MY NOTE—BACKGROUND---
This is my note to my daughter Camy in response to her request for her “History of Rock” class—Pick a song not on the songlist or artist listed and then get interviewed about that song. I am flying Newark to Las Vegas on Monday morning, 9/17/07, and Camy can’t interview me so I am writing up what I think she might want.
NOTE Starts here:
To: Camy Thees
Subject is "Rocket Man"
Is NOT on my IPOD has we take off on the plane, so in order to fulfill your request I will have to reflect on the song from memory, not actually listening to it.--
So I won't get to reflect as much as I wanted to, and I will put the ipod on random and see if anything else comes to mind--- that isn't obvious in your class
Rocket man
It's Friday night at 2:30 am, July 12th, 1974 and I’m 14 yrs old.
I'm where I usually am and will usually be for some summer years past and to come, Friday night on the boardwalk, Seaside Heights, NJ. Just getting off work (depending on the summer night crowd. We closed between 2-3am on Friday and sat nights, and July 4th always was a late night), about 6 years from meeting my wife (your mom) right down the block.
I'm on the Casino Pier, and I’ve taken a walk from my "pots, pans, and raggedy Ann’s" (do you even know what a raggedy Ann is????!!!!) "Spin the wheel" stand known as the The Castle, and I’m out on the pier and put myself right in the middle of the dwindling crowd standing in front of the Swiss Bob, the "Greatest Ride on the Boardwalk"!!! I'm there because it's a great people-watching, night winding down place that attracts all the pretty girls !!!!! - Why? Because the Swiss Bob has the biggest speakers I've ever seen!!!! And there's this guy named Albert (his nickname was Fat Albert, and my nickname was "Tommy the Toe", his because he was fat like the cartoon character Fat Albert, me because I was born with this huge, deformed, but pretty darn special right foot w a giant big toe on it)--- anyway, Fat Albert is at the helm of the Swiss Bob, and he is also at the helm of any music that plays on his turntable inside the control box for the Swiss Bob. Crazy Jack is nearby, as is Tony, Lou, Eddy, Mike and Zelmo. Bubba and the surfing dudes might have already gone to sleep for three hours so they catch the early waves.
Most of these guys and girls are 17, 18, or 19, and I’m the young one in the working pack, all of us w our red work shirts for Casino Pier. We work for Big Bob, and Wayne works for him. Jimmy and Brenda, Doug, and Wayne are the big bosses. Wayne hired me from Aggie's snack bar a few weeks ago, where I got fired because I broke the pizza dough machine. I think they fired me because it was my third summer and I was making $2.00 an hour and they could hire a new kid for a $1, which is what I started at 2 summers ago. It seemed as though Wayne was running everything, and I was working for him doing anything and everything. Stock boy, wheel operator, gofer, whatever. And since I was so busy and had all these things to do, it was easier for Wayne and everybody else just to call me "Toe", as there were enough Tom's on the boardwalk but only one "TOE", and it kinda identified me as a little special with my flip flops and all.!!!! I'd' meet people, get introduced by Wayne as "this is Toe, you'll be working with him"-- and they'd look down at my foot and then back up at me and say in their eyes, not words, "yeah, I won't forget this guys name (or foot) this summer". Me, All I knew was the more I worked the more I made, and it seemed fun enough working on the boardwalk eating cheese steaks and hanging on the beach. And watching, talking and meeting girls from all over the state as opposed to just from my hometown of Toms River.
It's a great night and feels like it's 8pm (it's 2:40am), and I hop into one of the Swiss Bob cars to take a ride on the "Swiss Bob, the greatest ride on the boardwalk!!!," which Albert will say about 5 times throughout the ride into his microphone and will come out of the giant speakers, interrupting one of the great songs he has selected for the night. This ride lasts a little longer and I don't have to buy a ticket because I’ve gotten to know everybody (even though I work at a relatively uncool merchandise stand and can't really reciprocate).
The '"Swiss Bob" THE GREATEST", ETC, echoes for the last time has we have gone forward, backward, and, as Albert asks, "do you wanna go a little FASTER????” we all SCREAM "YEAH!!!!" "Faster"-- and Fat Albert says all this with the right emphasis and diction and pitch to raise the crowd’s excitement on a great summer night. It was always a STAGE when the weekend crowds were there--and you were on that stage if you ran a stand (small stage) or the Swiss Bob (big stage loaded w pretty girls and guys like me w long hair). And the crowd is growing as everyone knows it's getting close to closing time and it's so cool to ride the last ride of the night, and my ride slows to a crawl then stops, and we get off and people scramble to get on the cars for the last ride off the night.
