Victory songs from the strong

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 03/10/2014 (4019 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

I used to go to rock concerts back in the day, partly because I enjoyed listening to music so loud it would cause my ears to bleed, but mostly because my fevered adolescent brain believed it was the best way to meet girls.

Today, my wife doesn’t allow me to meet girls, but I go to concerts to see whether aging members of the old bands are still able to crawl around the stage in form-fitting Spandex pants, and because I get a kick out of counting the wrinkles on the other hip-and-happening audience members.

Last month, I was thrilled to join a group of old friends among the roughly 8,000 people who braved menacing skies and soggy ground to take in the big outdoor concert at the Lyric Theatre in Assiniboine Park.

Almost everyone was there to see Canadian country rock legends Blue Rodeo. Everyone except me. I was there to see Vancouver folk-rock band Spirit of the West, whose songs I have been butchering for the last 31 years while singing along to the radio in my car.

I became a huge fan of these guys from the moment I heard the lyrics to The Crawl: “Well, we’re good old boys, we come from the North Shore, Drinkers and carousers the likes you’ve never seen!” because, hey, I came from the North Shore back when drinking and carousing summed up the extent of my career objectives.

Near the end of the band’s stint as the night’s opening act, my buddy Paul, beer in hand, leaned over to me and whisper-shouted in my ear: “Hey, Doug, did you notice the lead singer is reading the song lyrics off some kind of teleprompter?”

I scowled at Paul, because, no, I hadn’t noticed a thing. “Pshaw!” I grunted, dismissively, although I may be paraphrasing slightly because this is a family newspaper. “I seriously doubt he has to read the lyrics to songs he wrote and has been singing for the last 30 years.”

The conversation slipped my mind until the next day, when I was fumbling around the Internet and was stopped cold by a news story stating Spirit of the West lead singer John Mann had just revealed he’s been diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s disease and now needs an iPad to remember his own lyrics.

“I know this will come as a shock to many of you,” the 51-year-old singer wrote on his website, but he was adamant the degenerative brain disorder that robs people of their memories will not force him to give up performing.

“I don’t want to feel embarrassed,” he wrote. “I want to accept what has happened and live.”

I had really enjoyed the concert, but after hearing about Mann’s battle, and how his buddies in the rollicking band are standing behind him “foursquare,” it took on some additional meaning.

Forgive me for sounding like a Hallmark card, but I was deeply moved by Mann’s courage. He’s battling a terminal condition, and doing it joyfully, in public, dancing and singing with reckless abandon on stage, just as he has for three decades.

I was thinking about John Mann’s courage last weekend when I parked myself in a back row at the Burton Cummings Theatre to listen to the legendary Art Garfunkel try to regain the angelic singing voice that became a whisper when he was diagnosed with vocal cord paralysis in 2010.

I was there because my wife bought tickets for my birthday on the grounds she could not wait to dissolve into a big puddle of goo when Garfunkel, now 72 and missing his trademark blond curls, sang his masterpiece, Bridge Over Troubled Water, from his days with Paul Simon.

Like Mann, Garfunkel is dealing with a health crisis in the most public, vulnerable way imaginable. Initially, it felt a bit uncomfortable watching him struggle. He croaked a bit, coughed a bit and chased after the powerful notes he so easily caught as an icon in the 1960s.

But the crowd loved him for being a fighter. In his review of the concert, my colleague Alan Small beautifully likened Garfunkel to “a crafty veteran baseball pitcher who uses his years and years of experience, guile and sheer guts to keep throwing strikes when his fastball loses its fizz.”

It was just him, a couple of stools, and another guy playing guitar. But we embraced him, and Garfunkel loved the love he was getting, frequently touching a hand to his heart.

Despite a few coughs and croaks, it was magical because here was another guy whose music has defined the special moments in our lives, up on a stage, pitching with all his heart, refusing to quit.

When, backed only by a guitar, he finally sang a sweet, rearranged version of Bridge Over Troubled Water, my wife was not the only formerly fevered adolescent reduced to a quivering puddle.

Just like John Mann counting on his iPad in a Winnipeg park, it was a night when Art Garfunkel needed a friend. And we were sailing right behind.

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca