There was a moment there when she was hip.
I became aware of her back in ’69, with her song “Beautiful People.” I can’t tell you where I heard it. Possibly on AM. But probably on FM. By that time I was totally hooked. There was the progenitor in New York, WOR. And then WNEW. And WABC, with almost no commercials. And slow-talking deejays. The same people who’d been on AM were completely different on FM. Like Scott Muni. “Number one in the nation, the Scott Muni show!” That was his jingle in the drive-time slot on WABC-AM. On FM he had this deep voice… Ultimately he was known for his work on FM, but for those of us who lived through the transition…
And there was a station in New Haven. And WDRC in Hartford. And even the University of Bridgeport had an FM station, with contests. We used to call and compete.
It was a whole subculture, and Melanie was part of it. We had no idea her last name was Safka. That kind of information was not available. And I didn’t know anybody who owned the album, the one with the large letters and her picture on the cover, although I saw it in the bin every time I went to the record store, which was a lot.
And then came the Woodstock movie.
That’s what made everybody hip. Sure, boys grew their hair long right after the Beatles hit in ’64, but you’d be surprised how many people were still square. Protesting against the Vietnam war? It was a lot, but it wasn’t everybody. And when it came to the counterculture, many were afraid. It was taboo. As for drugs, hadn’t Art Linklater’s daughter jumped out of a window on LSD?
But one of the big stories about Woodstock was how peaceful it all was. Don’t forget, this was an era of rampant assassinations. And riots. Put 400,000 people together in a field sans enough food and water and the fact that there wasn’t mayhem was a huge surprise to the mainstream.
And believe me, Woodstock was on the front page of newspapers from coast to coast. But it’s one thing to read about it, it’s quite another to experience it. Which is what started to happen at the end of April 1970, when the movie was released. It was platformed, i.e. it didn’t play everywhere all at the same time. It only showed in a few theatres, and you had to make an effort to go. Take the train into the city. Make a pilgrimage. For this multi-hour tribute to our generation. We felt powerful. Then came Kent State in May and we became disillusioned, that’s when the Back to the Land movement began. But one thing’s clear, love and the music sustained.
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young became even bigger than they were. Ditto the Who. But the movie also injected John Sebastian’s career with a shot of adrenaline. Richie Havens went from cult to top of mind everywhere. Arlo Guthrie was brought back from “Alice’s Restaurant” and obscurity. And Melanie had performed at the festival, but was not in the movie. But then she released “Lay Down (Candles in the Rain.”
So not only did everybody see the Woodstock movie, they bought the three record set. And converted to albums from singles. This was the turning point. Sure, there was “Sgt. Pepper’ before this, but that was the Beatles. And “Sunshine of Your Love” had crossed over to AM in ’68. But with the success, the imprint of the Woodstock movie, those who were on the fence, who’d been afraid to jump in, did, and started to marinate in the music, the essence of the culture.
First came “Woodstock.” The Joni Mitchell song turned into a hit by the aforementioned Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, with its indelible guitar figure.
But the next big Woodstock hit was by Melanie.
“We were so close there was no room
We bled inside each other’s wounds
We all had caught the same disease
And we all sang the songs of peace
So raise the candles high
‘Cause if you don’t we could stay black against the night
Oh, raise them higher again
And if you do we could stay dry against the rain”
There were two versions. The 7:39 album cut they played on FM, and the 3:49 single on AM.
We’d had this situation before. Most specifically with “Light My Fire.” You were hip if you knew the longer version, if you heard it on FM, if you owned the album. Ditto on “Lay Down (Candles in the Rain).” FM blasted the long version, made you feel like you were a member of the club when you heard the short version on AM.
Furthermore, “Lay Down (Candles in the Rain)” was anthemic, in the same way the Edwin Hawkins Singers’ “Oh Happy Day” had been the summer before. Actually, the Edwin Hawkins Singers were the chorus on “Lay Down (Candles in the Rain).”
And the song was alternately upbeat and dark. Exuberant yet contemplative. It became part of the firmament. With an imprimatur of gravitas.
2
Only months later, I went to college. The freshmen moved in early, on a Wednesday, for orientation. On each floor was a Junior Fellow, who was supposed to greet and look over you. On my floor it was Jim, who saw my record collection and started thumbing through the albums, started talking music, telling me he was a bigwig on the college radio station.
And at this point, I still had respect for my elders.
So Jim took a liking to me and insisted I come to his room to hear his stereo. And what did he play to demonstrate it? “Lay Down (Candles in the Rain).”
3
And now Melanie was a star. Verging on being a superstar. She released a cover of “Ruby Tuesday” that got traction around the world. But even better was the B-side, which got FM play, the song “What Have They Done to My Song Ma.” That was a pretty good number. It’s not like I loved Melanie, but I had some respect for her. She wasn’t Laura Nyro, or Joni Mitchell, but she wrote her own songs, I didn’t judge her.
Until…
Beware of getting what you want. In 1971 Melanie released a single that went to number one around the world. Which meant we heard it incessantly, because most cars still didn’t have FM radios. And if a track was that big, it was in the air. You’d hear it coming out of shops. It was around, it was everywhere. And that song was…
“Brand New Key.”
“Well I’ve got a brand new pair of roller skates You’ve got a brand new key”
Just writing those words makes me want to punch somebody in the face.
Melanie had been a deep thinker, anything but light. And now she’s released this adolescent, no, strike that, kiddie song about roller skating and… I mean this was long before roller skating became hip in the latter part of the decade. We’d outgrown our childish ways. And this woman with this sing-songy number and vocal machinations was bringing us back, banging us on the head over and over again.
