On the Road with Barry Manilow

As the fourth born in my family, by the time I entered high school, my brother Wayne was a senior, my other brother Steven was a junior, and our oldest sister, Karen, had already graduated two years earlier. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the music I grew up with as a kid and young teen, and I can’t help but feel so deeply grateful to my older siblings for the music they, intentionally or not, shared with me. Even though I openly emulated my oldest brother’s taste for bands like Rush, Black Sabbath, AC/DC, and Led Zeppelin, I have to admit that it was our big sister who first brought rock, roll, funk, and soul into our house.

I have to admit that it was our big sister who first brought rock, roll, funk, and soul into our house.

She did it mostly in the form of 45 RPM vinyl records (the little ones with one song on each side), which we played on the cheap little Montgomery Wards stereo our parents kept in the living room. Karen turned us onto bands like Paul McCartney and Wings with “Band on the Run” and “Silly Love Songs.”

Some people want to fill the world with silly love songs… and what’s wrong with that, I’d like to know, cause here I go, again…

My dad must not have realized McCartney was a former Fab Four because the Beatles weren’t allowed in our very Catholic home at the time, something to do with John Lennon’s claim that they were more popular than Jesus Christ.

And then there was War with “Why Can’t We Be friends?” and “Low Rider,”

Take a little trip, take a little trip, take a little trip with me…

This song called “Feelings,” by a very emotional man named Morris Albert got a lot of afterschool playtime,

Feelings, woah, oh, oh, feelings…

Along with Glen Campbell’s “Rhinestone Cowboy,”

Getting cards and letters from people I don’t even know…

which my dad also liked because of his love for Country-Western with songs like Marty Robbins’ tragic gunfighter ballads “The Hanging Tree” and “El Paso,”

Out in the West Texas town of El Paso, I fell in love with a Mexican girl…

We also listened to Johnny Cash, but never at home. The man in black never made it into our living room, maybe something to do with him killing a man just to watch him die. We actually discovered Mr. Cash at our local public library where we used the earphones to listen to his cassette instead of the usual read-along-with-me audio books.

I fell into a burning ring of fire, I went down, down, down, And the flames went higher…

Later, Journey appeared with those amazing Egyptian sci-fi album covers with the scarab-shaped spaceships. My first day of freshmen year, someone in the science quad was blasting “Don’t Stop Believing” from a suitcase-sized portable stereo,

Just a small town girl / Livin’ in a lonely world / She took the midnight train going anywhere…

Not exactly the high school hell’s kitchen I was dreading. I can’t remember if Styx’s Paradise Theatre, “Too Much Time on My Hands,” was Wayne’s or Karen’s, but I do know the Pat Benatar’s Crimes of Passion, “Hit Me with Your Best Shot,” was Wayne’s (For some reason, liking her felt dangerous, like I was crushing on one of my brother’s girlfriends!).

You’re a real tough cookie with a long history, of breaking little hearts like the one in me…

I remember that Steven owned a soundtrack album for the film Saturday Night Fever, and a live Ted Nugent album: Intensity in Ten Cities, which I’m sure I only recall because the name was so damn catchy … and for that song “Cat Scratch Fever,” possibly (I know, I know, it should have been called Misogyny in Ten Cities, but hey, it was the eighties … I’ve come a long way!).

One summer, when I was about ten years old, Karen brought her little cassette player (the black desktop ones like the detectives in old movies used to record confessions) along for the three-day drive from California to our grandparent’s house in Indiana, something our family did every couple of years. She played, nonstop, nearly all three days the one cassette she owned at the time: Barry Manilow’s Greatest Hits.

She played, nonstop, nearly all three days the one cassette she owned at the time: Barry Manilow’s Greatest Hits.

Oh, Mandy, well, you kissed me and stopped me from shaking…

I write the songs that make the whole world sing. I write the songs of love and special things…

Her name was Lola, she was a showgirl, with yellow feathers in her hair and a dress cut down to there…

Talk about earworms! Even on that first evening, splashing around in the Super 8 swimming pool while our dad tried to get some sleep, we were belting out the songs word for word.

Looks like we made it! Left each other on the way…

Funny, but to the best of my memory, I don’t remember anyone complaining—and we’re talking about two adults, six kids, and a baby here, sitting nearly on top of each other for three twelve-hour days! Nope, as soon as one side ended, my sister would turn the tape over and play the next side, and when that side ended, she’d flip it and start again. That is until late on day two, when the batteries eventually gave out and Barry began to sound like a robot on life-support as his voice slow-motion stretched itself into a long, sad final of, I write the songs, I write the soooooongs…

On the same road trip today, besides the inevitable, “Are we there yet?” or “I have to pee!” the inside of the station-wagon would be eerily quiet, each of us with our air pods in, on our separate phones, shoulder to shoulder but worlds apart, like barely polite strangers on a long, crowded flight.

Thank you, Big Sister, for Barry, and for all the songs.

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The Barry Years: Karen and baby Jon, sibling #6 (or is that James, #8?)