75: Styx, "Lady"

Wm.

March 8

The way I remember it, it's a dark, clear night and we're in Dad's car, which I'm guessing was the black 1971 Ford LTD II and not the silver-with-maroon-hardtop 1975 Chrysler Newport he'd buy sometime that spring (thanks, Joe Garagiola). I cannot identify now where we might have been, but my gut tells me we're in Cincinnati or maybe across the river in Covington. Is Dad driving or are we in a parking lot? If the latter, what are we doing there? Could it be following some family outing, with Dad now visiting one of his parishioners in the hospital, leaving the key in the ignition so we could listen to the radio?

It's likely not the first time the eleven-year-old boy in the backseat has heard the song that's forever linked to the scene, scant as the details have become. This time, though, he's captivated immediately by the quiet yet active piano/synth introduction, the slow buildup as the rhythm section kicks in at the start of the second verse, the exuberant harmonies that follow, the pulsing "rumph-da-da-da-dumph" backbeat in the second chorus. He's too young to understand, but he senses there's emotion, there's feeling, behind the words. It's by no means the first time he's really liked a song after hearing it on the radio, but it might be the first time he's felt the magic that can be found there.

I've probably said before that, outside of listening to WLW during breakfast in the kitchen or for Cincinnati Reds baseball, my early memories of listening to the radio are linked with riding in a car. It stretches back as far as, say, the summer of 1971, but really kicked in late '73/early '74, a little before I turned 10. Over the next two years, my brain filed away tune after tune, each becoming associated with images both interior and exterior to the vehicle in which I'm traveling. These days, I refer to them as "car radio songs;" it occurs to me that I should compile a comprehensive list.

Last Friday evening I listened to Premiere's rebroadcast on 3/1/75 on a livestream from an Australian station. On the lead-in to #10, Casey tells a story about the song that went nowhere on first release in the fall of 1973, except in the band's hometown of Chicago. A couple of stations there kept it in rotation and momentum in other places began building, ultimately leading to a re-issue a year later. This time, the moment was right, and--for better or worse, depending on one's point of view I suppose--Styx became a thing. Dennis DeYoung's heartfelt love song to his wife Suzanne hit lots of folks, including this one, right in the feels (in spite of the hackneyed charms/arms rhyme). I was more than a year away from starting to buy 45s, but I have to believe that's one I'd have gotten.

Hearing "Lady" (soon to peak at #6) a week ago, I felt again some of the awe that first stirred 49 years ago. It's barely possible that March 1, 1975 was the day the moment I'm kinda-sorta remembering occurred.