Gone are the hippie Jesus hairdo and the tacky three-piece suits which he sported along with former partner Dan Seals, back when they were still that famous pop-rock duo England Dan and John Ford Coley.
Wearing a sports team cap, perhaps to cover a balding pate, an untucked, unbuttoned long-sleeve shirt (with the sleeves rolled up) over a white tee, denim jeans and cowboy boots, John Ford Coley looked like any hick who just walked out of some bar in Nashville, Tennessee, the “Music City” where he and Seals first recorded their demos, and where he still does most of his work.
‘England Dan’ is no longer with him, and none of their usual session musicians like Larry Knetchel, Tommy Morgan and Hal Blaine were around either; they parted ways a long time ago.
For the fourth time in the Philippines , it’s just John Ford Coley. And in the middle of a sparsely decorated stage, with an all-Filipino ensemble providing the session work and back-up vocals, he was playing before an audience that may have been big enough for a lounge act but barely filled half of the Aliw Theatre, a concert venue that would not have been able to accommodate the throngs that flocked to their gigs during their heyday.
It certainly didn’t matter though to the few who were there, as Coley, who was to celebrate his birthday by midnight, basically took out his songbook and played everything from the duo’s “Very Best” compilation album, showing his musical chops by alternately playing guitar and keyboards (Seals was the guitar player in the duo and Foley, the classically trained pianist).
From their biggest hit “I’d Really Love to See You Tonight” to those which did not even break the Billboard Top Ten but became love anthems here, played as covers by almost every band or sung in almost any karaoke bar, like “What’s Forever For”, “Broken Hearted Me”, and the ubiquitous “Sad to Belong” and “Just Tell Me You Me” (the concert’s title), you name it, it was in the repertoire.
He sang a few more which he thought the audience, most of whom were his fellow baby boomers, wanted, maybe needed, to hear, like the endlessly listenable “Make It With You”, as a tribute to his friend, Bread’s Jimmy Griffin who died of cancer two years ago.
Foley’s spiels were more like conversations with old friends, filled with warmth, wit and piercing honesty. He joked about the half-empty venue and told stories about every song, like the time a pretty and nicely dressed woman accosted him at a record signing. “She stuck the album in my face, squeezed my hand and said, ‘I want you to know my fiancée and I fell in love to your song Nights Are Forever Without You. We danced to the song. He proposed to me through that song. We did everything to that song.”
Foley could only say, “Well, thank you very much.” But that was before the woman got within an inch of his face and in some voice he’s never heard before shouted, “And then that ****** left me and I’ve hated your song ever since.”
Before singing “Sad To Belong” Foley said a lot of people in America actually wanted to take if off radio, because they said it was about cheating. But his first concert producer in the Philippines told him he can’t go to the country without doing the song. So he prayed about it and realized the song actually offers good advice: Marry your second spouse first.
He introduced “Love is the Answer”, from their regrettably titled Dr. Heckle and Mr. Jive album, as the only single at the time that was in the Top Ten that wasn’t a disco song. It was, in fact, the last Top Ten hit of England Dan and John Ford Coley before they split up, finally succumbing to the disco and punk rock onslaught that eventually heralded a new musical era and a new generation, my generation.
I was just a boy at the back of my father’s Ford Falcon when England Dan and John Ford Coley songs were dominating the air waves, a cherub in the Dionysian circus of rock and roll.
I learned to appreciate them much later. They offer a softer, simpler kind of rock that provides solace and companionship, and speaks of a more innocent time, perhaps before idealism collided with commerce, and before passion turned into disillusionment.
I looked around, seeing all these “more mature” men and women, and had no trouble imagining them in those over-the-top 70s outfits, wearing bellbottoms, hip huggers and gypsy dresses, with those shaggy hairdos to match. I know these songs tell their stories. They came to grips with who they are, what they want to do and who they will become with these songs serving as touchstones. But these songs could very well have narrated my coming of age too.
Tonight there was no age or generation gap between us. For at least an hour and a half, we were all musical soul-mates.