I Got You Babe

I didn't like it.

Now you've got to remember, we were in the heyday of the British Invasion, rock ruled, and if you look at the songs on the hit parade in the summer of '65 your jaw will drop. Yes, there was "Satisfaction." But also "Help" and my personal favorite, "California Girls." Motown was represented too, with "It's the Same Old Song," "Nothing But Heartaches" and "Tracks of My Tears," and this was when Dylan finally hit the Top Forty airwaves, with "Like a Rolling Stone," and the number one record was...I GOT YOU BABE?

And it was never really a Top Forty, barely twenty records got played, and the top five were played over and over again, which you kinda liked, because if you missed a favorite you just kept your transistor tuned to the station and soon enough it would come back on, meanwhile, you're twisting the dial trying to find the track on another outlet, fearful you'll miss it on the station you left, and while twirling the dial or pushing buttons you'd be subjected to number one over and over and over again. Which meant that I heard "I Got You Babe" many more times than I ever wanted to, and to tell you the truth, I don't ever remember listening to it all the way through.

I didn't think Sonny & Cher were their real names. Come on, Cher with a "C"? At this point naming your act was important, and who would live their lives with these monikers? And then I saw them on TV, I can still vividly remember it, they were singing "All I Really Want to Do," actually Cher was singing, Sonny was just hanging out on stage in this fur vest that was so bogus, so ersatz, I never ever cottoned to the act...NEVER!

Not that you could evade their songs, but really the only two giant ones thereafter were "The Beat Goes On," which Vanilla Fudge covered well on their very disappointing second LP, and Sonny's "Laugh at Me," which we did.

But then the act turned to TV. That's what you did when you were running out of gas. Thank god I didn't have a television set at that time, so I wasn't subjected to their visages. But the show was such a hit that it was all over the press, back when we knew who the people were in the gossip pages, and the divorce story was interesting...who wouldn't leave Sonny? And then I ran into Sonny and Chastity on their way out of the sporting goods store I was working at in Hollywood, he was driving a Porsche 911, we talked a bit, and I never forgot it.

And by this time I knew Sonny had worked for Phil Spector.

My friend Andrew Loog Oldham says the worst thing that ever happened to Phil was that Tom Wolfe article, "The First Tycoon of Teen," Phil believed his press, and didn't have that much success after, although he did work with the Beatles, but the Beatles were older, they remembered his wall of sound.

And I ultimately knew that originally the act did have fake names, as in Caesar and Cleo, but this was the deep trivia that came out in rock magazines, and dedicated readers ate it up and memorized it, but we weren't going back and listening to their records, hell, we'd have to buy them, there was no streaming, no YouTube, and that was never going to happen. Furthermore, I don't remember the Caesar and Cleo records being in the bins. Yes, people forget how bad the physical era was. Distribution was king and there was a good chance the record you wanted was out of print, unavailable, although you did constantly try and search for the ones you wanted, like I did with "Lumpy Gravy," which I finally had to buy on import.

And, of course, as the seventies progressed, Cher had AM hits and then she became a movie star, never mind marrying Gregg Allman, and the last hurrah happened on Letterman, which I actually saw the evening of, on my VCR, I taped the show every night, it was a club, and when Dave moved to 11:30 it just wasn't the same. So I was aware of the performance and then it exploded, became legendary, you can see it here: https://bit.ly/3lFrzwu And while I'm proffering links, this was not the show I saw, but here you can see the fur vest: https://bit.ly/2JAdeEn And ultimately, with help from Diane Warren, John Kalodner and a tattoo on her ass, Cher had a gigantic hit in the MTV era, turning back time, and when the internet came along I paid neither the deceased Sonny nor the still extant Cher any mind. But the other night I was listening to the top hits of 1965 on Spotify and I heard..."I Got You Babe."

Do you fast-forward or not. Come on, you've experienced this problem. You're listening to a playlist, or you're shuffling your tracks, and you hit a bummer, a bad song, or one that does not suit your mood, and if you click past it...then you start clicking through other songs and the mood is broken, you've got to listen to the bummers, and sometimes they reveal themselves to you. "I Got You Babe" revealed itself to me Tuesday night.

"They say we're young and we don't know
We won't find out until we grow
Well I don't know if all that's true
'Cause you got me and baby I got you"

It was a different era. There was a huge middle class. You could survive on minimum wage, you could make beaucoup bucks with your hands, especially on the assembly line, and everybody did not believe they could become famous and..."I Got You Babe" was evidencing optimism, it's the opposite of the paranoia and pessimism of today. And, the youthquake had started to tremble, we were aware of an unjust war in Vietnam, boys might get their ass shot off for no good reason and we stopped respecting our elders, we were young and we believed we knew.

"I got you babe, I got you babe"

By this time I'd had camp girlfriends, two in fact, but I really knew nothing about relationships, the power of two, oftentimes against the world, you only have each other, you lean on and rely on each other to forage forward. And the truth is life is scary, and no one really listens to you after you leave school, you're lucky if you have anyone at all.

