Vol. 18 - Just Like Me Only Smaller: Barry, Harry, and Sir Rod Explore Childhood Rather than Child-Rearing

As a father, I know that raising children is serious stuff, and that when it comes to child-rearing, even good friends may not see eye to eye.  Perhaps the most interesting thing about this latest post is the lack of real response, and certainly none of the corroboration from Adolfo that we've grow to expect.  I will dig more to find what was troubling Adolfo at this time.  His brief response offers some clues, but I choose to withhold judgement.  Without definitive evidence, I don't care to mischaracterize one whom I've learned to hold in the highest esteem.  In the meantime, enjoy this unique (if mostly one-sided) post.


Halliday begins with a lyric from Barry Manilow's "I Am Your Child:"

I am your child

Whatever I am, you taught me to be

I am your hope,

I am your chance,

I am your child

Dolf, my friend,

My son is nearly four, as you know, and so I decided just the other day that he needs to learn to drive my Peugeot in the event of an emergency.  His mother is not having it, of course, but she is not with our boy 24 hours a day and so, like fencing, masonry, filleting fish, and Esperanto (just to name a few), we have embarked together on mastering a new necessary skill, this time the operation of the manual transmission of a sturdy European sedan.  I take to heart Mr. Manilow’s above words from "I Am Your Child."  If my own Dewey Bunnell Holiday is to be whatever I have taught him to be, then I take my work seriously—sadly, perhaps more seriously than our Soft Rock heroes, it seems.  My research suggest that words and actions, at least as they pertain child-rearing, are two separate things for these otherwise faultless (I hope) men.

So many expectations are put upon children, but you and I are certainly aware that the children of artists have a unique cross to bear, for the expectations placed upon them are as fraught with trouble as the messages they receive while growing up.  Imagine if your dad was Leo Sayer?  What messages is he sending? And would Daddy be able to share your size 6X Garanimals?  Wouldn't that be odd having a pops who could wear your Stride Rites?  Forgive the (over)extended metaphor, but isn't that alone a recipe for a life of missteps?

You Make Me Feel Like Dancing?  Maybe...

What do artists like Barry Manilow or Harry Chapin or Rod Stewart actually teach children to be or not to be?  That is the question, friend.  How did little Josh Chapin, now closing in on 30 years old and the "boy" in Harry's most-loved hit, turn out?   Was he ridiculed for wearing stretch Levi's and turquoise jewelry in kindergarten?  We know that Harry’s daughter became a musician, but will she ever be capable of the soft rock catalogue assembled by her dear old dad during his 38 short years on earth (Godspeed Harry!!)?  And, before he left this mortal coil, did he teach her anything about parenting or just about music and abandonment?  One cannot parent from the proverbial road.  Manilow's own father left him and his mother at a very young age, and (perhaps as a result) Barry has no children of his own, so while he can write, as he does above, from the POV of a child, can he speak for children the way you and I can?  Rod Stewart?  Well, I believe he has at least six kids with four different women.  We’ve seen young Kimberly in the spotlight, and she seems fine, but what about little Ruby or Aiden, what lay ahead for them?  More urban myths about canine semen?  What happens when they need to learn Esperanto or animal husbandry?  If soft rockers can’t be good parents, then who in music can???!!  This fear is what drives me to raise my son to be accomplished in all things.  Is five years too early to talk to him about women?  Or is it too late!???  What if he likes men?  Then when do I start down this road?  Rod seems to allude to this conundrum in his rendition of "Forever Young":

And when you finally fly away

I'll be hoping that I served you well

For all the wisdom of a lifetime

No one can ever tell

But whatever road you choose

I'm right behind you, win or lose

There is no greater love than the love one feels for a child, but there is an inherent narcissism in it all, no?  The laughter my own son elicits from me is never greater than when he reminds me of myself!  Even before his second birthday, he had a gift for the metaphor, the simile.  An accidental poop floating in the tub with him at bath time became a “pinecone,” and thusly all subsequent poops became pinecones or other terms, never just pedantic poops.  At nearly four years of age, in addition to knowing that poop is a palindrome (indeed it is!), he is prone to examining his poops and giving them names based on what they resemble to him.  To prove my point further, just last week he asserted that one of his poops looked like me!  And, you know, it actually did.  His poop was just like me.  The boy must have eaten a large serving of body hair and marshmallows!  Harry Chapin, at least the poet Harry who penned “Cats and the Cradle,” would be proud of me, I suppose:

...My son turned ten just the other day

He said, "Thanks for the ball, Dad, come on let's play

Can you teach me to throw", I said "Not today

I got a lot to do." He said, "That's ok"

And he walked away but his smile never dimmed

And said, "I'm gonna be like him, yeah

You know I'm gonna be like him..

...And as I hung up the phone it occurred to me

He'd grown up just like me

My boy was just like me

Well, what have they learned, what have these children learned by being literally derived from greatness, if not raised in its very presence (and simultaneous absence)?  There, but not there?  I don’t know, friend.   This is not a hypothetical question.  Have they learned that art and reality are separate and that the messages of their daddies’ songs trump their real world parenting skills?  Have we detected a chink in the overall armor?  Is it our legacy to correct this failing?  Are soft rockers not only bad daddies but also philandering, womanizing pigs hiding behind the right words?   Tell me it’s not so.  Let my own smile never dim...

Dolf provides this terse, somewhat cryptic reply:

Really!??  Is this passive agression, Kevin? 

You do know that I have been living at the Holgate trailer, right?  Really?!  This is what you want to write about this month?  Really?  Do me a solid and go back to rhinestones and spring-green fields for a piece, huh?  Really?  Really?

And that is all the reply that Dolf could muster, unfortunately.  I have found no other exchanges about this subject.  I will continue to look, however, for as I said above, I don't wish to misrepresent a man whom I hold in very high regard. I urge you, dear reader, to exercize similar restraint.  Speculation will get us nowhere.- ed.