Bruce Springsteen’s “Thunder Road” is playing. I’m sitting in front of my computer, listening and writing.
Clara enters the room and says, “Dad, is this Elvis Presley?”
“Elvis?” I shout. “You think this is Elvis Presley? You think the man singing right now – the one playing the guitar and singing – is Elvis Presley?”
I was devastated. Thirteen years spent teaching my daughter about music have been for naught. She didn’t learn a damn thing. How many times has she listened to Bruce Springsteen? How many times has she listened to one of my favorite songs of all time? Hundreds? Thousands? And she thinks it’s Elvis?
There was very little music in my home while growing up. I have no idea what kind of music my parents enjoyed, if any, because I almost never heard them playing any music. Kind of a tragedy, really. A home absent of music is a quiet one.
The absence of the music, plus the absence of the internet, led to my general lack of knowledge about music other than the music being played on the radio at the time. The Beatles. The Who. Aretha Franklin. Jimi Hendrix. Frank Sinatra. Janis Joplin. Even The Rolling Stones were names I knew but whose music I did not. It wasn’t until I started driving and having access to the radio that I began to discover these musicians and their songs.
But I wanted more for my kids. It was fine for them to know and love today’s music, but I wanted them to know and love the music from the past, too.
Maybe not as deeply and widely and intensely as their musical savant mother, but why not?
I wanted them to be able to recognize Freddy Mercury’s voice or the way Keith Richards plays the guitar. I wanted them to know the drama behind the songs of Fleetwood Mac and the history behind Don McLean’s “American Pie.”
I wanted them to be able to answer every Pete Best trivia question ever asked of them.
I wanted them to know my favorite bands and favorite songs, which included both Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band and “Thunder Road.”
Apparently I had failed.
“Elvis?” I shouted one more time. “This sounds like Elvis to you? Have I taught you nothing?”
Clara smiled. ”No, I know it’s Bruce Springsteen, Dad. But I thought that might hurt you a little if I said it’s Elvis. You also taught me how to mess with people.”
I don’t think I’ve ever been so annoyed and so proud at exactly the same moment.
