Stories behind memorable albums of the 1970s as told by the artists

Month: June 2015

The highly emotional and personal magic of a special Brian Wilson song

Brian Wilson sings "Surfer Girl" at his show on June 29, 2015, at the Mann Center for the Performing Arts in Philadelphia. (Photo by Mike Morsch)

Brian Wilson sings “Surfer Girl” at his show on June 29, 2015, at the Mann Center for the Performing Arts in Philadelphia.
(Photo by Mike Morsch)

Music speaks to different people in different ways. But there is a point in every Brian Wilson show that lasts a little more than two minutes that I claim as my own: It’s when he sings “Surfer Girl,” and like a great song does, it brings back a flood of memories that touches deep in my heart and soul.

It reminds me of the time that Brian once rode along with me in my car when I really needed him.

On Jan. 4, 1988, a bitterly cold day, I had just arrived to work at a newspaper in La Salle, Illinois, when I got a phone call from my wife. “You’d better come home. Something is wrong and I think we need to go to the hospital.”

She was pregnant with our first child, but it was 10 weeks from the scheduled due date. I rushed home, got her and we departed for the hospital, a small, rural medical facility in nearby Spring Valley, Illinois.

Our physician, Dr. Basilio Padilla, was summoned, did an examination and determined that my wife was in labor. But it was way too early, and Dr. Padilla admitted her into the hospital, the plan being to use whatever drugs and technology was available at the time to stop the labor.

Dr. Padilla was highly skilled medical professional. A soft-spoken gentleman, he oftentimes had a smile on his face, and on this day, his demeanor and that smile assured me that he had this thing under control.

After enduring several hours of intravenous drugs being pumped into her system, my wife appeared to have steadied the ship. Dr. Padilla pronounced the crisis averted around 4 p.m. that day, but the situation was still considered high risk and bed rest was prescribed for the remaining 10 weeks of the pregnancy.

What did not improve was the weather. High, bitter winds had dropped the temperature to minus 50 – no exaggeration there – with the wind chill. We happened to be the only patients on the OB/GYN floor that day in the small hospital, and there were only two shift nurses on duty. For much of the late afternoon and early evening, I would go out to my car and start it, just to make sure it didn’t completely freeze up.

Since this was the first grandchild on both sides of the family, I had called my parents, who lived near Peoria, Illinois, and my wife’s parents, who lived in Iowa City, Iowa, and told everybody to stay put. The crisis was under control and there was no need for them to drive to the hospital in that kind of weather.

And then, around 10 p.m., life changed forever. Whatever drugs had stopped the labor were no longer doing the job and my wife went back into labor. Dr. Padilla was called back to the hospital, performed another examination on my wife, and asked me to step into the hallway outside the hospital room.

He wasn’t smiling.

“This baby is going to be born tonight. It’s going to be an emergency delivery and we don’t have the personnel or facility for an emergency of this nature,” he said.

He proceeded to explain to me that he was going to request a delivery team from St. Francis Medical Center in Peoria, and that they would be there within the hour via helicopter. The plan was that after delivery, the baby would be transported on that same helicopter back to the neonatal unit in Peoria. In that bitter cold, dangerously windy weather.

By 1 a.m. on Jan. 5, I found myself alone in the dads waiting room with the fate of my family in the hands of medical professionals just down the hall in the delivery room.

It was the most lonely and helpless moment of my life.

At 1:45 a.m., one of the local nurses came into the room and said, “You have a baby girl. I’m going to take you to see her, but they’re preparing her for transport, so you’ll only have a few moments.”

And then I saw her for the first time. I was told she weighed 2 pounds, 4 and one-half ounces. A neonatal nurse was holding the back of her head with one hand, in an upright position. With the other hand, the nurse had what looked like the head of a hammer – I found out later it was made of foam rubber – placed between her index and middle fingers, and was furiously tapping on the baby’s chest. Alarming at first sight, I was told later that the procedure helped prevent fluid from building up in the baby’s lungs. That first glimpse of my daughter lasted maybe two minutes.

Before long, my wife and I ended back in her hospital room. By 5 a.m. the medical team and baby were ready to get on the helicopter for Peoria. They wheeled the baby in an incubator back into our room so that we could see her before they left. We couldn’t reach into the incubator and touch her because she was wrapped in tinfoil and bubble wrap, her little face the only visible part we could see.

And then we waited. The helicopter had to battle those cold winds and the baby had to survive the trip. We would get a call when they arrived in Peoria.

At 6 a.m. the call came. The baby had survived the trip.

I had alerted my parents that the baby was being transported their direction. The plan was for them to meet the baby at the hospital, and that I would be there as soon as I could.

I got into my freezing cold car, and thankfully, it started. And once again, I found myself alone, with an hour to drive and with no idea whether my baby would still be alive by the time I got there.

All I had along with me for the ride was music. It was before the era of CDs, so I had cassettes, and one of my favorite records was “Endless Summer,” a compilation album by the Beach Boys that was released in 1974. That’s the tape that I popped in for the drive.

For some reason, I went right to the song “Surfer Girl.” I had heard it hundreds of times before, but this time it was different. The first two lines of the song took on a dramatically different meaning this time.

“Little surfer, little one. Made my heart come all undone.”

My baby girl was tiny. And I had immediately given her my heart.

When “Surfer Girl” would end, I would rewind the tape and play it again. Over and over, for the entire ride, I played “Surfer Girl.” I sang and I cried and I prayed that my baby girl would be alive when I got to Peoria.

I arrived at the hospital and my dad was waiting for me at the front door. We embraced. “Is she still alive?” I said. “She’s still alive,” he answered.

After being released from the hospital, my wife went to stay with my parents so she could be in the neonatal unit every day with our daughter.

