Like most everyone born before 1980, I had amassed quite an LP collection. (For those of you who know only about iTunes when it comes to music, LPs are vinyl record albums that provided a rock-and-roll soundtrack to life for so many of us Baby Boomers.)
The first album I can remember wasn't even mine. It had been purchased by my big brother, David. When he brought it home, with its $3.57 price sticker still on the front, my mom yelled at him: "How can you waste that kind of money on some no-talent, passing fad?!" I think, to calm down, she cued up Robert Goulet's "If Ever I Would Leave You."
The Beatles proved my mom wrong, and though Don McClean would one day sing about "the day the music died," for me, and so many others, music had come alive. My tastes were about as eclectic as you could get-everything from Jethro Tull declaring "your wise men don't know how it feels to be thick as a brick" to Karen Carpenter revealing "rainy days and Mondays always get me down."
Throughout the 1970s, there was a predominant thread to my album collection; the lyrics were often as moving to me as the music, offering insights on how to live my life. Joan Armatrading's self-titled album, Jackson Browne's Late for the Sky, Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks, Joni Mitchell's Court and Spark, Bruce Springsteen's Greetings from Asbury Park, and Tom Waits' Nighthawks at the Diner were among my crates filled with vinyl.
Alas, technology was too slow for me. Through the 1980s and 1990s, my record collection followed me from Pennsylvania to Ohio to Illinois to Pennsylvania again. The travel took its toll, warping the words and music that had so inspired me. By the time it became possible to convert LPs into digital recordings for an iPod or MP3 player, there was no turntable that could make sense of my grooved vinyl. Nevertheless, the lyrics of those songs have stayed with me, far better than where I last left my car keys.
I still love music, all kinds, which is why a year or so ago I found myself watching a country music awards broadcast. Young superstar Taylor Swift was one of the performers. She sat on a small, makeshift stage in the audience, surrounded by adolescent girls. Accompanied only by her guitar, she performed a song called "Fifteen." Much as the artists of my younger days spoke to me, Swift's lyrics seemed to empower her fans as they sang along with all their might:
Back then I swore I was gonna marry him someday
But I realized some bigger dreams of mine
And Abigail gave everything she had to a boy
Who changed his mind and we both cried
'Cause when you're 15 and somebody tells you they love you
You're gonna believe them...
The message about adolescent sex-choices and consequences-seemed to resonate with every face the broadcast spotlighted. I thought of that song when I edited one of this issue's features, "Love Story" (pages 30-33). Julie Downs, like Taylor Swift, deals with that same meaningful message through a different medium. Her video has forever changed lives.
-Robert Mendelson
Executive Editor
