Listen Again: “I’ll Be There For You” (aka The Friends’ Theme Song)

The other day I was thinking of an interesting project to do as a follow-up to my Good Songs project now that that is over. If there’s one thing that I learned as an English major it’s that every piece of writing can be interpreted in a multitude of different ways. Some interpretations could be directly contrary to what the writer had in mind, but with enough evidence that interpretation can be justified.

This new feature looks at songs you know and love in a new light.

The first song that I’m chosing for this project is “I’ll Be There For You”. Even though you might not remember the group’s name (the song was performed by the Rembrandts and written by “Friends” creators David Crane and Marta Kaufman) you definitely know the song.

If you were alive in the summer of 1995 and had all five of your senses, this tune—much like the Friends themselves—was inescapable. According to Wikipedia, it reached number one on Billboard’s Hot 100 Airplay, Top 40 Mainstream and Hot Adult Contemporary Tracks (of course it did) but reached only 17 on Billboard’s Hot 100, seven on Hot Adult Top 40 Tracks and 23 on Hot Modern Rock Tracks.

A few things before we continue: I have no idea what’s the difference between Hot 100 Airplay, Hot 100 and Top 40 Mainstream. These three lists seem to chart the same things and I have no idea how there could be such a wide discrepancy as all three of these charts seem to overlap one another. Furthermore I have zero clue as to why Hot Adult Contemporary Tracks and Hot Adult Top 40 Tracks are also separated by Billboard. Maybe the guy who owns Billboard needed to find his idiot nephew a job, so he created a list for him to screw around with. I don’t know.

I do like how this incredibly benign-sounding song reeking of 60s bubble gum pop was considered a “hot modern rock” track like. To whit, according to our good friends at Wikipedia some of the groups holding number one in “The Hot Modern Rock” category for 1995 were: Green Day, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Oasis, U2, Live and Silverchair. I’ve said it before, but the 90s were a wonderful time.

Anyway, the purpose of writing this wasn’t to remind you of how popular this song was back in the day. Most of you lived through this time, this song (and the show) was ubiquitous. The song itself was all over the radio (including modern rock stations, I guess) and then you’d turn on the TV and see the cast of “Friends” doing stuff (“They’re all ACTUALLY friends in REAL LIFE!”) or you’d stop by a newsstand and view Joey, Chandler, Ross, Rachel, Phoebe and Monica (or their real-life names) on every magazine cover. It got so that I was seeing TV’s “Friends” more than my real-life friends. And I was in college at the time, LIVING with my friends.

The other day I had this song earwormed into my skull and on it’s umpteenth delivery, I was thinking that this song might not be the uplifting ballad of friendship that we all think it is. The Rembrandts did a masterful job of making it joyous and happy, but underneath all of the bubblegum and sugar lurks something darker and more sinister then is normally found in the Billboards 50,000 different Top 100 lists.

Let’s peer back the shiny, happy veneer by stripping away the instruments and gaze at the song’s words and formulate what was really going on.  

(Lyrics are italicized, but you know these words already.)

So no one told you life was gonna be this way

Your job's a joke, you're broke, your love life's D O A

It's like you're always stuck in second gear

When it hasn't been your day, your week

Your month or even your year but

The opening of the song is the narrator is talking (maybe lecturing) to his friend about what a shitty life he has. His friend is very depressed, about what, we are not privy to, but this depression has lasted a long time and encompasses the person’s entire life.

The narrator begins the song by making his friend’s predicament a twisted surprise, by letting him know that, “No one told (him) life was gonna be this way.” In other words, the narrator is claiming that everyone (aside from his friend) knew that life—to borrow from the Buddha’s teaching—is suffering and that you have to go through a lot of tribulations to be happy. The narrator explains to his helpless friend that people who are functioning adults—and who aren’t Richard Gere—understand  this reality. The narrator admonishes his friend for thinking that life was going to be one cake walk after another and now you’re finding out that your life blows and it’s rocked your incredibly fragile world. So in addition to your depression, you’re also dumb and hopelessly myopic.

