Saturday, January 31, 1998

Desire to make the last dance count

By Bob Greene

LUGOFF, S.C. -- While on a long bus ride across rural South Carolina and Georgia (don't ask), I had plenty of time to make conversation with the person in the next seat. Because that person was Ben E. King, it was a pleasure.

Ben E. King, for those of you who can't place the name, was the lead singer of the Drifters in the late 1950s. He later went out on his own; among his indelible vocal leads were "Stand By Me," "There Goes My Baby," "Spanish Harlem" and "I Count the Tears."

On this interstate bus ride, though, it was another song I wanted to talk with him about. The night before, in a small-town arena, I had seen him perform -- and what I had seen in the audience during that particular song had haunted me.

The song was "Save the Last Dance for Me."

You can dance, every dance with the guy that gives you the eye let him hold you tight.

The song had been a No. 1 hit for the Drifters in the fall of 1960. The people who had made it a success then by buying the record were young -- teen-agers. The idea of the last dance -- the final song before going home from the party for the nigh t-- was something with which they could readily identify.

Now, though -- all these years later -- I had watched the audience as the audience had watched Ben E. King. The people, many of them, were in middle age and beyond. No more high-school gym dances for them; no more proms or homecomings.

And there was a look in their eyes as Ben E. King sang.

But don't forget who's taking you home and in whose arms you're gonna be.

Last dance seemed to perhaps mean something else now. Last dance -- at least on this night, in this building, in the darkness as the people looked with moist eyes toward the stage -- seemed, if you could believe what you were seeing in those eyes, to represent a new realization of certain things. That the opportunities life offers are no longer necessarily limitless, that choices become more important now, that the last dance -- in every sense -- was closer than it ever had been before. That the hope and longing that the last dance always signified was now more urgent.

The people in the audience -- no longer kids -- had looked toward the singer on the stage, their mouths moving as his moved:

So darling, save the last dance for me.

Now, the next morning, we were on this bus, and I asked King if it was just me, of if he ever noticed what I had thought I was noticing.

"Every time," he said. "Every night. You think about what the last dance used to mean to you -- all the dances you went to when you were young -- and then you think about all that you've gone through in life, what's behind you and what's ahead. All your years of setbacks, all your years of hope.

"And you think about how important it is for you to get the rest of your life right -- to do it in the right way, with the right person. From the stage, I can see the faces in the audience. The glow in the eyes of the people. And I know that they're thinking about the same things I'm thinking."

That is the special gift of music -- how a few lines, half-remembered from long ago, can not only take you back to the life you once led, but can make you think in new ways about the life you're leading now. Ben E. King is 59; just as the people in his audiences are no longer the boys and girls who first bought his records, he is no longer the young vocalist who sang the songs.

" ‘Stand By Me' makes me think a lot, too," he said. "About how important it is to have at least one person in your life you can count on. Someone you can call when there's no one else to talk to. You may think you're all alone, you may even choose to be alone -- put the walls up. But even when you do that, you know that you need at least one person who you know, no matter what, will stand by you."

The bus, on this cloudy Carolina morning, was crossing the Broad River. King pulled out some snapshots to show me.

"My grandchildren," he said, telling me their names.

On some nights, he said, as he sings "Save the Last Dance for Me," he will notice people who are all by themselves in the audience. Who have come to the show with no one.

"There are always couples holding each other during that song," he said. "But my eyes go to the people who are out there alone in the audience. I look at them, and I know what's going on inside them."

So don't forget who's taking you home and in whose arms you're gonna be.

"The people who are alone are the ones I can't look away from," he said. "I'm pulling for them."

Chicago Tribune