Tag Archives: drug addiction

♫ Just To See Her ♫

Posted on by under Bits 'n Pieces, History, music

Tonight, I am in the mood for some Motown!  I haven’t played this one since 2018, so you probably don’t remember that I played it four years ago, right?  Heck, most of you probably didn’t know I existed four years ago.  Anyway, let’s kick back and love us some Smokey Robinson!

The song written by Jimmy George and Lou Pardini in 1987 and recorded by none other than Smokey Robinson.  Smokey was in a bit of a funk … well, more than a bit, actually … at the time.  His last big hit had been Being With You in 1981, and then in 1984, his friend Marvin Gaye was shot to death by his own father.  Robinson was already addicted to drugs, and Gaye’s death just put the final straw on the camel’s back.  Then in 1986, he and his wife Claudette divorced.  But this record put him back on top.  Surprisingly, Robinson’s only Grammy win came for this song; he won for Best R&B Vocal Performance, Male.

Jimmy George and Lou Pardini would go on to join the band Chicago in 2009.

Apropos of nothing, but I found Smokey’s explanation of how he came by his name fascinating:

Smokey-4“My Uncle Claude was my favorite uncle, he was also my godfather. He and I were really, really close. He used to take me to see cowboy movies all the time when I was a little boy because I loved cowboy movies. He got a cowboy name for me, which was Smokey Joe. So from the time I was three years old if people asked me what my name was I didn’t tell them my name was William, I told them my name was Smokey Joe. That’s what everyone called me until I was about 12 and then I dropped the Joe part. I’ve heard that story about him giving it to me because I’m a light skinned Black man but that’s not true.”

Just to See Her
Smokey Robinson

Just to see her
Just to touch her
Just to hold her in my arms again one more time

If I could feel her warm embrace
See her smiling face
Can’t find anyone to take her place
I’ve got to see her again

I would do anything
I would go anywhere
There’s nothing I wouldn’t do
Just to see her again

I can’t hide it no
I can’t fight it
It’s so hard to live without the love she gave to me

Doesn’t she know it
I tried hard not to show it
Can’t I make her realize that she really needs me again

I would do anything
I would go anywhere
There’s nothing I wouldn’t do
Just to see her again
She brightened up my everyday
Made me feel so good in every way
If I could have her back to stay
I’ve got to see her again

I want to see her
(Just to see her)
Hold her hold her hold her
(Just to see her) see her
Just to touch her

Touch her
I would do anything
I would go anywhere
There’s nothing I wouldn’t do
Just to see her again
She brightened up my everyday
Makes me feel so good in every way
If I could have her back to stay (today)
I’ve got to see her again

it would it would it would
(Just to see her) make me feel so good
(Just to see her)if I if I could only see her again
Just see her again
Just to see her theres nothin’ I wouldn’t do
Just to see her oh don’t you know its true
Just to see her (if I could only see her again oh)

Songwriters: Jimmy George / Louis Joseph Pardini
Just to See Her lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group

♫ Fire and Rain ♫ (Redux)

Posted on by under Bits 'n Pieces, History, Humour, music

I last played this one a couple of years ago, but tonight I’m just in the mood for some James Taylor … hope you are too!

I love James Taylor’s voice … it is sensual, somehow.  It is … as if he is singing to me and only me.  I did not know, until doing a brief bit of research for this music post, that he had been heavily into drugs.  Silly me, eh … what else should I have expected?  Sigh.

Taylor wrote this in 1968 at three different times. He started it in London, where he auditioned for The Beatles’ Apple Records. He later worked on it in a Manhattan Hospital, and finished it while in drug rehab at The Austin Riggs Center in Massachusetts. In a 1972 Rolling Stone interview, Taylor explained: “The first verse is about my reactions to the death of a friend (that would be Suzanne – explained below). The second verse is about my arrival in this country with a monkey on my back, and there Jesus is an expression of my desperation in trying to get through the time when my body was aching and the time was at hand when I had to do it. And the third verse of that song refers to my recuperation in Austin Riggs which lasted about five months.”

“It concerned a girl called Susanne I knew who they put into an isolation cell and she couldn’t take it and committed suicide.”  Her name was Susie Schnerr, and Taylor also explained that it was months before he found out about her death, as his friends withheld the news so it wouldn’t distract Taylor from his burgeoning music career.

In a 1972 Rolling Stone interview, Taylor added: “I always felt rather bad about the line, ‘The plans they made put an end to you,’ because ‘they’ only meant ‘ye gods,’ or basically ‘the Fates.’ I never knew her folks but I always wondered whether her folks would hear that and wonder whether it was about them.”

