The Stones, or David Bowie from that music our parents demanded we turn down to classic, musical icons which represent what is now a normal part of society. (That, and the almost ambivalent idea that yesterday's rebellious rockers invariably become mainstays, then classic acts, without ever changing who they are. That's because in the end, the money controls what a lot of musicians can or cannot do.)

So, every time we listen to an old classic, we return to that moment when it first became a part of our lives, something that identified us as who we were, and are, as individuals. That's because, even though millions of other people consider that same song a favorite, no one else had the unique moment, the individual experience that occurred when they first heard that song.

No one else reacted exactly the same way I did when I heard "Cherry Bomb" for the first time, and so I and millions of others have a one-up bond to that, and so many other songs, which has in some way had a lifelong influence. "Cherry Bomb" invited me to appreciate a certain young woman at my high school in ways I hadn't before.

That's one reason why some songs are so special, so important. They are songs which just "do it" for us and make us stop whatever we are doing and turn up the radio when they come on. It's a part of who we were, and are, being replayed for 3 minutes, and we want to enjoy that sense of immortal, eternal youth as best we can.

It's this living embodiment within the lives of everyone who hears and comes to cherish a song that results in immortality for the performer. By extension, we revisit our youth, and so we come to love the songs even more.

Our kids or grand kids may appreciate the musicians we loved when we were their age, or they may say “I can't stand her music. How can you even listen to her?”

When we hear that, we can just smile, turn up the volume, and realize that in 20 or 30 or 50 years, they will be asking the same of their kids and grand kids, quite possibly when they have dug up old recordings from the 60s and 70s and rediscovered groups that made us all feel immortal and forever young when we first heard them.