The Romantic Education Edition

On WLS Radio 89, lyrical intensity, and early innocence.

Todd Krieger (TK) is a writer, cyclist, live music lover, and proud father of two daughters. While his comic book collection has stopped growing, his amassing of Grateful Dead recordings and memorabilia has not. He’s previously written WITIs on Dead & Company and WandaVision.

Also, a bonus for you today–why not listen to the playlist Todd made to accompany this article after you’ve read it?

Todd here. I grew up on the North Shore of Chicago in the 1970s, spending my formative elementary school years in bucolic Glencoe, Illinois, 60022. For those unaware of the magic of Glencoe, treat yourself to a rewatch of Home Alone or Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (though not Risky Business, for even though Princeton-bound Joel says he’s from Glencoe, they shot in neighboring Highland Park.)

While for many it was the magic of the movies that molded their youthful views of romantic love, for me it was the radio. The programming-heavy Top 40 of my pre-teen years, brought to me by WLS AM Radio 89, was the rocket fuel of my understanding (and misunderstanding) of what makes up all the wooing, the union and the heartbreak.

The images above are a paper trail of memory from that time in Chicago. What you see here are just some of the 63 leaflets I lovingly collected from my local record store Wally King’s, an analog archive of aching and marginalia listing the top 45s and the top 33s, along with lyrics and upcoming concerts in the area. I would loyally trudge down to Wally’s, collect my leaflet, and pore over it—who’s up, who’s down, what’s new—with the intensity of a minor league scout seeing who is ready to get called up to the majors.

Why is this interesting?

All of this of course hearkens to a certain kind of shared experience that no longer exists. There is the quaintness today to the idea of waiting days to once again hear songs you were dying to digest, that were all being programmed by somebody else. But beyond even that, what I remember most is listening to these songs on my bed, craning my ears to hear the lyrics, and thinking, “Wow, this is what love is supposed to be.”

The first shot across the bow into my heart center was 10cc’s ‘The Things We Do For Love’, which charted as high as #5 on April 16, 1977. The lyrics in the bridge serve as kind of a catch-all for the pathos and intensity of romantic pursuit.

Like walking in the rain and the snow

When there’s nowhere to go

And you’re feeling like a part of you is dying

And you’re looking for the answer in her eyes.

You think you’re gonna break - up

Then she says she wants to make up…

This was followed in short order by the emotional closeness of ‘Reminiscing’ from Little River Band, which peaked at #3 in October, 1978…

Friday night, it was late, I was walking you home

We got down to the gate, and I was dreaming of the night

Would it turn out right?..

I want to make you understand, I’m talking about a lifetime plan

Was it really that simple? You go out, you say, “You’re the bomb,” and next thing you know you have a partner for life. It all sounded so exotic, so mysterious, so terrifying and magical all at the same time. As my ears tried to make sense of the lyrics, my heart was being fed information it didn’t know how to metabolize. Reflecting on these efforts, it strikes me that in much the same way I would fill in all the action in a comic book between the panels, I was reaching to understand adult relations—an unchartered land of intrigue, heartbreak and some little thing called “love”.

There was no guide, there was no chatbot to inquire of. Just me, the radio, and a whole lot of questions.

Another example of singular 1970s songwriting searing its way into my consciousness comes by way of the uniquely named duo of England Dan and John Ford Coley, “I’d Really Love to See You Tonight”, which peaked at No. 2 on September 25, 1976.

I’m not talkin’ ‘bout moving in

And I don’t wanna change your life

But there’s a warm wind blowing the stars around

And I’d really love to see you tonight

Again, the stakes of romance and the language was so charged to my 9-year old ears it read like a foreign (and yes, romantic) language. Contrast this with today’s internet, and the documented epidemic of adult content reaching too-young kids, and I may as well be talking about a time as distant as the Wild West of the 1800s.

Finally, neither of the above tunes’ talk of lifetime plans hold a candle to the incandescence of Dan Hill’s “Sometimes When We Touch,” which peaked at # 3 on March 4, 1978.

And sometimes when we touch

The honesty’s too much

And I have to close my eyes and hide

I wanna hold you ‘til I die

‘Til we both break down and cry

Could just brushing a person’s elbow be so all-consuming that tears would well? Are adult emotions that much bigger? As I reflect on the Romance 101 of my AM Radio youth today, these are the questions that I remember my child-size brain asking. (TK)

Bonus Links:

• The largest tape transfer project in the history of rock’n’roll: The Grateful Dead released an official Play Dead streaming app

• The story of Woody Brown - Autistic Author