Me, I’ve had my fun, met new people like I do every night, saw more than a few pretty girls, some of whom actually responded to my barks by coming over to my stand to say hello and small talk. HEY......, I got my first French kiss out of those "barks" last summer so don't laugh--- can't remember her name but remember she was from P'burg.
High school is ahead of me, and I’m going to St Joe's because in June I got this new scholarship to help pay for it from Sister Juliana, but I’m responsible for the other half ($400 was my half, and anything else I earned during the summer was mine to keep and buy albums and whatever, b/c last year I earned enough to buy my first stereo system from radio shack).
So, freshman year of high school and pretty soon we'll start pre-season football practice, and one of my coaches actually works the cigarette stand across from my stand-- his name is Jack too, but there's only one Crazy Jack!!!!, and he works the bull's eye, where you shoot a machine gun type pellet gun into the red star and remove the star to win---WE all use to ask Zelmo (he works there too) if Crazy Jack had ever turned the gun around and shot out the Stretch Glass stand, but Zelmo said no. Then there's the smart brothers who run the circle stand, where you have to drop five flat metal circle plates to cover the red circle, -- they show you how, then you try but never seem to get all the red covered!!!
Wow, it's 2:54am, and I am in the control booth thanking Albert for the ride and saying goodnight to him and crew, and the fighting for the Swiss Bob cars is over and the last ride of the night is about to start--- but first, Albert announces this, let's everyone know that "THIS" is the last ride of the night"---
And he hits the go button (yes, it's big and GREEN), and I walk out in front of the Swiss Bob, standing center in front of the ride where the speakers can almost knock me over with the raw power of sound hitting air before it hits me, and the ride starts and the sound starts too!!!!
I try and think of when at any point in my life did the reproduction of recorded music (not a live concert) ever feel so good? EVER, as good as this night???? Well, that roller coaster in Disneyworld with the Aerosmith tune was really cool, with the speakers right by your head and the ride itself zooming to 80mph in 7 seconds or something, so I remember that--but that's almost cheating, I’m talking 1974 vs. 2000 and technology and everything,!!! Nooooo!!!, upon reflection, I don't have another moment or place in my life where it's this "cool" to be in the moment with the music.
And he hits the BIG GREEN button and lowers the turntable arm and needle on the Dual Turntable and.....
"She Packed my bags last night, pre-flight"- zero hour, 9am, and I’m gonna be hiiiiii gh as a kite by then"
And Rocket Man by Elton John closes out another night on the boardwalk-- I haven't had my first beer yet, and I know something smells funny in the air but don't know what that is, and I’m just high on the life I know--- but plenty of people around me are pretty lit with whatever they are lit with (drugs, booze, reefer, and the like were pretty commonplace on the boardwalk)
And I get on my bicycle (or I hitchhike depending on the ride situation) And ride on home over the bridge about 10 miles to the Presidential Apartments in Toms River, where my Mom, Dad, Gunny (that's my Irish setter) and I live in our 2 bedroom apartment. Not sure why but I have the bigger room as my brother (18 now) has moved out and is thinking of joining the Navy. Route 37 is just growing into its own as a four lane highway from that 2 lane road we knew when I started going to St. Joe's Grammar School from our first home in South Toms River. I pass Garfield, Vaughn, Clifton and Hooper Ave's, and arrive home around 4am, but not too bad b/c I don't have to be at work till noon tomorrow.
That entire bike ride I’m thinking about that song, and the night, and the people, and me.. That song was usually the last song I heard before I went to bed during the summer (no tiny IPOD's to customize my playlists in 1974, but my album collection was growing since one of the stands had albums-- spent half a week's pay one time at the stands trying to win albums--- Great albums, people like CSNY, Poco, Beach Boys, Marshall Tucker, America, Dylan, the Eagles, carole king, Joni Mitchell, Wings, pink Floyd, Stones, Yes, Allman Bros, Pure Prairie League, Elton John, David Bowie, Loggins & Messina, Led Zeppelin, and that guy w the Greetings from Asbury Park album who was getting a lot of airtime at the album stand-- he had some new tunes too-- this thing called Kitty's Back, and we loved that guitar, and organ, and sax!!!! and he was from near here!!!! And I still have all the albums, although they don't get much play--my cd’s and my ipod do.
