The Music that Moved Me

I have loved music forever. When I think about my life some of the most potent memories are associated with music. When I was about five my Dad bought Prokofiev’s ‘Peter and the Wolf’ so that I could become familiar with the different instruments in the orchestra and I remember falling asleep on his knee listening to it. Singing along to Queen and Neil Diamond with my Mam in the car while driving down to see Gran. Taking my Mam to see both Barry Manilow (who was actually excellent!) and Barry White (do I need to say more?) when she was in remission from terminal cancer aged 55.

I married a musician and some of my greatest moments of joy happen when I play loud tunes and dance around the house. But music has also been a vehicle for my enhanced self-knowledge and understanding. So many songs have revealed me more deeply to myself, have given me the gift of realization and integration. Sometimes I go back to old favs when I need a re-up, a reminder of who I am. But there are five songs that I heard played live that have become totemic to me, have given me something outstanding and irreducible. They are etched into the core of my being and I give them to you below.

Where the Streets Have No Name – U2, Croke Park June 1987

Ireland in the 1980s. Recession. Emigration. Unemployment. Bob Geldof. We didn’t know we could be cool. We were skinny, freckly and fashion-deficient. Then U2 released The Joshua Tree. My Mam brought home an advance copy from New York. The record tipped them into massive success stateside and their Croke Park concerts in June were highly anticipated. Everyone I knew over 14 and under 40 went. Illegal drinking in a pub in town, pints of Carlsberg. Puking in the toilet. Walking to Croke Park. The Pogues and Ronny Drew – brilliant but we all knew we were waiting for Bono.

Eventually, Dave Fanning introduced the band. The crowd of 57,000 goes berserk. Larry, Edge and Adam Clayton walk onstage and start up ‘Where the Streets Have No Name’, the excitement and tension is almost unbearable. That guitar riff. The Edge is walking and playing. Bono walks onstage and waves, the screaming starts. “Howya doing?” 57,000 people raise their arms. He lowers the mic – and lifts his arm “UP, UP, UP”. The entire stadium starts jumping up and down. I am lifted off my feet and airborne for a few seconds. The feeling is unbelievable, the crowd is moving as one and I am simply a molecule. The music, the energy, the release. One of the greatest moments of my life. My initiation into the tribal ritual of concerts and the feeling of unity they can bring.

U2 showed us that we could be cool. That we were valuable. That our culture and heritage meant something. Dublin was cool, Ireland was cool. We could make it overseas, we didn’t have to be ashamed of our culture, where we came from…the lack of jobs and opportunities, we could turn our lives around and anything was possible. I was 14 at the time and too young to see the implications for me beyond the collective but the experience has never left me, nor the imprint and I still get shivers down my spine and tears in my eyes when I watch video footage of those first concert moments.

In Your Eyes – Peter Gabriel, Den Haag July 1994

I was living in Amsterdam working as a chambermaid at the Marriot Hotel having just finished the academic year studying at the University of Amsterdam. I left Dublin the previous September on the verge of a nervous breakdown. In 1992 I was in a very serious car accident that left with me with massive PTSD. Six months later I broke up with my boyfriend for a stupid reason and was too proud to back down even though I wanted to and I know he wanted me too. He left my house and I cried. Those tears came every day for some time. He was killed in a hit and run accident four months later. I thought I would never smile again and was sometimes bent over double in emotional pain. But no tears, I had lost the ability to cry.

I felt like I was walking around with open wounds on my body. My sense of self was slipping away and I developed an eating disorder. Self-hatred dominated my inner world and I had few, if any, spiritual resources.

But my urge to survive and thrive (which had helped me recover from the massive injuries I sustained in the car crash) caused me to understand that I had to get out of Dublin to heal. I chose Amsterdam because my university (UCD) had an exchange programme with the university there.

Living in Amsterdam and meeting new people who didn’t know my backstory was exactly what I needed. I started to feel whole again and my former self was augmented by new discoveries and emerging facets of my being. I could begin again. One of my favourite things to do was to go into the Virgin record store and listen to Peter Gabriel’s ‘Secret World’ live album. A friend had given me a copy of ‘So,’ one of Gabriel’s earlier records while I was at my lowest point in Dublin and that record saved my life. Many of the songs from it were recorded on the live album and listening to it with headphones on in a basement record store in Amsterdam gave continuity to my sense of self and imbued me with hope.

As it happened the Secret World tour came to the Netherlands that summer so I bought a ticket and took a train to the Hague for the concert. Going on my own was a lonely experience. I went down way too early and had to kill hours before the show. Not to mention the fact that being on your own in a crowd of tens of thousands can amplify the feeling of isolation. But it was worth the discomfort.

Hearing those songs gave perspective to the narrative of my journey from brokenness – literal (eleven broken bones in the car accident) and figurative (my heart and my sense of self) towards recovery and wholeness. When the band performed ‘In Your Eyes’ I stood in the midst of the throng tears streaming down my face. All around me people held up lighters and I lifted my face and let the tears run. I was reclaiming a part of myself I had been terrified was gone. Was dead. But here I was in the Hague, Netherlands, alone in the crowd but alive and able to feel. To imagine the possibility that I would love and be loved again, that I wouldn’t be broken. That my story and my life meant something, that I would persist and one day the pain in my heart would be much less. The song gave me back my survival, my self, my sense of continuity and an understanding that my future could transcend my past.

