In the winter of 1970 I was a seventeen year old senior on the South Shore of Boston. I had been accepted to a local university in my junior year. I didn’t want to go to college, but the Draft was press ganging young men from all over America to fight the communists in Vietnam. As much as I wanted to leave my hometown, I was in love with Janet, a beautiful brunette, who was the head cheerleader at the local high school She loved me too.
Her mother was divorced and saw a Chilean jazz pianist. They went out often to dances, concerts, and soccer games and most weekend nights I came over after track practice with her mother’s permission to study. One Friday evening after Janet put her younger brother to bed, we made out on her living room couch never going beyond third base. As a good Catholic girl, Janet was saving herself for marriage. I was an atheist and told myself I could wait. I was in love and marriage to Janet was a dream of a folk, and future togetherI was okay with that, since we had come close to the edge often enough to dream that our fall was at hand.
Never naked, but on the edge of a fixed tomorrow
No draft. No Vietnam. College. Work. Marriage, children, a house with a lawn. It all seemed possible lost in the passion of youth. Then one night we were listening to WBCN, the radio of the American Revolution. JJ Jackson, the late night DJ, spun the LPs of the Ultimate Spinach, Grateful Dead, Ike and Tina Turner, and anything considered unplayable by the AM channels. and this night he went deep, as our desire crossed boundaries set by the Church.
Janet and I were into the Jefferson Airplane, although she was more SURREALISTIC PILLOW, while I loved the uncommercialism of AFTER BATHING AT BAXTER’S.
She turned off the lights. The couch was draped with darkness and we explored the mysteries of the human body paced by Jack Cassady’s bass on SPARE CHAYNGE. Janet fought off my hands’s missions below her waist, but we surrendered our bodies to the ancient tradition of dry humping. While we might not have had sex in its purest form, on several occasions we had come close enough to have achieved the Second Immaculate Conception.
I touched her. She touched me. Places we never touched thanks to innocent inhibitions. We were in the Garden of Eden. Our future was predicted by our fevered panting, our blood aboil with lust, this was not sin, this was heaven___
Then JJ Jackson spoke___
“This is a live recording from the Velvet Underground. ROCK AND ROLL. This is us, dig it.”____
At first I ignored his advice in favor of listening to Janet's shortening pants, until Lou Reed sang, “Jennie said when she was just five years old. There was nothin’ happenin’ at all
Every time she puts on a radio
There was nothin’ goin’ down at all
Not at all
Then one fine mornin’ she puts on a New York station
You know she don’t believe what she heard at all
She started shakin’ to that fine, fine music
You know her life was saved by rock ‘n’ roll.”
Janet asked, “ What’s wrong?”
I had stopped fondling her breasts and grinding my pelvis into hers. Suddenly I understood that she and I were not over, but I was destined to leave my hometown with its three streetlights, no bars, Catholic Churches, temples, the suburban desolation and an abandoned chocolate mill. I was leaving it all and whispered the Janet, “I love this song “
“I do too.”
We kissed and embraced and joined Lou Reed on the chorus.
“It was alright (it was alright)
"Hey baby, you know it was alright (it was alright)”
We were no longer together forever only locked in eternity for the now and “It was alright (it was alright), Hey baby, you know it was alright (it was alright).” because the Velvet’s lead singer had answered my questions on the future. I wanted more from lfie and that more was to live in New York and that spring I broke up with Janet right before her senior prom. That song echoed in my ears every day since.
My move to New York took six years.
I spent my first years at CBGBs, Max’s, Hurrah, Studio 54, the Mudd Club, and the Jefferson.
Lou Reed was in hiding as were the other members of the Velvet Underground. The band had abandoned fame for anonymity and infighting between the members. I gave up on ever meeting them, then New Year's Eve 1987 I was drinking industrial strength cough syrup and snorting cocaine with a bunch of friends on West 10th Street.
David Russell, Vickie, Barney and I were having a lovely time, but we weren't inviting any other guests, since only the innocent can handle the light of day and this was the deepest of night, which was blacker than a teenage girl's living room. David's Christmas tree was burning in the fireplace. It was very cold outside. 14 degrees only.
The TV was tuned to Dick Clark in Times Square.
1987 had ten minutes left on the clock.
We weren't expecting anyone else, but two minutes before 1988 the door opened for a familiar face and John Cale from the Velvet Underground entered the apartment fucked up as only a demi-rock god can be fucked up.
The legendary musician said nothing, as he walked across the room to pick up the codeine bottle. In one go he chugged half the cough syrup and then puked into a trash can.
"And it was alright." The line came from SWEET JANE. I liked it even better than BEGINNING TO SEE THE LIGHT. I missed Janet. She was married with two kids. Her husband was a town cop. They made a nice couple.
The pianist wiped his mouth and gave us each a monster line of cocaine.
Real cocaine.
"Merry New Year." John Cale walked to the fireplace to warm his hands in the blaze, then pissed on the Christmas tree fire. he left without a word. We said nothing.
Once the blow burned out, the cough syrup took over us.
We nodded out to the aroma of Cale's pee.
It smelled like rock and roll, which was why first I had come to New York.
"And it was all right."
And I hope it was all right with Janet too.
I still rock to ROCK AND ROLL and occasionally dream of life without it, but never on New Year's Eve.
