Thirty-eight years is a long time in a son’s life. Half an average lifetime, in fact. And no matter what period a person lives in, a lot of things change in that time.
In the summer of 1967, when I was 16, I somehow talked my Dad into giving me the car for the night. He must have been suitably nervous: My plan was to go to my first rock concert at a huge auditorium in a big city 30 miles away. A simple plan, really. But to complicate matters, I was going on a hot date and if my memory isn’t playing tricks, I think a couple of my buddies rode along in the back seat.
Raised on a farm northwest of Stratford, Ontario, driving around Kitchener looking for the “Aud” was, for me, like trying to find Times Square in New York.
I had tickets to see a band called The Turtles, a popular Beatles-type group from the United States that had a few big hits around that time. I can’t remember what the tickets cost, but I’m guessing they were under $10 each. The band wore suits, like the Beatles, were polite as boys from a church choir and used not one word of profanity.
I don’t remember what The Turtles sang that night, beyond their signature song, So Happy Together.
“I can’t see me lovin’ nobody but you, for all my life …
“When you’re with me, baby the skies will be blue, for all my life …”
Catchy tune. Great sentiment. I think it expressed exactly how I felt about the girl sitting not too far away from me on the bench seat of my parents’ green ’65 Chev Biscayne as we drove home from the concert.
Fast forward almost 40 years, and my son, who is nine, prepares to go to his first rock concert in Stratford. His buddies are all going. His date is a few years older and calls herself Mom. He does not, however, get permission to borrow the car. He wants to see his favourite band – Simple Plan.
Before he leaves, I tell my boy that I was almost double his age before I attended my first rock concert. That I went to see The Turtles. That they sang a song called So Happy Together. He listens, a bit amazed, l think, to consider the idea that his dad would have ever attended a rock concert.
Waiting up till he and his date come home, l want to hear all about his night. It was quite a bit different from my first concert. Not a suit in sight. A band called Sum 41 supplied all the pre-teens in the area with all the bad words they’ll need to know for the next 50 years, 41 apparently standing for the sum of all the swear words they can yell from a stage in every 60-second period.
But finally, Simple Plan came on. My son and his pals were ecstatic. Finally, they would hear live the band they’ve listened to on CDs for the past year.
The first song they performed?
So Happy Together, by The Turtles.
Funny, I thought, that my son and I would both hear our heroes sing the same song at our first rock concerts, almost four decades apart.
That was about the only similarity in our experiences, however. Unless memory fails, I don’t recall the lead singer of the Turtles getting beaned on the side of the head by a bottle thrown from the crowd and having to go to the hospital.
Times do change, I guess.
I miss the Turtles. And bench seats in the front area of cars.
And sometimes, that girl.
We were so happy together that night. For most of all the nights we’ve lived since that one, we’ve been happy apart.
The Universe decides these things.
©2005 Jim Hagarty