When Taylor performed this in 2015 on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, he and Colbert had some fun, with Taylor explaining that he was still working on it. “I wrote that song in 1970, and I just hadn’t seen that much back then – mostly fire and rain, so that’s why I keep saying it over and over again in the song,” he said.

Taylor then explained that he had never seen a calzone at the time, but if he had, he would have definitely added it to the lyric. Taylor and Colbert then performed an updated version of the song with new lyrics. A sample:

“I’ve seen man buns, Myspace and the Baha Men, but I never thought I’d see a new Star Wars again”

“I’ve seen grandmas reading 50 Shades of Grey”

“Quidditch teams and skinny jeans cutting blood off from my thighs”

Oh my!

And here’s James with Stephen Colbert in the updated version … I promise you will laugh!!!

Fire And Rain
James Taylor

Just yesterday morning they let me know you were gone
Susanne the plans they made put an end to you
I walked out this morning and I wrote down this song
I just can’t remember who to send it to

I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain
I’ve seen sunny days that I thought would never end
I’ve seen lonely times when I could not find a friend
But I always thought that I’d see you again

Won’t you look down upon me, jesus
You’ve got to help me make a stand
You’ve just got to see me through another day
My body’s aching and my time is at hand
And I won’t make it any other way

Oh, I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain
I’ve seen sunny days that I thought would never end
I’ve seen lonely times when I could not find a friend
But I always thought that I’d see you again

Been walking my mind to an easy time my back turned towards the sun
Lord knows when the cold wind blows it’ll turn your head around
Well, there’s hours of time on the telephone line to talk about things
To come
Sweet dreams and flying machines in pieces on the ground

Oh, I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain
I’ve seen sunny days that I thought would never end
I’ve seen lonely times when I could not find a friend
But I always thought that I’d see you, baby, one more time again, now

Thought I’d see you one more time again
There’s just a few things coming my way this time around, now
Thought I’d see you, thought I’d see you fire and rain, now

Songwriters: James Taylor / James V Taylor
Fire And Rain lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

♫ Fire and Rain ♫ (Redux)

Posted on by under music

My apologies for yet another redux … I was working on a different song, but found that my heart just wasn’t into it, and this one has been playing in my mind for several days now, so … nothing wrong with replaying one that makes me happy (and that I actually know most of the words to), is there?  And … I have added something to the original!  Taylor refers to a clip he did with late night comedian Stephen Colbert … I went in search of, found it, and have added it here for a bit of humour added to the music!

I love James Taylor’s voice … it is sensual, somehow.  It is … as if he is singing to me and only me.  I did not know, until doing a brief bit of research for this music post, that he had been heavily into drugs.  Silly me, eh … what else should I have expected?  Sigh.

Taylor wrote this in 1968 at three different times. He started it in London, where he auditioned for The Beatles’ Apple Records. He later worked on it in a Manhattan Hospital, and finished it while in drug rehab at The Austin Riggs Center in Massachusetts. In a 1972 Rolling Stone interview, Taylor explained: “The first verse is about my reactions to the death of a friend (that would be Suzanne – explained below). The second verse is about my arrival in this country with a monkey on my back, and there Jesus is an expression of my desperation in trying to get through the time when my body was aching and the time was at hand when I had to do it. And the third verse of that song refers to my recuperation in Austin Riggs which lasted about five months.”

“It concerned a girl called Susanne I knew who they put into an isolation cell and she couldn’t take it and committed suicide.”  Her name was Susie Schnerr, and Taylor also explained that it was months before he found out about her death, as his friends withheld the news so it wouldn’t distract Taylor from his burgeoning music career.

In a 1972 Rolling Stone interview, Taylor added: “I always felt rather bad about the line, ‘The plans they made put an end to you,’ because ‘they’ only meant ‘ye gods,’ or basically ‘the Fates.’ I never knew her folks but I always wondered whether her folks would hear that and wonder whether it was about them.”

When Taylor performed this in 2015 on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, he and Colbert had some fun, with Taylor explaining that he was still working on it. “I wrote that song in 1970, and I just hadn’t seen that much back then – mostly fire and rain, so that’s why I keep saying it over and over again in the song,” he said.

Taylor then explained that he had never seen a calzone at the time, but if he had, he would have definitely added it to the lyric. Taylor and Colbert then performed an updated version of the song with new lyrics. A sample:

“I’ve seen man buns, Myspace and the Baha Men, but I never thought I’d see a new Star Wars again”

“I’ve seen grandmas reading 50 Shades of Grey”

“Quidditch teams and skinny jeans cutting blood off from my thighs”

Oh my!

