Has it been 30 years?
In that time I've gone from a college kid buying the LP "Boats Against The Current," been married and divorced (with a son named after my favorite singer), seen highs and lows of my own, watched wars come and go, and two heart attacks later, I still love the music of an artist I discovered at the age of 15 in 1972.
Eric Carmen's music may be the greatest constant force in my life.
Eric Carmen fans like me were spoiled enough in 1977 to have reached a point where it was a given that every year we would get a new album from Eric. From 1972 to 1975, we had four Raspberries studio albums and Eric's first solo LP.
In 1976, despite press reports announcing the "coming release" of Eric's second solo album (under titles including "Nowhere To Hide" and "There's No Surf In Cleveland"), we didn't get a new studio album, but we did get "Raspberries Best Featuring Eric Carmen."
In 1977, fans waited with anticipation for Eric's long overdue second studio album to appear.
I remember seeing Eric on the cover of Phonograph Record Magazine on newstands in May of 1977 with reports that the album, "Boats Against The Current," would soon be out. With a return to college coming in August of that year, I spent more months searching record store bins and speaking to store managers seeking information on when the album would be out.
Finally, that August, I discovered the album in Disc Records in Louisville. They had hanging mobiles of the album cover, an endcap display of the album, posters on the walls and windows announcing the album, and a well stocked bin section with dozens of copies of the LP. It was like Christmas in Carmenland as I walked through that store, buying the LP and a picture sleeve 45 rpm of Eric's single "She Did It" before leaving.
On the limited budget of a college journalism student, I went on a buying binge at book stores, too, buying issues of Creem, Circus, Crawdaddy and any rock magazine with a story on Eric and the album.
More than that, I discovered the music and lyrics of that two-sided vinyl masterpiece. It was richly textured melodies with some of the best lyrics I've ever heard. To this day, I judge all lyric writers by the standards Eric established with this album. Eric is at his very best when he writes his own lyrics.
The album was Eric's autobiography in song. It was perfect. I was 20 when that album came out, eager to explore all the world had to offer, and Eric's depth of emotion captured for me what I was feeling at the time: darkness, despair, sadness, happiness, hope, love, all on one album.
At the age of 20, still in school, lyrics like "twenty years with my brain in a book, tryin' to find out who I am" from "Marathon Man" really hit home. Problems with the girlfriend? Well, a line like "in the bank of my love, your account's already overdrawn" from "Take It Or Leave It" summed up my feelings pretty well at the time.
At that age, with the pressure to succeed and my own desire to do so, a tune like "Nowhere To Hide" with its lyrics of "sippin' on a scotch and soda, a shadow in the corner booth, so philosophic and drunk on grown-up truth," really hit home for a guy who on dateless nights went with my buddies to smoke-filled bars to check out local bands.
As a hopeless romantic, "Love Is All That Matters" really fills the bill, while as a horny college kid "She Did It" was pretty inspiring, too!
I think I love "Marathon Man" as much for its driving rock 'n' roll as I do for the fact that my college roommate hated most of Eric's music, but even he had to admit, "Marathon Man - now that's a great song!"
"I Think I Found Myself," though, was the most amazing song on the album, at least to me. It was different from everything else on the LP. And on the edge of turning 21, the lyrics really meant a lot to me. When Eric sang, "I trusted everyone else so completely, well I was deaf, dumb and blind, but I'll be damned if I'll let 'em defeat me," it was a battle cry for the underdog.
And like many fans, I found hope in the album's title track. Eric told an interviewer that it was "a song to hang yourself by," but I have never heard it in that way. For me, at 20, and that's the image that lingers three decades later, it was a song of hope when Eric sings "we're gonna find what we're after at last, feelings that we left in the past, there's romance in the sunset, we're boats against the current to the end."
And in an age where my favorite band reunites ("the story isn't ending") after three decades, I find great hope still listening to "Boats Against The Current." Now if we could just get back to annual album releases from our favorite artist...