Born To Run – Bruce Springsteen, Detroit October 2004

October 2004 I was a PhD candidate in philosophy at the University of Illinois at Chicago. George W Bush was up for re-election running against Democratic candidate John Kerry. The stakes were particularly high given that Bush had ordered the military invasion of Iraq post 9/11, civil rights were being eroded in the US and recession was looming.

A concert tour named ‘Vote for Change’ was mounted by progressives to raise money to get Americans to register to vote and hopefully ensure Kerry’s election. (Sadly he was defeated by Bush.) The Detroit show featured headliners R.E.M. and Bruce Springsteen and since my boyfriend at the time was a huge Springsteen fan and like Springsteen himself, came from New Jersey, we bought our tickets and drove up to Detroit to make a weekend of it.

The concert was brilliant. Packed stadium, great vibe, friendly crowd. I’d never seen R.E.M. or Springsteen before and they were both amazing. Springsteen and the E Street Band incredible performers. It couldn’t have felt better. When the opening lines of ‘Born to Run’ came on, Paul and I turned towards each other and hugged. This was it, the crystalizing moment that everyone had been waiting for. The feeling in the stadium was incredible, it was like the whole place had become the music. The feeling of connection and congruence was palpable. I was part of something bigger than me, a whole that was bigger than any of us. This was EVERYTHING.

As I looked around I saw that Springsteen was singing these people’s lives, that he was expressing something powerful and essential about the American experience. That he represented for an American crowd what U2 did for us in Ireland, they made our lives real and important and worth representing. They offered us hope. Hope that we could be more than who we thought we were, that we could get out of the circumstances we grew up in, transcend our backgrounds, our perceived limitations. We could taste freedom and go after our dreams. In the particular, I came home to the universal and saw myself reflected in and completely part of that Detroit crowd.

Good Vibrations – Beach Boys, Hollywood Bowl July 2016

Summertime in Los Angeles. Concerts at the Hollywood Bowl. There is simply no place like the Bowl, a natural amphitheatre carved into a canyon in the Hollywood Hills. The occasion is the 50th anniversary of ‘Pet Sounds’ the genre-changing landmark Beach Boys record. My husband and I get tickets and order a picnic box with wine to pick up on arrival.

It doesn’t really matter who is playing the Bowl, it’s such a great venue that a good time is guaranteed. People are friendly and the surroundings beautiful. But to see the Beach Boys there? Life doesn’t really get much better.

I was on my feet dancing for most of the show, probably to the chagrin of people in the rows behind me. But when they sang ‘Good Vibrations’ the whole crowd was up dancing. Brian Wilson singing, the air warm and good vibes all around. Yes, that’s the name of the song and it was truly an incredible feeling to dance to it with my husband on a gorgeous summer night in LA. Sheer joy. A reminder that life is sweet, music matters and happiness can be here and now.

People Have the Power – Patti Smith, Los Angeles March 2020

Just before the covid lockdown went into force in Los Angeles I had the good fortune to see Patti Smith perform at the iconic Walt Disney Concert Hall in DTLA (downtown Los Angeles). I’d never seen Smith before and she did not disappoint, pulling out some classics from her legendary ‘Horses’ record.

But it was when she sang ‘People Have the Power’ that my being experienced a profound shift and I understood something deeply about the American Dream. Smith wrote the song in 1988 as a paean to the promise of American democracy, to the possibility of a better, more equitable country, a place of radical inclusion. Four years into Donald Trump’s presidency and the terrible consequences of his utter disregard for democracy and the wellbeing of all Americans, Smith’s vision is more important than ever. It’s a beacon of hope and a rallying call, a reminder that the United States was founded as a place unlike any other, a place where emigrants of all colours and creeds could make a home, a place where democracy is a lived experience and not an abstract concept.

This was and is especially resonant for me as I became a US citizen last December after over 18 years of living here. I did so in order to fully participate in the democratic process so that I can vote and help shape the community I live in and the country that has given me so much. Dancing in the balcony, singing along as Smith sang her anthem accompanied by the Youth Orchestra of Los Angeles (YOLA) I understood that now I am one of those people who have the power, whose participation makes a difference. I understood that I too can do my part to ‘redeem the work of fools’. My heart was electrified and my whole being pulsating, I felt like I belonged in the beautiful tapestry of America, that my participation matters and that I can make a difference since it is ‘decreed that the people rule.’ Patti Smith sang my citizenship into being and in doing so gave me to myself, showed me something new.

And my song of summer 2020? ‘You’ll Never Find Another Love Like Mine’ by Lou Rawls. I can’t adequately express how much I love this song. My husband and I have been dancing around to it at home all summer. Proof that even in the midst of a pandemic and radical uncertainty about the future, joy is still possible. And there is little more important than that.