Reclamation
©2025, George J. Irwin. All rights reserved.

May 16, 2018: A fun fact: Colleen and I were at each other’s first weddings. If that isn’t a country song, we don’t know what is. We’ve mentioned this to several professional singer-songwriters we know and asked them to see what they can do with that. No takers yet, as far as we know.

There is only one specific thing I remember about Colleen’s first wedding, besides the name of the groom, that is, which won’t be mentioned.

That one specific thing was the reason I had insisted that we come to the Lilac Festival here in Rochester on this specific evening. The reason was that I wanted to see the band Starship with her.

Well, to be more exact, performing that night was "Starship Featuring Mickey Thomas." This was a descendant of the band that started as the Jefferson Airplane in 1965 in San Francisco, and whose early hits "White Rabbit" and "Somebody to Love" were among the biggest in what was called the Psychedelic Era of music. Jefferson Airplane evolved into Jefferson Starship and then Starship, and moved far from their original genres into more straight ahead rock and roll and then firmly into Top 40 Friendly songs. One of these, "We Built This City," is often called one of the worst songs of all time, but it went all the way to Number One on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1985 so somebody had to buy it. (Including me.) Starship would have two more Number One singles, one of which is really important to this story.

I had seen Starship briefly the previous summer, as part of a lineup of 1980s acts, or the remains of them, anyway, at a medium sized venue in the area. My peak period for pop music was the late 1970s and early to mid 1980s so I knew all of these recording acts: Martha Davis of the Motels, Naked Eyes, Starship, Taylor Dayne, and the headliner, Billy Ocean. They were all great, even when they had just a few songs each allotted to them. (Billy Ocean played the longest, and that was not even an hour.) I was very surprised to see Starship’s then lead female singer, Stephanie Calvert, working the merchandise table between acts! Oops, I mean "Starship Featuring Mickey Thomas." She told me that their band was hired to play behind everyone except Billy Ocean, who brought his own musicians for the tour. So they had to learn other material besides the songs for which Starship, Jefferson Starship, and Jefferson Airplane were known. That last category included "Somebody to Love," and when the band played it, Stephanie knocked it out of the park. She was every bit the equal of Grace Slick, the original vocalist on the song; Slick’s recording is still considered one of the all-time classics of rock music. And yes, they also did "We Built This City." They didn’t get to every one of their biggest hits, much less the ones that charted a bit lower, but that was alright.

When it was announced that Starship Featuring Mickey Thomas would be playing the Lilac Festival, which is a long time well-known institution here, I knew that there was one person who absolutely had to come with me, and I knew exactly why. This time, the band was the headliner for the day (the Festival runs up to ten days long), which meant they would have something over an hour to play as the last act.

It took a lot of convincing. Colleen wasn’t in agreement that this was a must-see show.

"You’ve got to hear the lead singer. She’s the second coming of Grace Slick."

"Who?"

Ouch.

I explained how Grace Slick had joined Jefferson Airplane after the original female lead singer left, and brought two songs with her that became enormous hits and put Jefferson Airplane on the map, and then, skipping most of the details, how Jefferson Airplane begat Jefferson Starship, which begat Starship, which had three number one hits and several other Top 40 placements.

"Wait, isn’t that the band that did that song..."

And that was Colleen’s real issue with going, not that she didn’t remember who Grace Slick was.

"Don’t worry about that, they didn’t do that song when I saw them last year. And if they do, don’t worry about it then, either."

And so, we arrived at the Lilac Festival that evening, after the previous musical act had completed their set but with enough time to get reasonably close to the stage. Presently, Starship Featuring Mickey Thomas appeared to raucous applause from the crowd that had gathered—in my estimation, a larger audience than had showed for the Eighties Event the year before.

With more time, the band performed more of their hits, including, of course, "We Built This City." Stephanie Calvert took center stage and blew away the place with her rendition of Jefferson Airplane’s "White Rabbit." I think she made a lot of new fans that evening.

But very quickly, the set was more than half over. I knew that the Lilac Festival had a strict ending time; encores weren’t going to happen, for example.

I wondered whether my idea was going to work after all. Stephanie took the floor and wowed the crowd again with her faithful take on "Somebody to Love."

And then, what I’d brought Colleen for happened. The drum beat signaled the start of the song I had been waiting for. This was Starship’s third and final Number One single, a song originally recorded for the band’s 1987 album No Protection and also known as the theme song to the film Mannequin. The song was written by two powerhouse composers, Albert Hammond (who also had a Top Five hit for himself called "It Never Rains In Southern California" in 1972) and Diane Warren, who was on her way to a whole string of huge hits and wrote or co-wrote songs from everyone for Celine Dion to LeAnn Rimes to Aerosmith to The Smithereens. (Yes, the Smithereens!) In addition to being Starship’s third Number One, it was also Diane Warren’s first—of nine-- as a songwriter.

Now, if Colleen didn’t get really mad at me...

Why would that happen? Arguably "Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now" was not anything that was going to make anyone unhappy, unless you were a critic or a fan of the previous iterations of the band that was now in front of us and had decided that with this number, Starship (only somewhat featuring Mickey Thomas at that point) had in fact Completely Sold Out in 1987.

No, there was a more personal reason; the only other thing I remembered about Colleen’s first wedding.

And that was: when the time came for the first dance of Colleen with her new husband, the DJ was supposed to play "We’ve Only Just Begun" by the Carpenters...

...and instead, played "Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now" by Starship.

It still flummoxes me to think that anyone could ever confuse those two selections! The tender yet powerful voice of Karen Carpenter fronting Richard Carpenter’s keyboards, with help from members of the legendary "Wrecking Crew," on a ballad by Paul Williams and Roger Nichols that was initially part of a commercial for a California bank... versus a power ballad recorded fifteen years later? How could anyone that supposedly knew enough about music to host a wedding reception, and get paid for it, be that clueless? And to not even try to fix it? That was my reaction, and I was hardly a major participant in this event. I could just imagine how Colleen felt. Or maybe her new spouse decided he didn’t like the music choice and he or an ally unilaterally changed it last minute.

She had hated the song ever since. I think for her, that mistake—for which there was not even an attempt by the keeper of the music to address—was the harbinger of what was to come after her wedding day. A strong hint that they were done was that she came not with him but with a longtime female friend of hers to my first wedding. (This friend, by the way, is the only other person who was to both of our first weddings.)

Not your fault, Grace Slick, Mickey Thomas, et. al. You weren’t at the wedding. I think even you would have been okay with playing "We’ve Only Just Begun" for the first dance.

Back at the Lilac Festival, as more and more people recognized that the song being started was "Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now," they cheered. Colleen turned and looked at me and I just smiled.

"You know..."

"Yes, I do."

I moved behind Colleen. We stood my front to her back as Mickey Thomas started singing, and when Stephanie Calvert began her vocal I put my arms around Colleen. She backed into me and we swayed gently for the rest of the number. When it ended, I kissed her and said, "It’s our song now. I just reclaimed it for you."

Actually, we love music too much to have just one "our" song. And "Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now" is probably still not really one of "our" songs. But now she-- and I-- have a much better memory of hearing it.

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