The narrator continues to torment his friends by reminding him that his job sucks, it doesn’t pay well at all and he doesn’t have a significant other—he’s alone in this big world without any help or guidance. The unsaid exception, which we will see in subsequent verses, is that the song’s narrator portrays himself as this person’s only friend. Why does he do this? I’m not sure, perhaps the narrator is unbalanced too. Maybe he’s a masochist. Maybe he just likes fucking with his friend with the hopes that he’ll push his buddy over the edge into doing the unthinkable.

The narrator continues to harp on his friend, telling him to get his ass moving (“It’s like you’re stuck in second gear!”) but this prodding is actually doing more harm than good. You can’t just tell a depressed person not to be depressed, much like you can’t tell someone with a broken arm to heal faster. The narrator seems like a bright, articulate fellow, I am sure that he understands exactly what he is doing to his friends, which lends more evidence to my theory that he’s pushing his pal to the edge.

Furthermore, showing how hopeless his life has been in all facets (work and love life) is not blazing a path to better mental health nor is telling him that he’s been acting this way for over a year. The narrator does this to hurt his friend more. Now his friends is validated in his suspicions that his life sucks and to make matters worse, he now has the embarrassment of knowing that his friend(s) also think the life that he is leading is terrible. This isn’t just a little salt in the mental wound, the narrator is dumping the entire Morton’s factory on him.  

I'll be there for you

(When the rain starts to pour)

I'll be there for you

(Like I've been there before)

I'll be there for you

('Cause you're there for me too)

In the chorus, the narrator pulls the reigns back a little bit. He seems to be enjoying messing with his unbalanced friend and confuses him by telling him that he’s there for him. He’s always been there for him, just like his friend is there for him when he gets down. But that last line is more than a bit of bullshit because the narrator’s friend is obviously very depressed and has been for a long time, what solace could he give to the narrator?

But why does the narrator do this? Does he develop a conscious midway through this conversation? No, definitely not. I think that narrator is a very disturbed man who enjoys playing with his sick friend’s psyche.

You're still in bed at ten and work began at eight

You've burned your breakfast so far things are going great

Your mother warned you there'd be days like these

But she didn't tell you when the world

Has brought you down to your knees that

After the respite of the chorus, the narrator is back to admonishing his friend, “Work began at eight o’clock, and it’s now ten! What are you still doing in bed?” Not only is he calling attention to the depression—and it’s well known fact that depressed people find it difficult to leave the sanctity of bed—but he’s also sarcastically calling out his friend’s ineptness:

“You burned your breakfast[.] So far things are going great[!]”

Assuming that the song’s subject finally got the resolve to get up from bed and face an unforgiving world and his shitty job, he probably realizes that he’s late. So as he’s rushing around making sure that he’s getting himself properly prepared for the uncaring world, he jams a piece of bread in the toaster. If he’s already two hours late to work, this is quite literally the quickest and easiest breakfast that he can make, eat on the go and be at his desk within a set amount of time.

It doesn’t take much brainpower to make toast, children and the infirmed perform this task daily, yet the subject can’t seem to do this right. At this point in his life, he’s a hopeless failure and the narrator makes it his job to point that out. And he does it in the most obnoxious way possible by alerting him to that fact and then sarcastically telling him how well things are going. “You’re a simpleton who can’t even toast a slice of bread properly. Your life is just GREAT!”

He then goes for the coup de grace by invoking his friend’s mother. Adding a layer of confusion to his diatribe, the narrator tells him that “[his] mother warned [him] about days like these.” This admonishment comes despite the fact that earlier in the lecture, the narrator specifically told his friend that “No one told you that life was gonna be this way.” Is the narrator purposely confusing his friend or his he giving him another subtle—yet devastating—jab by insinuating that the subject’s mother, much like her son, is a no one?*

He then doubles down on the insult by saying your mother lied to you because she never told you that you we were so weak that you will be brought to your knees—not by famine or war or pestilence but by a burnt piece of toast.

