Crying at the Feelies Show

On mortality and the last time

The Feelies at White Eagle Hall, May 23, 2026: l. to r., Glenn Mercer, Dave Weckerman, Stan Demeski, Bill Million, Brenda Sauter

Audience member: 50 more years!
Feelies guitarist Bill Million: We'll all be in the sky in 50 years.

    I always cry a little at Feelies shows.  Usually it's during a song from their 1986 album The Good Earth.  I cry because that album reminds me of a time in my life that I was too young and dumb to realize was one of the best times of my life.  I regret that I didn't treasure it more.  The thing is, I just didn't know any better.
    But at the first show of the Feelies' two-night 50th anniversary stand at White Eagle Hall in Jersey City, May 22nd and 23rd, 2026, it wasn't anything from that album that opened up the waterworks.  It was "Away," from 1988's Only Life.  The song is a hyperactive jig about a turbulent, passionate relationship — it really couldn't be further from anything mournful.  But music can be funny that way.
    One of my first assignments for Rolling Stone was in 1988, crossing the Hudson River to cover a video shoot that Jonathan Demme was directing for "Away" at the legendary Maxwell's club in Hoboken, where the Feelies played many times.  Demme was a massive Feelies fan and had cast them (billed as the Willies) as the band at the high school reunion dance in Something Wild (1986), where they played David Bowie's "Fame" and the Monkees' "I'm a Believer."
    I heard "Away" over and over that day, as one does at a video shoot, so the song was, quite welcomely, permanently incised into my synapses.  During a break, I interviewed Demme, who was just the nicest, kindest person, so gracious with my surely inept cub reporter questions; I never forgot it.  Soon after that, I was working for MTV News, and I'd sometimes chat with Jonathan's nephew Ted, who worked down the hall on YO! MTV Raps.  Ted was also a great person, well loved in his field.  He died in 2002, just 38; Jonathan in 2017.  I didn't know either of them well but "Away" just set off vivid memories of them — and of my own blissfully naïve self back then — sending a tear down my face as I stood in the middle of a packed crowd, looking up at a rock band blazing its way through a 38-year-old banger.
    I've seen the Feelies play more than any other band.  And, through the years, I've watched them age, every show a frame in a 50-year time-lapse film.  Their aptly titled song "The Boy with the Perpetual Nervousness" is 46 years old; Feelies guitarists Glenn Mercer and Bill Million, who wrote it, are now in their 70s.  I can't confirm it but word is that those were the Feelies' final shows.  Instead of their traditional closing song, 1980's barn-burning "Crazy Rhythms," what might be the last song the Feelies ever played was the rarely played gentle strummer "So Far," from their 2011 album Here Before. "It’s OK, it’s all right," sang-sighed Mercer.  "Now it’s time to say goodnight."
    Bands reunite all the time, and the Feelies certainly have broken up and gotten back together before.  But this time, I got the sense that I'll probably never see them play music again.  And I'm OK with that: I saw the Feelies play whenever I possibly could, and when I did, I drank in that magnificent band as deeply as I possibly could.  Because I had grown wise enough to know that these were some of the best times of my life.
    I'm actually thankful to know that that was probably the last time I'll see the Feelies, because one doesn't always get such clarity about that sort of thing.  Sometimes, you don't know it was the last time you'll ever see a favorite band — or a favorite pizza joint, or a favorite city, or a favorite friend.  So, as the late Warren Zevon once said, as he was dying: "Enjoy every sandwich."