And here’s James with Stephen Colbert in the updated version …

Fire And Rain
James Taylor

Just yesterday morning they let me know you were gone
Susanne the plans they made put an end to you
I walked out this morning and I wrote down this song
I just can’t remember who to send it to

I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain
I’ve seen sunny days that I thought would never end
I’ve seen lonely times when I could not find a friend
But I always thought that I’d see you again

Won’t you look down upon me, jesus
You’ve got to help me make a stand
You’ve just got to see me through another day
My body’s aching and my time is at hand
And I won’t make it any other way

Oh, I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain
I’ve seen sunny days that I thought would never end
I’ve seen lonely times when I could not find a friend
But I always thought that I’d see you again

Been walking my mind to an easy time my back turned towards the sun
Lord knows when the cold wind blows it’ll turn your head around
Well, there’s hours of time on the telephone line to talk about things
To come
Sweet dreams and flying machines in pieces on the ground

Oh, I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain
I’ve seen sunny days that I thought would never end
I’ve seen lonely times when I could not find a friend
But I always thought that I’d see you, baby, one more time again, now

Thought I’d see you one more time again
There’s just a few things coming my way this time around, now
Thought I’d see you, thought I’d see you fire and rain, now

Songwriters: James Taylor / James V Taylor
Fire And Rain lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

♫ Just To See Her ♫

Posted on by under music

I haven’t posted a song for a couple of days … not because there was no song in my heart, but simply because I save this pleasure for the end of the day, when the comments are all answered, morning post written & scheduled, family finances taken care of … and the past two nights I have simply been too exhausted to do a music post.  Tonight, though, I am ahead of the game and that soul music is calling to me.  Actually, this one is classified R&B (rhythm & blues), but I still think of it as soul, as music that reaches deep down and pulls out something we may have forgotten existed.

The song written by Jimmy George and Lou Pardini in 1987 and recorded by none other than Smokey Robinson.  Smokey was in a bit of a funk … well, more than a bit, actually … at the time.  His last big hit had been Being With You in 1981, and then in 1984, his friend Marvin Gaye was shot to death by his own father.  Robinson was already addicted to drugs, and Gaye’s death just put the final straw on the camel’s back.  Then in 1986, he and his wife Claudette divorced.  But this record put him back on top.  Surprisingly, Robinson’s only Grammy win came for this song; he won for Best R&B Vocal Performance, Male.

Jimmy George and Lou Pardini would go on to join the band Chicago in 2009.

Apropos of nothing, but I found Smokey’s explanation of how he came by his name fascinating:

Smokey-4“My Uncle Claude was my favorite uncle, he was also my godfather. He and I were really, really close. He used to take me to see cowboy movies all the time when I was a little boy because I loved cowboy movies. He got a cowboy name for me, which was Smokey Joe. So from the time I was three years old if people asked me what my name was I didn’t tell them my name was William, I told them my name was Smokey Joe. That’s what everyone called me until I was about 12 and then I dropped the Joe part. I’ve heard that story about him giving it to me because I’m a light skinned Black man but that’s not true.”

Just to See Her
Smokey Robinson

Just to see her
Just to touch her
Just to hold her in my arms again one more time

If I could feel her warm embrace
See her smiling face
Can’t find anyone to take her place
I’ve got to see her again

I would do anything
I would go anywhere
There’s nothing I wouldn’t do
Just to see her again

I can’t hide it no
I can’t fight it
It’s so hard to live without the love she gave to me

Doesn’t she know it
I tried hard not to show it
Can’t I make her realize that she really needs me again

I would do anything
I would go anywhere
There’s nothing I wouldn’t do
Just to see her again
She brightened up my everyday
Made me feel so good in every way
If I could have her back to stay
I’ve got to see her again

I want to see her
(Just to see her)
Hold her hold her hold her
(Just to see her) see her
Just to touch her

Touch her
I would do anything
I would go anywhere
There’s nothing I wouldn’t do
Just to see her again
She brightened up my everyday
Makes me feel so good in every way
If I could have her back to stay (today)
I’ve got to see her again

it would it would it would
(Just to see her) make me feel so good
(Just to see her)if I if I could only see her again
Just see her again
Just to see her theres nothin’ I wouldn’t do
Just to see her oh don’t you know its true
Just to see her (if I could only see her again oh)

Songwriters: Jimmy George / Louis Joseph Pardini
Just to See Her lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group

♫ Fire and Rain ♫

Posted on by under music

I love James Taylor’s voice … it is sensual, somehow.  It is … as if he is singing to me and only me.  I did not know, until doing a brief bit of research for this music post, that he had been heavily into drugs.  Silly me, eh … what else should I have expected?  Sigh.