* Comedian Rob Paravonian posed a similar connection between the second verse and the first. I think that my point still stands. 

One can almost imagine the scene of the narrator standing over his friend as he lies curled on the floor in the fetal position as he delivers this audial body blow as disgust drips from his last words. I’ll be there for you, indeed.

I'll be there for you

(When the rain starts to pour)

I'll be there for you

(Like I've been there before)

I'll be there for you

('Cause you're there for me too)

Our psychotic narrator begins to realize that he probably laid it on too thick in that last verse and pumps the breaks slightly. He doesn’t want blood on his hands. Like in the first chorus, the narrator is playing the role of good cop here by bucking up his friend’s spirits. He keeps repeating these thoughts to him that he’ll be there for him over and over again, as if it’s a mantra.

No one could ever know me, no one could ever see me

Since you're the only one who knows what it's like to be me

Someone to face the day with, make it through all the rest with

Someone I'll always laugh with

Even at my worst, I'm best with you, yeah

It's like you're always stuck in second gear

When it hasn't been your day, your week

Your month, or even your year

In addition to the chorus, the narrator continues with the brain games by openly mocking his friend and daring him to end his life. The narrator tells his friend that he should die and the narrator is going to get away with the crime. The reason? “No one could ever know me, no one could ever see me. Since you’re the only one who knows what it’s like to be me.”

Further turning the screw the narrator admits, “even at my worst, I’m best with you. Yeah.” In other words the narrator is basically saying that what he is doing now is probably the worst thing that he’s ever done but at the same time pushing someone to take their own life is also the best salesmanship job he’s ever done. Some day the narrator, whom I am now picturing as Patrick Bates from “American Psycho”, is going to laugh and laugh about today’s events.

To further push his friend into the abyss, the narrator repeats his point verbatim from the first verse: your life is going nowhere and hasn’t gone anywhere for some time. Just do us all a favor and end it.

I'll be there for you

(When the rain starts to pour)

I'll be there for you

(Like I've been there before)

I'll be there for you

('Cause you're there for me too)

I'll be there for you

(When the rain starts to pour)

I'll be there for you

(Like I've been there before)

I'll be there for you

('Cause you're there for me too)

The narrator finishes the visit with the false mantra of being there for his friend. And then finally ends the charade with the sarcastic lie of “knowing” that his helpless friend will be there for him too. His friend can’t get out of bed and he can’t even make toast without screwing it up, how will he be able to lend any support to anyone?

The narrator (and deep down his friend) knows this and loves that he is able to get that last dig in. The final turn of his Machiavellian screw job is done. The friend now understands exactly what the narrator has been telling him all morning. What happens next to his friend is no longer his concern. The narrator wipes the apartment down of his prints and exits the door.

41. WKRP in Cincinnati

Comedic law #1: Ensemble casts usually make the best comedies. I'm not sure why this is true, though it probably has something to do with the fact that if you don't like one character, if you wait a few minutes he'll be off the screen and another one will come along. Sort of the Chinese Buffet way of thinking: I don't like egg rolls, but I like the General Gau's chicken. And one of the best orders of General Gaus—I mean ensemble casts—was featured on the great “WKRP in Cincinnati”.

To my knowledge, none of the cast members were big stars before the show took CBS' airwaves in the late 1970s. Most played bit roles in television or movies and were known as character actors. That's why the show was so great, it wasn't built around a star or was a vehicle for one particular person—an aside: the show “Friends” was initial a vehicle for Courtney Cox and that's why a majority of the first season revolves around her character Monica, who may be the least interesting character of the six. If “Friends” stayed in this format, who knows if it would have been a monster hit in the ratings.

With “WKRP” the stories and the plots were the stars, and they were mostly character driven. Much like another MTM ensemble show (“The White Shadow”), to enjoy “WKRP” was to enjoy the characters. In other words, the hook of the show, a group of radio workers, isn't what made it beloved. It was the heart within these people. Yes, Dr. Johnny Fever (Howard Hessman) was a burn out who had nothing in common with slick sales man Herb Tarlek (Frank Bonner) or Les Nessman (Richard Sanders), but it was apparent that the cast cared for each other and that showed on the screen.

