go.Jimmy.go

“I wanna go back and do it all over, but I can’t go back I know.”

There are certain songs you hear when you’re young that you think you understand. Then you get older and realize you never understood them at all.

“I Wanna Go Back” is one of those songs for me.

The song was originally recorded by the band Billy Satellite in the early 1980s, but like a lot of people, I first discovered the tune when Eddie Money recorded his version for his Can’t Hold Back album in 1986.

I was going on seventeen years old at the time, and at that age the idea of wanting to go back seemed ridiculous.

Go back? Go back where? I was too busy trying to go forward. Everything was ahead of me.

In 1986, I had my first real car; a 1973 Toyota Corona wagon. Calling it a classic would be generous. Calling it reliable might be pushing things, too. But none of that mattered. It was mine, and when you’re closing in on seventeen years old and someone hands you the keys to your own car, a beat-up Toyota might as well be a Rolls-Royce.

That summer, I was taking guitar lessons every week, and learning everything I possibly could from AC/DC, Led Zeppelin and every other hair metal band whose records I could get my hands on.

I think you all know by now I wanted to be a rock star guitarist. Seriously. It even says so in my high school yearbook (see above).

High school wasn’t something I appreciated at the time, either. But looking back, even that seems pretty great now. In the fall of 1986, every morning began with Concert Choir. My daily class schedule also included courses like music theory and art, along with the required English, math and everything else they insisted I learn.

And then there were Friday nights.

“I recall hanging out on Friday night…”

Friday night meant one thing. The mall. Always the mall.

There was no Amazon package waiting on the porch, and no Spotify release notifications popping up on my phone. If I wanted to see what new albums had been released, I had to go to the record store at the mall and physically flip through them album by album.

I’d study the covers, read the song titles and occasionally make a purchase based almost entirely on how cool the artwork looked.

And yes, there were girls. There were always girls. I’d casually stroll past the Orange Julius pretending I was waiting for my friend Prince to arrive, or had somewhere important to be. All while secretly hoping one of them might notice me.

They usually didn’t.

Eventually, I’d make my way to the arcade and spend the last of my lawn-mowing money trying to get the high score on Galaga. And if one of those unattainable girls happened to play the machine beside me? Well, that was pretty much the equivalent of winning the lottery.

Or at least it was when I was almost seventeen.

“Back then I thought that things were never gonna change.”

That’s the line of the song that really gets me now. Because that’s exactly how it felt. When you’re young, you never think about the possibility that the world you’re living in will someday disappear.

You just assume your friends will always be around, and your parents will always be there too. The mall will always be crowded on Friday nights, and the record store will always have another Bon Jovi album waiting for you. You’ll always have another summer. Another school year, and another quarter for Galaga.

You don’t recognize those moments as nostalgia then because you haven’t lived long enough to have anything to be nostalgic about.

You’re just living, and that’s the cruel little trick about getting older. By the time you finally understand how special some of those ordinary moments were, they’re already memories.

Which is probably why I’ve spent so much of my life hanging onto things that take me back there:

Eighties music.

Godzilla movies.

Classic Cars.

Arcade games.

Breakfast cereal containing enough sugar to power a small city.

People sometimes ask me why I’m still fascinated by those things. Maybe it’s because they aren’t really things at all. They’re time machines. Put on the right song and suddenly I’m not sitting here in 2026. I’m on the edge of seventeen again.

There’s an electric guitar leaning against my bedroom wall. My Toyota Corona is sitting outside. Friday night is coming. Somewhere at the mall there’s a record store filled with new albums I haven’t heard yet, an arcade filled with games waiting to be played, and probably a girl near the Orange Julius whom I’ll never have the nerve to talk to.

And the best part? I don’t know what’s coming.

That’s something I’ve thought about quite a bit lately, especially while working on novels like The Seventh Echo. So much of what I write eventually comes back to memory and the things we carry with us. The things we wish we could change, and the strange power the past has to reach across decades of time and tap us on the shoulder and say hello.

Maybe that’s why Eddie Money’s song means more to me today than it ever could have in 1986. At seventeen, I heard a great song. All these years later, I finally understand it.

Would I actually want to become seventeen again? Probably not. I’d have to survive high school again, for starters.

But would I take one Friday night? Absolutely. Give me the keys to that beat-up Toyota.

Put a few dollars in my pocket.

Turn up the radio.

Let me walk through those mall doors one more time.

I know I can’t stay.

I know I can’t change anything.

And I know that eventually, I’ll have to come home.

But just for a little while…

I wanna go back.

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My new novel, The Seventh Echo is available now.