Every now and then I get a song so stuck in my head that there’s nothing I can do, so I just run with it. Lately that song is Simon and Garfunkel’s “The Only Living Boy In New York.”

I grew up listening to a lot of Simon and Garfunkel. Their music always brings me back to a very specific time in my life. When I was old enough to appreciate music, but too young to drive. There were certain albums that my family always had in the car—The Stones, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, and Simon and Garfunkel. I played a lot of soccer with a couple of close friends, and my parents would drive us all everywhere. Hours and hours at a time. Listening to all this music. I’m lucky that my Mom has great taste in music because a lot of this really formed that foundation of music that I would listen to for the rest of my life. I haven’t listened to much Simon and Garfunkel in a lot of years. It was always there, and I of course heard it here and there and it would always bring me right back.

A few months ago I was in New York for a couple of days, visiting with friends and seeing Phish at Madison Square Garden. Phish at the Garden is always an event. It’s amazing how you fall right back into familiar patterns as if they were yesterday, and not ten years ago. After the last show I saw, as we were shuffling out, “The Only Living Boy In New York” was playing over the PA. After four or so hours of the lights being down, and the music playing, walking out with the house lights on can be a melancholy feeling. A return to reality. These days, losing yourself in a Phish show for a few hours can really feel like an escape to a past life. I close my eyes, and there I am in the same city, in the same venue, sitting next to my same friends, listening to the same band play the same song. (And if that sounds like a bad thing, it’s really not—it’s something I’m grateful for.)

As we made our way out, I stopped and listened to “The Only Living Boy In New York.” It had probably been years since I’d heard the song, but standing there is Madison Square Garden it seemed just exactly right. Having a song tied closely to an event or memory—whether it’s a movie, something I experienced, or just something I imagined—is one of my favorite things going. Those little scenes are everywhere all the time, and I love that sometimes a song can bring you right back there.

Since that day, I haven’t really been able to go too long without thinking of that song, and that little moment. It’s only in the past week or so that I’ve actually been playing it over and over, for whatever reason. And what a fucking song huh?

You start poking around and reading about it and it takes on even more weight. Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel, friends since they were kids, and now on the brink of a breakup. Art heading to Mexico to try do some acting in a movie. Paul left alone in New York to work on the album.

Tom, get your plane right on time.
I know you’ve been eager to fly now.
Hey let your honesty shine, shine, shine

Of course, Simon and Garfunkel used to perform under the name “Tom and Jerry” when they were coming up. I’ll let you guess who Tom was. That’s just some poignant, heavy, beautiful history right there. I have to tell you, it reminds me of one of my all-time favorite musical images: Paul McCartney stopping by to visit Brian Wilson—deep in the dark throes of his paranoia and drugs and sandboxes—putting his arm around him as they sat at Brian’s piano, and saying “Thank you for Pet Sounds.” That image gives me the chills. And the fact that “The Only Living Boy In New York” kinda-sorta-maybe-dare-I-say-it reminds me of “God Only Knows”—in that when both songs come up on the album they really demand that you stop whatever you’re doing and listen—doesn’t hurt either.

And to top this all off, as I start reading more about the song, guess who happened to drop by the studio right after they finished recording the vocals on that day back in 1969?

Bob Fucking Dylan.

In this world of Pitchfork-style music criticism, I increasingly don’t care for much that’s written about music, but damn, there’s nothing like finding out a great story about a piece of music that means something to you. Couple that with a scene in your head that plays when you hear the song, and you’re ready to listen to one song non-stop for days on end.

As I’ve been doing.

The Beatles are probably my earliest musical memory.  I had a little Fisher Price record player and I remember listening to “Penny Lane” over and over again (I loved the piccolo trumpet, though I didn’t know what it was at the time.)  The Beatles came from my parents, from my Mom—this was her music passed on to me.

I don’t remember where Thriller came from, but it felt like my own.  I know that being a kid in the early eighties you couldn’t miss it.  Biggest album in the world with no exaggeration.  I just remember it being there, everywhere.  And I couldn’t get enough.  I listened to that tape over and over and over.  ”Billie Jean,” “Thriller,” “Beat It,” those were my songs.  Over and over again.  Especially “Beat It.”  I didn’t know what “pop” music was. I was too young to draw any lines between Michael Jackson, or The Beatles, or the Elvis songs my Dad played in the car.  It was all just music. I liked some of it more than others, and for a big chunk of time the only thing I wanted to listen to was Thriller.

My family jokes to this day about some charity party thing we went to, and of course the DJ was playing Thriller songs all night.  Shit, I was probably requesting them non-stop. The details are fuzzy, but he had a fake white MJ glove and I ended up with it.  I begged him for it (in hindsight my father probably slipped him $20 to get it).  Whatever.  I absolutely loved the thing and ran around with it at all times.  What an image image—a little blond six year old kid from Connecticut running around with a Michael Jackson glove.  I wish I had a picture.

Fast forward a whole bunch of years to when I’m in college.  I had just driven all night from a Phish show in New Jersey to another show in upstate New York.  We’re exhausted.  The sun in coming up as we’re pulling into the campgrounds to park for the weekend.  Everyone is asleep and out of it.  Suddenly “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough” comes on the radio and we roll down the windows and fucking crank it.  Everyone’s looking at us, but people are into it.  That song has a goddamn groove.  I’m half delirious running on fumes and Mountain Dew and this song was a jolt right through everyone’s spin.  I will never listen to this song again and not think of that exact moment.

So Michael Jackson died today.  Music has been an enormous influence on my life, and Michael Jackson had an enormous influence on how I know music.