Taylor wrote this in 1968 at three different times. He started it in London, where he auditioned for The Beatles’ Apple Records. He later worked on it in a Manhattan Hospital, and finished it while in drug rehab at The Austin Riggs Center in Massachusetts. In a 1972 Rolling Stone interview, Taylor explained: “The first verse is about my reactions to the death of a friend (that would be Suzanne – explained below). The second verse is about my arrival in this country with a monkey on my back, and there Jesus is an expression of my desperation in trying to get through the time when my body was aching and the time was at hand when I had to do it. And the third verse of that song refers to my recuperation in Austin Riggs which lasted about five months.”

“It concerned a girl called Susanne I knew who they put into an isolation cell and she couldn’t take it and committed suicide.”  Her name was Susie Schnerr, and Taylor also explained that it was months before he found out about her death, as his friends withheld the news so it wouldn’t distract Taylor from his burgeoning music career.

In a 1972 Rolling Stone interview, Taylor added: “I always felt rather bad about the line, ‘The plans they made put an end to you,’ because ‘they’ only meant ‘ye gods,’ or basically ‘the Fates.’ I never knew her folks but I always wondered whether her folks would hear that and wonder whether it was about them.”

When Taylor performed this in 2015 on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, he and Colbert had some fun, with Taylor explaining that he was still working on it. “I wrote that song in 1970, and I just hadn’t seen that much back then – mostly fire and rain, so that’s why I keep saying it over and over again in the song,” he said.

Taylor then explained that he had never seen a calzone at the time, but if he had, he would have definitely added it to the lyric. Taylor and Colbert then performed an updated version of the song with new lyrics. A sample:

“I’ve seen man buns, Myspace and the Baha Men, but I never thought I’d see a new Star Wars again”

“I’ve seen grandmas reading 50 Shades of Grey”

“Quidditch teams and skinny jeans cutting blood off from my thighs”

Oh my!

Fire And Rain
James Taylor

Just yesterday morning they let me know you were gone
Susanne the plans they made put an end to you
I walked out this morning and I wrote down this song
I just can’t remember who to send it to

I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain
I’ve seen sunny days that I thought would never end
I’ve seen lonely times when I could not find a friend
But I always thought that I’d see you again

Won’t you look down upon me, jesus
You’ve got to help me make a stand
You’ve just got to see me through another day
My body’s aching and my time is at hand
And I won’t make it any other way

Oh, I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain
I’ve seen sunny days that I thought would never end
I’ve seen lonely times when I could not find a friend
But I always thought that I’d see you again

Been walking my mind to an easy time my back turned towards the sun
Lord knows when the cold wind blows it’ll turn your head around
Well, there’s hours of time on the telephone line to talk about things
To come
Sweet dreams and flying machines in pieces on the ground

Oh, I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain
I’ve seen sunny days that I thought would never end
I’ve seen lonely times when I could not find a friend
But I always thought that I’d see you, baby, one more time again, now

Thought I’d see you one more time again
There’s just a few things coming my way this time around, now
Thought I’d see you, thought I’d see you fire and rain, now

Songwriters: James Taylor / James V Taylor
Fire And Rain lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

Good People Doing Good Things – Dr. Teri DeLane

Posted on by under Good people doing good things, Social commentary

Sometimes the best help a person in need can get comes from someone who has “been there, done that”.  Those are the people who truly understand what you are going through, whether it is the death of a loved one, a divorce, or drug addiction.  Enter Dr. Teri DeLane.  Let us travel back to the year 1967, for that is where Dr. DeLane’s remarkable journey began.

13-year-old Teri came from an abusive, violent, drug-addicted family in Las Vegas, and in the summer of 1967 she and a friend decided to hitchhike up to San Francisco to participate in Summer of Love.  For those too young to remember, Summer of Love was the convergance of some 100,000 young hippies on the San Francisco neighborhood of Haight-Ashbury that summer of 1967. Teri spent much of the summer just hanging out in the area, staying with one person or another, until eventually she contracted pneumonia and ended up back in Vegas, By age 14, she was using heroin, running the streets, dropped out of school, and spent time in and out of juvenile detention centers.  When she was 16, she spent a year in a youth prison, and by age 20 she had overdosed three times.

