#386) “Into
the Night” by Benny Mardones –
“Into the Night” sometimes gets negative chatter for a couple of reasons:
1) The video,
which is … I don’t know, how should I put this: not in any way, shape, form or fashion complementary to the song. I try to judge old stuff fairly, through my very own
jerry-rigged lens of what I know about the times in which they happened. I'm pretty good at adjusting for the inflation of changing sensibilities as time passes. But the video for this song
is especially tough to watch. Even by 1980 standards, pre-MTV, pre-image over everything, it’s cringey the way the video for “Friday” by Rebecca Black is cringey. The project could have used an advisor, someone
with fresh, objective eyes to make suggestions, to pull Benny aside, perhaps, and say, “Look, dude, the song's great, but I got some notes on the video I would very much like to run by you ..."
2) The lyrics…which
are … I don’t know, how should I put this: great actually. But there's that one line, the very
first line in the song: “She’s just sixteen years old / leave her alone…”
In this vigilant
world, that line would never fly. And, yes, at face value, it shouldn’t. It's also a bit cringey … at face value. But to be sure, the second part of the line is a warning to leave her alone, not get her phone number, and more to the point, I think it’s important to monitor how our minds engage the notion of censorship, scrutinize the where, when and
why of labeling any creative expression, any expression at all, “inappropriate" or "problematic". This is especially important to do as time passes and everything finds its forever home in the quiet, sunlit repository of historical context.
Mardones, who
passed away in 2020, had a ready explanation for the origin of the song and
that first line in particular, having to do with him living next door to a
family that had a teenage girl in the house. Around the time he started writing the music that would eventually become the album, Never Run, Never Hide, a buddy apparently did once make a
comment about this girl, to which Benny said “hey, she's just sixteen, leave her alone”… etc., etc. The
rest is one-hit-wonder history.
Okay, fair enough.
But I don’t really think that explanation, or any other, is necessary. “Into
the Night”, like all songs, movies, TV shows and novels, like anything
creative, is a work of fiction, and open to interpretation. Yes, the words
“she’s just sixteen years old” are heard, but so what? I’ve known this song a long time, it was hitting me in enticing ways when I was ten (six years younger than 16!), and
in spite of the disillusioning video (which I didn't actually ever see until about three years ago ... damn you YouTube!), there is nothing in it to make the
listener think the character singing, the "protagonist" (so to speak), is anything
other than a young man, himself sixteen years old, or seventeen, or eighteen, and it is a protective father or mother, or older sister or brother, who has spoken these
words to him, warned him to leave her alone, not Chris Hansen on Dateline.
People overthink
things, look for trouble, actively seek out a reason to be outraged, and that’s
no way to live. It’s just a song. It can and does mean
anything the listener wants it to. And while a debate about how good or bad a song it is may be warranted, at no time have
I ever thought it was a non-fiction account of 33-year-old Benny Mardones
grooming a teenage girl. I mean, come on, that’s just ridiculous. That wouldn't have flown even in 1980.
To me, in adulthood, the song reads as a gripping account of what I remember about being in love at that age. Evidence to support this can be found in the rest of the lyrics, which are quite good, intimate, vulnerable but smoldering, exactly how young love tends to play out. Confession: I was in love with a teenage girl once in my past, and lines like, “It’s like having a dream where nobody has a heart”, and, “I can’t measure my love, there’s nothing to compare it to” are pretty much exactly what it felt like. It was never so pleasant as it was torturous, but I craved it just the same. And yes, there was a huge age difference at play with this seventeen-year-old that I was obsessed over, but it was all okay. Why? Because I was fifteen.
Fifteen, and yeah, "Into the Night" pretty much told the story of what I was feeling, and how it was making me feel.
But where the song really punches hardest is musically. For my money, it is among the most potent rock ballads ever recorded, really something
akin to sumptuous - the thick, lurching rhythm, syncopated guitar strikes, leathery
bass line standing guard as a fever-dream piano twirls and skitters its way across an intersection like St. Elmo's fire. It's a musical left hook that very much evokes thoughts of desire, longing, and yes, a
certain desperation, even a permeant shame and regret for it all. Mardones’ vocals are appropriately
anguished, reflecting the kind of pain that accompanies unrequited, forbidden or
interrupted love. And at the end, as the fadeout commences like a moonrise, it really does sound like the whole
emotionally messy business disappears into the night.
And the truth is, in spite of what I think the lyrics are about, I don't really associate anyone under the age of 21 with this song, on account of where I mostly remember hearing it when I was a kid. In the very early 80s, as I was riding my banana seater around town and the song was still kind of new and likely still being considered by some to be Mardones’ springboard to rock god immortality one day, I only ever heard it in places where grown-ups were.
Not older kids or teens, but grownups. Grown-ups gathering in the loungey, local supper club/tavern-type places my parents frequented. They were usually town adjacent, and always down-to-earth (read: local) enough to be interesting without ever being sketchy. Sometimes there was a river rock fireplace in the corner, but there was always trophy fish on the walls, an ashtray at every table, a happy hour, a jukebox and a great Friday fish fry, which turned into live music "'til 1 a.m.!" around 9.
My parents never stayed that late, but they were denizens of these places in the evening and twilight hours. Picking my through that crowd of middle-aged, middle to upper middle-class 70s gents and 80s ladies, “Into the Night” was thumping out of any and every jukebox I crossed paths with. I bummed a quarter here and there and played it myself more than once, and long before I knew what it was like to be in love with anyone, it made me feel things, made me feel some type of way (as the kids say), which I could never have described, but couldn't possibly ignore.
"And I would wait 'til the end of time for you ..."
#387) “Look
What You’ve Done to Me” by Boz Scaggs – I've come to realize in recent years that Boz
Scaggs is underrated (or perhaps underappreciated) as a performer and songwriter,
and as Boz Scaggs songs go, “Look What You’ve Done to Me” is surely underrated
and/or underappreciated.
I think the song might suffer a
bit from its association with the 1980 movie “Urban Cowboy”, not because there's anything wrong with the movie necessarily, just because the song is so damn
good, such an exquisitely rendered ballad, it almost seems a shame to share it.
And really, how
could it not have been great? Co-written by Scaggs and David Foster, whose contributions have helped shape a lot of songs now considered classics, it
features the members of the group Toto playing and The Eagles singing
background vocals. Close, fragile piano chords and strategic key progressions work
and play well with Scaggs unusual vocals, coming together to form a
psychologically haunting brew that never turns sappy. A brew that is simply
not done justice and will never be fully satisfied in its role as the “love theme” for any movie.
Like "Into the Night", it’s one of those songs that played a more richly textured role in my childhood than merely being another song on the radio. I grew up in a small struggling town that was quiet a lot of the time, quiet as the sun came up and quiet as the sun went down, and the mildly erratic blush of “Look What You’ve Done to Me” is what I remember so many of those days sounding like. There was always a radio on in the background somewhere, and always a mist of small-town loneliness condensing out of the the air on a dim Saturday morning or darkening Tuesday evening as the last daylight slid out through the window above the kitchen sink.
For better or worse, "Look What You've Done to Me" still reflects this low-grade anxiety over a day that hasn't really done anything wrong but is making me feel low just the same.
"Hope they never end this song / This could take us all night long ... "
