My rock-and-roll coming of age: "This girl is a woman now"

Women in Rock series

Welcome, everyone, to a special holiday edition of the Woman in Rock series.

You’re getting this instead of the promised post on Sister Rosetta Tharpe because this author has a case of writer’s block. I’m not sure what’s going on, but I can’t seem to get past it.

I think it’s because that post touches on some pretty deep issues and my take on things may be a bit controversial.

So in time-honored fashion, I’m pivoting and focusing on myself instead.

Yes, this post is about me, a time-honored topic in my life.

Specifically, a topic suggested to me by Chris Bro at the always excellent Shaped by Sound, who asked me to write a guest post on my life in music.

Why find a topic when you can steal it wholesale from a fellow Substack author?

As this indicates, in another life I would have made an excellent Hollywood producer or AI chatbot developer.

I say this because a friend of a friend had their screenplay stolen and made into a movie, and the courts ruled “Hey, that’s OK because writers are the bottom of the totem pole, way below the agents, producers, and director who had clear possession and used that exact same plot, and don’t you dare forget it.”

And, as we all know, AI chatbots have been trained on voluminous content stolen from wikipedia entries and the musical catalogue of the Big Three who covered every topic known to man — Burt Bacharach, Bob Dylan, and the Beatles.¹

Justice is not blind. It’s more like your mom, choosing to believe your brother over you just because he’s the ‘baby,’ her current favorite, and a better in-the-moment fabricator.

The big point being, there could have been other profitable careers for a professional kleptomaniac like me. But I digress (and will make it up to Chris, don’t you worry and get your panties in a twist).

Today I’m going to take you on a whirlwind tour of my journey from being a girl to becoming a woman through the majesty and mystery of rock-and-roll music.

Yes, that’s right, dear reader. Everything of consequence that I learned as a teenager about how to be a woman, I learned through rock and roll. Not from my parents, not from school, and not from friends, but admittedly quite a bit from TV shows like “Gilligan’s Island” — you’re either a millionaire’s wife, a Hollywood actress, or a wholesome farm girl — or Julie Andrews movies — forget bankers, hang out with big-hearted chimney sweeps on rooftops, or, alternatively, catch the charming widower by transforming his kids into the heartwarming Austrian equivalent of the Jackson Five or the Cowsills.

To get in the mood for your reading experience and understand how important this transition was, listen to Gary Puckett (video above) explain in song what it means when “this girl is a woman now.”

I’m going to share what I learned from nine iconic (for me) rock ’n’ roll songs, but first — a note from one of our sponsors, Michael Acoustic, about why you should subscribe to this substack.

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Always remember that guys like Michael who play acoustic guitars are ‘trustworthy.’ It’s the electric guitar players you want to worry about.

We learned this from A Complete Unknown, so if you’re an electric guitar player and have some umbrage, take it up with Bob Dylan/Timothée Chalamet and Pete Seeger/Ed Norton.

All sponsors vetted for authenticity, and no gratuities changed hands.

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Now, on with our show.

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Imagine that, touching me makes him happy inside

“I Want to Hold Your Hand” is the first rock-and-roll song I clearly remember, although I probably heard Elvis before this. (Historians might classify Elvis as early rock-and-roll, but for me he’s not. That man deserves a category of his own.)

Below is the exact Beatles performance I watched on The Ed Sullivan Show on Sunday evening, February 9th, 1964. I became one of literally tens of millions who fell irrevocably in love with the band, and certain members thereof, at that exact day and time.

Paul was my love object of choice, but he wasn’t my first. I had puzzled over which boy next door I should marry at the grand ol’ age of four — Gary, David, or Peter. They had no choice in the matter; it was my decision and mine alone.

Now I’m a George girl, although I find John fascinating. It’s always the ones who’ve departed and we can project all kinds of fantasies on that we pine after. But I think it was “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” “Here Comes the Sun,” and “Something” that really sealed the deal. Three of my favorite Beatles songs. Sorry, Paul. Taken.

My friend and I sang whatever snatches of “I Want to Hold Your Hand” we could remember over and over in the days after Ed Sullivan. Among the songs that they performed, that was the one that stuck.

I don’t know about my friend, but I puzzled over why boys like hands so much and why touching my hand would make them happy. My little brother never wanted me to touch him. I had ‘cooties.’

“Children, behave!” sounds familiar

A few years later, in sixth grade, I got sent to the Principal’s Office for leading a chase down the hallway and a pile-up on top of a guy named Jeff. I don’t remember why, except maybe he snatched something from me. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

They called my mom and made her come to the school, and she reassured them that she considered my behavior outlandish and would deal with me. The thing was, my mom was a bit of a rebel herself, and I was surprised to find that she was oddly pleased by what I had done, gave me a pretty mild-mannered talking-to.

