Talking to Girls About Duran Duran: One Young Man's Quest for True Love and a Cooler Haircut Read Online Free PDF
Author: Rob Sheffield
Tags: United States, Literary, Personal Memoirs, Biography & Autobiography, Editors; Journalists; Publishers, music, Journalists, Biography, Genres & Styles, Rock Music, History and Criticism, Composers & Musicians, Rock, Journalists - United States, Music Critics, Sheffield; Rob, Music critics - United States, Rock music - History and criticism
brilliant to give them their own song. I would rewind this song over and over, close my eyes and dream of being one of the girls. I want to be that girl tonight. Girl tonight!
I’m still in awe of my sisters. The only thing I would even consider changing about them is that their husbands are taller than I am. (We’ve had words about that.) But I would love to know anything as deeply as they know one another. I’ll never get their ability to laugh for hours over nothing, but I crave being part of their girl noise even when I don’t understand it.
What I don’t get, they are more than willing to teach. I am always learning new rules from them. Giving compliments, for example—always a good idea, yet there are rules for doing it right. My sisters taught me to start with the shoes, and then keep the compliments coming. Never compliment her eyes, because that means she thinks you think she’s plain. Always compliment something else before you compliment the hair, but always compliment the hair. If you’re giving a compliment you don’t mean, which is often advisable, sandwich it between a couple that you do mean. My sisters had a lot of rules.
Everything was changing so fast and moving in stereo. My voice was breaking, so I creaked from Andy Gibb highs to Isaac Hayes lows in the space of a single syllable, even when the syllable was “uuuuh.” I was saying it and spraying it, thanks to my brand-new braces. I was growing so rapidly that I had to relearn how to walk every few months, bumping into trees and tripping over my feet on such a regular basis, inspiring the classic greeting, “Smooth move, Ex-lax.” Nothing could really help me make sense out of my spindly, gangly body and all the hormones exchanging gunfire in it. Nothing, that is, except my radio.
My sisters did their best with me. Music helped.
DAVID BOWIE
“Ashes to Ashes”
1980
David Bowie ended life as I knew it one Sunday morning, entering my life the way a true prophet should—over a bowl of Fruity Pebbles. After church, I was waiting for my sisters to get done with the funnies, perusing Parade. There was a question in “Walter Scott’s Personality Parade.” “Does David Bowie dye his hair, and is he gay?” Mr. Scott responded, “David Bowie, who dyes his hair orange and claims to come from Mars, is reportedly bisexual.”
I never made it to the funnies. I had no idea what either “reportedly” or “bisexual” meant, but I knew now that rock and roll was as sinister and excellent as I always feared it was.
I first got a look at the man in rock-star mode at my grand-parents’ house on the last night of the 1970s, appropriately enough. It was Dick Clark’s Salute to the Seventies , his very special 1979 edition of the New Year’s Rockin’ Eve . Bowie came on to perform “Space Oddity,” looking mean in a gray jumpsuit buttoned up to his neck. My grandfather puffed his pipe and chuckled. “These jokers,” he said affectionately in his County Cork brogue. “The joker is from space, is he?”
As soon as Bowie was done, I kissed my grandfather goodnight and slipped off to hide under my bed in terror for a few hours. Hello, ’80s!
It was the beginning of a great teen romance. My relationship with Bowie was a quintessential junior high school relationship, with the caveat that he knew nothing about it. I kept breaking up with him, staging tearful reunions, having worrisome fits over “Where is this headed?” and “Do we have anything in common?” often renouncing him entirely and vowing to listen to nothing except hard-core punk or folk music or whatever was turning my head that week, only to realize there was no getting away from Bowie. It was like trying to break up with the color orange, or Wednesday, or silent e . It was the most passionate and tumultuous relationship I’d ever known.
I was full of complicated romantic feelings at this time. I was pretty sure I was madly in love, but had no idea with
I’m still in awe of my sisters. The only thing I would even consider changing about them is that their husbands are taller than I am. (We’ve had words about that.) But I would love to know anything as deeply as they know one another. I’ll never get their ability to laugh for hours over nothing, but I crave being part of their girl noise even when I don’t understand it.
What I don’t get, they are more than willing to teach. I am always learning new rules from them. Giving compliments, for example—always a good idea, yet there are rules for doing it right. My sisters taught me to start with the shoes, and then keep the compliments coming. Never compliment her eyes, because that means she thinks you think she’s plain. Always compliment something else before you compliment the hair, but always compliment the hair. If you’re giving a compliment you don’t mean, which is often advisable, sandwich it between a couple that you do mean. My sisters had a lot of rules.
Everything was changing so fast and moving in stereo. My voice was breaking, so I creaked from Andy Gibb highs to Isaac Hayes lows in the space of a single syllable, even when the syllable was “uuuuh.” I was saying it and spraying it, thanks to my brand-new braces. I was growing so rapidly that I had to relearn how to walk every few months, bumping into trees and tripping over my feet on such a regular basis, inspiring the classic greeting, “Smooth move, Ex-lax.” Nothing could really help me make sense out of my spindly, gangly body and all the hormones exchanging gunfire in it. Nothing, that is, except my radio.
My sisters did their best with me. Music helped.
DAVID BOWIE
“Ashes to Ashes”
1980
David Bowie ended life as I knew it one Sunday morning, entering my life the way a true prophet should—over a bowl of Fruity Pebbles. After church, I was waiting for my sisters to get done with the funnies, perusing Parade. There was a question in “Walter Scott’s Personality Parade.” “Does David Bowie dye his hair, and is he gay?” Mr. Scott responded, “David Bowie, who dyes his hair orange and claims to come from Mars, is reportedly bisexual.”
I never made it to the funnies. I had no idea what either “reportedly” or “bisexual” meant, but I knew now that rock and roll was as sinister and excellent as I always feared it was.
I first got a look at the man in rock-star mode at my grand-parents’ house on the last night of the 1970s, appropriately enough. It was Dick Clark’s Salute to the Seventies , his very special 1979 edition of the New Year’s Rockin’ Eve . Bowie came on to perform “Space Oddity,” looking mean in a gray jumpsuit buttoned up to his neck. My grandfather puffed his pipe and chuckled. “These jokers,” he said affectionately in his County Cork brogue. “The joker is from space, is he?”
As soon as Bowie was done, I kissed my grandfather goodnight and slipped off to hide under my bed in terror for a few hours. Hello, ’80s!
It was the beginning of a great teen romance. My relationship with Bowie was a quintessential junior high school relationship, with the caveat that he knew nothing about it. I kept breaking up with him, staging tearful reunions, having worrisome fits over “Where is this headed?” and “Do we have anything in common?” often renouncing him entirely and vowing to listen to nothing except hard-core punk or folk music or whatever was turning my head that week, only to realize there was no getting away from Bowie. It was like trying to break up with the color orange, or Wednesday, or silent e . It was the most passionate and tumultuous relationship I’d ever known.
I was full of complicated romantic feelings at this time. I was pretty sure I was madly in love, but had no idea with
Similar Books
Learning
Karen Kingsbury
The Last Confession of Sherlock Holmes
Kieran Lyne
Birthdays Can Be Deadly
Cindy Bell
Old Men at Midnight
Chaim Potok
Craving Flight
Tamsen Parker
Tempo Change
Barbara Hall
This Old Souse
Mary Daheim
Rain Music
Di Morrissey
Waking Kiss
Annabel Joseph