Crippling Nostalgia

 Four years ago, I struggled through a bout of crippling nostalgia. No, really, believe it or not, there is such a thing. Well, kind of. The phrase is used more to deride people who don’t keep up with the times, but psychologist do recognize nostalgia as a serious problem.

Anyway, I worked through it by buying a bunch of shit off eBay and this, but now it is creeping back, brought on by the recent deaths of Steve Phillips and Eddie Van Halen. During the scant free time I have, I’ve done little these past few days other than listen to Rainmakers and Van Halen albums. I’m not ashamed to say, some of the songs have brought tears. Okay, I am ashamed to say that – I’m a grown man, I don’t cry during Eruption. And I wouldn’t, except that my life is in such a shamble, and that music is so joyfully, muscularly secure…. It wets my cheeks.

Those songs take me back at impossible speeds to the 80s; before booze and Huntington’s Disease and… all this. I’m recalling snippets of my life as a teenager in agonizingly clear focus. Make no mistake – I was just as mixed up and pathetic as any kid during those days. But at the time, I most certainly did not believe they would be the best years of my life. Yet here I am: crowding 50, in poor health, and a slave to two masters – the bottle and HD. Neither of which gives me a moments peace. Turns out those stupid, feckless high school years would be the best of my doleful life.

And I fucking squandered them.

An eye-doctor adjusts the lenses on the cumbersome device I’m looking through to see the past: Click clack click. “Better worse or about the same?”

Early 80s, Junior High it would be, I’m hanging with a friend and his older brother has some kids over to skate on their Half-Pike. Neither my friend nor I have boards (not that they would have let us take turns if we had), so we’re just watching. The older boys are playing Van Halen’s 1984 on a boom box. They wear torn jeans and no shirts. They smoke. Most of the skate-action is plebian – little more exciting than a handicap ramp – but every once in a while, one will catch air and come crashing down on his ass. Hilarious!

Those were the coolest kids I’d ever – or will ever see. And they rocked Van Halen.

Seems to me like there were a lot of older brother types around back then, and many of them had electric guitars. Ask nicely and they might let you mess around with one for a minute; some might even take the time to teach you a thing or two. Hey now! I’m playing Smoke on the Water! But then they would put Van Halen in the boombox and play Eruption and you’d realize you’re not holding something safe. You’ve got a king cobra in your hands. You’d better drop it or learn how to play.

A few years later my parents would divorce. Note that this was the mid 80’s, mid-America and being the child of a divorced couple made you somewhat of a scandal. Not that I minded. In fact, it was probably the most interesting thing about me. Aside from that, I was talentless, boring, aimless and weak. Then my mother uprooted me in search of affordable accommodation that would take me through four different high schools in four years. Again, I didn’t mind. I figured I could reinvent myself in these new environs. Nope. I was still the same shy nerd in different zip codes. But I briefly attained… not glory, exactly, but call it almost normalcy, when I made friends and had a passable social life in Collinsville Illinois High School. I actually had a girlfriend! She let me get to first base (no, really!). And there was a teen-club called Panama Jax. And the unofficial anthem of that club was, of course, Van Halen’s Panama.

There was a confounding maze of back roads around that club. Some of which terminated in dead ends butting up against farmers’ fields. Would I remember those back roads? Probably not; actually, I’m certain they’re gone now. I’d bet my life all that land has been developed. But I’ll never forget what I got up to on some of those back roads. With my girlfriend. And first base. And Van Halen on the cassette player.

In the late 80s, Israel and Palestine had nothing on the conflict between David Lee Roth and Sammy Hagar. I sided with DLR, but even still, I could not deny the catchiness and pop-power of Van Hagar. Their tapes begrudgingly found their way into my collection.

Not as popular, but much more personally impactful, I’ve already written about the Rainmakers. During those years, I was never further than an arm’s length away from a Rainmakers cassette.  

“Better,” I tell the doctor. “Much better.”

Crippling nostalgia. Indeed.