And then Teri discovered Delancey Street, the renowned San Francisco-based self-help program for drug addicts and ex-offenders. Teri entered Delancey Street Foundation in the early 1970s as a teenage prostitute, drug addict and school drop-out. Teri learned more than how to stop using drugs at Delancey Street.  She learned about being part of community and how to trust. “The Delancey Street Foundation saved my life by surrounding me with people who would not allow me to fail. The process is taking a person and giving them the tools necessary to live by, thrive by, to grow, to push you to your best potential, to pull out your strengths instead of always concentrating on your weaknesses,” she said.

Wed-DeLane-2Dr. DeLane would ultimately not only finish high school, but go on to earn two Master’s degrees and a doctorate in clinical psychology. It was while working on the doctorate that she became involved with running and developing programs for incarcerated men and women that were offshoots of the Delancey Street program. Then came a chance to work with a juvenile justice reform program as an advisor, and Teri knew she had found her calling. ”My heart and soul has always been youth because I was someone that got it and I desperately wanted to have an impact on changing kids.  Because I know that if you get in early and really work on them and help them learn to trust, they can change,” she said.

In 1998, Teri DeLane founded the Life Learning Academy, a non-residential San Francisco Unified School District charter school, based on the Delancey Street Foundation principles, that serves the city’s highest-risk, highest-need students. The school tracks a 99% graduation rate with 85% of the students going on to college.  The kids that do so well here are the kids with histories of school failure, truancy, arrest and substance abuse.  The ones that traditional school settings can’t provide for. The ones that would otherwise end up dead or in prison in a few short years.

“The idea about developing this school came up when Mayor Willie Brown contacted Delancey Street because the juvenile justice system in San Francisco was falling apart.”

DeLane incorporated practices of the Delancey Street program that could be integrated into a school environment:  creating community, engagement, leadership, dress code and working toward rewards.

And she trains her teachers and staff.  “It takes training to help people understand the complexity of teenagers.  The way to engage them is a push and pull process.  You give them a little and you take a little.  I train the staff to teach the kids how to think about their thinking so they can tune in and help them understand that have control of themselves, but it takes a long time to change that.  The kids are so engrossed in negative thinking and believing that they are failures.  What you need to know about teenagers is that they push against structure and crave it at the same time.”

Delane knows the background of each student and shares that with the staff.  Taking into account a student’s home environment, or even lack thereof, is key to understanding the behavioral issues that some of the students may have.  Even so, the Life Learning Academy does not rely on counseling and has no counselors on staff.  “We don’t need them,” she says, and recalls her own experience as an at-risk student in a traditional school system.  “I was sent to counseling because I was acting out in school.  No one said, “Wow, I get it.  Her environment and her family are complete disasters.  Now wonder she is angry, no wonder she is fighting.”  It wasn’t me that had the disorder really; it was the family system.”

“The way I changed wasn’t through traditional therapy.  It was by coming into an organization with people that helped me find my strengths, who yelled at me about the things that were going to get me in trouble and who kept me moving forward,” she said.  “Because the kids keep having to go back into their family environments I want to teach them tools to make them stronger and not take them back through their history.  Not to open them up but to empower them.  They may go home to a horrible environment, but they spend a lot of their waking hours in a positive, fun, exciting place.  Kids know that they can come in in the morning, be in a bad mood and people aren’t going to be on them and we will notice they are in a bad mood.”

Students are expected to take part in community service projects, internships and even to pursue part-time jobs.  “What we do at the school is a circle around the kids with a number of things that have to be included in their lives in order for them to have a full life:  education, a job, having money and a portion of the circle has to be learning how to give back,” she said.  “I teach that the way you get is by giving.  Not by sitting around talking about your problems. We don’t stay stuck in our past.  What we do is work through it, let it go and move on.”

All the students know Delane’s background, see what she has accomplished and witness her giving back every day.  And they know that the way she moved on from a troubled life is what they are learning at Life Learning Academy.  That realization allows trust to gain its foothold.

“I think I am really lucky because I have never forgotten where I come from. And as a result, I have gratitude to the ends of the earth because there is no better feeling in the world than watching kids become part of this community and start thriving and growing.”

Nobody can know how many lives Dr. DeLane has saved, how many she has kept from a lifetime of drug-addiction, prison, homelessness, but I suspect the number is high. Teri DeLane is truly an example of someone who has given back … and keeps on giving.  Two thumbs up to Dr. Teri DeLane!