However, for sheer guillotine-like intensity and definitiveness of severance, nothing in our society, short of divorces and funerals, begins to compare to the moment when parents leave kids off at college for the first time.
When Mick sang “I can’t get no girl reaction,” I’ll bet half the listeners heard what I heard: “I can’t get no girlie action” – which is a little bit more risqué. And on the other hand, I’ll bet lots of people heard “I’m trying to meet some girl” rather than the blunter “I’m trying to make some girl,” which was what Mick actually sang.
Damn! This was stereo! I just kept playing it. I’d keep coming back to those two speakers and the fact that I could close my eyes and lose myself in an imaginary space. I was so taken with the sound that the music almost didn’t matter to me for a while. Eventually I stopped listening to the sound and started paying attention to the record. I’m not sure I found the music overwhelming. I think the effect was subtle, like the very sound of the bossa nova itself. Still that rich Nelson Riddle orchestral palette elucidated part of the truth about bossa nova, which is that, while it may be quiet and subtle, it’s often about passion and excitement. It’s not just in the breathless frustrated eroticism of The Girl From Ipanema On this very album you can hear Surfboard, which somehow captures the thrill of waiting for and then riding a wave.And then there’s Samba Do Avião, which is about riding a plane coming in for a landing at Rio de Janeiro’s Galeão Airport, and looking down at the town as one goes.
It spurred me to try to find shared topics to fascinate her with. Which is where Beatlemania came in. I persuaded my father to take me to see the Beatles’ movie A Hard Day’s Night, largely to have something to talk about with her. But of course, to a teenager in 1964, Beatlemania was like a Roach Motel: you could check in, but you couldn’t check out.