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April 22, 2021
Deborah K. Shepherd's Playlist for Her Novel "So Happy Together"
In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.
Previous contributors include Jesmyn Ward, Lauren Groff, Bret Easton Ellis, Celeste Ng, T.C. Boyle, Dana Spiotta, Amy Bloom, Aimee Bender, Roxane Gay, and many others.
Deborah K. Shepherd's novel So Happy Together brings the both '60s and '80s to life in this road trip novel.
Rita Dragonette wrote of the book:
"Shepherd takes us on a literal ride into the not-so-distant past, remembering how naïve we were before we understood there are things you just can’t change―even if you’re destined, even if you’re soulmates, even if you’re willing to risk everything . . . The reader will ache at the forced (and quite salty) sass of the young narrator, desperate to show it doesn’t hurt, and highly enjoy the ironic wit of the mature voice who knows better and goes for it all the same. A story for anyone who can relate to how we cling to a fantasy of the past to avoid committing to the present."
In her words, here is Deborah K. Shepherd's Book Notes music playlist for her debut novel So Happy Together:
So Happy Together is set in the sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll ‘60s in Tucson, Arizona, when the protagonist, Caro Mills, is kooky, colorful and creative, and madly in love with fellow drama student, Peter MacKinley; and in the ‘80’s, when Caro, who has married someone else, finds the marriage unraveling and her creative spark quenched to serve the needs of her husband and children. She believes if she finds Peter again, she can recapture what she has lost, so she sets off on a pre-cellphone, pre-Facebook road trip across a thousand miles and twenty years. The novel explores the conundrum of love and sexual attraction, creativity and family responsibilities, and what happens when they are out of sync. It’s a story of missed opportunities, the tantalizing possibility of second chances, and what we leave behind, carry forward, and settle for when we choose. It sits in that raw, messy, confounding, beautiful place where love resides.
Most of the songs on this playlist are from the 1960s, with an oldie but goodie from the late ‘50s. Only one is something Caro listened to in the ‘80s, because that’s not where she wants to be. Her road trip takes her to her past, to her youth, ergo, that’s the story’s soundtrack.
“Bridge Over Troubled Water,” Simon and Garfunkel
The words of this deeply felt hymn offer solace to anyone in need, and Caro wants to be that “silver girl” bringing comfort to Peter, whom she believes still needs her, even after twenty years apart. The song, anchored by Art Garfunkel’s pure choirboy voice, is filled with grace and giving.
“The sounds of Simon and Garfunkel waft me across the Hudson River and back across many years.
“Will the waters be untroubled when I get there? Will there even be any water?”
This is the song I want played at my funeral…but not anytime soon.
“Happy Together,” The Turtles
Clearly, the title of my book was taken from this song. Its upbeat tempo belies the reality that this is about longing for something that cannot be. The singer imagines that the crush he has on the girl of his dreams is reciprocated, when, in fact she probably doesn’t know he exists. Caro clings to a fantasy about Peter, imagining how happy she might have been, and might still be if she finds him. Years after they had parted, Caro starts writing Peter letters that she never sends:
“This letter, too, went into my bottom drawer. What if I’d chosen the wrong guy on that very last day when I could have had either?”
“Ah, Sunflower,” The Fugs (from a poem by William Blake)
As a teenager growing up with few friends in a small town, Caro prides herself on being different and literary:
“I discovered teenage angst…I affected a completely black wardrobe to project an air of indifference, intellectual depth, and mystery (and, it goes without saying, slenderness), and found solace in books…”
Caro identifies with the Blake poem’s theme of pining away with desire, and feels proud to be the only girl in her dorm who’s ever heard of The Fugs, the out-of-tune East Village underground rock group with rudimentary guitar skills, terrible voices and no musical talent, who put poetry to music.
I have to admit, although The Fugs retain a certain louche quality, and it’s fun to recall how cool it was to like these bad boys back in the day, it’s hard to sit through their soundtrack now; like maybe a combination of fingernails on a chalk board and root canal.
“Le Tourbillon,” Jeanne Moreau
As a college student, Caro was obsessed with the romance and enigma of French cinema:
“Jules et Jim was playing at Le Cine and I was dying to go, but everyone was either studying or rehearsing. I was wishing I had a boyfriend to share this experience with me. I loved this movie! I was especially smitten with the idea of a woman being the love interest of two men…I loved that it was French…I want my life to be like Jules et Jim…until the part where Catherine drives with Jim off that bridge.”
Caro leaves the movie house with “Le Tourbillon,” an upbeat song--whose melody is reminiscent of children dancing in a French village—echoing in her head. The lyrics tell the tale of separated lovers meeting (and “heating each other” in the English translation) once again. It’s sung by the sultry, smoldering New Wave French actress Jeanne Moreau, whom Caro emulates as the epitome of cool. Caro will meet Peter—whom she comes to believe is her soulmate—a few days later.
“White Rabbit,” Jefferson Airplane
The quintessential acid trip anthem of the era. “Feed your head,” urges Grace Slick’s stunning contralto voice, which floats in and then over the rest of the band, while the insistent snare drum beat, with its homage to Ravel’s Bolero, goes on and on. Caro drops acid with her friends Ernesto and Scott, who have reminded her to “stay cool.”:
“An hour later, I was the coolest thing around. In fact, I was so cool, I had been crowned Queen of the Mountain. From my bejeweled throne, I overlooked the entire verdant valley, where all my tiny mountain people stood ready. They lived to serve me. And I didn’t even have to give them orders. They could read my mind and know my heart’s desire.”
