Phil Everly, Proust, Freud and Drinks For All My Friends

The first Everly album I ever owned, inherited from an uncle when I was 13.

Hidden within music we often find those mystical triggers that set off involuntary memory.

Radio provides the best and most delicious of such moments, when the random selection of music opens up sometimes repressed areas of the subconscious. Or, to combine Freud with Chuck Berry:

Rock the pfennig right into the slot/You gotta hear something that’s really hot

(Freud and Chuck Berry. That would have been quite a gig. Freud would have been the supporting act. That goes without saying.)

The radio brought such a sensation to me this morning when I heard the news that Phil Everly had died at the age of 74.

There’s not one of my best and most beloved friends with whom I have not played or sung Everly Brothers music.

And memories of each and every one of them flooded in this morning. Some of them I see all the time. Some of them I still play music with. Some I haven’t seen for ages. Some are absent friends.

I think of these people most days anyway. But the passing of Phil Everly brought back golden times. And not just that. It brought the promise of golden times to come, singing and playing or simply just listening to the records together. But particularly singing and playing…

Rest in Peace Phil Everly and thanks for all the great times yet to come.

 Here's Songs Our Daddy Taught Us, my favourite of all their albums: