13. No Jacket Required by Phil Collins
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5soq6RLoIz8&list=OLAK5uy_k-NheJU7cAhkVHX4w1pEEw27yVOhCM73M
One of the best things about returning home from Sweden was finally getting the chance to listen to No Jacket Required as much as I wanted to, which was A LOT. I pirated a copy of the album from my brother-in-law and played the tape over and over during the summer of '87 while driving around Twin Falls in the black step-side Chevy pickup. And my reaction to the album back then is still the same reaction that I have today, which is "What the hell, Phil?! Do you love her or hate her? Can't you pick a mood and stick with it?!" I remember thinking that this album would have probably killed me if it had come out during my senior year. The song progression swings wildly between the expression of desperate love for a woman and complete rejection of the same woman. The album is like this emotional rollercoaster that just keeps going up and down and up and down and up and down. It would have wrecked me emotionally if I'd had it in my record collection during that first year of The Great Depression.
I do remember this album in connections with one occasion that summer when I went to the Arimo churchhouse to look for Sheldon. A bunch of people were getting prepared for his wedding reception in the Arimo church gym. When I got there, I didn't find him, but I did run into that red-head that I'd pined over during my senior year. It was quite a shock to my system. I thought I'd gotten completely over her after my mission, but those same old feelings came rushing back and hit me like a freight train. I don't think I even said anything other than hello to her, and I was just so befuddled as to why she was helping Suzanne with the reception. But that's what she was doing. Anyway, I found it hard to breathe or even think because of how overwhelmed I felt, so I got the hell out of the church as soon as I found out Scapell wasn't there. And then for the next two weeks I listened to No Jacket Required practically nonstop because it was simply the best album to accompany the super-strong rollercoaster emotions that I was feeling. It was just so frustrating to not have those feelings for a couple years and then to have them rush back like that. Phil's music therapy was really the only thing that made me feel like someone else understood what I was going through, so maybe I wasn't completely going insane.
Of course, I didn't really understand what had happened to me until I took a couple more college psych classes--including abnormal psych--and realized that I'd experienced a kind of post-traumatic stress event that triggered really strong past emotions. And as a missionary, I had enjoyed a kind of psychological protection against those emotions because I'd had to spend so much of my mental energy just trying to figure out what in the hell drunk Finns were yelling at me at the bus stop. But once I'd come back home, that protection was gone. Also, because I didn't have a chance to prepare mentally for the encounter, I got the full force of those emotions. It was kind of like how when you get hit by someone that you can see coming at you--there is time to prepare for the blow and get an arm up to defend yourself. But when you don't see the person coming at you, and you're just standing there clueless in the middle of a grocery store, and suddenly there is a hammer blow to the back of your head--yeah, you're going to see stars for a while after that.
Anyway, with the help of this album, I was able to eventually stop seeing stars later on that summer. And once I got back into college, I really did not have those same feelings for her anymore. In fact, I remember that sophomore year of college as being probably the happiest year of my life--which put a definite end to The Great Depression and, at the very end of that school year, brought me a new lover that I've been able to keep loving for over 30 years now. Like Phil said:
Turn your head and don't look back
Just set your sails for a new horizon
Don't turn around don't look down
Oh there's life across the tracks
And you know it's really not surprising
It gets better when you get there
Nardo
#13: Phil Collins—No Jacket Required. Up to this point in his career, Phil Collins basically had two public personas: A) the funny guy; and 2) the angry guy. He’d used that angry guy persona on some of his biggest hits, like “In the Air Tonight,” and “I Don’t Care Anymore.” And his funny guy person came out in songs like “Like China,” and “Illegal Alien.” Also, most of his acting appearances played up his funny guy persona, such as his appearance on “Miami Vice” in the Season 2 episode “Phil the Shill,” where he plays a funny-guy British con man named Phil. (That episode gave us one of the great lost songs of all time, “Life Is a Rat Race,” an in-show game show theme sung by Collins especially for the episode. It’s a reworking of the b-side song “The Man With the Horn.” Here’s a video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ss4jbv3wVSg)
ReplyDeleteI think that’s why everyone loved Phil Collins. Everyone likes the funny guy, and everyone can relate to the angry guy.
And I think that’s why I dislike “Long Long Way To Go” so much, because it’s neither funny nor angry. It comes off as sanctimonious. And nobody likes sanctimonious guy. (Oddly enough, one of the background singers on the song is Sting. Phil Collins can’t pull off being sanctimonious guy, but that’s right in Sting’s wheelhouse.)
On this album, though, we only get hints of funny guy (“Sussudio”) and angry guy (“Who Said I Would?”) What we mostly get is melancholy guy, and it turns out Phil is pretty darn good at melancholy guy, too. (As long as he stays away from the sanctimoniousness.)
On a totally unrelated note, for quite some time I thought that, on the song “Inside Out,” Phil was actually singing the words “inside and out.” I thought there was an “and” in there every time he sings it. And this was back when I was young and my hearing was good. (I blame all those hours I spent in the summers without ear muffs on those very loud tractors.) (Or maybe it was one “Thickhead” too many.)