Huh. Message received. It’s OK to chase boys and pile on top of them.

Tommy James and the Shondells had come out with a similar message in a song I loved, “I Think We’re Alone Now.”

Hold hands — the Beatles said the same thing — and run fast and hard to someplace where the adults can’t find you. Tumble to the ground and listen to your hearts beating super loud. I loved how they recreated the sound of a heartbeat.

Not as much fun as tackling Jeff with my friends on a linoleum floor, but it sounded like it could be a gigglefest.

Even if he breaks your heart, keep being glamorous

Except for Elly May Clampett in The Beverly Hillbillies, women everywhere you looked in the sixties were fetching and glamorous, the better to impress one another and wow the male of the species. (Even if you were happily married, a bit of male attention never hurt.)

My mom and all the ladies dressed to the nines for church — it was expected — and a night out required a sexy black dress and artfully applied makeup.

My grandmas didn’t go anywhere fancy — church, funerals, dinners out — without little hats covered in netting perched on their heads, what the Brits would call ‘fascinators.’ (The perfect word.)

Speaking of the Brits, they had Twiggy as a role model but we Americans had the impossibly glamorous Supremes. I hate to say it, but, as witnessed below, they could teach young women today how to be bombshells covered completely from neck to toe in sparkly fabric. No need to show so much skin. Total bombshells. And those eyes!

I became a clothes horse watching the parade of beautiful and sexy women like these both onscreen and off. There was a pride in looking good, and the arrival of the counterculture did not change that. We just segued to mini and midi skirts and psychedelic prints. (One of my friends later became a hotpants hound and kept getting kicked out of school for indecency.)

As the Supremes demonstrated, when someone left you, despite all those tears you had tasted, that was the exact time to kick things up a notch. Look fabulous and make him regret breaking up with you.

Why is he asking about my daddy?

Hitting puberty, the Zombies really caught my attention with their psychedelic coolness, posh English accents, heavy breathing, and desire to take me to promised lands. I’d always wanted to travel overseas.

They were also into hands, only theirs were ‘pleasured.’ Did they get hand massages or manicures? Those could be pleasurable.

But hey, what’s with all the questions? Let’s not bring my parents into this. Especially my dad. As my mom always said, “Don’t tell your dad.”

And who cares if you’re richer than my daddy and live up on Snob’s Knob? One of my best friends lives up there and there’s no way I would trade her life for mine, even if my parents are carbon copies of the politically incorrect Archie Bunker and his “dingbat” wife Edith on All in the Family.

It was around this time that my friends and I started inviting boys over to her basement after dark. Her parents had a pitcher of martinis every day after work, and I’m guessing that’s why they never noticed the goings-on right downstairs and the comings and goings of random boys. My house backed onto theirs, but my parents wouldn’t have noticed a bomb going off with their lives upended by an extremely hyperactive toddler on top of my perpetually mischievous brother.

If those cool Zombies had lived in Endwell, for sure we would have invited them over.

If you want your fire lit, do it yourself

The Doors had come out with this song “Light My Fire,” but there was something about The Doors, and especially that Jim Morrison, that flashed an enormous warning sign to a girl just entering adolescence.

He seemed dangerous, and he was. But Jose Feliciano came out with his own version of that song a year later (below), and my friends and I couldn’t stop playing it. Jose seemed like a nice boy, and he was blind, so how could he be a danger?

Turns out, he could. More than we thought.

It was about this time we started getting “the talks” at both school and home. Watch out for boys. All boys. They only want one thing.

Really? How cool is that. They want us, and there’s song after song trying to convince us that we want them.

But hold your horses here. The women’s liberation movement was gathering steam and we were starting to notice some things. Like, hey, Jose, why am I supposed to light your fire? That’s not fair. If you want me so badly, why aren’t you pleading to light mine?

And then he clinched it, threatening that our “love” will become a funeral pyre if I hesitate and “wallow in the mire.”

This guy’s history. You’re the wallower, ‘sexist pig.’ Next!

OK, now we’re really talking

You’re going to argue that Herb Alpert is not rock and roll, and you would be right. But he restored people’s faith in romance during a time when everyone was losing faith in everything.

We had the Vietnam War and assassinations and demonstrations and an influx of drugs and a countercultural movement involving hippies and freaks, and along comes this remarkably handsome and talented guy who reassures us that good old-fashioned love exists — not just ‘lighting fires’ — and that it matters.

