{"id":9089,"date":"2017-06-02T23:22:45","date_gmt":"2017-06-03T05:22:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/?p=9089"},"modified":"2017-06-02T23:22:45","modified_gmt":"2017-06-03T05:22:45","slug":"friday-evening-videos-im-no-angel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/2017\/06\/02\/friday-evening-videos-im-no-angel\/","title":{"rendered":"Friday Evening Videos: “I’m No Angel”"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I was a young man, I went through a phase that I imagine a lot of young men experience, a time when I was desperately trying to be a bad boy. You know the type, the misunderstood outlaw with a sensitive side, just like James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause<\/em> or, to reference something a bit more relevant to my generation, Bender in The Breakfast Club.
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Of course, I wasn’t really bad<\/em> at all (which, come to think of it, is probably true of most<\/em> of the young men people believe to be bad boys). In fact, I was pretty goody-goody if I’m being honest about it. I never broke any laws, aside from occasionally speeding in my big old Ford Galaxie. I didn’t get into fights or vandalize things. I didn’t do drugs, and I never touched alcohol until my 21st birthday, if you can believe that. I went to my classes every day and I pulled mostly A grades, high school and college both. But growing up in strait-laced Utah, at least when I did it back in the ’80s, it wasn’t too hard to gain a reputation. Don’t go to church, listen to the wrong kinds of music, have a naughty sense of humor and an earthy vocabulary, wear your hair a little long in the back and cultivate some facial hair… oh, and of course, drive a big old Ford Galaxie. They had roomy back seats, you know. I was very well aware that fathers cringed when I arrived to pick up their daughters, and I loved<\/em> that. In my mind’s eye, I was a heartbreaker, a dashing highwayman, a love-em-and-leave-em renegade with an irresistible smile and a mission to claim another sweet young thing before the night was over, a real scoundrel. I know at least one of the girls I dated saw right through all that nonsense — probably they all did — but their fathers didn’t, and more importantly… I<\/em> didn’t. For a time, I really believed that’s who I was. And I liked<\/em> that guy. I miss him sometimes, now that I’m old and settled.<\/p>\n

Around that general time period, Gregg Allman, who was a notorious bad boy himself, released an album called I’m No Angel. <\/em>Allman was legendary for his work with the Allman Brothers Band, a seminal Southern rock band of the 1970s, but his solo career had been far less successful, so it was a bit of a surprise when this new album’s title track — originally recorded by Bill Medley of The Righteous Brothers five years earlier — hit number one on the Billboard<\/em> Mainstream Rock chart in the third week of March 1987. I was a senior in high school then, cruising the last couple months toward graduation day with all the credits I needed, and a lot more interest in immediate pleasures than trying to figure out my future. The bluesy-country sound of “I’m No Angel,” and lyrics that spoke of a man both dangerous and endearing, clicked perfectly with the image I was trying to cultivate, and I adopted the tune as my personal theme song for that long spring and the summer that followed. I remember singing it to that girl I mentioned, the one who saw through me, one hot and sunny afternoon in the roomy back seat of my Galaxie…<\/p>\n

I don’t remember ever seeing the video for “I’m No Angel” back then. It’s pretty silly stuff, typical of late-80s MTV after the initial surge of excitement for the new medium had worn thin. I think Allman looks a bit embarrassed to be in it, and it’s telling that his official YouTube channel<\/a> doesn’t include it (although there is a nifty live version<\/a> of the song from 2015 that’s worth checking out). Nevertheless, I present it here as a memento of a time in my life that I still think about more often than I probably ought to at my age:<\/p>\n