Oh, and my brother is taking me to my first concert, I think it's in September 1974 in a town called Red Bank, where I was born. The bands name is Hall & Oates, and I loved their first album "Abandoned Luncheonette"
What? That wasn't their first? Well I didn't know--
And I’m riding home,
"I missed the earth so much I miss my wife, it's lonely out in space"
Fat Albert ALWAYS closed the Swiss Bob with "Rocket Man"--- every night he worked!!!! And I must have closed out 5 summers on Casino Pier and then Wayne and Bob bought some other part of the boardwalk and I worked there, too.
But, from age 12 to 18, or thereabouts,
And I’m riding home,
Rocket Man
And it's gonna be a long long time,
I'm a rocket man
Rocket man----
"And all this science
I don't understand
It's just my job
Five days a week
A Rocket Man
Rocket Man"
I'm on my bike, I’m just a kid, and I am just not sure HOW MUCH I don't understand, science or otherwise--but I know it's a lot.
But for some reason I have these big dreams, and big hopes, and incredible motivation just to be me in whatever way my Mom and Dad have shown me. My Dad works hard at the food store, not 5 but 6 days a week, and my mom works like three jobs, and has for as long as I can remember--which was cool b/c after pop warner practice at Toms River South (the "little" Indians we were called), I could just walk down to the Jersey Shore Savings bank and wait for mom to be finished cleaning the bank with her friend Edith, so I’d' have an easy ride home. Oh, speaking of jobs, 3 jobs doesn't include taking care of me, but I don't need much caring these days as I work and make money and pay for my school and save for college (all my friends and I seem to play football and get good grades, so that's cool to want to go to college (only ones I know are St. John's University b/c my older brother Jerry went there and Notre Dame b/c we watch them play football) and I usually eat at the boardwalk, but my mom sometimes lets me miss church on Sunday cause she knows I’m working hard and late on Saturday night. I know the only two things I need to do is get good grades and stay out of trouble, and the kids I hang around with it's as if that's all their parents care about too, so that’s all we have to do to have all the freedom in the world teenagers need-- and work on the boardwalk and make money and have fun-- did I forget to mention that I laugh almost five times an hour on the boardwalk???? I laugh so hard sometimes I can't control it-- the people I work with, the guys, the girls, the bosses, we all just are having a good time working and laughing, but I usually laugh hardest with the girls as it seems they just have fun no matter what. And Wayne is always dating the most incredible looking chicks so I'm taking some notes and laughing all the time.
But nothing can convince me otherwise,
As I’m riding home--
"I'm a Rocket Man"
I'm turning the corner on Route 166, heading north and almost home-- I know Gunny (my irish setter dog) is there at the bottom of the steps (we live in the upstairs apartment, and he just goes absolutely NUTS when I come home, which is fun too but when I’m tired I wish he would stay tired--but he can't help it--
"On such a timeless flight"
Just riding my bike --- and gonna be doing THAT for a long time to come--
"And I think it's going to be a long, long, time
'Til touchdown brings me 'round again to find
I'm not the man they think I am at home
Ah, no no no...
I'm a rocket man
Rocket man
I'm a Rocket Man
And it's 1986, and I’m moving into my first house w my wife and our first kid is on the way and my dad is there helping us move in, and I see that look on his face, and looking at his son's pregnant wife, and I see that twinkle in his eye like…..
And he and Helen (that's my mom) just give me this look--like they thought they knew where I came from, but now there just not that sure?????!!!!!!!!
"Rocket Man".
She packed my bags last night, preflight
Zero hour, nine a.m.
And I'm gonna be high
As a kite by then
I miss the earth so much
I miss my wife
It's lonely out in space
On such a timeless flight
And I think it's gonna be a long, long, time
'Til touchdown brings me 'round again to find
I'm not the man they think I am at home
Ah, no no no...
I'm a rocket man
Rocket man
Burnin' out his fuse
Up here alone
And I think it's gonna be a long, long, time
'Til touchdown brings me 'round again to find
I'm not the man they think I am at home
Ah, no no no...
I'm a rocket man
Rocket man
Burnin' out his fuse
Up here alone
Mars ain't the kind of place
To raise your kids
In fact, it's cold as hell
And there's no one there to raise them
If you did
And all this science
I don't understand
It's just my job
Five days a week
A Rocket Man
Rocket Man
And I think it's gonna be a long, long, time
'Til touchdown brings me 'round again to find
I'm not the man they think I am at home
Ah, no no no...
I'm a rocket man
Rocket man
Burnin' out his fuse
Up here alone
And I think it's gonna be a long, long, time
'Til touchdown brings me 'round again to find
I'm not the man they think I am at home
Ah, no no no...
I'm a rocket man
Rocket man
Burnin' out his fuse
Up here alone
And I think it's gonna be a long, long, time(7x)
THE END
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