But real life doesn’t halt for very long in these situations and I had a job. So twice a week for five weeks, on Wednesdays and Sundays, I would drive the hour from La Salle to Peoria to see my baby. And every time I got in the car, I’d put on that Beach Boys tape and play “Surfer Girl” over and over. And I’d sing and I’d cry and I’d pray. She needed to be alive every time I got there and I didn’t want to change that routine. It worked the first time.

That was 27 years ago. And when Brian Wilson sang the words, “Little surfer, little one. Made my heart come all undone” Monday evening, June 29, at the Mann Center for the Performing Arts in Philadelphia, it all came flooding back, touching me deep in my heart and soul as it always has.

And to my left, with her head on my shoulder, her arm locked in mine and her hand gently tapping on my forearm along with the beat of the song, was my daughter Kiley. She’s an adult now, but she’s still my little one. And she still makes my heart come all undone.

A lot of Brian Wilson’s songs are about love. What a wonderful gift he has given us.

Dad and daughter. Happily ever after.

Dad and daughter. Happily ever after.

Forget Taylor Swift, ‘Fanilows’ come out in force in Philly

Barry Manilow wows the Philadelphia crowd on Saturday, June 13, 2015.  (Photo by Mike Morsch)

Barry Manilow wows the Philadelphia crowd on Saturday, June 13, 2015.
(Photo by Mike Morsch)

While waiting in line in the men’s room after the Barry Manilow concert Saturday night in Philadelphia, one of the more creative gents suggested out loud that he was surprised to see any kind of line in the loo because he didn’t think there would be that many men at a Barry Manilow concert.

We all kind of chuckled at that, likely because we were all kind of thinking the same thing. And no sooner had that comment been uttered when into the men’s room walked seven or eight women, intent on sharing our facility because the line to women’s restrooms were too long and they really had to go.

It wasn’t a scenario that I necessarily anticipated that I would experience at a Barry Manilow concert, but very little concert behavior surprises me anymore. Women using the men’s room at a concert elicits a mere shrug of the shoulders from me these days.

What did surprise me – but only slightly – is something that I have come to accept now that I have seen Barry Manilow in concert three times: I am a “Fanilow.”

And it all started quite innocently.

Barry performed on the same evening in Philly as did Taylor Swift, who was right next door at the football stadium. (Photo by Mike Morsch)

Barry performed on the same evening in Philly as did Taylor Swift, who was right next door at the football stadium.
(Photo by Mike Morsch)

You see, Mrs. Vinyl Dialogues is a big, huge, gigantic, super colossal “Fanilow,” which is exactly what it sounds like – a big, huge, gigantic, super colossal fan of Barry Manilow.

Prior to meeting her, I had never seen Barry live in concert. But I am very much into the music of the 1970s and he is one of the quintessential stars of that decade. Because of that, I realized after seeing him in concert the first time that I actually knew many of the words to many of his songs.

Attending this concert, however, was a Game Day decision. Apparently I had been informed several weeks ago by Mrs. Vinyl Dialogues that Barry was going to be performing in Philadelphia and that it might be a good idea to secure a few tickets for her as a birthday present.

Because I am a typical man, though, that entire conversation had somehow escaped me, no doubt because I was worried about something more important, like grilling meat. So when the sentence “Hey, Barry is in town tonight and there are tickets available,” came out of her mouth, my ears perked up.

I am not a complete dope – most of the time. And I sensed an opportunity to grab two tickets to the show and maybe correct the earlier error of my ways because, well . . . I right the wrongs, I right the wrongs.

After calling the venue and securing the tickets, off we went into South Philly, that despite one very big warning signal: Taylor Swift was performing a concert in the football stadium right next to the arena where Barry was performing. At the same time. The South Philly sports complex had the potential to be the hottest spot north of Havana and a traffic nightmare.

But it didn’t turn out that way. Taylor’s show started at 5 p.m. and Barry didn’t start until 7:30 p.m. Taylor is young and her crowd is younger, so they can stay up later and watch her perform. Barry is older, and so is his crowd, so we were done earlier. There was no traffic cluster coming or going.

And let me assure you that Barry, who will turn 72 this month, still delivers the goods. He’s a showman with great stage presence and great songs. And he seems like a nice guy, something I can confirm as I have interviewed him in the past. He always seems generally grateful onstage to the fans for the long career he’s had and he expressed that same sentiment to me on the phone when we talked.

Every “Fanilow” has a favorite song or two and mine are “Copacabana” and “I Write the Songs.” Let me share a little history about the latter.

Most people probably know that Bruce Johnston of the Beach Boys wrote “I Write the Songs,” for which he won a Grammy Award for Song of the Year in 1977.

But Barry wasn’t the first to record the song. He wasn’t even the second artist to record the song. The first to record it was The Captain and Tennille for the 1975 album “Love Will Keep Us Together.” The second to record it was David Cassidy for his 1975 solo album “The Higher They Climb,” which was featured in the first volume of The Vinyl Dialogues.

Having interviewed Bruce several times – he appears in both The Vinyl Dialogues and the upcoming release, The Vinyl Dialogues Volume II: Dropping the Needle, which will be available around Aug. 1 this year – I’ve had the opportunity to talk to him about the creation of “I Write the Songs.”

“By the way, if you ever read that I wrote ‘I Write the Songs” about Brian Wilson, forget about it,” said Johnston. “The song is a hymn to God for being the person that starts it all. ‘I’ve been alive forever, and I wrote the very first song.’ It gets me nuts when people say I wrote that song about Brian.”

And just like Saturday night, fans still go nuts when Barry sings “I Write the Songs.” It’s one of those tunes that does indeed make the whole world sing.

And it was clear that all the “Fanilows” in Philly knew that.

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