Half-Nelsoned by My Own Memory

Here’s how I remember it:

My sister took me to a concert when I was a teenager. It was to see Rick Nelson in Orlando, Florida. She had to remind me who Rick Nelson was. The kid from the Ozzie and Harriet Reruns. He sang Hello Mary Lou. Travellin’ Man. Poor Little Fool. Garden Party.

Oh yeah! That guy! Cool! Let’s go!

I was really excited, because it would be my first concert ever. And we’d be going to Orlando, like, at night, and everything. And my sister was taking me! My sister, who was 9 years older than me, and, let’s face it, didn’t particularly like me all that much. I desperately wanted her to like me. (That would be a recurring theme throughout my life, and I’m finally starting to realize, in my 60’s, that the goal is unachievable.)

We went to the concert, and I had a great time. I remember thinking it was the first time I was seeing someone famous, in the flesh. We were telling our mother about it the next day, and she said, “I don’t know why you bothered going to see that has-been.”

I kind of took that personally, since it was my first concert. She was criticizing my concert-choosing abilities. So, when a very short time later I saw him host Saturday Night Live (and he even wore the very same shirt he wore at the concert in one of the skits!), I told my mother, “See? Saturday Night Live doesn’t have has-beens as hosts!”

Here’s where my recollection of events falls apart, though:

The only time Rick Nelson hosted Saturday Night Live was Season 4, Episode 12, in February, 1979. I’d have been 14 years old. All well and good.

But it seems that, according to setlist, the only time he did a concert in Orlando in his entire career was the day before my 21^st birthday, in 1985. The fact that it was close to my birthday would have been a good reason to take me to a concert, but it definitely wouldn’t have been my first concert. (And now I’m thinking my first concert was Arlo Guthrie.)

The creepy thing about that particular concert is that, again according to setlist, it was Nelson’s next-to-last concert ever. Three days later he did a concert in Guntersville, Alabama. The next day, he boarded his plane to head to his next concert, which was to be in Dallas, Texas. En route, the plane crash-landed due to a cabin fire. The pilots survived, but the seven passengers did not. Their bodies were all close to the exit door, so they tried to get out. They tried.

If that, in fact, was the concert I saw, you’d think the death 4 days later part would have made more of an impression on me. But who knows. Maybe I blocked it out.

It’s weird to think that I spent a few hours staring at someone whose days were numbered. Neither of us knew that, of course. Apparently, the grim reaper doesn’t cast a long shadow.

But how could I have seen the SNL show after the concert? Maybe they showed it as a rerun as a tribute to him. According to the SNL archives, there were 3 potential Saturdays between his death and the episode I’ll talk about in the next paragraph, in which they had no new episodes scheduled. Sadly, they don’t make mention of which reruns they used to fill in the gaps.

Rerun or not, he must have meant something to the show, because on February 8, 1986, on very short notice, they had The Nelsons as their musical guests on Season 11, Episode 9. The Nelsons were a band comprised of Rick Nelson’s twin sons, Gunnar and Matthew.

So there you have it. I saw Rick Nelson in concert either somewhere other than Orlando when I was 14, or when I was 21 in Orlando. Then I saw the Saturday Night Live episode that he hosted, either on its original air date, or as a rerun. And then he died days later, or years later.

It is really funny how your memory can play tricks on you, isn’t it?

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While researching this post, I noticed that Rick Nelson’s sons keep saying they are in the Guiness Book of World Records as the only family in history to achieve number one record status in three successive generations. They’ve said it so many times in so many interviews that if you Google it, you might think it’s true. But I couldn’t find mention of it anywhere in the Guinness Book’s website, and I spent a few hours looking.

Having said that, though, they do have 3 generations with number one hits, and that is noteworthy. I’m including those 3 hits here, because the very fact of them is interesting, as is the fact that they are all love songs, but are very much a product of the times in which they were written. It’s a a pop-culture history lesson, in serenade form, just for you, Dear Reader. So you can’t say I never gave you anything.