Rob Sheffield, Love Is a Mix Tape – The AudioSuede Book Club
By: Felicia
The mix tape: Mine sit in a bag on the top shelf of my hall closet – Old memories literally stuffed in the closet and forgotten. For many, namely of the younger set, making a mix tape is an ancient art. Sure there are blank CDs and now MP3s and iPods. But a mixtape, as Rob Sheffield so poetically wrote in his 2007 book Love is a Mix Tape, is romantic. You really had to put a valiant effort into making a mix tape back in the day – your real heart and soul – waiting for that exact moment on the radio to begin recording and knowing exactly when to stop, and knowing exactly which songs to string together.
Mix tapes say a lot about a person. I once got into a fight with a friend on a Chicago road trip over mix tapes. She didn’t understand why I mixed slow and fast songs on the same tape, and I didn’t understand why she was such an idiot. Needless to say, we’re not friends anymore. Personal memories are ingrained in songs and Sheffield conveys that thought perfectly in his memoir.
You might have read Rob Sheffield’s work in Rolling Stone or SPIN magazines, or seen him on various VH1 shows as a talking head providing commentary on why he loved the 80’s. In the first half of his memoir, Love is a Mix Tape, he tells the story of his love affair with his wife Renée through music. Unfortunately their marriage was short, as Renée died of a pulmonary embolism after only five years of marriage.
The story starts with Sheffield listening to an old tape from March 1993, each chapter beginning with a mixtape playlist. He sits in his room, each song a reminder of his wife whose favorite band was Pavement. They first bonded over their love of The Replacements and the Meat Puppets and an instant connection was formed. It’s like they had such a strong bond over music that everything else kind of just fell into place.
The story takes place in Charlottesville, Virginia and chronicles two people falling in love with each other’s quirks. Music like Liz Phair, the Meat Puppets, Pavement, Yo La Tengo, Nirvana, Everything But the Girl, Madonna and Prince was the one major thing they had in common, yet it was strong enough to make their opposing quirks seem lovable. The book covers their five year marriage, both the good and the bad. It is an ode to the more mundane parts of their time together like taking long drives and singing along to the radio or drinking bourbon together and listening to records, each story a mundane yet special memory weaving in ties to music. Sheffield writes, “Nothing connects to the moment like music. I count on music to bring me back – or, more precisely, to bring her forward.”
The backdrop of their love story was the 90’s. It was a time where pop culture was blossoming, from Beverly Hills 90210 to the end of the Reagan era. Nineties music was Sheffield’s favorite. It told the story of his life with Renée. She brought unpredictability and excitement into his wallflower and safe existence. They were complete opposites – him an Irish Catholic from Boston, and her a backwoods country southerner. She was everything he wasn’t: brave, energetic, smart and he loved everything about it. He recalls inconspicuous details of her uniqueness like when she wore a morning coat to their wedding just because it made her look like Janet Jackson in the Escapade video, or when they went to a thrift shop just to buy a guitar she fell in love with at first sight but didn’t know how to play.
Music not only got him through the landmarks in life, but it taught him about life. In the grand spectrum of life and the world, a five year marriage to someone you love like Rob loved Renée is like five seconds. After the first half of the book Sheffield questions his superficiality of choosing a mate based on musical taste, which is probably something a lot of music snobs can relate to. I know I can since I live by that rule every day of my life. I just can’t be associated with people who have terrible musical tastes.
It was May 11, 1997: Mother’s Day. Renée stood up from her sewing table in their apartment and collapsed. She died instantly. By the time Sheffield describes Renée’s death, a little past the halfway mark of the book, you almost feel as if you yourself lost a personal friend due to the vividness he describes her in the first half. He makes is easy for the reader to fall in love with her quirkiness along with him. The cause of death was a blood clot that traveled from her leg to her heart. It was something she couldn’t evade with her healthy lifestyle. It was just one of those extremely unlucky and tragic things.
The aftermath was swift and sad, as Sheffield went through the motions of being a widow. Was he living someone else’s life? Here he was, having to organize a funeral for his spouse at the age of 31. Having to prove she was dead to the student loan company. Getting Renée’s junk mail, calls from creditors, social security, death certificates. Things you never think of while you’re young and seemingly full of life. Then he had to deal with those occasional acquaintances like her therapist, her hairstylist, her optometrist. Saying goodbye to them for her and their kindness towards him quelled the cynicism he had in him.
He started isolating himself, avoiding places he would run into people he knew so he could allow his cynicism to take over. As a way of staying anonymous he would go to chain restaurants to eat by himself. This way he didn’t have to deal with explaining where Renée was to another acquaintance. Listening to music became harder for him too. “I knew I would have to relearn how to listen to music, and that some of the music we’d loved together I’d never be able to hear again.”
During his grieving he found a Jackie Kennedy documentary record in a music shop and he started worshipping her as a widowed woman. He wanted to learn from her grief. He eventually learned that wallowing in his grief would never get her back, which was the only thing he wished for. His revelation to start loving his life again starts with a news story about a nacho dwarf in Milwaukee, which you’ll have to read the book to understand. He started taking small steps to the living world by moving to New York City and ditching things he was holding onto that contained memories of her. He accepted that saying all his goodbyes would take time. “I realize that I will never fully understand the millions of bizarre ways that music brings people together.”
Sheffield writes, “After Renée died I assumed the rest of my life would be just a consolation prize.” But after he moved to New York he met a new girl and fell in love, of course over music. Life wasn’t just a consolation prize anymore. This whole book was like a love letter to Renée and he definitely proved that it really is better to have loved and lost than to not have loved at all. One of Sheffield’s last thoughts in his book was, “When we die we will turn into songs and we will hear each other and remember each other.”
Sheffield’s second book called Talking to Girls About Duran Duran: One Young Man’s Quest for True Love and a Cooler Haircut will be released on July 15, 2010.