15th
The second time I saw Hanson in concert was 2003, right after Taylor and Natalie got married. The first time had been four or five years earlier, at an enormous venue on their world tour when MMMBop was still getting regular radio play and being obsessed with the band was de rigeur among my elementary school classmates; by the time this second show rolled around, things had changed for all of us. I was fifteen and in high school and hanging out with a pseudo-goth crowd with enough notoriety to have garnered a nickname (The Bench Crew) and a reputation for being “scary.” They had released a second album to a middling reception, and then their very publicly very Christian heartthrob lead singer had impregnated his teenage girlfriend. The show they were playing this time was a charity benefit featuring a bunch of well-known local bands, erring on the side of indie rock; A & I walked up to the theater with our heads down, assuming we’d be the only serious Hanson fans in attendance.
Instead it was like a flashback to 1997: girls in tank tops holding homemade signs, many of which actually implored Taylor to leave his wife for their holder. A man who tried to talk about the importance of AIDs research (the cause for which the event was being held) was drowned out by chants of “Han-son! Han-son!” Once they got on stage, someone actually yelled out “Natalie’s a bitch” during a lull between songs.
This is what I try to explain to people who think I should be embarrassed by being a Hanson fan in the first place: you have no idea. Everyone’s calmed down pretty significantly in the intervening decade, but when I saw them in New York this fall I walked out listening to two girls talk shit about the band members’ relationships with their wives so casually and knowingly and cruelly, as if they were discussing the love lives of close friends instead of a band they’ve been listening to for kind of a long time now.
And, you know, that’s ugly. But it’s part of what happens when you are a fan, what makes being a fan different from being a connoisseur or aficionado: that enthusiastic, possessive relationship to a band or show or actor, that desire to reach out beyond the work to know the person behind it. To make shit up about them when you can’t. To loose track of how much of their story actually belongs to you. It’s almost impossible to avoid when you have a long history with the thing: Hanson is not just this band but these concerts, most of which A & I have gone to together, these songs that I’ve listened to when I was happy or heartbroken or in need of simple comfort.
The second to last time I saw them was a show in New Haven where they played their first album straight through and A and I stood on chairs in a sweaty, close club and sang along; we had so much fun we went back to my apartment and bought tickets to their New York show the following week, almost just because we could. Didn’t have to ask for mom’s credit card or make sure dad could drive or clear it because it was a school night. If you’d asked me when I was twelve what my life would be like when I grew up I probably would have outlined that exact scene for you; it was lovely to know that, even then, I had been right about a thing or two.
Fifteen years ago I memorized Taylor Hanson’s birthday: March 14, 1983. This morning I woke up and saw the date and thought, oh, happy birthday, Taylor.
