In the Name of the Father- Gavin Friday & Bono

I cannot speak of my love for this song without telling the story of the great lengths I went to find it.  We have to go back many many years, to my 8th grade year at Morningside Academy.  Yes, I am the product of a Christian private school- complete with uniforms and weekly bible memorizations.   For some reason, one of our teachers, Mr. Adams, brought in this David Copperfield magic show video to show our class.  Don’t ask me the relevance.  If any of you are familiar with David Copperfield- he likes to jazz up his magic acts with pretty women, cool music, dramatic movements, and crazy lighting.  It’s fun to watch.  So this particular live show begins, with this magic trick involving David and this pretty girl disappearing into a fan, and then ‘magically’ appearing on the opposite side of the arena.  Our class watched the whole show, but I couldn’t get over this first act.

To start with, it was put together really well- a little romance, a little mystery.  But THE SONG.  Do you know how some songs you hear a couple of times before you decide, “hey I really dig this song” and then there are songs where as soon as you hear it- something clicks- and you instantly know you love it.  Well I instantly knew.  It starts out slow, with a man (soon to be revealed) singing and then instantly gets faster with the addition of this odd bagpipe-drum music…then gets slow again, with this man crooning to his love “come to me, come lie beside me, oh don’t deny me, your lies…”  And the magic act was synced perfectly to the song.  I HAD to have this song.

Now let me give you some background as to where the world was technologically when I was in 8th grade.  To begin with, this David Copperfield video was in fact, a video tape.  Secondly, the compact disc (“CD” for short) had become mainstream the year before- at least in my world.  i had gotten my first CD player and CD in 7th grade (in case you’re curious, the first CD I bought was ‘janet’ by Janet Jackson, and my second CD was the Best of the Doors 2-disc set- I listened to them over and over and over…)  Thirdly, our home had a computer, but we didn’t do much with it.  There was no internet.  I repeat, there was no internet.

So without the world at my fingertips, how in the world would I find my song?

I started with announcing to the class “Does anyone know who sang that first song?”  Mr. Adams was nice enough for me to rewind the tape and replay it for everyone.  I got a bunch of blank stares.  Then Mr. Adams was nice enough to let me forward the tape to the credits, hoping my song would be there.  No luck.

I went home and told my family about this magical song (no pun intended).  My mom loves David Copperfield and said she wanted to watch it.  No problem- I went back to school and begged Mr. Adams to let me borrow it.  We had two VCRs so we made a copy of the tape.  Now I had the song in my possession and I went hard to work.

I started out by taking the video to my uncle’s house.  He knows more about music than anyone in my family.  He said he wasn’t sure, but he did affirm what I was thinking- the voice sounded like Bono’s from U2.  He had a couple of U2 CDs but the song wasn’t on them.  Ok so its not U2, but it sounds like U2…I started asking anyone and everyone that came to our house.  At the time my mom had her own custom-drapery business going on in our garage, and many of her clients would stop by to check out how their home drapes were coming.  They all had to sit through the David Copperfield magic act before the left.  (“Um, no I have no idea who sings this song.  Listen kid, we gotta run.”)   I called every radio station and put the phone up to the TV speakers.  Not one of the disc jockeys had a clue.  I started to hate the world.

I went to every music store in the mall and around town, describing the song (“its slow, then these bagpipes come in”), reciting the lyrics, humming the tune (very unsuccessfully, I swear i’m tone deaf).  Then one fateful day, when I was at Spec’s music store in Jensen Beach, chatting it up with one of the workers about this amazing song, he suggested, “Well why don’t you bring the video in and we can have a listen?”  My jaw dropped.  I immediately begged my mom to take me home and bring me back.  I came back with the tape, and the employee put it on.  Now if you can imagine, a Saturday evening at a popular music store (this was in the days before music downloading, so these stores got a lot more action), there were people coming in and out and the TVs hanging from the ceiling are usually set to top 40 music videos or artist interviews, documentaries…and all of a sudden, a David Copperfield magic show is on.  Everyone stopped and started watching.   I knew I would never get this opportunity again, so I walked up and down the aisles announcing “If anyone can identify this song, please tell me!”   This grungy, bearded hippie-looking employee comes out from the break room and goes “Oh yea, this is Bono.”  I ran up to him “It is???  But i’ve gone through every U2 album!”     “Oh, no this is just Bono.  This is from the movie In the Name of the Father.”  and he casually walked to the movie soundtrack section and picked up the only copy of the CD that they had.

I bought the CD of course.  I remember it was like 17 or 19 bucks.  And only one song was good on it.  But finally I had it.  And you know what, it was worth it.  I still regularly listen to the song to this day.

Here is the full song…

And below is the link to the David Copperfield act to it….

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/467865/david_copperfield_the_fan/

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