The Music Memoir
Music That Saved Me As A Teen
Helping me feel less crazy and alone.
Alone in my bedroom, sitting on my bed, scribbling words on paper, working out lines of a poem, a song I’d never heard before came on the radio.
The lyrics captivated me.
I’d never heard such words in a song before. There was something about his voice. A connection. An understanding, as I’d experienced with Janis Joplin’s years earlier.
Someone out there, someone else in this world, someone understood my pain.
I held my pencil, the tip ready to jot down the singer’s name.
The song ended, and the announcer said, “That was Alice Cooper with his new hit, Only Women Bleed.”
The next few evenings I tuned in to the same radio station, hoping to hear the song again.
I kept adding more change to the money stashed in my bureau drawer, leftover lunch money saved for booze and cigarettes, but I wanted this record so much I was willing to dip into that cash supply.
When it came time to purchase the album, I didn’t have enough money. So I asked my mother for a few extra dollars. She never had a problem giving me money to buy books and records — anything that would keep me satisfied and entertained at home.
It was as if she bribed me to go along with my imprisonment. A silent unspoken deal, a trade-off, like books and records, could replace all the real freedom I so wanted.
At home in the evening after supper, I tore off the clear plastic wrap from the Welcome to My Nightmare album and sat beside the stereo speaker to listen to it for the first time.
The songs took my breath away.
Each evening, I played the record over and over, until I memorized all the words and sang along.
I felt so amazed and excited that someone would dare sing about being crazy.
The songs helped relieve my anxiety and fear, making crazy a fun, almost celebration of sorts, and a snub to my mother.
When she and my father switched to one of the upstairs bedrooms, she moved the stereo from the living room to the dining room to keep the noise from going upstairs.
Since I no longer had the privacy I needed while listening to my music, I made the best of the situation. I tossed aside all my worries and let myself go wild, deciding to show my mother what crazy was really like, since crazy was what she always called me.
While I sang along to the words of each song, I jumped on the sofa, leapt to a chair, and waved my arms in the air. Dorothy, Kathleen, and my cousins cracked up over my antics, while my mother told me to settle down, shushing me to quiet down so as not to wake my father.
The more upset she became, the happier it made me. I wanted to make her life as miserable as she made mine.
I turned up the music, and she turned it down. “If you wake your father, there’ll be hell to pay,” she warned.
But I only laughed and turned up the volume.
When I ran out of steam, I’d stop to catch my breath, then stare her straight in the face, twisting my neck from side to side, rolling my eyes back and forth. “Do you think I’m crazy now?” I’d ask.
When the song Cold Ethel played, I sang it directly to my mother, believing the song spoke of who she was, based on all the comments she’d made over the years about sex.
My mother made sex sound like a dirty chore. Something to do only when necessary.
When the song stopped, I giggled, let out a shriek, leapt on a chair and started singing the next song.
Since the only TV in the house was in the dining room, it meant that when I played music, no one else could watch any shows. There was nothing else for Mom, Dorothy, and the other kids to do but listen to my music and let me entertain them. Sometimes they cheered me on like I was a rock star on stage.
I loved how my mother watched me, her face stone-like, upset with how she’d lost control and didn’t know how to rein me back in.
I wanted to make her aware this was only the beginning of how far I’d go.
I wanted her to hate having me at home, in her sight, getting on her nerves. I wanted to become a pounding headache beating against her skull, forcing her to get rid of me.
I collected all his records, listening closely to every word he sang.
Alice Cooper became my favourite singer during my mid-teens. He was my saviour, the one who helped provide me with the strength, the encouragement, and the energy to carry on, to survive until I could leave home. The one who kept me from wanting to curl up and die.
His words became my hope, while Janis Joplin was the part of me that felt defeated.
They were like two sides of a coin. I listened to her when I wanted to cry and listened to Alice when I wanted strength, energy, power, and the belief I would survive life with my mother.
BARBARA CARTER is a visual artist and writer with a focus on healing from childhood trauma, alcohol addiction, and living her best authentic life.
