Michael McDonald and one of his REAL loves, daughter Scarlett

Pop quiz.  What does this...

 …have to do with this:

Comment below before reading on.  I really want to hear my OS friends wax poetic about this one.

Now for the story behind the “quiz.”

A few days ago, I went to a Walgreens for some of the magical skin cream my dermatologist suggested to help my ravaged skin recover from my ongoing bout with Stevens-Johnson syndrome.   And as I searched the aisles, I heard a song that brought back very fond and very important memories:    Real Love, by Michael McDonald.  

And when I didn’t find the cream I was searching for, I headed for a CVS drug store, and heard…Real Love, by Michael McDonald.

And when I didn’t find it there, either, I went to another Walgreens…and heard…yep, you guessed it:  Real Love, by Michael McDonald.

By this time, I was afraid I would get into my car and hear an obituary on NPR.  And I realized that if I did, I would have a hard time dealing with the rest of my day--mostly because of that song I’d heard three times in about 30 minutes.

I cannot adequately express what that song meant to me and my women friends back in the day.   Whenever and wherever we heard it, we would stop and stand at rapt attention, as if it were some kind of patriotic anthem.   

Except, we didn’t sing along.  We listened for “THE LINE” which so eloquently explained what we were all yearning for.  That line was:

“..but we’ve both lived long enough to know that we’d trade it all, right now, for just one minute of REAL LOVE…”

Of all the lyrics we loved, and we were some serious music lovin’ women, that one line hit us where we lived, at a time when we were still very single and “waiting to exhale,”  as Terry McMillan called it.

Today when I hear that song…I smile.  I’ve had a real love or two.  Which actually makes that line even more powerful than it was before I really knew what real love felt like.

And there’s another difference—here comes a hint for the pop quiz.  

Back when my girlz and I would tear up over that song, it was all about finding Mr. Right.  Today, though the rest of the lyrics are about romantic  love, I know that there are many kinds of real love.  And Michael McDonald sings as if he has experienced them all.

In fact, I will listen to or watch anything he’s part of because I trust that voice to move me whether I love the song/show or not.  He’s the only artist who has ever created what I consider a “perfect” CD that I can listen to from beginning to end without skipping even one song--and remember you’re hearing this from a former rock crit for a “major metropolitan daily.” 

It's Blink of an Eye, by the way, a 90s release I missed during my time on the rez and discovered when I went home to Spotify search on what I now call "Michael McDonald Day."  (Buy it here: Blink of an Eye at Amazon.com )

The catalog of his music I discovered there brought back even more memories.  And also reminded me that he was the only white artist who really fooled my mother. 

She was fighting sure he was black ‘til she saw him on both Soul Train and Arsenio Hall’s show, where, as you might have noticed in the video above, the audience seemed so delighted to hear that "black" voice coming from that very white man onstage that they broke into appreciative applause after he'd sung the first two lines of the song.  If you missed it, be sure to go back and listen for that.  It's priceless.

I still remember her staring at the screen in denial and disbelief, as if she was sure they were doing that Singin’ in the Rain trick, and the black man really singing the song would walk out onstage and put an end to the charade. 

But she finally, if grudgingly, gave the man the props he deserved.

“Boy can sing,” she sighed.  And I mentally raised a “power” fist on his behalf.

He’d been given props for that before, of course.  In fact, a fan once wrote that when asked if a white man could feel soul music, Bobby Womack knew exactly who to use as an example of one who could.  “Mike McDonald… that dude’s got it,” he said.  “Comes from the heart and you can’t fake that, man.”

I also admire what he chooses to say with that voice, and how that voice massages the message into your soul so masterfully—and effortlessly.   He doesn’t bleat and bellow the way some “blue eyed soul” singers do to prove they’re worthy of that title.   

He just sings from the place deep down where the words come from.   

That’s also where the “soul” comes from.  I mean…here’s his version of God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen of all things.  These aren't his words, obviously, but what he does with a song we've all heard over and over and over again is just too funky fresh for words.  I played his version over and over and over again just to enjoy the way he'd transformed it:

Incredibly, in interviews, he says he’s not really a piano player and that he just “happened” to get the gigs that put him on the path to icon status.  And you can tell by the sincerity and serenity in those impossibly blue eyes--eyes that you almost never see because he almost always keeps them closed when he sings--that he really believes it was all just a lot of good luck that brought him this far.

