Funeral for a Friend

For the most part, nighttime was a positive experience for me as child. I’m sure it helped that I always fell asleep quickly and slept soundly through the night. On a rare occasion I would startle awake with fragments of a scary dream lingering my head, and my imagination would run wild until I fell back asleep. But in general, I wasn’t really afraid of the dark. That being said, one of the strangest and most frightening experiences of my childhood took place in the middle of the night – sometime in early 1978.

My Night of Terror

On this particular night, my alarm clock/radio went off randomly in the wee hours. At 4:12 am to be exact, as it was seared into my memory. It wouldn’t have been a big deal if the beep-beep alarm had gone off, or if the radio started playing some harmless pop song. But instead, the sound coming from my little alarm clock was in the form of pure terror. At least for an eleven year old.

The song wasn’t like anything I’d ever heard on the radio – it consisted of nothing but creepy organ music. It reminded me of the classic haunted house music from Phantom of the Opera (Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor). Click on the play button below and I’m sure you’ll recognize it right away: I was absolutely petrified. It was a cold winter night and my room was pitch dark, with only the dim orange light from my humidifier casting strange shadows…on what only mildly resembled my bedroom in the light of day.

As a kid, I constantly reorganized the furniture in my bedroom, almost always keeping my bed in a corner of the room, primarily for safety and comfort. Unfortunately on this particular night, though, I had recently arranged it so that the bed was in the middle of the room, with only the headboard against a wall. This left me completely vulnerable on three sides. The only thing in my favor was that when I awoke to this moment of horror, I was completely buried under the covers, giving me at least a mild sense of security.

So as the music continued I remained buried and perfectly still, almost too scared to breathe. Yet the creepy music played on and on…and on.

After what seemed like an eternity, the song eventually transitioned into something less frightening. But it was probably another ten minutes before I dared to sneak one of my skinny arms out from under the covers and reach across the great abyss to hit the “off” button on my alarm clock. Whoever – or whatever – had turned on the radio might still be out there, somewhere. When I finally built up enough courage, I moved as quick as a cobra, not willing to take any chances.

I don’t recall what happened next, but I must have just fallen asleep out of sheer exhaustion. After verifying the next morning that my alarm wasn’t set, or even turned on, I wondered if the whole thing had been a dream.

Real or imagined, the following weeks were the only time in my life where I didn’t look forward to bedtime.

A Late Night Reminder

Fast forward nine years to my dorm room at college, where I was studying for a final late one night. The local classic rock station was in the process of playing their entire library of songs from A to Z. They were just getting toward the end of the F’s when I suddenly halted my studies and froze. It took me a minute to determine the source of my uneasiness, but I eventually recalled that frightening moment from years earlier. By the time I figured it out and returned to the present from my flashback, the song had segued into a different melody, this one with vocals. I realized it was an Elton John song. And, I actually kinda liked it.

During my next trip back home, I asked my childhood friend (and huge Elton John fan), Tom, if he knew what this unusual song might have been. The only clues I had to offer were that the title began with an F, and it contained creepy organ music. He laughed, and assumed it must be a two-part song called Funeral for a Friend / Love Lies Bleeding. Tom graciously recorded his Goodbye Yellow Brick Road CD onto a cassette tape for me so I could check it out for myself. Sure enough, this was my mystery song.

Oddly enough, the song ended up becoming one of my favorites, in spite of its ominous and haunting introduction into my world, years earlier.

Full Circle Moment

Fast forward another 22 years to sunny Southern California. I was there on a two-week business trip and Michelle was able to join me for an extended weekend. Our hotel was right next door to the Honda Center in Anaheim, where Elton John and Billy Joel just happened to be playing together that Saturday night. The show was completely sold out, but that evening we walked across the street to check it out, and found someone with two extra tickets. We wouldn’t be in our usual front row spot, but this was the best we could do at the last minute.

 
We got to our seats just in time to see Elton and Billy open up the show, playing a few songs together. Then Elton went on by himself. And wouldn’t you just know it…he opened his set with Funeral for a Friend / Love Lies Bleeding.

I couldn’t believe it.

As the song began, the arena remained totally dark, with only a single spotlight featuring the keyboard player. The creepy organ music was amped up to such high levels that I could feel the bass rumbling through the whole arena and vibrating inside of me. It was so intense that it felt as if my internal organs were being reorganized. It was awesome.

I sat back and thoroughly took in the moment. I closed my eyes, recounting all the details from that horribly frightening experience 30 years earlier. I pictured the moment perfectly. But I could only smile as I realized that the memory in my mind had somehow transformed itself over time from frightening…to magical.

 
A Lesson Learned

I’d love to know why my alarm clock malfunctioned like it did in the middle of the night back in 1978, and why that particular song started playing at the exact same moment. But there are no explanations. It just happened. I can only wonder…

This whole story reminded me, though, that like other events in my past that appeared to be “bad” at the time of occurrence, I now considered this a positive experience. I could list hundreds of similar events, as well, where I completely changed my attitude about an experience with the passing of time and further examination.

It seems that if I’m patient enough, a new perspective always reveals itself to help me appreciate the experience, or at least recognize the benefits that I might have missed the first time around. It’s one of those lessons you can only learn as you grow older.

So even though it cost me a few terrifying nights as an 11 year-old, I’m now grateful to have a long history and some fun memories associated with this fantastic song.

And now I’ll do my best to remember this lesson in the future – whenever something “bad” happens or things don’t turn out like I planned. As they say….misfortunes are often blessings in disguise.

I’ll share with you a live version of Funeral for a Friend / Love Lies Bleeding. This one is – appropriately – more enjoyable than the original album version, which frightened me so badly as a kid.

Enjoy!

Note: the video is almost 10 minutes long. “Funeral” ends at about the 5 minute mark.