Dean Martin, The Golden Gate Bridge, & Suicide Prevention
SONG OF THE WEEK: "Somebody Loves You (Like Dino Said)"
“Somebody Loves You (Like Dino Said)”
Once I stopped a man from jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge. His nickname was Froggie (real name John). I knew him as a bike messenger in San Francisco.
Froggie had painted flowers on his face, based on some numerological equation. It could be said he was “a little lost lamb” in “the heart of the city” (to quote Nick Lowe’s song).
One morning, as I was checking into work, I found a note Froggie left where he knew I’d find it. He’d scrawled “Bye Bye Blair” on a torn out magazine ad for Marlboro cigarettes that showed a construction worker smoking on the Golden Gate Bridge (I still have the note). I called the Bridge Police and, sure enough, they caught him before he could jump. A year after the Bridge incident, Froggie turned up, sane and sober, and thanked me for intervening.
Little did he know he’d end up in verse 3 of this song...my funk-soul ramble musically inspired by Joni Mitchell and The Staple Singers. The title is a refraction on the Dean Martin song “You’re Nobody Till Somebody Loves You.”
My lyrical message is not to lose hope, to not lose heart, to not succumb to the craziness of the world but hand my mind over to the sanity and care of God, to feel the big love.
Out in cyberspace there are clips of this song in the studio, live solo acoustic, and live w/band, recorded around the USA. Here’s the original acoustic version, produced by Mark Doyon for Wampus Multimedia.
…and remember, Somebody out there loves you even when you can’t see it.
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