Now who’d have thought that after all,
Something as simple as rock ‘n’ roll would save us all.
— Frank Turner, “I Still Believe,” England Keep My Bones (2011)
We know that there were days we may have not survived were it not for songs. They assured us we weren’t alone, that difference is good, that other people struggle, bleed and cry. They made us feel alive when perhaps nothing else could. They spoke to us and for us in ways we couldn’t — and perhaps still cannot — articulate.
Of all the essays I’ve written for Hear Nebraska, this one has been the most difficult to construct, for a few reasons: First, it’s the one in which I fess up to the ridiculous music snobbery I harbored during the last few years I lived in Nebraska. Second, it’s a confession of the obsessive level of devotion I bestowed on one band (Social Distortion) and one musician in particular (Mike Ness). Finally, in it, I confront my darkest days, most of which occurred in the late 1990s when I was a student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
But I can’t write about growing up with and through music in Nebraska without acknowledging the time I spent in the murkiest waters of my mind, so I’m wading into them here to acknowledge how music got me through them, in both good ways and bad. I believe wholeheartedly in the power of music to rescue and transform, and I’m pretty sure that, like me, many people have songs or artists forever held close because, at some point, they were all that mattered.
When I was 18, I clung to Mike Ness and the music he created with his band Social Distortion. So many aspects of Mike fascinated me: his raspy voice, cool tattoos and slicked-back hair, the way he wore eyeliner and how his guitar was slung low across his hips. But above all were the songs he sung. I couldn’t relate to his tales of drug use, bar fights and jail time, but I totally connected with his themes of longing, alienation and loss. For a period of my life, Mike and his music mattered as much as my family and friends. In my mind, he was family, he was a friend. I thought there’d never be a day that I wouldn’t listen to one of his albums.
I realize that from where I sit now, 17 years older, all of this sounds completely lame. Albums like Social Distortion (1990), Somewhere Between Heaven and Hell (1992) and White Light, White Heat, White Trash (1996) are still solid rock ‘n’ roll albums, but they sound nothing like they did to me at age 18. I mean no disrespect to Mike; after all, Social Distortion is considered one of the best-selling American punk bands of all time. I guess that Mike and the guys hit upon something that kids like me wanted and needed.
***
In the fall of 1996, I reluctantly left Norfolk for Lincoln to attend college. I didn’t want to move to Lincoln and especially not into a college dorm. During my senior year of high school, I’d set my sights on places like New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, even London or Paris — places that were bigger and exciting, with rich histories and renowned music scenes. I’d spent the first 18 years of my life in a small Nebraska town, and I wanted out — out of town, out of state, out of the Midwest.
But the University of Nebraska had offered me a pretty sweet scholarship, one too good to pass up. I now cherish the years I spent at the University as a time of great mental awakening to a world of ideas. But as 18-year-old me unpacked my clothes and CDs and assembled my shower caddy in my new dorm room, I felt far from any sort of life-changing experiences. Those, I was sure, were waiting for me on the streets of Paris and New York, not on the university’s campus.
Looking back, my discontent had less to do with the school I was attending or the city in which I was living than it did with my shadowy state-of-mind. My late teenage years brimmed with angst, confusion and loneliness. I’d begun to feel alienated from many of my high school friends, and my idyllic teenage romance eventually toppled from the pedestal on which I’d carefully placed it. I blamed its fall and my fading friendships for my sadness. My relationship with my parents was also growing increasingly tense; my dad’s rules, opinions and expectations did nothing but cause me more frustration and anxiety.
I longed to scream, break stuff, run away from everyone I knew, let it all go. The problem was that I wouldn’t allow myself to express anything. Sometimes when I think back to 18-year-old me, I can only see myself with a piece of duct tape — self-administered — across my mouth. This never really happened, but it embodies how I felt a lot of the time. What kept me from screaming whatever it was that needed to come out, I don’t know.
Words like “depression” didn’t exist in our house growing up. When dark shadows first began clouding my mind, I pushed them down inside of me. Instead of talking about them, I buried them. That didn’t make them go away; it just encouraged them to grow thicker, stronger roots. By the time I was finally able to acknowledge them, they had deeply intertwined with feelings of self-guilt. Some of you know what I’m talking about — that voice that says, “What’s wrong with you? You’ve got a family who loves you, a college education awaiting you, friends who want to know what’s going on, a car, some spending money, your physical health — why can’t you just be happy?” Of course, it’s an argument you can never win, one that leaves you worn out and dispirited.