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6 comments:
In 1989 I located a preserved copy of that issue of Phonograph Record Magazine, May 1977, with Eric on the cover, and the caption, "The New Pop Art". Inside, there was a double full page spread with Eric's interview, and several more photos of him. The quote highlighted in headline at the time was Eric's lament, "People never seem to realize that I was dead serious about Go All The Way", and the interview itself I feel is a tremendous preview to the album that was to come. Eric was also quoted as saying, I recall, in describing his intensity during the production work, that he was putting himself through an adrenaline...something or other, depriving himself of sleep and saying that, "If I go in too rested,..." he was afraid he would be too analytical, and said of his manner of producing the songs, "It's just a matter of getting back to nine months ago when I wrote the damn things." It's been years since I've actually had that copy, being as I lost it in a bad move seven years ago, but these quotes are very memorable to me when I think of the album Boats Against The Current.
I never established a static opinion of any one song over and above another because it changed for me like a mood ring. I think that of the songs that I felt the most immediate connections to, "Nowhere To Hide" and "Run Away" stood out the most, with quickly added to that, "I Think I Found Myself".
I listened to that album until the grooves went flat and I memorized every single particle of musica on there, so wound up with multiple copies. The mood ring thing still applies, but with Eric's input, and especially this view of the drafts, I feel like the album is released anew, in the sense that there is so much more to think about, and one of the things Eric also was quoted as having said in that interview, "I'm really very analytical". I could relate to that, and when something like this album comes along and gives me reasons to think, then thinking is one of the favorite things to do.
I have grown much with this album, and continue to grow with it. Thank you Eric, for that painstaking work which you have done so much to create and to preserve its purity of.
Don,
Good stuff! I was awaiting the album's release with just as much anxious anticipation.
Also, you reminded me of a little detail that I'd long forgotten: I do remember reading in 1976 or '77 about the album's working titles well in advance of its release. The "Nowhere to Hide" concept would have fit as well as Boats Against the Current, for obvious reasons, IMHO. As for "There's No Surf in Cleveland," I don't remember ever hearing an Eric recording of that song, but he must have thought about including it on Boats.
I do have the song on vinyl, of course --- on my vintage Euclid Beach Band album. I'd love to find it on CD, just for "I Need You" and "End of the World," but it's a rarity. In fact, there's one copy of the Euclid Beach Band album on CD offered at Amazon.com right now [8/24/07] for a mere $149!
Great post, Don!
I still have my copy of that entire issue of Phonograph Record magazine, including the "Sounds of the Cities" section in which critics of the music scene in various cities write about the artists they think may be due to break big very soon. It's still interesting to go back and see who they mentioned. One of them was the Cars, who at the time were still a Boston band.
A late comment, but excellent work, Don! :))
~gael
I bought my cassette version of "Boats" at a variety store for $1.00 in 1982, at age 19. I was less than 2 years into a songwriting career and listened very carefully to it, not knowing how it would inform my own songwriting skills, but now over 30 years later, I can see how it influenced me, if only through osmosis, to try to write song lyrics that mean something and touch the heart. I write mostly ballads and country lyrics and keep a thesaurus and rhyming dictionary as well as "old man Webster's word warehouse" handy, because as I've said for years, "the Beatles and Bread used up all the easy rhymes".
"Boats against the current" is an album that could stand on it's lyrics alone, OR on it's music alone, but the fact that it has meaningful lyrics and music that fully complements those lyrics is a testament to the hard work that went into the making of this record.
My old cassette still works, and I have to say "Runaway" is my favorite song on the album. Stunningly beautiful music and words that melt.
"Nowhere to hide" and "Love is all that matters" are tied at second.
I shared " Love is all that matters" with my sister and she had it as her first dance at her wedding on May 29, 1982. She's still happily married with 3 sons.
I always liked "All by myself", but this album has musical gems that I never get tired of.
It influenced my guitar and piano style in much the same way that Bread and other 70's era bands did.
The "Sad, but sweet" melodies and harmonies never get old.
THANK YOU ERIC CARMEN!!!!!
David "b3" Ingram - Arroyo Grande, California
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