Later in the evening, Caro’s trip takes a nosedive, and she imagines that her arms have turned into snakes and her head has become a fiery skull.
“I Put a Spell on You,” Nina Simone
Simone’s raw, mesmerizing alto fairly growls in this mournful, vulnerable cri de coeur: “I don’t care if you don’t want me. I’m yours.” I imagine Caro listening to this one over and over again in her dorm room at night, sometimes falling asleep to Simone’s rough voice set against the lush tones of the studio orchestra. She wishes she could put a spell on Peter to make him hers forever.
“Light My Fire,” The Doors
Love and sex and weed, and that opening circus-like melody that is also reminiscent of a Bach organ work. Caro is truly, madly and deeply in love with Peter and believes he is her everything. Peter hopes he can be, but something’s missing:
“…we were sitting in his apartment, the remains of our Taco Bell take-out dinner on the table. We had smoked a little weed and The Doors were holding forth with “Light My Fire.”
“Once again, he wanted to hear about my lovers, and like Scheherazade, I tried to weave enchantment with my tales—not to stave off death, but perhaps to strike a spark of life, to find the magic spell that would make him unable to resist me any longer.”
And then there’s sexy Jim Morrison who set a lot of nights on fire and died so very young. His grave in Paris’ Pere Lachaise Cemetery is still a shrine for his diehard fans.
“Lay, Lady, Lay,” Bob Dylan
Although Dylan first released this song in 1969, two years after Caro meets Jack, her future husband, this is the song Caro always thinks of when she reminisces about that meeting:
“Oh, my God, I was mad about this man! I felt like I’d hit the boyfriend trifecta: smart, great in bed, and behind that scruffy beard, a real looker, as my mother would have said. And he loved me! But at the same time, there was something about him that I couldn’t put my finger on. Something that seemed to be lurking behind the radical politics, the long hair, and the clothes he wore like a manifesto, but he wasn’t telling, and I was afraid to ask.”
“Ohio,” Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young
This protest song, with its recurring “Four dead in O-hio.,” sears the heart and marks the end of an era for Caro and her husband, Jack, who met at an anti-war rally in 1967. She falls in love instantly when he’s the first in the crowd to burn his draft card. Three years later, Jack has cut his hair, shaved his beard, and joined his father’s corporate law firm. On May 4, 1970, the day the Ohio National Guard slaughtered four students on the campus of Kent State University, Caro and Jack are getting ready to have dinner with Jack’s parents, and Caro dons a black armband in mourning and solidarity:
“I had envisioned [Jack] defending the Black Panthers and war resisters. Jack had envisioned a roof over our heads and dinner out a couple of times a month…My father-in-law was still Nixon’s biggest cheerleader, and I knew that wearing my politics on my sleeve would be rubbing his nose in it.”
“It’s You I Like,” Fred Rogers
Mr. Rogers has a voice that reminds Caro of her sweet shy, soft-spoken Peter. And when she seems to have lost her identity-- known mostly as Jack’s wife and Greg, Sarah and Caleb’s mom, and drowning in the suburbs-- at least Mr. Rogers still thinks she’s special:
“Years after all three kids had outgrown Mr. Rogers, I still made periodic forays into the Neighborhood. Both Fred and Peter liked me just the way I was.”
“Chances Are,” Johnny Mathis
This is the consummate “slow dance,” song and, although recorded in 1957, it still remains the perfect song to fall in love to. It’s the one Jack chooses to try to win Caro back when the marriage has grown stale:
“Jack crooned along with Johnny as he took me in his arms. The dance didn’t last very long, though. It had been so long since we’d made love to each other, really made love and meant it, that neither of us could bear to linger over the preliminaries.”
“Just a Little Bit of Rain,” Linda Ronstadt and The Stone Poneys
“Please try to forget all the bad times, lonely blue and sad times,” sings the irreplaceable, irrepressible Linda Ronstadt at the lower end of her range, a range we’re not accustomed to hearing. The pure, gorgeous voice of this Tucson girl (her family owned the local hardware store) was evident from the beginning of her career. And she only got better. “Different Drum” is the song everyone remembers from this album, but this song of longing and pathos just gives me chills and is the one Caro would have listened to over and over again.
“In My Life,” The Beatles
This sweet, tender ballad remains my favorite Beatles song, and Caro’s, too. It remembers and pays homage to people and things “that went before,” but who’s the one who occupies Caro’s heart when she hears: “In my life, I love you more”? Is it Jack, or is it Peter?
“Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch,” The Four Tops
Because: Motown. Because: Sometimes you just gotta dance.
Deborah K. Shepherd was born in Cambridge, MA and spent much of her early life in the New York area. Before retiring in 2014, she was a social worker with a primary focus on the prevention of domestic violence and sexual assault, and provision of victim services. During an earlier career as a reporter, she wrote for Show Business in New York City and for the Roe Jan Independent, a weekly newspaper in Columbia County, New York. She also freelanced as a travel writer. She graduated from the Interlochen Arts Academy in Interlochen, Michigan, and holds a BFA in drama from the University of Arizona and an MSW from the Fordham University Graduate School of Social Service. Deborah lives with her husband and two rescue dogs on the coast of Maine, where she gardens, cooks, swims, reads, entertains her grandsons, tries to speak French, and blogs at www.deborahshepherdwrites.com and www.paleogram.com. She is currently at work on a memoir. She lives in Belfast, ME.
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