Today’s song challenge is “a song someone sang to you once.” How about sang to me too many times to count? If I was in a bad mood or just feeling playful, and Riley was there with his guitar, I made the same request: “Play ‘Rocky Raccoon,’ please!” I’ve shared on here before how one time when I made that request, he gave me a reproachful look.
Riley and other musicians were doing a tribute in a local bar to John Lennon in December 1980, days after the former Beatle was murdered. As much as everyone there loved playing and hearing the music, there was such a pervasive feeling of sadness among us. I couldn’t take it anymore and mouthed my request: “Rocky Raccoon.”
“That’s a McCartney song,” he answered off mic, not wanting to embarrass me.
“I know,” I said. “Please play it anyway. For me.”
He couldn’t refuse me. I don’t know about anyone else in the bar, but hearing Riley play and sing a song that always made me laugh was what I needed to keep my equilibrium that night. Whether or not John Lennon liked the song, as he once told us in a different song, Whatever gets you thru the night/It’s all right, it’s all right.
I thank Riley, always, for all the days and nights he got me through with his music and poetry, all the other artists’ music he introduced me to, his friendship and love, for sometimes testing me almost to the ends of my patience and endurance, his emotional support during my hardest times, and his ability to make me laugh.
In 2022, on the 42nd anniversary of John Lennon’s death, a group of musicians and fans gathered at the Strawberry Fields/Imagine memorial in Central Park, and there’s a video of them doing the song. I guess I’m not the only one. =)
Here’s the album version by the Beatles.
This one is tough, and I tried really hard to remember 🙁
Although I have sung songs to others and other others have sung songs to me, I have a photo of Sam under the Eiffel Tower, well, er, the 1/3 scale replica in a theme park just after the cancer diagnosis and before the treatments began. His friend who helped take care of him invited us to his work picnic outing to that park.
Sam lay on a bench next to the flower beds under that tower and sang to me, but I can’t recall the song. We had a lot of music in common including Pet Shop Boys, Erasure, etc., but I can’t remember the song. It’s sad how some memories are like that. He also did a Tina Turner impression during the drive back, which I struggled with a camera to photograph.
So, how about You Sang to Me – Marc Anthony.
It’s sad how some memories are like that.
Sometimes I think it’s a protective shield we put around ourselves because there are moments when we feel so much, too much, and we can’t, or aren’t ready to, put ourselves back in that moment. I appreciate it every time you share a memory with me, even the hard ones. We are all souls in bodies, traveling together.
I’d never heard the Marc Anthony song, and now I have, and watched the video, and I thank you for that, too.