The Songs - Tough All Over
This is another entry in my ongoing “songs that visited me and decided they wanted to stay” series. I hope you like these enough to become a paid subscriber, because I really need you to keep this series going. This entry is free….but not all of ‘em are!
Tough All Over - John Cafferty & The Beaver Brown Band
Don’t judge me.
Clearly this song is wildly derivative in more ways than I can count. It features the sort of cheesy 80s synth riff that makes me cringe, and the type of all-too-obvious working class Springsteen-isms that were all the rage in the Born in the USA era. I mean….
She ain't got no fancy clothes
Don't drive no fancy car
She's the waitress
At the bar and grill
…ain’t exactly “Thunder Road”. But it gets the point across I guess. And you can dance to it.
Cafferty and his band had previously allowed their music to be featured in one of those so-bad-it-is-actually-good films called “Eddie and the Cruisers”, so they had a bit of house money to play with. “Tough All Over” was their first post-Eddie release, and to my 19 year old ears it was like an earworm.
I loved Springsteen then. Still do. Every state seemed to have mini versions of Bruce back then. Tommy Conwell out of PA. Mellencamp out of Indiana. Michael Stanley out of Ohio. Huey Lewis out of California. Cafferty came out of Rhode Island, and had been roaming the eastern seaboard for years, dead broke, selling records out of the trunk of his car. But he had served the rock and roll bar gods honorably. Nobody could blame him for handing over his songs to Hollywood when he got the chance, any more than they blamed Mellencamp for being known as “Johnny Cougar”. Cafferty’s purgatory would be to be forever confused with a make-believe band, but at least he was able to pay off his debts and afford a tour bus.
Rock and roll was a full contact sport back then. It was face to face. Blood and sweat on the boards. Record stores and bars and piling all your gear in the back of a decrepit van, hopefully making just enough money to pay for gas and motel rooms. There was a circuit of clubs and promoters and friendly DJs. Everything was word of mouth. If something special was happening, you ran to the pay phone and told your buddy “get your ass down here”. If you played a great gig, the memory lingered and subsequent crowds grew. Cafferty wasn’t necessarily more talented, he was just more relentless.
Eventually you stop chasing the actual dream and settle for paying the bills. Perhaps it’s the different between a van and a bus. A big deal for those ridin’. Rock and roll might be a shitty job, but it still beats the alternative.
Here's one for the brokenhearted
It's tough just to get things started
All over again
All over again
So went the bridge in “Tough All Over”, and for that brief moment Cafferty very nearly found the eloquence of his elders.
Almost 3 years ago to the day, I wrote this….
“Beer and girls and bon-fires and boom boxes, 4 of the greatest things in the universe. On magical weekend nights they’d all converge and time seemed to stand still. We laughed and sang and cried and thought things were gonna be like this forever….friends and warm summer nights and music and the water from the creek rolling by….promising eternal youth. And at the end of the night we’d break into groups….finding our way home….always on foot. Giddy from the beer, holding hands….with the free one clutching the boom box as we danced our way down the street that curved like an S past the police station and the projects, singing John Cafferty’s Tough All Over….over and over again. We’d have to stop dancing and rewind the tape…..and then we’d be off again. Another 3 minutes plus of pure bliss. There was nothing special about that night….it was like 100 others…..except the memory is tied to that particular song. It’s a good song…..not groundbreaking…..but a solid bar-band song with a great chorus…..and I’ll forever be grateful that it exists because without it those special nights might have disappeared into the ether. For those few hours….or those few minutes….I don’t think I ever felt more alive.”
Yesterday the song came on in the car, and when it was over I found myself fumbling for the repeat button. Muscle memory. I was 19 years old again.
Did the song make the night, or did the night make the song?
Yes. And yes.
*****
Nostalgia is a powerful thing. Cafferty and his band are still out there, trawling the East Coast a few nights a month, playing the same songs, having not released new music in well over 30 years. People don’t want new music. They want what is already in their heads. They want those memories jogged. I’m no longer skipping down the street, boom-box on my shoulder, girl on my arm. I only want to be reminded of when that sort of thing was possible. “Tough All Over” does that. Which is more than most songs. Even better ones that might have been birthed on E Street.
In a bit…
—tf
Songs That Visited Me and Decided They Wanted to Stay
Intro
In a Big Country
Found Out About You
Tutti Fruitti
Surrender
Who Knows Where the Time Goes?
Nightswimming
Fast Car
Take Five
Romeo and Juliet
Wichita Lineman
Waterfall
There She Goes
A Sort of Homecoming
Purple Rain
Nights On Broadway