His song “This Guy’s in Love With You” was another one of those thrilling Burt Bacharach and Hal David tunes, but Herb got permission to change the lyrics from an allegation of infidelity to a declaration of love — to his wife. Which he sang on national television no less (below).

“My hands‘re shaking, don’t let my heart keep breaking.”

The romantics among us who wanted to believe in true love and soulmates, myself included, ate it up and sent the song to the top of the charts.

Of course, that doesn’t mean you’re going to enjoy living with them. Witness my parents with their obsessive love and constant arguing. Or Herb divorcing his wife a few years later.

But, naturally, I assumed that I would be different. I would get lucky and find myself an incurable romantic who was also handsome, talented, and successful like Herb. It was the fantasy that just might become a reality that was worth all the dreaming and chasing.

It’s the staying together that’s the hard part

The arrival of yet another kid, this time with health issues, meant exponentially more problems at home. Then the parental units decided to build a new house to accommodate everyone. Billy Joel’s 1982 song “Pressure” comes to mind.

But omg the music at that time. It was an abundance of riches, and I became obsessed with Chicago and the voice of Terry Kath.

I remember going to a party at my friend’s house, probably a birthday party because it was all girls, and we ran down the road singing Chicago songs at the top of our lungs in the dark. As you can imagine, Endwellites love hearing teenage girls screaming Chicago late at night and waking up their kids.

The band’s 1970 hit “Make Me Smile” (below) was so upbeat it lifted the spirits, even if the first verse about the kids in the park not knowing that he was alone in the dark didn’t make sense and was even a bit creepy.

That little issue aside, the singer’s happiness and “sweet tears of joy” made you forget the dark side of relationships that was starting to become more intrusive. The classmate who got pregnant and then disappeared. Dad warning his workers not to touch me (causing one of them to roll his eyes and me to be shocked at my father feeling the need to do this). My brother drowning the house with noise as he practiced playing “We’re an American Band” over and over again on his drums in the basement. And the mouse that kept making an appearance in my bedroom and my parents were too overwhelmed to do anything about it. (They were having fights over backhoes and dishwashers!)

Maybe I was resonating with a song that almost seemed to veer between depression and mania, that spoke to the highs and lows of a teenager stuck in a chaos-filled home from which there seemed to be no escape except by getting a driver’s license and escaping in the orange Ford Pinto — and blasting the top hits on the local AM radio to my heart’s content.

No joke, this guy is totally full of himself

Carly Simon nailed it in “He’s So Vain” (below).

I’d had a secret crush on the same guy for quite a long time. He was good-looking, an athlete on two varsity teams, killer smile, and smart. The full package. What was not to like?

Then we went on a date. Maybe it was nervousness on his part, but I don’t think so because I found out years later that he didn’t treat his wife well. The guy made sexist comments and was thoughtless and inconsiderate the entire night.

Up close, the physical attraction dissipated. The chemistry wasn’t there either. He even had a weird and annoying habit of tapping his front teeth with his fingernails.

It was a major wake-up call. Carly had had a bad experience with pretty boy Warren Beatty, and I had my disappointing experience with this Endwell pretty boy.

An invaluable lesson before heading off to college. Pretty is not enough, and sometimes even a major liability. Don’t pine from a distance and waste time on mooning over someone who could be your worst nightmare. As the Brits say, chat them up and find out if there’s any ‘there’ there.

You can’t top loving kindness

I was still a ‘girl’ when I went to college — immature and idealistic, understanding reality only too well but craving the romantic fantasy, and determined to escape from the confinement and chaos of my well-meaning but dysfunctional family and have some long-awaited adventures.

Definitely not looking for a relationship, footloose and fancy-free. And, of course, life happened while I was making other more grandiose plans.

I fell into a relationship with a guy four years older who totally ‘got’ me.

The theme song for that relationship? Joe Cocker’s cover of “The Letter” (below), for two reasons.

First, I absolutely adore Joe Cocker, someone described by everyone who knew him as the nicest man, but one who could get stroppy when backed into a corner. Like my boyfriend, a really nice guy, but not a pushover.

Second, “The Letter” is the perfect description of our relationship. Imagine the happiness and relief we both felt to find someone we fancied who was also committed, steady, reliable, loyal, faithful, and generous — and would rush to come when needed.

We stayed together for six years, the relationship ending amicably due to circumstances beyond our reckoning and control.

Once you have a relationship built on loving kindness, you can never accept anything less. Life is too short.

This rock-and-roll girl was a woman now.

1. Known to man. Woman know other stuff, and we’d prefer not to share it with ChatGPT.