"You Don't Own Me" / Dusty Springfield

How did I never know this song was originally recorded by Lesley Gore?

Wait -- it was 1963. It hit #2 on the charts. Where was I? (Okay, yes, deep in a Beatlemania haze, but STILL...)

Then it swung by me again in 1964, on Dusty Springfield's debut album (in the US) Stay Awhile/I Only Want to Be With You.  Was it released as a single in the States?  I have no idea.

Nevertheless, I remain firmly convinced that I never heard Lesley Gore's version at the time and that Dusty's is hardwired deep in my girl-group DNA. And, yeah, you know I am a Lesley Gore fan, but hey, Dusty is on my shortlist of Golden Girls. This song means the world to me because of how Dusty sang it.

One thing Lesley and Dusty had in common -- a very, VERY complicated sense of wanting autonomy and yet craving love. Dusty tended more towards the victim end of the spectrum, which to me made it all the more affirming to hear her declare: "You don't own me / I'm not just one of your many toys." (Ah, that well-placed word "many," and what a special shiver of disgust Dusty gave it.)

The demands pile up from there on, escalated with key changes: "Don't say I can't go with other boys," "Don't tell me what to do/ Don't tell me what to say,"  "Don't put me on display," "Don't try to change me," "Don't tie me down" -- yikes!! But the weary doggedness with which Dusty sings it tells me that she's make these requests before and they've fallen on deaf ears.

In both Lesley's and Dusty's versions, the requisite pop strings and horns undergird her (putative)declaration of freedom:  She doesn't tell him how to live his life, so surely he should understand that she is "free / And I love to be free / To live my life the way I want / To say and do whatever I please." So why do I sense that this cry of independence is not being heard by the man in question?

Wow. This is 1963/64, long before Helen Reddy's 1975 "I Am Woman, Hear Me Roar." Feminism was still just a glimmer of an idea; if anything, it was nothing but Helen Gurley Brown and Sex and the Single Girl (a 1962 book quickly subverted by the 1964 Natalie Wood movie.)

Sure, both Lesley and Dusty would eventually be identified as bisexuals/lesbians. Did that give this proto-feminist anthem a special oomph? Maybe so from their perspective; but for me, that is totally irrelevant.

Because, yes, do I still snarl this under my breath when a domineering man tries to push me around?

You betcha.

"Maybe I Know" / Lesley Gore

Watching the T.A.M.I. show DVD last night, I was mesmerized by many things -- Gerry Marsden's earnest delivery of "Don't Let the Sun Catch You Crying"; the anxious expression on Brian Wilson's face as he sang "Surfer Girl"; how handsome Marvin Gaye was in 1964, like a tall black Ken doll; the sheer unstoppable energy of that perpetual motion machine, Mr. James Brown; and after James Brown's act, how spastic Mick Jagger's dancing looked in comparison. (Not that the screaming teenagers in that 1964 Santa Monica audience seemed to mind one bit.)

Probably my least favorite part of the whole show was the segment with 17-year-old Lesley Gore, her red hair lacquered into a stiff Barbie-doll flip, wearing a pale knit suit and high heels that wouldn't have been out of place at a Junior League meeting. By this time Lesley Gore had already had one #1 record, a genuine sensation called "It's My Party"; she was only 16 when she sang that 1963 song, in which she stamps her foot and pouts at her own party because her boyfriend Johnny is over in the corner making out with a girl named Judy. (She followed it up immediately with "Judy's Turn to Cry" -- Lesley Gore's handlers never missed an opportunity.) Growing up in the Midwest, I wanted to feel as if Lesley Gore was speaking for me, but there was this scrim of New York suburban spoiled JAPpiness that I couldn't quite penetrate. (I had the same problem years later with Joyce Maynard, writing as "the voice of her generation," when it was clear to me that she was only the voice of a kid whose parents had publishing connections I lacked.) Maybe that's what put me off about Lesley Gore. I wasn't just jealous of her precocious success -- after all, I adored Alex Chilton, Lulu, Laura Nyro, and Peter Noone, all equally young when they burst onto the scene. It's just that . . . she never really felt like an authentic teenager to me.

And yet here I am today, hooked on another song Lesley Gore sang that night.



"Maybe I Know" was probably her brand-new single at the time of the T.A.M.I. show, coming from her fourth album Girls Talk. Eventually it would climb to #14, a respectable showing (though not so high as her earlier single from 1964, "You Don't Own Me" -- which Dusty Springfield soon would claim her own). I have to admit, this song is perfect early 60s Girl Pop, with a bouncy ponytail-swinging beat that makes me wish I still had my old white go-go boots.

It's no surprise that this hit was written by Ellie Greenwich and Jeff Barry, the Brill Building's A-team, songwriters with an infallible ear for a pop hook. The verses are almost negligible compared to that irresistible boppy refrain: "Maybe I know that he's been a-cheatin' / Maybe I know that he's been untrue ooh-ooh / But what can I do." Listen to how those uneasy minor chords gradually, stubbornly, work their way into major-key resolution. It perfectly mirrors this girl's determination to stick with her cheating boyfriend and love him anyway. Produced by Phil Spector with his vintage wall of sound arrangement -- doubled vocals, handclaps and all -- it's a seamless pop product, guaranteed to pour effortlessly out of your transistor radio.

It was a shrewd choice for her to record, because it has one hallmark of a classic Lesley Gore song -- that acute sense of the swirl of teen gossip. Listen to the verses: "I hear them whispering when I walk by" -- "I know it's me they're talking about / I bet they all think I'll never find out" -- "My friends are telling me that he's no good" -- et cetera. Remember what it was like in junior high and high school, how all romantic affairs were conducted in the fishbowl of public opinion? Notes passed in class, whispered conferences by the locker, evenings spent gabbing on your Princess phone instead of doing homework -- it's a wonder any of us got into college.

I'm glad to see I'm not alone in admiring this song -- here's a YouTube video of They Might Be Giants' cover, which they love to pull out for their encore set. This totally cracked me up when we went to see TMBG a year or so ago. The Johns have a great ear for Forgotten Pop Gems -- at various times they've also resurrected "Yeh Yeh," "The Lion Sleeps Tonight," "The Ballad of Davy Crockett," "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)," and the old traffic safety ditty "In the Middle, In the Middle, In the Middle." ("Don't cross the street in the middle in the middle in the middle in the middle of the block..."). Hey, what's the point in having a brain stuffed full of this trash if you can't amuse your friends and family with it from time to time?