Trigger! On first thought people can get confused by the word trigger. Is it something on a gun? Is it the unexplainable? Unrecognizable? A swelling of emotion? Something else? Or all of the above? For me it is all of the above but today I write about the emotions.
As I sat this morning listening to a song by The Beatles, Free as a Bird, I was triggered. It wasn't about the Beatles so much but the talented Jeff Lynne, producer extraordinaire and lead of the band The Electric Light Orchestra. I realized there are several things in my life that are essential to my story that must be included. My story could not be told without the inclusion of Jeff Lynne and The Electric Light Orchestra.
There was a time in 1974 that I was first introduced to the Electric Light Orchestra, (ELO). I had been out doing crazy things on the campus of East Tennessee State University in Johnson City Tennessee where I was going to High School. I was a Freshman in High School and was doing a multitude of the stupid things High School kids do, especially kids coming from a dysfunctional family, staying from one place to another, doing drugs he could afford, mostly huffing, and as confused, well as confused as one might expect. It was while coming home late one night, being high as a kite that I was at my grandparents house where I often stayed. Sitting up late, I watched this band perform an amazing rendition of Can't Get it Out of My Head and to this day, I believe the best rendition ever of Roll Over Beethoven. At that moment, even though I was as high as a kite, I was won over to the music of ELO.
I don't know what it was other than their own ability to be unique and do their own thing. They weren't really copying anyone else's style of music, they were creating their own style. I started following the and listening to everything I could, be it, to this day some of my favorites from albums like On The Third Day, Eldorado, Face The Music, and others, but especially these three early renditions.In my own troubled life, I had moved from staying with grandparents on occasion, to wherever I could find a place to sleep, be it a baseball dugout, an abandoned bowling alley, and ultimately with friends from couch hopping to a youth pastor, and the creme dela crème, the YMCA Homeless Transient Shelter in Erwin Tennessee. I had a bed, a boom box and a bunch of 8-tracks, including of course. ELO. I remember laying in bed so vividly to this day, listening to the traffic driveing by while listening to the guitar riffs on Fire On High. Something about the sounds of ELO and night time traffic filled with sirens on occasions that still triggers memories.
I went to 3 different High Schools 6 different times from the 9th grade through eventually graduation in the 12th, all while listening to the music of ELO. Something else happened though. Just up the street from the YMCA on the corner of Tucker and Main Street in Erwin lived this hot lady, a few years older but nonetheless, hot as all get out, Mary Jane.
I was smart, I started showing up and visiting Mary Jane whom I had met at a church I started going to because another girl named Kim told my sister that I was hot. Kim and I dated for awhile, it was good, but after a tough breakup, I was lonely, and living at the YMCA. I was tired of Ragu spaghetti sauce over noodles cooked on a hot plate I wasn't supposed to have. What did I do after dating a few girls? What most anyone in my situation would do, I started showing up at Mary Jane's around supper time. We would sit down, eat, watch movies or television and over a bit of time start to fall in love. As Mary Jane would tell me some years later, the band we did a lot of making out to was ELO. There was nothing like a great band, a young man making out with a much hotter older woman along with the music of ELO that would give taste of Heaven.
Needless to say, a couple of years later Mary Jane and I were married. It was the shock of some in the community. This woman older than me, a school teacher and I, a guy who was homeless and left college early was getting married. Some 40 years later while sitting in my living room in Wichita Kansas, Mary Jane and I talked about how we had shown people that said our marriage wouldn't work. I'll never forget her telling me so emphatically, "Yeah, we showed them didn't we Mike?"
The love we had, kindled in part by the music of ELO would grow. While there were setbacks at times, as there will be in any marriage, we both knew the importance of ELO in our love for each other. One night, some 35 or so years after we tied the knot, we were sitting on the couch. I told my Alexa, "Alexa play my music." I honestly had no idea what Alexa was going to play when I told her to play music. This time as Mary Jane and I sat close together on the couch, she started playing Telephone Line by ELO. WOW! Mary Jane wrapped her hands around my head and gives me a passionate kiss I'll never forget. Enjoying it, I ask, "Wow, what was that for?" She responds, "Alexa is playing our song. We used to make out to that song all the time." Then showing that that once dumb poor street kid was still kind of dumb, I responded, "Honey, I used to make out with a lot of girls to that song." She back hands me as she should have and we both start laughing.
