A week has gone by now, and there’s been a lot of talk of the past and of memories and the soundtrack to my halcyon days, but there’s good news: day 7 is the end of the first act. This will be the last of my teenage reminiscences and the big finale of my melancholy musings on the past. I’m asked for a song that reminds me of a certain event, and the song that I’ve chosen is another one of those wildly evocative sense-memories, one of those transporter songs that bring me right back to a place, a time and a conversation that hasn’t really ended.
Needless to say, I’m not Jamaican, I’m not black and I’m not descended from slaves, so this song’s message has no real personal connection to me. I do like it: it’s heartfelt, it’s emotional and it’s a powerful plea for individualism (not the Ayn Rand kind, fortunately, but the more egalitarian version). It’s about rising from your own shackles and standing tall and proud and not letting The Man bring you down. This is something I can get behind.
But, unusually for me, it’s not what the song says that makes it so important to me. It’s where I first heard it that gives it its impact. This, to me, is the soundtrack to a certain pizzeria back home that became a regular hangout for the cast and crew of a production of Romeo and Juliet I had the privilege of working on. This pizza place had a jukebox which we would regularly abuse. We had a playlist: a usual rotation of songs and Redemption Song was always the first to be played.
I’m not sure if it meant all that much to any of us, but it didn’t matter at the time. We each had one song that we’d like to listen to there, and we each got ours heard. That play was an interesting and strange time in my life. I made many friends, some of whom have gone on to become my closest, and wasted so many evenings leaning over tables piled with empty, greasy pizza boxes arguing points and cracking jokes.
People talk of an adolescent awakening, and this was mine. It became one of those clichés about broadening your mind and discovering the world around you and all that other hippie bullshit, but there’s a grain of truth in all that. I did broaden my mind, and I did discover a great many things unknown to me until then, and I had a blast doing it. I met characters, unusual people who danced in PVC trousers and top hats, people who threw themselves through drywalls and people who could bend your ear for hours about absolutely nothing. I discovered music, investigated bars, and tried out as many new things as I could. I crammed as much exploration into, and squeezed as much experience out of, this brief period as was possible.
And yet, in everything I did, my fondest memories still reside in that small, unassuming mid-terrace pizza restaurant, and in its jukebox, the chrome-and-neon treasure chest that hung from the wall next to the Coke machine. The song is both mournful and triumphant, and so are my recollections. I mourn the loss of those times, but revel in the fact that they happened in the first place.
That pizzeria is long since closed, and a new group of overacting, loudmouth kids now inhabit the stage we once brought to life. Some of those characters have lost contact, while others remain as family. Those times have gone, but they are not forgotten: nothing is forgotten, especially not the laughter and the experiences and my unfortunate teenage goth phase. While Redemption Song may not have any significant and lasting political impact upon me, it’s affected me deeply emotionally, if only by being the opening theme to friendship, conversation, and the rest of my life.
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