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Its the rear-view mirror
effect. When one looks back, objects tend to
appear larger than they really are. It isn't
necessarily fate or synchronicity, it's just that
certain things fall away and others are
magnified, foreshadowing what follows like key
points in a play, the narrative of one's life.
But, then again, life is a narrative. Someone
said that's why so many of us are running around
writing songs and stories and plays, because
we're trying to make sense of our lives by
enhancing that narrative.
The first record I ever
bought was Bob Dylan's 'Nashville Skyline'. I
remember it was a windy autumn day, and my father
and I had stopped in at a garage sale on the way
home from the drug store. I used to love going on
errands with my father, even at that age, which
must have been 12 or 13. I'd played piano when I
was small, but I'd recently picked up guitar and
begun to get into music again, stuff that I
considered much hipper than 'Born Free' or
Brahms, the pieces I was assigned in piano
lessons. There was something else out there, and
I could hear it, muffled but clear, through the
wall between my brother and myself, shadows of
Dylan, the Beatles, the Stones. The garage was
dusty, and there was the usual run of junk
scattered about, books and records piled up on an
old folding card table. The cold concrete floor
chilled my toes through my sneakers, and I rocked
on my feet as I picked up the Dylan record; which
was lying on the top. He looked friendly enough
on the cover, tipping his hat as if to say,
'here's a great way to start, sonny boy.' I
turned the record over and saw a picture of
Nashville, the skyline quoted in the record's
title.,While I knew a little bit about Dylan, I
knew less about Nashville. But, the,record only
put me out 25 cents and I had little to lose
I took the disc home and
played it on my Dad's hi-fi. It took me aback;
Dylan didn't sound anything like the Dylan I had
heard through the wall., instead, his voice was
deep and affected and if I didn't know better,
sounded,like he was impersonating Kermit the
Frog. The background was decidedly country,and as
if to underscore the point, the opening cut was a
rickety duet with, Johnny Cash, both singers
hitting notes somewhere between the scale, and I
don't think they were operating with the intent
or precision of those Arabic vocalists who go for
that sort of thing. In fact, I remember being
curious as to why Dylan would duet with someone
as square as Johnny Cash, the Man in Black. Come
on! The Man was on T.V. all the time, for God's
sake! I listened a few times, and put it away.
The album didn?t make much of an impact on me. Or
so I thought. A few years later I was writing
tunes and playing in a teenage rock and roll
band, and although we played music inspired by
the likes of the Clash and Elvis Costello, two
highlights of our set were adolescent (fast fast
and faster) versions of 'Shelter from the Storm'
and 'I Threw it all Away,' a tune from 'Nashville
Skyline'. We transformed the latter tune from a
melancholy song of regret to an angry declaration
of teen angst. That was the problem with our
band. Every song, no matter how subtly intended,
became an angry declaration of teen angst. 'I
Threw it All Away' was one of the tunes we
considered cutting in our first ever recording
session, but it was deep-sixed for a couple of
originals. I remember things went well because we
did two songs in one day at a big-time Chicago
studio and when we finished Saturday evening, I
immediately hopped into my car, picked up my
friend Rhonda for a road trip. We decided to head
to Nashville and after an all-night drive, wound
up in the Music City in the early hours of the
morning. My first view of the skyline was not all
that different from the one pictured on Dylan?s
famous album cover, although this was some twenty
years after the fact. Rhonda and I had breakfast
at a joint Elvis could've eaten at, it was full
of the kind of local flavor we imagined to be
lurking at every corner in this colloquial
southern town. Besides the ghost of Elvis, we
expected to see seersucker suits.. After
breakfast, we went down town, which was deserted,
and sat on steps overlooking the Cumberland,
still and listless under the early morning sun,
water lapping gently against a single riverboat
docked at the banks. Rhonda and I were great
friends, but being a young guy in a band full of
songs declaring teen angst, I couldn't help but
have a bit more in mind. She may have, too,
because after we found a hotel, she suggested we
go out and get a bottle of wine to celebrate.
But, no one was selling...blue laws, you know.
Next time I made it to
Nashville was with my second band. This time we
played a kind of rock-country-folk blend, not
unlike the type of thing Dylan was doing on his
early records. He was my musical idol by this
time and this band wore other influences proudly
on our guitar straps, covering the likes of
Johnny Cash, Gram Parsons, and Hank Williams Sr..
We decided to master our first record in the
Music City and witness the process in person, a
good excuse for a road trip, as well as homage to
our new adopted roots. I didn't know until years
later that Dylan cut 'Blonde on Blonde' and
'Nashville Skyline' in the building across the
street from where we sat and listened over and
over to our well-intentioned but tepid
imitations.
The next day, we drove up
to Hendersonville and visited the House of Cash,
and then went looking for Johnny's actual house.
I remember heading down a steep hill in a big
white station wagon, one of the guys in the back
holding a boom box and playing 'I Walk the Line'
over and over again. We all thought Johnny was
the hippest there was, in many ways even hipper
than Bob. If you put him in context, especially,
as to when he came on the scene, it was
remarkable. The man was so original, it sounded
as if he was dropped from the moon onto an
unsuspecting and barren earthen musical
landscape. When we arrived at his gates, we
parked the car and stood outside for a few
minutes staring at the big house, wondering if he
was home. We drove out of our way, south into
Nashville again before heading back home to
Chicago, because our drummer wanted to get a
picture of the Nashville skyline. He wanted to
match the album cover best he could.
The third time I came to
Nashville, it was in a moving van with my
girlfriend Molly and our heavily sedated cat,
Aurora. There were many changes in the Skyline,
and in a sense, it barely existed. There was a
huge bat building sticking up in the middle of
it, and since then, a football stadium has risen
into view, albeit skeletal and incomplete. In
fact if you pick up a copy of the CD version of
'Nashville Skyline', they've taken the picture of
the Skyline off the back. It figures. Then again,
Bob has been missing at times, as well, left for
dead only to emerge triumphant with 'Time out Of
Mind'. The same for Johnny, who emerged
triumphant with 'Unchained', and now, sadly,
suffers from health problems of his own. The
funny thing is I now drive by an imitation of
that picture I saw so many years ago, in that
cold autumnal garage, nearly every day. I've
played a gig on the riverfront where Rhonda and I
sat, mastered a couple records of my own across
the street from where Bob invaded Columbia
Studios, and witnessed the ghost of Elvis at
least one time. I saw Springsteen at the Ryman,
Bill Monroe at the Opry, and Emmylou Harris at
the baseball game. Molly and I got married at the
courthouse and we live in a duplex in front of
the guy who wrote 'Sunday Will Never Be the Same'
for Spanky and Our Gang. Music is everywhere
here, and I can finally understand exactly what
Dylan wanted to show the world when he presented
that picture of the Nashville Skyline and tipped
his hat in a fashion both mocking and reverent.
In an undefiniable sort of way, I feel like I'm
in the place I should be, and more importantly, a
place where I can feed off the lineage and do my
best to carry a small piece of the torch. I'm
also happy to say the blue laws aren't nearly as
strict as they used to be.
©Doug Hoekstra 1999
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