The Growing Up Years

This is a special song if only for the fact that its arrangement consists of just Simon (sorry, Landis) and his semi-acoustic guitar. It's also a thoughtful rumination on adolescence.

George Carlin said that he resented being told to "Have a nice day." It put pressure on him, he fumed: "Now I've got to go out and somehow manage to have a good time!"

Our speaker feels the same sort of pressure to go find a party or something. "People all say, 'Laugh and be gay!/ Youth is the time for fun and pleasure.'" The adults around him wish to live vicariously through his winsome exploits, no doubt. But his mind is on more serious (ahem) matters.

Then another adult, one in more immediate authority, tells him to only focus other serious matters. "Dad tells me we can't go steady." His father tells him to limit his attention to schoolwork... and not to get too involved too young: "Don't try your wings before you're ready."

Faced with this intractable fate, our speaker does resigns himself, and breaks up with his girlfriend. "Now you and I must say goodbye/ There's nothing else we can do."

However, there is still a longing-- "How can I ever live without you?"-- and with it comes a resistance to his father's ironclad rule.

After all, time is on his side. While "long are the growing-up years," on the one hand, they will eventually result in his... actually growing up. And "strong is the ache in my heart." This convinces him to play the long game, and consider the break-up a temporary status, one to be reconciled once he reaches adulthood. "...when we're grown, you'll be my own," he vows, "Never, no never to part."

Now, we adults know that this is unlikely. Yes, there are cases in which high-school sweethearts wed. But in general, once college keeps two young adults in separate time zones for four years, such passions cool. Since they can't be with the one they love, as the CSN song goes, they love the one they're with.

"Youth is wasted on the young," sighed Shaw, sounding like one of the adults in the song urging teens to sow their wild oats. But this teen doesn't even have time for that. He's making some very grown-up commitments that he can't even keep because of his schooling.

It's a shame that his father can't see that his goal-- preparing his son for adult life-- is being done in a limited way. Yes, part of being an adult is getting a degree, finding a job, and making a living.

But another major part is making a life! The relationship he's being deprived of would mature him in other, equally important ways.

Chances are good that his serious young man will seriously pursue the young woman he is so serious about, once he gets the freedom to do so. This might be one of the times high-school sweethearts weather the storms of college and do end up together.

For now, maybe he should have his dad talk to his mom. She'd set the old man straight.


Next Song: I Can Feel It Happening to Me

Teenage Blue

Sometimes poets know things before scientists can prove them. We now have a copious body of evidence that shows that the adolescent mind is quite undeveloped, and swimming with hormones. We have sociology and psychology backing this up with reams of observations about adolescent behavior patterns, plus news stories with tragic endings for anecdotal evidence.

But the songwriters were asking "Why must I be a teenager in love?" long before that.

Simon, on this track, puts it thus: "There's nothing bluer than teenage blue." Teen emotions are intensified, and without experience-- or a fully-formed frontal lobe-- to mitigate them them, they soar and dive like kites in a storm.

"There is no love like teenage love/ there's nothing truer than teenage true," our speaker begins, in the grand tradition of starting a discourse with a grand pronouncement (as does this blogpost. Hey, if it ain't broke...)

Naturally, this is, then, personalized to "you"-- the woman he is addressing. Since he has already used the word "blue," we know this is not a happy conversation: "My love for you was teenage love," he says, as we notice the sad past tense.

What happened? "We quarreled and said we were through." After one fight? Clearly, we are dealing with relationship amateurs. "And now I'm feeling teenage blue." Which, as was stated, is the worst kind of blue.

What was the issue? We don't know. All we have is the line "there's nothing truer than teenage true." So maybe he is just saying that he will still hold their love dear even though they parted. Or maybe he is saying, "Well, I was true..."

In any case, even this adolescent has the self-awareness to make the following set of observations: "Maybe if I were older/ I wouldn't feel so sad," which is probably the case, given the above-mentioned research. But, "You know you are my first love/ And it hurts real bad." It is a given that the first time having any experience is heightened by unfamiliarity, so this is also probably the case.

