Finding That Rainbow Connection

A song that followed me from childhood into adulthood

Image by ErikaWittlieb from Pixabay

Thank you Dana and Lawrence for asking me to share this story on Genxy Substack!

It was 1979, I was age six and it was about to be a big afternoon, a transformative day — one that would shake my world and set the tone for years to come. Mom had brought us to the movies, and the single-screen theater was humming with activity and primed for magic.

Lights dimmed, and after some initial puppet frivolity, the music swelled, the camera dipped out of the clouds into a swamp and an evocative banjo strum met our ears.

Kermit, my weekly friend from TV’s The Muppet Show, sat on a log, strumming his banjo and welcoming us into his world of movie magic, beckoning us to be lovers, dreamers and creators with his new anthem, “The Rainbow Connection.”

And oh, I was smitten.

My mother — in fact all of the adults around me — nearly lost their minds for some reason that day, when a scene later, a full-screen shot showcased Kermit pedaling a bike down the road, unaided. This was before CGI and computer effects in movies, and the adults seemed baffled.

How did they do that?! they seemed to say. How’s a puppet pedaling a bike?

Silly adults. It’s Kermit, of course he’s pedaling a bike. What’s the big deal?

The next day I raced out to buy the vinyl LP album, zipped home, and to my parents’ surprise, started crying when I realized it only contained the movie’s songs and not a replay of the entire movie. VHS didn’t yet exist. I’d never even seen a laserdisc. The songs were fine, but more than anything I wanted to experience the film’s joy again, dialogue and all.

Alas.

Still, it gave me more opportunities to take in the main song’s lyrics. And as I aged through grade school and then high school, dipping into the magic of theater and live performance, Kermit’s welcoming words made more and more sense, encouraging me into the world of being a creator.

Have you been half asleep, and have you heard voices?
I’ve heard them calling my name
Is this the sweet sound that calls the young sailors?
The voice might be one and the same

I’ve heard it too many times to ignore itIt’s something that I’m supposed to be

Someday we’ll find it, the rainbow connectionThe lovers, the dreamers, and me

So yes, Jim Henson, the prime creative genius behind The Muppets, was a seminal force in my upbringing — his vision bringing my yet-unnamed generation the educational and empathic Sesame Street, the animated Muppet Babies, Fraggle Rock, and two more Muppet films, The Great Muppet Caper and Muppets Take Manhattan. My peers may’ve worshipped sports heroes like Larry Bird or Joe Montana, but my hero was one bearded fella.

Cut to 1990. It was my mother who delivered the unbelievable news that only 11 years after my Kermit-with-a-banjo moment in the movie theater, we’d lost the visionary Jim Henson at the age of 53. Mom shook her head in disbelief, and it all brought a too-early, unwelcome reflection on death to my teen life.

A theater kid through and through, also now a singer in our school’s church services, I was forever dabbling in art, creation and inspiration. Joined at the hip with my best friend Jimmy (and his burgeoning guitar skills), we became inseparable our senior year, spending hours in his basement harmonizing, practicing and creating songs, and doing our best rendition of Extreme’s acoustic hit, “More Than Words.”

And then, one day in mid-April, my talented and tinkering friend arrived home with a secondhand banjo.

My mind exploded, whooshing me back to 1979 and that old-fashioned movie theater. We, the class of 1991, were graduating in a few weeks. Having influence as the geek somehow elected senior class president, I knew the song Jimmy and I would have to perform at graduation.

The author with the microphone and friend Jimmy with the banjo | Photo property of Joe Guay

In that stuffy and overheated gymnasium, some of my classmates smirked, sure. It seemed cheesy or childish, perhaps. Some didn’t get it.

But as I gave the introduction and spoke of the song’s relevance to this generation of 18-year-old almost-adults raised on Sesame Street, of Jim Henson’s death less than a year before, and as Jimmy strummed that banjo and my first notes rang out, the parents sure got it. Their little kiddos, the ones who laughed at Cookie Monster and Big Bird and went to see the Muppets in the theater, had aged out of childhood. There were tears.

In college and early adulthood I lost that Muppet connection. My “rainbow connection” dimmed. Real life came calling, the Jim Henson organization, now without their leader, had to regroup and re-strategize, and their output inevitably slowed a bit. It had lost a place in my life.

Until, in my 20s and 30s, ah-ha, I discovered the karaoke stage.

Bob might sing “Sweet Child of Mine.” Kiera would drag out the already-tired “Wind Beneath My Wings.” (Ugh). But every so often, to shake it up, I’d whip out Kermit’s “The Rainbow Connection” to witness the bewildered faces of my jaded young peers melt just a bit. Such is the power of music.

In 2023, after too many lost years, I reunited with my high school friend, Jimmy. Now a father of three, he’s still a tinkerer of all instruments. So on that warm July afternoon, he dragged the ol’ banjo out of the closet, downloaded the chords (and refresher lyrics) from the web, and then two old Gen X guys had the joy of performing “The Rainbow Connection” for his wife and a trio of befuddled boys in the echoey living room.

It was perfect.

Thank you Jim Henson, thank you, songwriter Paul Williams, for the musical inspiration that’s encompassed decades.

Kermit would’ve been proud. In fact, he had a prime seat.

High school friend Jimmy with banjo in 2023 | Photos by Joe Guay

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