I can’t remember life without music. When I was young, I sat in front of my parents’ stereo like it was the Wailing Wall and would reveal the meaning of life if I paid proper attention. I found truth in the trenchant observations of Joni Mitchell’s Court and Spark and in Cat Stevens’s (the name he went by then) meandering hippie lyrics for Tea for the Tillerman. I fanned the albums and eight-track tapes around me like a mandala, a protective moat of music. Listening was a sacred rite, a solitary ritual I performed only when my parents and sister were occupied. I had enough company coming through the speakers. I did not believe in the Holy Trinity—we were Jewish—but I believed in the Beatles, the Who, and the Rolling Stones.
I mainly played my parents’ records, which are now mine: Motown from my mother, who likes a backbeat and synchronized dance moves, and country from my father, a fan of the smooth sounds of Glen Campbell and Charley Pride. There was a healthy serving of the British Invasion, like Abbey Road with my mother’s maiden name handwritten on the front; there was Simon & Garfunkel’s Bookends; there was a blues record with Irma Thomas singing “It’s Raining”; there was a beat-up copy of James Brown’s Live at the Apollo; and there was the chunky brown double album of the Carpenters’ greatest hits, a brilliant example of 1970s’ period design which perfectly matched the rainbow of browns in our living room. My parents had also shrewdly invested in the cutting-edge eight-track technology, with tapes including many 1970s’ blockbusters like Meat Loaf’s Bat Out of Hell, Billy Joel’s The Stranger, and Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours.