Further so is the notion that "I will love you through all the years." This first impression of passion will likely be intense enough to keep the memory of the feeling intact for a lifetime. Said more simply, can anyone forget their first love?

The mind, like the body, strives after balance and homeostasis. 'I am sad because the girl is gone,' it thinks, 'but if she comes back, the sadness will stop.' "OK, mouth, do your thing and make the pain stop," the brain instructs. So the voice sings: "Say you still love me, I beg of you/ Don't leave me feeling teenage blue."

That may work. But he's going to have to woo her back with something more about what he has to offer if she does, rather than what she has to offer him-- a return to the status quo... which generated the rift to begin with. As a certain president might put it: Ask not how your girlfriend can stop you from being sad, but how you can keep her happy.

Simon has, by this point, been working through images of loneliness, heartache, and heartbreak for a number of songs. Here, he really nails it. The song balances poetry and straightforwardness, with its one clever way of turning a phrase. The simple melody and affecting delivery allow the purity of the sadness to be palpable.

This is one of his best early works, and it's a shame it's not even on YouTube. The only place I found it was, of all places, a celebrity website called "Who's Dated Who?" A site dedicated to chronicling past romances, as it turns out, is not a bad resting place for such a long to land.

Next Song: Educated Fool

Motorcycle (Motor Cycle)

The only reason anyone remembers the short-lived act Tico and The Triumphs these days is that Simon was in the group... and he wasn't even Tico! That was the nickname of a guy named Marty Cooper. Sorry, Marty! While Cooper sang on many tracks, Simon took the lead this time. 

(Allmusic.com wrongly has Simon as Tico. The Marc Eliot biography of Simon, I think unfairly, does not mention either the band or Cooper in its index.) 

To be fair, the band did crack the Top 100, reaching #97 with this song in 1962. 

Motorcycles had been a major part of pop culture, or perhaps counter-culture, at least since Marlon Brando rode one to fame in 1953's The Wild One. Elvis quickly followed the next year with his movie Roustabout. The next famous film focused on them was 1969's Easy Rider, also a counter-culture landmark. In 1972, Marvel Comics debuted its undead anti-hero Ghost Rider . Today, the most popular entertainment centered on motorcycle culture is TV's Sons of Anarchy. 

Still, the most famous motorcycle song has to be the Shangri-La’s cautionary tale “Leader of the Pack.” Simon beat that one by two years; it came out in 1964.

This song starts with the sound of a motorcycle zooming past, followed by that pursed-lip sound (a "raspberry," minus the tongue) often made in imitation of engines. 

As it says on the label, the song is about a motorcycle. Also, the freedom of motorcycle riding: "Every day after school I'm a motorcycle fool... From here all around to the other side of town... you can't catch a motorcycle when he wants to go."

In his song "Mercury Blues," Steve Miller wins, then loses, the affection of a woman to the driver of a Mercury car... so he promises to buy two. Here, too, the speaker's relationship seems to depend on his vehicle. The first verse has the line "Driving with my baby," and the second starts with the invitation: "Come on with me, baby, on my red motorcycle."

The bike is also the reason for the speaker's local fame: "Everywhere I go everybody's gotta know," "Everywhere I go there's a motorcycle sound," and "Don't you know me, I'm cool!" It seems more than just a part of his identity, but the source of it.

(The rest of the song is a lot of "ba-ba-ba" and "yeah, yeah, yeah"... and more than a dozen mentions of the word "motorcycle.")

The song also presaged the Beach Boys' first #1 hit, the 1964 single "I Get Around," with its driving (ahem) beat and its celebration of the teenage freedom afforded by shiny, speedy wheels. Funny how they never mention helmets...

Chicago classic rock DJ Lin Brehmer has list of 20 motorcycle songs, and Simon's isn’t on it. The Neil Young’s “Unknown Legend” is, as is Allmans’ “Midnight Rider.”

Also missing is Arlo Guthrie's long shaggy-dog narrative, 1968’s "The Motorcycle Song.” While Simon is a master of rhyme, Arlo comes up with: “I don't want a pickle/ I just wanna ride on my motor-sickle.”

