I finished my drink a few minutes later, and then I too headed for my seat. Sandy preferred hanging out back stage rather than out front in the seats, so I was alone. An usher guided me to my seat on the left inside aisle of a special short row of four seats. To my surprise, the other three seats were occupied by the young woman I had admired earlier and her parents. My seat was next to the friendly and charming mother. We hit it off immediately. It turned out that they were the parents and sister of Glen’s band-leader, T.J. Kuenster and like me, had complimentary tickets and backstage passes. Among other things, I learned that T.J. and his dark-haired, beautiful kid sister Andrea, took piano lessons together while growing up in Chicago. I too called Chicago home for a number of years (as you now know after reading about Igler’s). By the time the evening was over, I realized that Andrea was an accomplished singer / songwriter as well. I asked that she send me some of her songs, as I was working on a project. Eight months passed. Then, out of the blue, I received an email. At first, I didn’t recognize the name Andrea Marie. In retrospect, it was because I never knew her stage name. Anyway, Andrea had run across my business card and couldn’t place me either. “When did we meet?” her email asked. Well, I wasn’t sure. Then she sent the attached picture and it all came back. I chided her about not sending me those songs and within two days I was listening to some very fine recordings of hers including the perfectly timely Everything But Love. Even though, by that time I had finished mastering the album (this Desperate album) I liked her song so much, that I redid everything, added her song, deleted another, rearranged the song order, so I could add Andrea’s lovely song (in case you haven’t listened to it I won’t spoil it by telling you what it’s about beforehand – perhaps you should listen to it now before reading any further because the lyrics are listed below).
So I guess I owe Sandy another thank you, one for the album idea and one for Andrea.
Producer’s commentary on Everything But Love:
Circa 1997 – Alas, Sleeping Beauty is Dead, actually dead, really dead, never to awaken again.
How could that be? It’s not supposed to happen that way.
Charles Parrault would never have allowed his princess to die, let alone die with Everything But Love.
Coincidentally, LaBelle au Bois dormant, Parrault’s Sleeping Beauty was written exactly 300 years earlier, 1697. That story, that lovely vision, the embodiment of the dreams of young girls for centuries, was the first in the Contes dema mere l’Oyel (Mother Goose Tales), borrowed from an even earlier source, Gaimbattista Basile’s Pentamerone Sun, Moon and Talia.
Walt Disney would never have penned such a horrible story line. His Sleeping Beauty, which draws from Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s ballet, Saint Petersburg (1890), taught us that good always prevails over evil and love conquers all, and prince charming rides to the rescue on a white steed. If we can’t count on that, what can we count on? With our own lives falling apart day by day isn’t there some hope, some dream we can cling to?
Watching the sorrowful pageant of Princess Diana’s funeral, the details of her death and flash-backs of her life, the words of Barbara Walters or whoever was speaking, hammered away, over and over for days . . .
Now when I hear Andrea’s lyrics, “She had everything but love . . . Everything but love . . . Everything but love,” the flashbacks of Diana’s story energize. Soon the words begin to flow into memory . . . “She had a heart as big as the world, diamonds and pearls couldn’t fill it . . . She had Everything but love. Oh, Diana we’ll miss you . . .”
Parrault, Basile, Tchaikovsky and Walt Disney borrowed their stories from the past. Andrea’s song borrows from the present and from what was seen and heard on the sad day of Diana’s funeral in 1997. But a song is like that. The writer takes all the same stuff everyone else hears and by some magic, synthesizes it in a special, original way and voila’ – a song is born. That song will sing for you and to you today, tomorrow and forever . . . as long as songs are played . . . as long as people weep for what might have been. And when we do see God face to face we will ask Him, “where is the love?”. . . But that’s another song.