First Rock Show: 7 year old edition
by
Andy Link
I can proudly say that neither my seven or five year old sons knew a single curse word; that is, until I took the seven year old to see Queen + Adam Lambert at the Hollywood Bowl.
Music education was a core element of my elementary school education in the 1980s. We had a music education class, where a teacher would play the piano and the class would sing – I remember Yellow Submarine was her favorite – and also instrument instruction classes. My kids today experience none of that, unfortunately I imagine not many elementary school students do these days, and I can’t help but wonder what’s going on today at my old school. To compensate, we instituted a house rule that starting at the age of seven, our boys would need to play an instrument, they can choose any instrument they want, but they need to take lessons, and practice.
My older son chose electric guitar, and while he is very far from a prodigy, he’s done well, practiced, improved, and learned to play a few songs, his Darth Vader theme in particular sounds like it should be accompanied by heavy mechanical breathing. Between We Are the Champions, We Will Rock You, and Another One Bites the Dust, Queen has always been his favorite rock band, so when they came to town, I thought a great way to reward him, and myself, would be for us to see them play live. I was hoping he’d see the experience as a validation of the work he’s put into playing guitar, and also a motivation to practice even more, after seeing what a rock show can really be about.
When we first arrived at the show after being dropped off by my wife, an LAPD officer walked up to my son to sternly warn that he better not see him getting drunk, fighting or causing any trouble. After the officer walked away chuckling, nervous and shaken, my son asked, “Dad, am I in trouble?” No, he was just joking around with you (smile, then laughter, shoulders relax). You’ll be one of very few little kids at the show tonight, I explained, he should expect quite a few people to talk to him. Sure enough, that was the case, more than a half-dozen others chatted up him and me (I heard “Starting ‘em young, all right!” two different times) – as it turns out he was the only little kid I saw at the show. Towards the end of the night he told me that he was going to ask the next person to approach him if they wanted his autograph, of course with the way those things work, no one else talked to him after that.
I’m not completely naïve, I knew there were innocence lost risks involved in taking a seven year old to a rock show, including exposure to naughty words, and possible questions about what that funny smell is. I don’t know if I lucked out with the section we sat in, or people felt uncomfortable lighting up in front of a child, but the what’s that smell question somehow never arose. As far as the curse words, I had no doubt they’d be sung and spoken, but with all the sensory overload at a rock show, I figured any individual adult words would go over his head. On that count, I was right, he missed all of them, and there were a bunch. What I didn’t count on however, was that Adam Lambert would flash the lyrics of a new song he wrote across a screen onstage, featuring a chorus with the phrase, “I Don’t Give Two Fux” – definitely not my favorite song of the night – the second time through the chorus, my son turned to me and asked, “Daddy, what’s fux?” The man sitting next to me turned to look at us and cracked up. That’s a bad word I said, the worst bad word. Like I’ve told you before, I continued, it’s okay to know bad words, but it’s not okay to say them because you don’t know what they mean, or how they’ll hurt people. “What does it mean?” Adult stuff, I replied. When we were leaving we talked about it some more, I told him that he needed to keep it secret, and that meant not even telling his friends he had a secret, much less what that secret was. I said I trusted he was a responsible enough seven-year old to go to a rock show, and he needed to show me he was responsible enough to keep this secret. It’s been a few months since the show, and I’m happy to say he’s kept the secret to himself, of course he’s probably forgotten the actual word at this point. Throughout the show he sat on my lap, leaned forward, listening intently and cheering wildly for every song, pointing out his favorites as they were played. As much as he enjoyed the music and the spectacle, I think there was also a lot of appeal for him in being a kid allowed access to an adult world experience, but I did think he handled it all well.
We always say my older son is my clone, that he not only looks like me but thinks like me, haha poor kid. The show was fantastic, I loved the mix of modern Adam Lambert brought to the classic rock of Queen, as well as their stage presence and Adam’s moving tribute in honor of Freddie Mercury (“Who’s Freddie Mercury?” he asked, surely the only one present who posed that question), but I couldn’t help but feel that they were spending too much money on the light show, although I have to say the effects during the Bicycle Song were awesome. I thought I’d mention that observation to my wife afterwards, because my seven year old wouldn’t be interested in my thoughts on Queen’s budgeting priorities. He almost made it to the end of the show, but just before Bohemian Rhapsody (I heard it while we were walking out), he said he was tired and ready to go. As we were exiting I asked what he thought of the show. “It was good, but I just think they spent too much money on the lights. I mean, people go to a rock show to hear music and see the band, they don’t go to see all those lights every song. I just think it was too much with the lights.” He also told me he no longer wanted to be president when he grows up. After seeing the show, now he wants to be a rock singer.