I beg to differ.   But I’m glad he believes it.

I'm also glad that I found that priceless exchange between Michael and Scarlett while searching for a song that Spotify didn't have.  It's one of many lovely moments from a longer YouTube vid Scarlett posted to make him smile on a Father’s Day when he was out on the road.

It’s a goofy, gimmicky thing full of strange special effects that turn Michael and other family members into weird cartoon-like characters that talk either verrrrrrrrrrrrrrry sloooooooooooooooooowly or sofastyoucannotunderstandaword.

Kid stuff.  Just like the moment when her music mix  segues to a song meant to shock Daddy.  Textbook response from Mike.  As the lewd lyrics escalate…he just…turns it off.   No lecture, no censure, just a deft gesture that lets her know who's in charge even during their most playful moments. 

And I’m sure, thus chastened, she never called Daddy’s bluff again--note that she covers the lens of the camera with a nervous giggle once Michael turns off the music, as if she were suddenly ashamed of what she'd done.

It’s all part of the "daddy/daughter" dance.   One of the dances we'd “trade it all, right now” for—a dance they enjoy as much as they enjoyed doing “The Snake” to Michael Jackson in that car.  You can't fake that, either.  He wrote a song about it--you'll have to go to his MySpace "station" to hear it:  

When Scarlett Smiles

In my rock crit days, the musicians I respected and wanted to hang with weren’t the ones who swilled Jack Daniels straight from the bottle or drove cars  into hotel pools or had groupies lined up outside their rooms waiting impatiently for me to finish the interview.

I liked ‘em like Mike.  Men with wives and kids they called all day and night, and whose eyes stayed lit with love long after those phone calls had ended. 

And yeah, I know--it’s damned hard  to stay real in the business of show.  Marriages fail more often than not both in and out of that business—the stats get more depressing every year.

But then you see Scarlett and her superstar dad looning around in the car together…and it almost restores your faith.  So do articles like the one his beloved wife Amy wrote about her terrifying battle with breast cancer (read it here http://bit.ly/zMqn5k) which expands upon the “real love” theme:

“’I cried out to God, Why now?” she writes.   The answer?   “Because now is when you can handle this. All those things I’d feared losing to cancer—the kids, a solid marriage to Michael, our new settled life, our beautiful home—they were precisely what gave me the strength I needed to beat cancer. Without them to rely on I might have died.”

Think that’s amazing?  Here’s s snippet from her husband's "answer article" (Michael's "matching" mag article ) in the same mag:

“One afternoon during a chemo session, I sat holding Amy’s hand, hoping the side effects wouldn’t be too bad this time. Suddenly she turned to me. Our eyes met and she gave me this sad little smile, as if to say, 'I’m sorry you have to go through this.' Me? I thought. Why is she worried about me?

...I’d written love songs all my life but only now was I beginning to truly understand love. I squeezed Amy’s hand. Her long blond hair was gone, her green eyes dull above her sunken cheeks. But she had never looked more beautiful to me than at that moment. On the drive home, Amy stared out the window a long time. Finally she turned to me. 'I don’t know what I’m facing here. I mean—'

'You’re not going anywhere,' I stopped her. 'You’re going to be here a long time. Everything will be okay.'"

OH yeah.   I’m a fool for love like theirs.   He wrote a song about that, too.  Listen to Everlasting here—MySpace again: 

But the piece de resistance from Blink is a song about Scarlet and MLK, Jr. and, well, everything that matters.   My new lines to live by are, “In the past I thought I had to earn any good that comes from this life we’re living/Here and now, let us realize that this life’s gift and it’s already  been given.”  It's the title song--here's a live version:

So if you took me up on my pop quiz, and your comment talked about the many faces of "real love" or anything to do with marriage, kids...any of the myriad joys of family life or life in general...you passed with flying colors.

And let’s not stop there—let’s have a Michael McDonald Day here on OS.   Here’s my favorite “recent” song, To Make A Miracle, a bold and beautiful statement of faith that surprised me at first, but doesn't anymore, after all I've read:

Singing a soulful classic—and filmed by his musician son Dylan, apparently:

Once you get past Eddie Murphy's Stevie Wonder impression, this is just…unspeakably beautiful:

 You don’t need me to introduce these—the piano intros alone are legendary.  So rock out, and you’re welcome: