Maybe I was too big a fan and was susceptible to anything remotely connected to Elton John. Or maybe it was the glowing review in "Rolling Stone". Or the hype that said it was the Album of the Year.

I bought "American Gothic" and dropped the needle and was completely confused. Bombastic, theatrical, it sounded like nothing else in my collection. But having paid for it, and thus needing to play it and get my money’s worth, I came to know it, but to say I loved it would be stretching it.

But now I do.

It was one late night in the mountains, hearing "Another Friday Night" on my iPod.

1. "Another Friday Night"

In retrospect, the intro sounds like it could be played by Captain Fantastic. But the album contains no specific credits. Still, it’s intros like this one that intrigue me, they sound like a jaunt in a car over a hilly dale, into another burg.

But the burg David Ackles is singing about here I’m ultra-familiar with. The middle of nowhere. I spent too much time there. Vermont. Utah. I live in Los Angeles for a reason. A place where you can get a burger in the middle of the night, where you’re a number, not a name, and that’s a good thing.

And when you live in the boonies you anticipate and dread the weekend. It’s when everyone ties one on. But your hopes and dreams almost always trump reality, which is a few momentous evenings surrounded by endless hangovers.

Another Friday night
Guess I’ll put a clean shirt on and hitch a ride to town

It takes an effort. When it’s easier to stay home. But if you stay home nothing happens.

…maybe borrow Jack’s guitar and find a girl to sing to

There’s not a guy who picked up a guitar after seeing the Beatles on "Ed Sullivan" who didn’t dream of this, serenading a woman to smiles and more.

Hey, who am I kidding
She can’t be the sort of girl who’d wait for me

Defeat, it’s the flip side of optimism. The older you get, the less you expect you’ll succeed.

Ten years out from home
I joined the circus, worked the fields
But I never saved a dime

You itch to go, but then the years slip by and you wonder how you wasted so much time.

Looking for my life
I thought I’d found it once or twice
But it turned out I was wrong

Whew! You think you have the answers, and then it turns out you don’t.

Heard the music, and learned to dance to someone else’s song

You do it their way thinking you’ll get ahead and by time you realize you’re the only one who knows the right path, there’s less sand on top of the hourglass than the bottom.

I’ve had men tell me be content
To spend your life for food and rent
And give up trying
They say life’s a dying jailer

Ah, the human condition. You keep pushing that rock uphill, but some of us still go out on Friday night:

I just tell them
I do all right
Still it’s rough on Friday night
When there’s time for thinking
I spend it drinking up my failure
But I hold on to my dreams anyway
I’ll never let them die
They keep me going through the bad times
While I dream of the good times coming by

One of the shocks of adulthood is realizing no one cares. You go to a school resembling a police state, do this, do that, screw up and they lock you in detention. Then you graduate and no one’s watching, there’s no audience. It’s so lonely. It’s rough on Friday night.

The chorus is bombastic, but "Another Friday Night" captures that lonely Friday night feeling better than any song I know.

Stay in at least until the change at :48, it makes the track, it’s so intimate.

2. "One Night Stand"

It sounds like a fairy tale.

But it’s not, it’s life on the road. You make a connection to stanch the loneliness, it’s almost enough to make you stay.

My favorite song about road sex is Loudon Wainwright’s "Motel Blues", but this is almost as good.

He’s not kicking her to the curb. He’s attracted, he’s connected. But he’s got to do his job.

Hey, why don’t you take off work
And let’s go for a ride
Someplace special just for us
We could take along a picnic
And find a place to hide
Yeah, I know I’ve got to catch a bus

Our obligations get in our way.

Still…

Well, it’ sure been nice
I might even miss you
Hey, what’s your name
Come here, I’m gonna kiss you
Yeah, mm, I wish it wasn’t a one night stand

3. "Waiting For The Moving Van To Come"

Breaking up is creepy. You were together, now you’re apart. What are you supposed to do with all those memories, all those dashed hopes and dreams?

Standing on the front porch of the old frame house in town
In another day or two it all starts coming down
I wonder what they’ll do about the oak tree with the swing

It was yours, now it’s going to be theirs.

I never built the tree house, but I had plans
For so many things I am trying not to think of while I can
Waiting for the moving van to come

How do you wipe the memories from your consciousness? They keep creeping back in, especially when you don’t want them to.

Well, I work the daylight now, I’m always home by six

You deliver the change they want too late, after they’re gone.

We had some happy times
Ten years is so much time
You’d think we both could find a way

But you can’t. Is it a moral failing or are two people just not meant to be together that long?

"Waiting For The Moving Van" has no changes that make you wince, it’s a heartfelt masterpiece.

4. "Montana Song"

This is a ten minute epic about returning to the homeland, looking for answers. Although the lyrics are quite descriptive, the sound has got the feel of the Great Plains, there are no boundaries, no limits, you’re standing there with the wind blowing through your hair as you see your ancestors behind you and your progeny in front.

I’d say "American Gothic" sounds different from anything today, but it sounded different from everything in 1972, when it was released. And if I didn’t tell you it was produced by Bernie Taupin, you’d never know, although cut in England, it bears no stamp of that country, it’s positively American.

It sank like a stone, David Ackles moved on to Columbia, released another album and that was it, his recording career was done. He worked on some movies, did some theatre and then died of cancer at the tail end of the last century. And now we’ve got this album, floating along with the flotsam and jetsam on Spotify. So much of today’s music will be forgotten tomorrow, but this forgotten album from decades previous has even more relevance today, when it’s not about selling discs, about success, but the music. The more I play "American Gothic", the more I get hooked. It’s somehow human, in an era where silicon is triumphant, where feelings, emotions, are pushed deep beneath the surface. But the human condition is such that our brains are always working, we’re always thinking, whether we want to or not. How did we get here? Did we make the right choice at the fork in the road? We’ve got so many regrets. But we’re left with our stories. David Ackles embodied his in "American Gothic".

P.S. After writing the foregoing, I was arranging the playlist and I realized I hadn’t written about "Love’s Enough", which is the most conventional track on the album, and unlike so many of its brethren on the record, it’s optimistic, it’s a love song.

Every time you fall in love
That’s the best time of all

Ain’t that the truth.

It’s holding sunlight in your hand
It’s heaven come to call
And you wonder will it last forever
And you try to keep tomorrow locked away
‘Cause tomorrow is forever
And love’s enough for anyone today

You might want to spend the rest of your life with them, but really, you just don’t want today to end. This state of bliss, this feeling of electricity, the sensation that you’re fully alive and that this is what you were put upon this earth to do.

"Love’s Enough" could be a hit today. But what makes David Ackles’s rendition so great is that it’s understated. A nascent fire inside that you protect, that you don’t want to blow out.

Spotify playlist

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