A life through music

The Observer

Every child needs an idol, but few imagine their favourite singer has actually become one of the family. Susie Boyt's unshakeable love for Judy Garland even extends to the star's children - and all of their emotional baggage...

Why I'll never get over the rainbow 15 August 2004

I cannot remember a time in my life when I wasn't a little in love with Judy Garland.

As a child I was so sensitive that my heart went out to anyone and everyone, many, many times a day, not just friends and family but strangers and even ants. Listening to Judy Garland singing, with extreme ardour, about the emergencies of love ('The Boy Next Door'), or of the shaky stoicism that life requires ('Smile'), or even with a worldly devil-may-care shrug ('Chicago'), I felt at last I had encountered someone whose feelings ran as high as my own. This was an enormous relief and from the age of five or six I regarded her as part of my family - or rather I positioned myself within hers. I had seen footage of her when she was still Frances Gumm on stage in white organza with her sisters, aged four or five and skittish and peachy. I'd also heard her belting love songs into the faces of her own infant children at packed halls round the world, and although I did understand it might have been a little overwhelming, it was a position I would have been honoured to hold. It all started when I was four and my mother took me to see The Wizard of Oz at a West End cinema, with some ceremony, just as her mother had taken her 30 years before. The strength of feeling, the awkwardness of childhood, the yearning and the natural optimism which combine perfectly in that first rendition of 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow' left me feeling deeply shaken but also somehow understood.

Straightaway Judy's singing seemed to me to sidestep the indignity of difficult feelings, and rather to capitalise on them and present them as the best things that life has to offer. Since childhood I have always entertained a lot of dark thoughts - I put out a welcome mat for them and offer them a roast dinner - yet Garland to my small frame seemed to transform the harsher truths of life into something wonderful, where all feelings, however dark, are good and true because they're yours. Yet Garland's talent wasn't limited to expressing the bitter joy of obstacles overcome. It meant a lot to me that someone whose emotional life seemed so extreme could also express a genuine ease in her human dealings as well: graceful, elegant and free. In my lighter moments I could only agree with sentiments such as: 'Holding hands in the movie show/ When all the lights are low /May not be new / But I like it, how about you?'

Garland was a natural comedian and this side of her music appealed to me hugely. I loved listening to 'Walk up the Avenue' from Easter Parade, and played it to my daughter when she was taking her first steps. I once appeared in a school review singing a duet called 'Friendship' that Garland sang with Johnny Mercer and I sang with my best friend Alexa Rosewood, where great offers of mutual service are exchanged, hysterically, between old pals. My favourite line was: 'If you ever lose your teeth when you're out to dine/ Borrow mine.' My natural interest extended to the rest of the family, naturally. I've seen Liza Minnelli three times at the Albert Hall, each performance a crazy mixture of heroism, denial and exuberance. I worry about her all the time, for obvious reasons, and I'd do absolutely anything for her if she asked. I often listen to Liza singing a song about a woman who falls in love with a deaf mute with whom she communicates through newly-learned sign language. Each time I can't quite believe what I'm hearing. I revisit the soundtrack of Cabaret regularly too. 'Put down the knitting, the book and the broom', I'm always telling myself when I've literally lost the plot of a novel I am writing or am suffering from cabin fever. I also see Lorna Luft, Garland's middle child, whenever she's in town. I admire her courage and emotional health. The dark feelings that plagued me as a child and a teenager have been largely outlawed, these days, by a sunnier disposition which I've had to impose on myself. Therefore it feels daring now to enter into the contagious triumphant disappointment of songs like 'Maybe this Time' (sung by Liza) or her mother's rendition of 'The Man that Got Away'. At such moments I indulge in an affectionate nod towards my insaner former self and even experience a mini-pang for the bad old days.