Lightnin’ Hopkins to the Rescue

I was introduced to R.E.M. my freshman year in college. They played at Page Auditorium on campus about a month into the school year. The guy in the dorm room next door spent the rest of the semester practicing the bass part for “Radio Free Europe.” He played it well. I heard that song a lot that fall. I bought Murmur. Loved it. And followed the band closely throughout their I.R.S. period.

Their fifth album, Document, was released in the fall of 1987. The start of my senior year. The third song on the “Leaf Side” (or the ninth song on the CD) was “Lightnin’ Hopkins.” Guitarist Peter Buck said in an interview that the song didn’t have anything to do with the Texas Bluesman of the same name who had died in 1982. One day Buck had a Lightnin’ Hopkins album in the studio. Lead singer Michael Stipe saw it, and wanted to use that for the name of the song. The lyrics are mostly intelligible, but mostly don’t make any sense. That’s par for the course. Don’t worry about it. (A similar album encounter happened a few years earlier when Stipe sang the notes on the back of a Revelaires record album found at the studio to the backing track of “7 chineSe bros.” The song ended up being released as “The Voice of Harold.”)

Fast forward to spring semester. Biochemistry was the last class I needed to finish all the requirements for a Chemistry major. It was a graduate-level course taught out of Duke Hospital in an auditorium classroom suspended over one of the entrances.

I felt pretty good going into the first exam. I had a well-oiled study routine: keep up with the reading, highlight important stuff in the book, write the important stuff on note cards, and quiz myself writing equations and mechanisms on the chalkboard in an empty classroom.

Ready to start. I read the first question. Hmmm. Not exactly sure. Let’s move on to the next one. OK, let’s see. Nope. How about number three. And so it went. Question after question. We had fifty minutes for the test. The TA announced halftime. I hadn’t written anything other than my name on the cover page. Panic set in.

It was the only time I ever blanked out on a test. Elementary School. Middle School. High School. College. Doctorate. That was the only one. I tried reading the next question but by then my mind was firing randomly. I decided that I couldn’t answer it before I had even finished reading it.

My mom, a Ph.D. Chemist, described studying as suspending facts and details in solution in your brain, and when something goes wrong all of that information precipitates out into a pile of wet powder.

Need to get a grip. I put my pencil down, sat back in my chair, and bubbling up to the top of my consciousness was one of my favorite R.E.M. songs: “Lightnin’ Hopkins.” I started listening to it in my head. (I have a very good mind’s ear.) It’s driving, especially the drums at the beginning. After the first verse is a short guitar interlude that’s basically Buck banging out the same chord for eight measures over top of the relentless drums and bass. If you know the song, you know what I’m talking about. It was at that moment I felt myself calm down. It was surprising, because the song is the opposite of calm. 

I went back to the first question and plowed through it. No moving on until that one was answered. Then the second. And the third. I somehow managed to answer them all.

I’d like to be able to say that I did well on the test, but that would not be accurate. I passed. Not by much. But the result was a whole lot better than it was looking half-way through. I improved the rest of the semester and completed all the requirements for the Chemistry major. Graduated. Moved on. 

I still love the song. I still recall that moment whenever I hear it. And I am grateful for it.