Peter Cetera with Amy Grant – The Next Time I Fall

I don’t remember what music was playing when I lost my virginity. (TMI, I know, but most of us get there eventually so settle down.) It was definitely something from the ‘60s, because my college girlfriend hated modern – that is, 1982 – music, and had reacted by becoming a big fan of a local oldies station. This lead to her calling in one night to speak with The Monkees’ Peter Tork, who earned my eternal enmity by making a lame joke (I have purged my memory of what he actually said) about her boyfriend – that is, me. Screw you, Peter Tork. (And you, too, Janice, for not verbally bitch slapping him in response.) (Blogs are apparently designed for score settling.)

Anyway, that’s my “first time” story. I don’t remember what was playing over my first real kiss either (or exactly when it was), but I remember the who and the where, and that means the song would’ve been a pop ballad from the 1970s. And that means there is at least a slight possibility that the vocal stylings of Peter Cetera were in the air. 

Outside of Lionel Richie, and later Phil Collins and George Michael, was there a more reliable guy to turn to in the late ‘70s or most of the ‘80s for a romantic ballad than Cetera? Whether on his own, in Chicago or teamed with a female partner, Cetera always brought it. Not the prettiest voice by far, but definitely distinctive. How many of us had our first kisses on a sweaty gymnasium floor as Peter crooned over the not-designed-for-music speakers? How many others lost their sexual innocence cuddled on a basement chesterfield or the backseat of a car under his guiding voice? And how many more, after the kisses and lovemaking inevitably ended in heartbreak, turned to him for solace and a good cry before getting back in the game?

It’s a challenge to decide which of his tunes is the highlight. (Not really, but anyway . . .) With Chicago there was “If You Leave Me Now”, the “Hard” duo of “… to Say I’m Sorry” and “… Habit to Break”, the first dance sappiness for a million newlyweds of “You’re the Inspiration”, and a half dozen other songs whose names mean nothing to me because either (1) I stopped paying attention or (2) they all sound the same. His Oscar-nominated movie tune “Glory of Love” is great, but in the end, the only choice for me is his duet with Amy Grant on “The Next Time I Fall”. It’s the only one that I laid down cash to own my own copy of when it came out, and the only one that I still listen to on purpose years later.

It was an odd pairing: Grant was (is?) so Christian that she had to vet even the songwriters before agreeing to make the record. And without casting aspersions, Cetera had been the frontman for one of the biggest rock bands in the world for 20 years, and I think I’ll stop right there. But Grant wanted to expand her dominance in the gospel and contemporary Christian music worlds into pop, and there were few more reliable partners to be found than Peter. And off they went.

With a faux orchestral swell to open, then tinkly synths and guitars, it announces itself as a song of the mid 1980s, with all the big hair, shoulder pads and “Miami Vice” pastels that the world could muster. Is it cheesy? God, yes. But that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Cheese happens to be probably my favourite eat-without-cooking food, and I bet a lot of people feel the same way, so why do we use the word to signify something negative? It’s a hopeful song, of two people who’ve loved and lost, but stubbornly persist, in the belief that the bad experiences of the past have finally prepared them to make love work this time. Their voices go well together, Cetera’s slightly nasal, almost synthetic sheen contrasting with Grant’s natural country girl sweetness. The song is lush, comforting – it washes over you like the best pop of that era, embracing you in an aural blanket. My favourite part comes after the second run through of the chorus, at around 2:21. Grant sings them out of the chorus with “It will be with you”, Cetera smooths the edges off his voice while Grant croons behind him, then they sing the next line together, newly committed to the plan of, you know, falling in love. I still get chills during this section, and those carry through the rest of the song, and if I could explain why that happens to me I am sure I could earn an insane fortune making pop music. 

The video for the song seems odd initially, because at no point do Grant and Cetera appear together. They are shot mostly around the edges of a room of people either rehearsing for or performing a dance. Shots are in black and white, washed out colour, oversaturated with sunlight, in low resolution, jittery handheld – there’s barely a clean shot in the entire video. The visual effect is to give the impression of two emotionally unsettled people moving closer together, and the last part of the video would have you believe the singers are looking at each other through gaps in the dancers, furtively, maybe – at least on Grant’s part – flirtatiously. Other than one shot where the demonic look in Cetera’s eyes completely took me out of the moment (it’s at 2:43 of the video), it’s a pretty decent marriage of song and visuals.

One of the songwriters was Bobby Caldwell, who had a top 10 hit of his own with 1978’s lounge jazz come-on “What You Won’t Do For Love”. He did his own version of this song a few years later, retitling it “Next Time (I Fall)”, and while I don’t want to speak ill of a talented artist who is no longer with us, the difference between Caldwell and the superstar power of Cetera and Grant is obvious in the grooves. Maybe that stereotypical momma was right: for all the bedroom eyes of most of his hit ballads, Peter just needed to settle down with a good Christian girl to find true musical happiness.