By Pete Kurie
As a kid, I wasn’t a big troublemaker. I tried hard in school. I wanted to please my parents; they were good to me.
Then I saw Dylan.
I was fourteen.
To give you a sense of my America, President Clinton had created the progressive-seeming “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. (Being queer was tolerated, as long as you were willing to die for your country and also not talk about it.) I’d been to other great concerts in my 1990s boyhood. For instance, I’d seen a new band called Radiohead open for R.E.M.
But parents were always around. I loved having them close, yet I desperately wanted to march to my own drum.
Everyone said my mom and I looked alike. She was androgynous. She wore power suits by day and flowy dresses by night, her inner hippie peeking through. She wrote folk songs on a Goya guitar, singing of an Aquarian age worlds apart from suburban Pennsylvania.
My dad didn’t play an instrument; he played the radio. He got emotional listening to The Big Bopper, Buddy Holly, and Ritchie Valens, remembering the day the music died. My brother, too, spoke through music. He looked like a jock but listened to Madonna and shredded on heavy metal guitar.
This night, Dylan, was miraculously free of blood relatives. It was just me and Josh, a friend from next door.
Dressing cool for the concert felt important. But it was hot outside. I settled on khaki shorts, a black t-shirt, and Chucks. I was going for something European but probably came across a bit square. Josh’s dad, our chauffeur, had a mustache and looked like he was going to enlist me in the army against my will at any moment. He smelled of cigar smoke. He dropped us off, telling us he’d be back at ten and to be waiting.
Yes, sir.
He frightened both of us; it didn’t take much to anger him to the point of screaming at the top of his lungs.
The “Star Pavilion” was surprisingly modest. The outdoor stage faced an uncovered grassy field. There was no curtain. The guitars and drums gleamed under the lights. I was drawn to the snaking wires, soundboards, and amplifiers. Everything hummed and hissed as the sun started setting; everyone and everything was ready.
The tour buses parked next to the stage. The performers got off the bus, walked a few paces, waited in the wings, and took their places in front of the elated crowd. I was standing closer than I had ever been to the speakers and the stage (it was INTENSELY LOUD).
Is music allowed to be this loud?
At home it never was.
But this was like a carnival in which rules were upside-down.
In which rebellion was accepted.
I could feel the bass reverberating in my chest. My heart was racing to its rhythm, faster than anything I had experienced in gym class. I wondered if doctors knew of this risk to rock fans. I wondered if I was in trouble. (I wasn’t.)
The crowd was getting tipsy on concession-stand beer. Others were covertly smoking weed. Two macho guys picked a fight over who was blocking the view. Classic.
It was surreal, everything all at once.
I didn’t try to understand the bizarre communal mood swings.
Just took it all in.
Maybe this is why people go to church. For some sort of catharsis.
Bob Dylan stood with a Stratocaster strapped over his shoulder. All perfectly-unkempt curls and piercing blue eyes. The fifty-something voice of counterculture was singing straight to me. After “Ballad of a Thin Man,” “Simple Twist of Fate,” “Highway 61,” and other greats, the band left the stage. It went by too fast. Crushed. Ravenous. We demanded an encore. Our sanity depended on it. More. More. More.
My friend Josh kept looking at his Casio watch.
I could feel him getting anxious.
We were running a few minutes late. He pleaded with me: "We gotta get out of here right now, he’s gonna kill me!” I wondered if I was in trouble. (Again.)
And yet, there was no possible way – in the entire universe – that I was going to miss one last song. I had never been more certain. I planted my feet in the muddy grass and, with steely resolve, said something out of a Spaghetti Western: "You go on ahead, I'll find my own way home."
Josh looked at me quizzically and then, as soon as he understood I was serious, sprinted.
It’s okay, I repeated to myself like a mantra.
I’ll be okay alone.
Except, I wasn’t alone.
A cosmic camaraderie began to envelop the strangers around me. It must have been in the ether all night long; suddenly, I felt it. It was like every minute here was worth a year in real time, and these were my oldest friends. Our bodies pressed against one another, and we started swaying as Dylan crooned,
They'll stone you when you're trying to go home
And they'll stone you when you're there all alone
But I would not feel so all alone
Everybody must get stoned!
Now I get it.
Trouble is not the end of the world.
Trouble is just the beginning.
A boy my age with sad, dark eyes is smiling mysteriously at me. Even more mysteriously, I am smiling back at him. (He wants to ask, I want to tell.)
I belong here. I am seeing and being seen. I am an observer of the crowd and a part of it. Both a wallflower and a dancer in the strange, beautiful dance.
A duality I would seek and find again and again, as a student and an artist, throughout the years.
When the concert ended, my body vibrated from music and my simple act of disobedience. I rang my parents on a crackly payphone; they were unfazed. While waiting for them to pick me up, I awarded myself an overpriced poster with some cash from weekend yard work. Before I knew it, I was lying on my bed, safe. Things had changed.
The next day, I wrote a song.
Nearly thirty years later, I’m still writing.
I guess I was a little like Bob Dylan. And my mom.
Those years are gone, but the feeling lingers on………..
Pete Kurie began writing songs as a child, as a way to see & comprehend the world around him, before training as a cultural theorist at Princeton. Reminiscent of Leonard Cohen & Lou Reed plus contemporary storytellers like Eileen Myles, Sam Burton, & Elvis Perkins, Pete’s self-titled album is an ode to the sounds of his youth & a ticket to our mysterious future. Listen, then take a look at the music video by Justin Giugno.