Since I couldn’t communicate my own frustrations, I looked to music to do so for me. The time I spent at Fountains had introduced me to skate and old-school punk rock. I yearned for punk’s raw energy, its fuck-you attitude — feelings I wished I could figure out how to articulate for myself. Punk became something that I wanted to believe in and be a part of.
The first time I listened to Social D’s song “Ball and Chain,” when Mike plaintively sang, “I’m lonely, and I’m tired, and I can’t take any more pain,” I was hooked. Perhaps I was caught up in the cool rock lifestyle he seemed to represent. I saw him as tragic and romantic, dark and, at times, lost, but always hanging on, even if just by a single guitar string. Underneath his hard-edged, cool exterior were demons, heartbreak, loneliness, desperation, exhaustion. By the time I was 18, I had experienced all of these, too. They made me feel weak and tiny but, with Mike by my side, I decided I would do everything I could to seem tough and in control.
***
Last year, I attended a Q&A session here in Seattle with musician Ian MacKaye. After a gazillion questions about straight edge, an audience member posed a much more curious one: Just how did Ian define “punk,” anyway? Ian’s answer was beautiful; as he understood it, punk was simply “a free space.” A fresh idea. Something that could exist anywhere: jazz could be punk, hip-hop, blues, techno, too — anything that encouraged the generation of new ideas and creativity in ways not directed by motives of profit. For Ian, that’s all punk is.
If only 18-year-old me could have heard that. Instead I began to use punk as a way to keep new ideas out. I became a conformist to something that — at its roots — exalted a nonconformist, anti-establishment, passionate, DIY way of life.
At school, I moved into Smith Hall, an all-girls dorm on campus. I shared my room with two other Nebraska girls: one from Omaha and one from Utica. I’d often race home from class, wanting nothing more than to find the room empty so I could be alone and play my Social Distortion and other punk CDs. Dorm life seemed like a holding pen between teenage life and adulthood. I wasn’t under my parents’ roof, yet I wasn’t completely on my own either. And I no longer knew where “home” was: It wasn’t yet Lincoln, and it no longer seemed to be Norfolk.
I don’t know if it was due to depression or the quality (or lack thereof) of cafeteria food, but by spring break my freshman year I had dropped to 99 lbs. My mom worried that I’d developed an eating disorder, which maybe I had. I slept a lot. I dug myself a hole just big enough for my music and me. I decided that I needed to fit a type, to have an image, something — anything — by which I could identify. Using music as my knife, I carved lines around who I wanted to be, or at least how I wanted others to see me: tough, confident, cool, pretty. I felt none of these on the inside.
The outside had become more important to me than the inside anyway. I grew more concerned with making sure I was going to the “right” shows, that I was seen with the “right” people, that I had the “right” look. I learned how to lace my oxblood Dr. Marten boots oi-style and drank pints of Guinness with the punk and skinhead boys I desperately wanted to impress. After hearing one of them deem the lyric “All you need is love” as “hippie shit,” I immediately hid all my Beatles CDs in the back of my sock drawer. I got my first tattoo. I made my own studded leather cuffs. They looked goofy on my puny wrists, but I wore them anyway.
I realized that I couldn’t look to punk to tell me who I was; rather, I needed to understand myself through it.
As the ugliness I felt inside seeped out, I became a real music snob, feeling free to openly judge what others listened to. Here are some statements I actually remember saying to people I met:
“You’ve never heard of The Clash? You’ve got to be kidding.”
“Oh, you like to listen to Dave Matthews? What’s wrong with you?”
“You followed Phish last summer? What the hell for?”
Yep, pretty self-righteous. And ridiculous. The worst part was that music stopped being fun for me. I purchased discs that I thought I should own, not those that I necessarily wanted to listen to. Making sure the bands I followed fell within the silly parameters of “cool” I’d established in my mind was exhausting, primarily because it was just so limiting, and I began to lose that which I loved most about music: excitement, discovery, wonder.