The after-school rider in Tico’s “Motorcycle” might sneer at the phrasing of that couplet, but he would certainly agree with its sentiment.

Next Song: I Don’t Believe Them

Satin Summer Nights

In The Capeman, the scene has now shifted to New York, and we meet some new characters. (Track 3 on the album).

Sal has been sleeping "on the roof" of his tenement. We know about the accessibility of this space from songs like "Up on the Roof."  This vantage point gives young Sal views of the sunset, but also canoodling couples. Like Carlos and Yolanda, who like to dance to old songs. We presume he sees them through a window across the street.

Then he mentions St. Lazarus, the one his mother was told by the santero, the fortune teller back in Puerto Rico, was the only force who could save him from his violent fate. Lazarus, of course, is the man Jesus brought back from the dead, so he must have something to do with changing one's fate and getting second chances.

Sal is aware that he will have to grow up at some point-- "Well, these jitterbug days I'm living/ They won't last..."-- but the question is how. He seems to enjoy the romance of the couples...and the "sound of a cappella groups" Simon spoke of in "Late in the Evening" and which provides the background for this number. He calls this a "satin summer night," a reference to the thickness of the humid air, but also its sultry sensuality.

For now, he seems to be drawn to a girl named Bernadette: "I can feel the fire in her eyes." She returns his attentions: "Be my special one/ I seen you move in from across the street/ I love the way you run."

Bernadette and Yolanda revel in the freedom and confidence they feel in their adopted country: "No more baby talk/ This is the island of Nueva York." Also, the privacy afforded by the rooftops.

So his route to manhood seems set, and attractive at that. Find a girl, settle down, etc.

But here comes another option. It is offered by one Hernandez, who goes by "Umbrella Man," after his scepter of choice. He belittles the romance of the couples, and calls such goals small: "You little ghetto weeds/ I feel like killin' you."

Umbrella Man says there is more going on here. There is war being waged among a dozen rival gangs, he explains, listing them off. Each is centered around a different ethnicity and neighborhood, each eager to expand its territory... by violence if necessary.

Involvement in protecting oneself and the neighborhood, he feels, is inevitable: "Your future's locked in mine." He is a member of the local Puerto Rican gang, the Vampires. These other gangs look down on them--"They treat you like you're piss"-- and it's only manly to respond with a return challenge: "From the heart of the barrio, now, my brother/ We tell [them]: "Suck on this."

Umbrella Man is full of racial slurs, and he uses one on Sal to provoke a reaction, adding, "You get no respect here unless/ You belong to a bopping gang." And that adjective, we assume, means a gang willing to "bop" the other gangs a solid blow.

In conclusion, Hernandez offers Sal a choice: "You either belong, or you get hurt/ Or you can buy some protection from me." Buy protection "from" him in both senses of the word, that is-- either the protection from outsiders will come from him... or the danger he needs protecting from will.

And Umbrella Man has one more selling point-- he will fight on Sal's behalf! "If someone's got to die/ I believe in an eye for an eye/ What do you believe in, Salvador Agron?" He closes his pitch by referring to Sal as both "Mr. Agron" and "Senor Agron" to drive home that this is a choice of ethnic and adult pride.

Sal, young though he may be, realizes that Umbrella Man offers a false choice. He has already seen another way-- the way of Carlos and Yolanda, the way it could be with Bernadette.

What does he believe in? He already knows: "I believe I'm in the power of St. Lazarus." And he begs the Umbrella Man not to ruin his bliss: "Don't tear apart/ This satin summer night."

Musical Note:
Marc Anthony sings Sal's part here on the album, and played young Sal in the original production. Anthony is equally adept at acting (the movie Big Night and others) and singing, and has been a force in entertainment since the 1980s, singing on some Menudo albums. In 1999, his English-language hit "I Need to Know" hit #3, and his fourth album won a Grammy. He is the best-selling salsa singer... ever.

Oh, and he's been married to Jennifer Lopez since 2004 (although as of this writing, divorce papers have been filed).

Next song: Bernadette