Turn Around Bright Eyes by Rob Sheffield

Author:Rob Sheffield
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins

2

The first time I truly felt Rod’s love touch was a hot summer night, deep in the seventies, in the pinball room of a Holiday Inn in Dunn, North Carolina. My family was on our yearly road trip to Disney World, and we always stayed at this Holiday Inn because my dad figured it was located at the precise geographical halfway point between Boston and Orlando. So over the years I got to know that pinball room well: the Elton John “Captain Fantastic” machine, a couple of others, an air hockey table, foosball, all on a carpet that was Bubble Yum green. And a jukebox.

Every summer, we pulled into the motel parking lot after a long day on the road. I liked to loiter around the pinball room pretending I was staying at the motel all by myself, the way a young boy does. This night, there was a teenage girl playing the Captain Fantastic, a real seventies dream-weaver gypsy queen, feathered hair, blue jeans, hemp-braided belt. I only saw her that one night, but I bet even today I could pick her out of a police lineup and charge her with crimes of love. She commanded the jukebox, playing the same two songs over and over all night: ELO’s “Sweet Talkin’ Woman” and Rod Stewart’s “Tonight’s the Night.”

I felt safe with “Sweet Talkin’ Woman,” which was one of my favorite songs. I could relate to ELO, and the way Jeff Lynne sang about falling in love with girls who walk too fast and talk too sweet and slip away before you can catch them. I also admired the cellos. But I didn’t feel safe with “Tonight’s the Night” at all. I was threatened by how much this older girl liked it.

The jukebox in North Carolina played “Tonight’s the Night” complete with the forbidden line, “Spread your wings and let me come inside.” Not exactly a double entendre—it’s barely two-thirds of an entendre. But it was too much for the radio. The pop stations back home censored that verse. The only time I’d heard the “spread your wings” line was on TV, during the prime-time soap Family, as the soundtrack to a slow dance between Kristy McNichol and Leif Garrett.

This song has to be the most effective anti-sex commercial ever; it makes the act of physical love sound unbelievably sordid. They should play it in schools to drive down the pregnancy rates. Rod invites his virgin child into the parlor, pulls down the shades, and pours her a glass of wing-spreading potion. He disconnects the telephone line (probably because Jeff Lynne won’t stop calling, begging her to come back). A brief interlude of gown-loosening, then it’s upstairs o’clock. Somehow you just know how it will end: Rod passed out on the couch, pants down, snoring, while she goes through his wallet, copies his credit card numbers, and plugs in the phone to call her boyfriend back home in Strasbourg.

The girl in the pinball room loved both these seventies songs, even though they’re so different.

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