All Things Must Pass

One of the last things I ever did with my dad was to take him to a rock concert. Back in 2009, I was in Ottawa for his 80th birthday and I took him to see the great John Fogerty at the Scotiabank Place in Ottawa. He knew all about Fogerty from Creedence Clearwater Revival days and we both enjoyed Fogerty running through his great back catalogue. But my main musical memories of my dad are more related to the vinyl experience.

Anthony Johansen, rather like his son, had a highly eclectic taste in music. His music of preference was undoubtedly jazz and he learned to play half decent piano. It would simply not be enough for my dad to listen to his mates playing jazz. He had to play it too. Some of my abiding memories of that incredible man are of him and his friends cooking up some jazz music in his front room, dad wearing a fedora and looking, for all the world, like a man who was in real live heaven.

I spent just short of a week in Ottawa with my dad and his lovely wife (and soul mate) Joy Phillips-Johansen. We became closer than we had ever been and I am forever grateful for that special visit. Mere miles could no longer separate us. We were finally in the father and son relationship we had never had. As I left the house on the Sunday night, I was not to know I would never see him again because he left us less than two years later.

The pain of losing my dad was the most painful family loss I ever experienced, which came as quite a shock given that we had spent most of our lives miles apart, literally and figuratively. The father and son reunion was much deeper than I ever thought possible. When that Boeing 767 climbed through Ottawa’s dark night skies, it really was a permanent farewell which I have never gotten over. I doubt I ever will. When you finally get something you never thought you’d have and then it gets taken away in less than a few short years, it’s very hard to take.

So anyway, the music.

On my last afternoon, I was packing my bag in the downstairs bedroom when I could hear music and not just any old music. My dad was playing “All Things Must Pass”, George Harrison’s magnificent solo album from 1970 and he was playing a vinyl copy too. It was an album we both adored although I had completely forgotten! And it took me back to another time, back in 1975, when as a much younger boy I stayed with my dad in his then home in Saint John, New Brunswick. He had a number of albums then, too, including the magnificent Joe Walsh album “Barnstorm” on which my dad picked up the sound of morse code in one of the tracks. REGISTER AND VOTE! He remembered Morse from his sailing days! But “All Things Must Pass” was the one we both loved. I wonder if it was the same copy?

I entered the room and dad was standing there, looking at the record turning round. “This is a great record”, he said, as “My Sweet Lord” came from the speakers. Neither of us had any time for religion, but the tune was too good to ignore. We listened to most of the record until we had other things to to, like talk. It is a very happy memory for me.

Today, I’m playing “All Things Must Pass” and remembering my dad, the old rascal. No one told him to grow old gracefully and sit quietly to the strains of Mantovani or James Last, and even if they had, he’d have told them to go forth and multiply.