I HATE “Brand New Key.” Then and now. If I heard it then or I hear it now I push the button, I turn it off, it’s intolerable. It’s not the only one, but it’s right up there, one of my all time major tuneouts.
But it killed her career. FM stopped playing her. Now she was in the Top Forty world, where you lived and died by the hit. And Melanie never had another one. Now it was just the opposite. If we saw a new Melanie album in your collection not only did we wince, we judged you negatively. Yes, back in the days when we used to visit each other in our houses, before we connected virtually, we studied your record collection, and judged you for it.
And soon Melanie was in the rearview mirror. A curio compared to Led Zeppelin and the other monsters of rock. There was no news, it was almost like she’d disappeared. You might hear one of her songs on an oldies station, then again, at that point the oldies stations were playing songs from the fifties. It was like she didn’t even exist.
And it’s not like there was any news. Music news was scarce. And it’s not like Melanie was doing anything of note, it’s not like anybody cared. She was akin to the one hit wonders of the sixties.
But then, she started to reappear.
4
Melanie was fat. And there’s no bigger crime against humanity in America. Frequently when a woman is outed, whatever they say, they instantly go on a diet and try to regain the form they were known for. Like Kelly McGillis.
But not Melanie. She wore these long flowing robes and never apologized. She owned who she was. And I give her credit for that. She did not apologize, she was just Melanie. And made some new music and went on the road and you had to respect her for that. Unlike so many of her peers, Melanie had grown up. And appeared that way when you saw her in the press. She wasn’t airy fairy, but down to earth. She’d had children. She’d survived.
And then this week she died.
And I immediately thought of listening to “Lay Down (Candles in the Rain)” in Jim’s room. They put me on the college station, then they squeezed me out. It was a cabal. And whereas I had a show every Saturday morning during the fall, which was hard to get up for but perfect because everybody listened, and another every other Thursday, now during the spring semester they said I could be on maybe once every other week. I did this and then gave up. Funny how I’m on the radio now and none of these people are.
But it’s all grist for the mill. We’re all over seventy now. Most are done. They’ve retired. Which is very weird. They worked hard, they’ve had enough, they’re living off their nest egg, which they built over decades.
Not me. I ain’t got no nest egg. I didn’t start to make any reasonable money until recently. Forget having to work, I WANT to work. But the rest of my generation is peeling away. And it’s strange.
A few of us died before our time. But most of us are still here. A little bit worse for wear, but it’s not like we’ve got one foot in the grave. And although people love to talk about travel, and food, and of course their grandkids, which I also don’t have, not wanting to get diverted from my career path, I find what they want to talk about most is music.
Yes, they go to the show. They tell you who they’ve seen. They wax rhapsodic about the gigs they attended in the past. They tell you gossip, as if they know these acts personally. It’s like they’re twenty one years old again. But now with even more available time to marinate themselves in their passion.
Some are interested in new music, but most are not.
And most of their heroes are still on the road, assuming they’re not dead. And they’ve got the money to go see them. And they’ll never tell you a show is bad. It’s what they live for, who’s going to denigrate their life itself?
So they’re living in the past.
But the conveyor belt keeps moving.
Now people born in the twenty first century are legal to drink.
Some of the grandkids are having kids, making you a great grandperson.
But you still see yourself as young.
And then Melanie Safka dies at 76.
5
It’s one thing for Christine McVie to die at 79, another for Jimmy Buffett to die at 77. Especially Jimmy, he’d built an entire empire, he’d left his mark. It’s like his life was an endless victory lap. He was a cultural institution, who crossed all lines. And he lived life to the fullest. He was cut down before his time, but he’d had cancer for a while and…well, 77, that’s close to 80, right?
But 76??? That’s not that far away!
So when is it going to happen to my friend group?
Well, Gary Smith just died. Which is so weird, because I don’t have to go that far back in my e-mail to see him corresponding totally alive.
And I knew Gary, but I didn’t talk to him every day. How about my inner circle. It’s only a matter of time before one of them becomes sick and is on their way out. It could even be ME!
And unlike Jimmy Buffett, I cannot say I’ve achieved all I want to. Not that Jimmy didn’t have further desires, but like I said, he’d left his mark.
It’s creepy.
And everybody is in denial.
You pass, and then we stop talking about you. Even some of the greats. Life is for the living, and you’re dead. And gone.
Now “Beautiful People” was the sixties. But “Lay Down (Candles in the Rain)” was the seventies. I was grown, that was my decade.
But it was fifty years ago.
The eighties were MTV. But the nineties? Where did they go?
And the aughts were Napster and internet innovation. The teens were a bit less frantic and interesting but then we had Covid and everything is different now, absolutely everything. Over this four year period I got old.
Now I don’t feel old, but I am closer to death. And I can see so much of society’s b.s. as such.
Sure, the people running for President are older than I am, but that’s no consolation. As a matter of fact, it’s hard not to detach from the horse race. I’ll vote, but it’s so overwhelming and we feel so powerless.
But once we felt so powerful, like we could move mountains.
And what empowered us was the music and the people who made it. They were our signposts, they were our seers.
And for a moment there, Melanie was one of them.
But now she’s gone too. But she had not only hits, but a family. She died before her time, but she’d achieved at least some of her goals.
The rest of us, who still want to climb the mountain, leave our mark, time is running out. Or is it? Do we act like nothing’s changed, like we have all the time in the world? Or do we freak out and get down to it.
I don’t know. I don’t know if I’ll ever know. But these passings are becoming ever more shocking. And I know at some point it will be my time. And the world will continue to spin without me.
And that’s just plain weird.
