Musical Flashback: The Chauffeur
February, 1984. Frank Erwin Center. Austin, Texas.
The stadium’s filled to capacity. Stage hands swarm, preparing the show; a Jumbotron hangs over the stage, screen black.
Individual bodies are hard to make out with the lights so low…but you can hear them. A sea of small voices engaged in busy chatter while finding seats, excited but hushed conversations among each group about the total awesomeness that’s about to come.
With each second the anticipation builds; the air is thick with it. You can almost reach out and touch it.
The lights flicker. The show’s about to start. In that quick blue flash across the venue, thousands of fresh faces glow, most young girls, all in groups of two or six or ten, all eyes filled with impatient excitement.
There’s movement on the stage and some screaming starts, but it dies down quickly when a couple of roadies run off. False start.
Somewhere in the first mezzanine, six sixth grade girls sit — a happy cluster of sky-high Aqua Net bangs, pink denim jackets, and puffy heart earrings.
Linked since elementary, when the leader of the pack — a mean girl by every definition, easily identified by big, owl-eye glasses and a mullet just like John Taylor’s — started a fan club that was destined to shape at least a part of all of us.
Much drama has ensued since its inception — memberships revoked and reinstated, feelings hurt, tears shed. But tonight’s not the night. Tonight, all hurt feelings are forgotten.
And here I sit. Alongside my sixth grade tribe. Past transgressions are forgiven, old scores are settled. None of it matters now.
We chatter excitedly, animated, voices piling on top of one another, not really saying anything, but somehow expressing everything. We are all on the same page.
The lights go down again and the chattering voices fade with them.
From behind the curtain, the first few notes of a song. The crowd explodes to its feet.
Forgotten pink denim and tiny Esprit handbags hold our seats as the screams start. An entire auditorium FILLED with screams. A cacophony so great, it drowns out its very reason for being.
I hear nothing but my own screams and the screams around me. I see nothing but darkness and the blue lights of the stage. The Jumbotron flickers to life. I scream some more! We all scream MORE!
Two women sit in front of us — we’ve guessed that they’re in their 40s but they’re probably only 31 or 32. To a group of sixth graders they seem ancient— like our moms, or something. They cover their ears and shoot annoyed looks back at us when the screams start. I’m the only one who notices, and I feel bad about it for a moment. Then I wonder…well, what did they expect?
The old women are forgotten, though, as the screaming suddenly intensifies. The boys, OUR BOYS, are making their way onstage. The all-knowing Jumbotron shows us the proof.
We look at them and we look at each other and we scream. IT’S REALLY THEM! In the flesh! For real! We’re in the presence of greatness!
Between screams it occurs to me that, maybe, one of them will look out into the crowd and see me. I believe this could happen. I silently will it to happen. I imagine us locking eyes. I imagine him seeing, through my intensely devoted gaze, just how much he means to me.
It doesn’t really matter which one, I tell myself. But it’s Simon I dream of.
If he could just get one glimpse of my face, I think, he’d see.
I know I’m just a blip in the crowd, far out in mezzanine. I know they can’t see me, and even if they could I’d just look like any other 12-year-old fan in this ocean of waving arms and swaying bodies.
But still, I hope.
And they play the first notes of this song, and we all lose our minds, and I know that I will love them forever.
Now, with nearly 40 years between me and that moment, I can look back and see just how manufactured it all was. The lyrics made no sense. It was all about the look and the hype. Style over substance.
But back then, it didn’t matter. Pure love oozed from my pores that night. My friends and I were branded. Marked by the moment. Forever bonded in our devotion to these five strangers.
For the first time in our lives, we knew pure bliss. And even now, nearly 40 years later, I can assure you that any one of us can feel it again, if we only remember that moment long enough.
So thank you for that, John+Nick+Simon+Roger+Andy. (But Simon especially. Because Simon was especially mine.)
From one of the waves in the sea — thank you for all of it.
