An Emotional Rescue

Imagine with me please...I'm jamming to 80s music on the radio.  Madonna, Hall and Oates, J. Geils Band.  All the good stuff.   When suddenly...SUDDENLY...they play a song that's so very familiar.  I know that I know it.  I know instantly that it had been a favorite.  But I can't quite place it...Is it Electric Avenue?  Funky Town?  No, neither of those sounds quite right.  It feels like a song from my grade school years, which would put it into the 70s rather than the 80s.  Hmmm.  I listen a little bit further.  Rolling Stones.  It's got to be Rolling Stones.

I cave, "Joe, what song is this?"

Joe checks the window on the media player he is using,  "Rolling Stones, 'Emotional Rescue.' " 

Oh, my goodness!  This is the signature song from my one of my berry field summers. I was instantly right back working for Matlock Farms in the Puyallup River valley.  I didn't know it was the Rolling Stones at that time, but I did think it was a cool song. 

I go over to the computer and stand beside where Joe is working.  I'm grooving along with the beat.  Waiting, just waiting for my favorite parts.

The,  "Uh-hoo, uh-hoo-hoo, uh-hoo-hoo-hoo, Uh-hoo, uh-hoo-hoo, uh-hoo-hoo-hoo," was something I thought was really cool.  I also liked the part about the "crying like a child."

But still, I had to wait for my very favorite lines

I will be your knight in shining armor
Coming to your emotional rescue
You will be mine, you will be mine, all mine
You will be mine, you will be mine, all mine
I will be your knight in shining armor
Riding across the desert on a fine Arab charger.

It appealed to the imaginary, knights and ladies, part of my young personality, but it also had a fun electronic sound and a cool beat.

Oh, here it comes!  We're almost there!

But suddenly!  Suddenly the sound is gone.  GONE.  And I see Joe pick up his phone.  He had muted the computer to talk on the phone.  Well, maybe it will be fast and he'll get the volume back up in time.  Maybe I'll still get to hear, in that funny, whispery, spooky voice I remember, the part about the guy riding across the desert on a fine Arab charger .

But no such luck.  Nope.   It was Issues, Etc., radio show calling to line up Joe's next interview.  Can you imagine something so trivial as that!  I bet they would have called back had they known it was the Rolling Stones.  Right?

Oyweh!

This song stuck with me throughout the years.  Now remember, most of these years were before google.  Before the internet.  I remember at one point, having heard that it was the Rolling Stones.  But when I asked Joe about it, (yes, that same Joe who seems to know everything about every eclectic kind of music around), he could not tell me anything about the song.  He did not recognize it at all.  I think he must not have been a Stones fan. 

Now this "sticking with me thing" that a few tidbits of these lyrics did, it was not any big deal.  Just a curiosity.  A memory I'd occasionally pull out and dust off.  And wonder about.  I didn't know the name of the song.  And I only suspected that I knew it was the Rolling Stones. 

Now pan forward a few more years until shortly after we moved up north.  Once when we were in East Grand Forks visiting Rolf and Dort Preus, with whom we were still getting acquainted at the time, it came out that Rolf had been a big Rolling Stones fan in his day.  So I sang that lyric.  The one I included up above.  The lyric for the mystery song.  Rolf started laughing at the idea of this mother of six, this younger pastor's wife, knew that song from what must have been his college or seminary years. 

But Rolf was also good enough to solve the mystery for me.  "Yes, of course!  That would be "Emotional Rescue," from the 1980 album of the same name."

This is the Stones' Solid Gold performance of this song.  Aaaaahhhhh.  Solid Gold.  Now there's another story for another day.  Definitely a period show.