This photo of Marneen was posted outside the Royal High
School cafeteria in Simi Valley, California (1972), the day
the school voted for her to win Jr. Class Homecoming Princess.
However, something else was on Marneen's mind, and it was
dreams of becoming a famous singer-songwriter.
WHEN "YOUR SONG" BECAME MY SONG
The cafeteria of Royal High School in Simi Valley, California, was no doubt much like the countless others that would have been found in the high schools of America on that day in June of 1973, with summer just around the corner and already in the air. Students sat at the Formica tables, some of the more studious ones talking about class and their assignments, but most of them just buzzing with the excitement of being young and alive, and sharing talk of all the things that seemed important to them at that point in their lives: rock music, cars, boys and girls, and what happened on the previous night’s episode of The Six Million Dollar Man.
As head of the Royal High School Pep Squad, I had no time to stop and indulge in such talk as it was pre-graduation day. I was already feeling rushed and behind as I breathlessly raced through the cafeteria, my text books and diary clutched tightly to my chest as I made my way to the stage that had been set-up at one end of the cafeteria. Looking around at the satin green and gold ‘Go Highlanders!’ banners that were put up to promote the school’s star football team, I suddenly stopped dead in my tracks, feeling as if all the wind had been knocked out of me by some spiritual entity. Immediately, I became aware of a melody that was filling my ears, a beautiful piano passage that seemed to expand inside me and quickly take control of all my senses and emotions. All other ambient noises around me began to fade into obscurity. It was a moment that rooted me to the spot with its power, then sent me racing straight to the front of the stage. I threw my books down and sat next to the speaker where this striking love song was calling out to me from.
The song, which I had not previously heard to that point, turned out to be “Your Song” by Elton John. A track which Elton had written with his long-time collaborator Bernie Taupin that was released three years previously, in October of 1970. I knew or cared little about this at the time. All I knew was that, at this exquisite moment in time, “Your Song” changed and re-shaped my life forever. The song immediately became an integral part of me, and filled me with a divine musical inspiration that continues to dominate and drive me to this day. “My gift is my song, and this one's for you,” Elton sang, and I took him at his word. I accepted the gift with eternal gratitude, knowing in my heart and soul since I’d been a young child that it was my dream and destiny to make my mark as a famous singer-songwriter. However, it would take another two decades before I finally understood exactly what gift I had been given, and what I needed to do to make to make it all work. For now, though, in this phantasmagorical instant, I was ecstatic and content to be lost within this tender and touching song, as intense emotional responses swirled around inside of me. As I glanced around the cavernous room, everything in my world had become a strange twilight zone, where all the other students seemed frozen. They occupied the same space but on another plane of time. Elton’s voice, the lyrics he was singing, and myself became the only things that mattered in the entire world at that moment in time.
Only once before had a song connected so deeply and instantly within me. That was the day that I heard “I Love You More Today than Yesterday” by the Spiral Staircase. I was fourteen years old and dutifully sweeping out the garage floor when I first heard it call out to me from my small plastic portable radio. The song threw me into a wild abandon of dancing and singing, a state of euphoria that gripped my teenage heart and first triggered the urge within me to sing and perform. It just took hearing “Your Song” three years later for those visions and dreams to finally coalesce within me.
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