Every member of the cast worked very well with all of the other members, but there were certain pairings that were terrific and the writers often went to the well with these duos: Fever and Venus Flytrap (Tim Reid), Mr. Carlson (Gordon Jump) and Andy Travis (Gary Sandy), Tarlek and Nessman. Even the woman, who seemed as if they had nothing in common; smarter-than-she-appears secretary Jennifer Marlowe (Loni Anderson) and industry new comer Bailey Quarters (Jan Smithers) had a great deal of chemistry. In each pairing, the latter was usually the straight guy, while the other character played off of him/her. This wasn't gospel and sometimes it changed up, however.

The Jennifer/Bailey debate among young men who grew up watching the show in syndication is that generation's version of the Ginger/Mary Ann debate from “Gilligan's Island”. While Jennifer was a knockout in every sense, there was something “sneaky hot” about Bailey that a lot of guys found intriguing. It was almost if Jennifer was the sure thing (good looking, brains, rich) but Bailey had something under the surface that could be better than Jennifer. The girl you picked probably had more to say about picker, than anything: did you lean towards the favorite or were you a champion of the under dog?

As stated before, while the acting was top notch, the plots were the engine that made this show run. Perhaps one of the greatest episodes in television history is when the station came up with the idea of a Thanksgiving turkey giveaway. Instead of simply going to a store or food shelter and handing out turkeys, the group decided to have station manager Mr. Carlson go up into a helicopter and drop turkeys to the people on the ground. The thought was that when the birds were released, the turkeys would fly down and land softly in the arms of the people. One problem: turkeys can't fly.

Instead of seeing the turkeys fall to earth, we are then shown program director Travis sitting in Carlson's office listening to the radio as the promotion that will put them on the map is underway. As he is listening to Nessman's description of the events (reminiscent of Herbert Morrison's description of the Hindenburg disaster), Travis realizes (too late) that turkeys can't fly. This led to one of the great lines in television history from Carlson, “As God as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly!”

And the fact that the director left the scene of turkeys bombing down on Cincinnatians to the imagination of the audience makes the scene that much more funny.

Not all episodes were that slapstick-y, there was another episode when the gang had to play a softball game against their rival station and the only one who was excited about it was baseball fan, Nessman. The problem was he stunk at the game partly due to his mother's constant harping of him having to practice the violin while the other kids played ball. With the station clinging to a one-run lead, the bases loaded and two out in the bottom of the ninth, Nessman is stuck in deep right field. Suddenly the viewer hears the crack of the bat and it's obvious that the ball is coming his way. As the ball is coming, Nessman is day dreaming of his mother's shrill tone imploring him to practice. Suddenly he notices the ball, puts his glove up and ... the show ends.

While the nerdy guy making the decisive play in a baseball game isn't new territory, the juxtaposition of Nessman's enthusiasm coupled with the reason for him being so bad was a different way of telling the story. That is another reason why the show worked well. It never really broke a lot of new ground in the way it was filmed and most of the plots and characters could be consider either cliché or done already, but the writers often took different routes to those “places”.

And no show about a radio station would be complete without some music, and “WKRP” had a fine lineup of the day's biggest artists. The problem is, due to licensing money, you can't hear them any more. According to Wikipedia, when the show went into syndication the original music from artists like the Rolling Stones, KISS and the Doors were too expensive to pay, so they would have a band record generic rock and replace the well-known songs. These generic replacements followed the episodes to DVD and while there may be some loss, it is mostly incidental.

While not the first ensemble comedy, “WKRP in Cincinnati” showed that America can support a show with a lot of characters and smart plots. A direct influence on another off-beat, ensemble comedy about the radio business, “Newsradio”, “WKRP” was also responsible for a number of unique characters bringing the biggest laughs.