The Hungry Years
A memorial and a memory
When I heard that Neil Sedaka had passed, I did not first think of concerts or record sales or even his astonishingly high tenor voice. I thought of a bedroom in Warren, Michigan. I thought of summer light slanting through thin curtains. I thought of my cousin Kenny.
Kenny and I were only two years apart, which in boyhood makes you less like cousins and more like co-conspirators. For a time, we were inseparable. We shared the sort of friendship that required no planning. If one of us was upright and breathing, the other was usually within shouting distance. We were not particularly bad children, but we were inventive, which is sometimes worse.
We owned a record. That record was “I Go Ape.”
The opening notes were a warning shot to the household. The moment the needle dropped, something ancient and irresponsible took hold of us. We did not merely listen to the song. We became it. Beds were no longer beds. They were jungle plateaus. Dressers were cliffs. The floor was lava or quicksand or whatever danger a monkey might need to justify launching himself across furniture.
For three minutes, we were unstoppable.
And Ma knew it. The second she heard that intro, she would appear in the doorway with the expression of a woman who had already lost the argument. “Oh no. Shut it off.” It was less a command and more a plea to preserve the lamps, the mirror, and possibly our collarbones.
Of course we loved it all the more for that.
There is something sacred about the music that scores your mischief. Years later, when the jumping has stopped and the furniture remains intact, the song still carries the echo of who you were. You hear it and remember that once you had no fear of falling because you had not yet learned how hard the ground could be.
Kenny left us too soon. That sentence still feels unfinished, as if someone misplaced a page in the middle of the chapter. His birthday arrives each year with a tenderness that catches me off guard. And now, on the morning I learn that Neil Sedaka is gone, I find the calendar holding both of them at once. The man who gave us our anthem of monkeyhood. The boy who leapt beside me.
It is a strange thing to grow up with an artist. Sedaka did not remain frozen in novelty songs. He matured. So did his music. When I rediscovered “The Hungry Years” as an adult, it felt as though he had grown up alongside me. The voice was still there, unmistakable and bright, but now it carried longing. Regret. Memory. The recognition that time does not politely wait for anyone.
As boys, we sang about King Kong and prehistoric man. As adults, we hum about love remembered and years that slipped by while we were busy being alive.
That is the quiet trick of a life in music. A singer spans decades. Two boys span a childhood. And suddenly one of them is gone, and the other is standing in a room, holding both the laughter and the ache at the same time.
I like to think that somewhere Kenny still hears that opening riff and grins. That somewhere he is still mid-leap, fearless, indestructible, not yet aware that lamps break and bodies age and songs eventually end.
Thank you, Neil Sedaka, for the soundtrack.
And happy birthday, Kenny.
I Go Ape
by: Neil Sedaka
I go ape every time I see you smile
I'm a ding dong gorilla and I'll carry you cave man style
I'm gonna bump you on the head and love you all the while
Well, I'm a monkey's uncle who's a cousin to a chimpanzee
Like I was reeling and a rocking and a swinging from a coconut tree
Oh, honey, can't you see you bring out the monkey business in me?
Ranga tanga ring ting tong
I'm related to old King Kong
Honey, won't you say you're mine?
With a honky tonky monkey shine
When you hold my hand I'm a pre-historic man
I go ape!