People who look back on their college years as times of freedom, experimentation and self-discovery make me terribly jealous. I was just so scared. I didn’t understand myself, but I also didn’t want to, for fear of what I might discover. I missed out on a lot because of the boundaries I drew: relationships, music, art, inspiration, friends. Music that should have been worn as wings to fly was instead used as armor to conceal and defend.
In a weird way, Mike filled the role of boyfriend for me during this time. I honestly believed that only he could understand me. I saw Social Distortion in concert for the first time in 1997 at Omaha’s Sokol Auditorium; when Mike winked at me from onstage during the show, I interpreted it as a sign of our destined connection. I dated guys who resembled the image of Mike I’d created for myself. They wore black leather, were in bands, had cool tattoos, wrote song lyrics and struggled with drug and alcohol addictions. Often their intentions weren’t genuine and I got hurt, but then again, neither were mine, so I told myself it didn’t matter.
In 1999, Mike released Cheating at Solitaire and Under the Influences, two solo albums of country-western songs on which he paid homage to the music he’d grown up with. Country wasn’t all that new for Mike; after all, Social D’s signature sound is what it is because of its mélange of country, punk, blues and rockabilly. But something else was going on. I recognized many of the tracks as favorites of my dad’s. Liking the same songs as my father certainly wasn’t very punk… was it? What was Mike doing to me?
He wasn’t doing anything to me; he was trying something new for himself. Solitaire featured guest musicians like Bruce Springsteen, Brian Setzer and Billy Zoom. Mandolins and pedal steel guitars played alongside Gibson electrics and upright basses. Influences included songs by Marty Robbins, Harland Howard, Wanda Jackson, George Jones and Jean Shepard. As I listened, I began to hear Mike’s roots, his journey, his kinship to artists from other times, places and genres. Soon the answers I sought from the albums turned a question onto me: if Mike could venture in new musical directions, why couldn’t I?
***
I wish this story had some sort of interesting conclusion or resolution, but it really doesn’t. Eventually, I started talking to people who cared about me about feeling helpless and hopeless. Slowly, as I opened up, I came to terms with my own insecurities. I began to write: shitty poetry and song lyrics at first, then journal entries, short stories and even a few screenplays. I didn’t share them with anyone; the process of writing — letting everything out that had been bottled up inside me — mattered more than the end product. I began to find meaning in my college courses — particularly my art history, literature, and gender studies classes — once I allowed myself to get excited about them. I embraced the new ideas they introduced and the paths on which they led me.
I also expanded my musical perimeters. I realized that I couldn’t look to punk to tell me who I was; rather, I needed to understand myself through it. I listened to the bands I wanted to listen to, not just those I thought would fit an image. When I came to the brink of criticizing a roommate’s new favorite song, I held my tongue. In the car, I let others select the radio station. And at some point, I started falling in love with music again. I will forever remember a Mezcal Brothers show at the Zoo Bar in Lincoln — as the Mezcals performed their special blend of rockabilly and roots rock, my friend Aaron pulled me up for a dance (something I never did; I was too afraid of looking foolish). But the music was just so alive and much too fun to resist! I let go into its vibrant energy. It was the first time I’d laughed and smiled at a show in a long time.
Mike was around during this transitional period, though I found myself relying on him less and less. The more comfortable I became in my own skin, with my own mind — as cluttered and mucky as it sometimes felt — the less I needed to see myself in his songs. I started to miss a day or two of listening to Social Distortion. Then a couple of weeks. And a few months.
At some point, I quit listening altogether.
Over the years, I converted many of my CDs to MP3s and parted with the discs. MP3s tend to live long lives on my hard drive, but every so often I delete files I no longer play. I still have all my Social D and Mike Ness albums, however. The CDs are in a box in my closet, and the MP3s (some as old as Napster) are tucked away in an archive file on my computer. I just can’t part with them. Maybe it’s in case I need a reminder where I’ve been, maybe it’s out of fear that I’ll go back there one day. Maybe by hanging on to them I’m able to hold onto whatever it was I heard in them so many years ago.
Why do we find saviors in certain artists or anchors in particular songs? The reason really doesn’t matter. What does is that we found them when we did, that they entered our lives just when we needed them the most.
Chelsea Schlievert Yates is a Hear Nebraska contributor. She grew up in northeast Nebraska and now lives in Seattle, Washington. Reach her at cdschlievert@gmail.com.