We loved ELO so much that we made a pact that helped keep our marriage so passionate for so many years. We decided that anytime, no matter what we were doing or where we were at, that if we heard an ELO song we had to give each other a kiss. There was the KIA car commercial, it played it all of the time, it showed while visiting someone's house, or at a movie. All the time, over and over again. We even went to see the movie I Can Only Imagine, well guess what? The movie starts off with an ELO song. Seems like we were kissing all the time and people wondered why, so we had to tell them about our ELO pledge to each other.
We had been together some 39 years and I had made a pledge about the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame. That is I would never go until ELO was inducted. Well the previous year they had been inducted and my daughter who lives in Ohio bought Mary Jane and I tickets to go because now, ELO was in the HOF. We were excited to go, so we did.
While in Cleveland at the Rock N Roll HOF, I was frankly disappointed in a lot of ways despite being asked for my autograph as we went to go in. See, I'm a musician and know how to dress the part, even the long hair and long beard. Mary Jane just laughed about it. While in the HOF my back was hurting and I had to rest more than usual. Mary Jane on the other hand was complaining about a little tummy ache. We didn't think much of it at the time. We left disappointed in the HOF for all kinds of reasons and went back to our daughters. It was early in the week and each day Mary Jane complained a little more about her tummy. We left Ohio to drive back to Kansas because I had a concert on Saturday night. We stopped at Lake of the Ozarks to check it out and Mary Jane kept complaining more about her tummy hurting.
We got home on Friday, I did my show on Saturday and Mary Jane didn't go which was rare. It was a night that I'll never forget as I was inducted as a Great Musician from the State of Kansas into the International Blues Hall of Fame. I came home excited, woke Mary Jane up to show her the plaque and tell her. She was so glad for me. We went to sleep and the next morning she complained more about her tummy. I told her I was taking her to the Doctor. She insisted she didn't want to go, but in a not so nice way, I told her she was going to the "damned doctor, you have insurance!"
At the doctors office they did a scan of Mary Jane's tummy. From there they saw something and sent her immediately to the emergency room at St. Francis Hospital in Wichita. It was there that our nightmare begin. Mary Jane ended up being admitted to the hospital and would be there 5 of the next 6 weeks where she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. There was hope though in what was called the Whipple Surgery. They thought it was a good possibility that she would respond well to the surgery, even with it being as dangerous as it is. 3 weeks later they attempted the surgery.
I'll never forget the 17 or so people in the surgical waiting room with us. I'll also never forget the surgeon walking out some hour and a half later to tell me they had to abandon the surgery. The cancer had grown so much that if they had continued the surgery she would have died. They diagnosed her at stage 4 and gave her 6 months at best to live.
I decided to get in touch with friends in Nashville Tennessee. The Bridgestone Center made great tickets available for us, my friend Jim Schulman from University High in Johnson City was now the Vice-Mayor in Nashville so he helped make things happen and gave us his parking place at Bridgestone, so close to the door. Then, well then, there was Facebook. I asked my friends to help make our dream date possible. Man oh man, how those friends came through.
I sit here writing, literally with tears flowing down my face thinking of these memories, while listening to ELO in the background on shuffle, with by chance, Zanadu playing. The line comes up, "A million lights are dancing in the sky where you are." Not making that up.
Please don't take this wrong,THIS IS NOT AN ATTEMPT TO RAISE FUNDS!!!!, but I promised my wife to do my own record, which has just been released but I promised to release hers as well. Everything is done except for the licensing fees for some of her cover songs. Prayerfully, those funds will come in someday to get that done, of which, 1/2 of all proceeds go to the Cancer Relief Organization in Wichita that helped us so much, Victory in the Valley. Thanks for reading, God bless you and thank you again Jeff Lynne and the rest of the cast of ELO over the years. Your music has made an impact, of which, my story couldn't be told.
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