"They say our love won't pay the rent
Before it's earned our money's all been spent
I guess that's so, we don't have a pot
But at least I'm sure of all the things we got"

You didn't need to buy career insurance. Doctors were rich people. You needed no safety net, you could enter the landscape with your eyes open and odds were you were gonna make it.

And the track had the feel of the Byrds, with the jangly guitar, and even though the vocals were right up front there was a wall of sound behind, and then just an organ or some instrument that sounded like a carnival and then came a bridge.

"I got flowers in the spring, I got you to wear my ring"

It's hard to explain the era, with its sports and traditions hanging over from earlier days. Glenn Frey loved football, and the truth was you wanted to give your letter sweater to your girl, assuming you had one to begin with, and your fraternity pins and rings...

"And when I'm sad, you're a clown
And if I get scared, you're always around"

And this was when Cher became Cher. She reached deep down and bellowed, and it seemed like she was really in love, that she truly believed what she was singing, and we became convinced she and Sonny were actually together, this was not a studio concoction, and Sonny did write the lyrics.

"So let them say your hair's too long
'Cause I don't care, with you I can't go wrong"

Hair. It was a constant battle. How long were you allowed to grow it, what did your parents say, what did the school say, I remember coming back from the barber shop and my mother insisting I go right back because they hadn't taken enough off, and she was liberal! But there was a dividing line, between us and them, you can say it's akin to tattoos and hip-hop, but tattoos are permanent and back in the sixties things fashion was moving so fast you didn't want to get stuck in some backwater, unable to switch your look to avoid being made fun of, there was no nerd culture, i.e. nerds were not lionized and embraced, either you were cool or you didn't even exist, so people constantly tried to be cool. And sure, hip-hop may piss off boomers like rock pissed off boomers' parents, but the funny thing was the rock songs were so good that they ended up being remade as AC numbers, my father knew "For Once In My Life" having never heard the Stevie Wonder version, he knew it as "beautiful music," no one's cutting adult versions of hip-hop, actually a lot of hip-hop is built on samples from the rock canon.

"Then put your little hand in mine
There ain't no hill or mountain we can't climb"

This was not nihilism, this was not destruction, this is one thing that has been lost in the rewrite of the sixties, boomers wanted to be nonviolent, there was a whole anti-football contingent, boomers only turned to violence and destruction when their elders insisted they go overseas to risk getting shot while having no choice in the matter, ergo the lowering of the voting age.

"I got you to hold my hand
I got you to understand"

UNDERSTAND! We want someone to talk to who listens and gets us, that's more important than how the other person looks or how rich they are.

"I got you to walk with me
I got you to talk with me"

The word "rap" was pulled from the inner city, it meant talking, we were rapping constantly, conversation drove the sixties, after all we had no internet, no social media, there was no other way to connect.

So I'm hiking in the mountains and a whole picture develops in my brain as I'm listening to "I Got You Babe." There were people just a bit older than I was who embraced this as their anthem, and those who'd made their choices and felt, or wanted to feel good about them. I didn't expect to see the sixties encapsulated in "I Got You Babe."

"I got you babe
I got you babe
I got you babe
I GOT YOU BABE!"

The song did not fade out, it doubled-down on its essence, having each other was enough, and even though they were singing to each other we were empowered too, that was the magic of the music, sure, people listen to music today, but music does not drive the culture the way it used to, it was just about all we had, these pied pipers were leading us to new lands, they were opening our minds, they were showing us there was another way to live our lives, we just didn't have to repeat the steps of our parents.

And I'd like to tell you I'm getting the same sensation listening to "I Got You Babe" right now, two days later, inside, in my office, but serendipity oftentimes plays a part in the listening experience, right song, right time and not only are memories made, but insights generated, feelings kindled.

So many songs I know by heart I was too young to understand so this late date discovery process is enlightening and satisfying, but that's the entrancing element of music, you can always peel back the layers, you can always go deeper.

"Babe
I got you babe"

1965 is set in amber. I'm no longer pissed that "I Got You Babe" is keeping the Beatles from being number one, eliminating space for something more palatable to me, it can be evaluated on its own terms. And at the time I thought "I Got You Babe" was a throwback, but it was squarely placed in the culture of the day. Sure, Sonny may have been old, but Cher was preternaturally young. she wasn't even twenty! She was truly one of us, how did she grab the brass ring at such a young age? And Cher was the alternative to the blond beach bunnies, you could have dark hair and be attractive and sexy and Sonny and Cher might have started the bell-bottom craze.

And the funny thing is this fifty-five year old track survives, in an era where what happened last year is completely forgotten, where music goes by so fast you can't even remember the songs you liked, and a lot less is known by heart.

There's not a boomer alive who doesn't know every lick of "I Got You Babe." That's right, the biggest Stones fans, the darkest personages, they know this song, because they were forced to listen to it on the radio, and at this late date even I can smile and feel good listening to "I Got You Babe," that's the power of a great song and great production.

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