Insight: The Stranger, Bookends and the Ring of Fire

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

Every single day, in some way, shape or form, music touches my life. And I’m a better person for it.

Last weekend, my wife Nancy and I spent time visiting several thrift shops and antique stores and we each found something to bring home. She is into sewing and with the time speeding by until a new grandchild is born in March, she’s been busy accumulating fabric to turn into clothing and other items for the baby. As for me, I always find a record album or two during these excursions to add to my growing collection.

On this trip, I brought home Billy Joel’s 1977 recording “The Stranger” priced at only $5, and Simon and Garfunkel’s 1968 “Bookends,” also for $5. I also bought a “Peter Paul and Mary” album for $3. Considering those to be genuine bargains, you can only imagine my surprise when I noticed a pristine copy of 1963’s “The Best of Johnny Cash: Ring of Fire” for $12. I brought four all-time classic recordings home for just $25.

That Billy Joel album remains one of my favorites, and I am lucky to say that I saw him and his band perform it live during his “Just the Way You Are” tour at the Frankfurt Zoo in Germany in 1978. I was stationed in Frankfurt in the U.S. Air Force at the time and a friend called and asked if I wanted him to purchase tickets for the concert. I was able to scrape up the $20 and the next evening, my wife and I joined our friend and his wife to walk two blocks to the zoo for the show.

The Frankfurt Zoo Auditorium featured a small stage facing 300 folding chairs with 150 on each side divided by an aisle. We sat near the aisle in the third row, and I was completely mesmerized by how great the acoustics were there. At one point, Billy Joel stepped off the stage and ran up and down the aisle while singing and I certainly felt that he gave a great performance that night.

If you’ve watched the movie “Almost Famous,” you’ve probably seen the cover of Simon and Garfunkel’s “Bookends” album. It’s a black and white image of the two singers and in the film, actress Zooey Deschanel brings the album home and her mother, portrayed by actress Frances McDormand, disapproves. Deschanel says that the music of Simon and Garfunkel is poetry, but McDormand says “Yes, it's poetry. It is the poetry of drugs and promiscuous sex.”

The “Bookends” album contains an interesting mix of catchy tunes including “A Hazy Shade of Winter,” “At the Zoo,” “Mrs. Robinson” (from the 1967 film “The Graduate”), and “America.” Deschanel plays “America” from “Bookends” to explain to her mother why she’s leaving home to become a flight attendant. At one time in the 1970s, I owned the Simon and Garfunkel album “Bookends” on 8-Track tape for my car, but that’s another story for another time.

Growing up in the 1960s, I loved listening to Peter Paul and Mary but have never previously owned one of their albums. This was their first album on the Warner Brothers label in 1962 and includes classic folk songs such as “500 Miles,” “Where Have All The Flowers Gone,” “If I Had A Hammer,” and “Lemon Tree.” I was on my way to the front of the store to pay for the other records I had found when I noticed the “Peter Paul and Mary” album. Its cost of $3 was less than a gallon of gas and it promises to be a much-beloved part of my collection, especially since it was the first folk music album to ever reach the top position in America on the Billboard Popular Music chart.

The weekend after the New Year’s holiday, Nancy and I went to the theater to see the Bob Dylan biopic “A Complete Unknown.” Scenes in that movie depict the friendship between Dylan and Johnny Cash and although I’m not much of a country music afficionado, I am aware that Johnny Cash is truly a legend, and through the years I have come to appreciate his music.

Finding “The Best of Johnny Cash: Ring of Fire” album was indeed a stroke of luck. The distinctive purple album cover, and the LP inside it are in near-mint condition, and it’s a tangible piece of history now residing in my music room. Released in July 1963, sales for “The Best of Johnny Cash: Ring of Fire” grew over the rest of that year and it was the first #1 album when Billboard debuted their “Country Album Chart” on Jan. 11, 1964. Some new copies of the soon-to-be 62-year-old album are selling for $35 currently on Amazon.

With each passing day, I’m so grateful to have rebuilt my home stereo system last summer. I even have co-workers contribute albums to my collection. Over Christmas, Melissa Carter of The Windham Eagle was in Goodwill and found two old Neil Diamond albums which she purchased and gave to me.

For me, music rekindles past memories, it helps me travel to places I wouldn’t normally visit, and awakens my sense of creativity. <