Photo by Chris Carroll

This week singer-songwriter Freedy Johnston will be taking over the XPN blog. He recently released a new collection of original songs (his first collection of originals in 7 years) called Rain On The City. He’s currently on tour and will be playing in Philly on Thursday February 18th at World Cafe Live. Today, Freedy takes us back to the 70′s for some golden era Top 40 reminiscing.
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April 13th, 1974.

Saturday morning. Sun City, Arizona, a retirement community outside of Phoenix. I am thirteen years old and standing in the hot morning sun holding an A.M. radio against my ear listening to American Top 40 with Casey Kasem, waiting to hear the fate of my favorite song Bennie and the Jets, and waiting for my friend Al (who is 68) to pick me up in his golf cart to go play a round of golf. My brother and I are living there with my grandparents, strictly against community rules, while my parents sort it out. The usual stuff, no need to go into it. Anyway, I know in my gut from the last few weeks history, as it climbed past The Way We Were, Jet, Come and Get Your Love, Mockingbird, Dark Lady, Seasons In the Sun, Tubular Bells, Hooked on a Feeling, Sunshine on My Shoulder and other hits, that this was the week for Bennie and the Jets to finally hit number one. Bennie and the Jets is my favorite record. It is still my favorite record. I know every single nuance of the recording. I don’t understand the song at all, but it makes me feel happier than I have ever felt. It’s kind of a funny song, but also melancholy and knowing, two words I don’t even know yet.

I know it’s going to win when number 2 is Hooked on a Feeling, there’s no other place for it to be but the top. So that is the real moment I knew, but still, the drum roll before it’s announced is unbearable. Just then, Al drives up noiselessly in his cart and waves for me to get in. The garage door opens, my grandfather backs his cart out into the sun and down the drive. My younger brother is with him and leans behind him to flip me off, like any good eleven year old brother would do. I don’t return the gesture because Al would see, but I do hold up my hand as if to say “gimme a sec” while i hear the magical words “ladies and gentlemen, the number one song on this week’s AT40 countdown, Elton John with Bennie and the Jets”. The crowd noise, the first out of key chord, then that slow stepping groove, and “hey kids..”. I stood there listening, smiling staring down at the burning concrete, elated, tapping my foot to the beat.

Everything seems to have changed, but I don’t know how, just like I don’t understand the song. Everything suddenly seems very serious, but very light and beautiful too. after 20 seconds or so I turn off the radio (Al won’t allow me to play it and I don’t have an earphone) and walk across the painted gravel yard, get in the cart and we head down the curving, perfectly smooth street, while the song plays on in my newly teenage head.