May
31
the true story behind the song Dancing in the Moonlight
(Heard the story behind the song from a Youtube channel that gives little-known facts behind hit songs. I was so impressed by a musician turning trauma into beauty that I thought I’d share. Make sure to give the song a listen when you’re done.)
Sherman Kelly and some friends were running a nightclub in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, in 1969. One day, they decided to rent a 65-foot yacht and travel to St. Croix for the day. Unbeknownst to him at the time, Kelly was prone to seasickness, and he and his girlfriend got really seasick on the crossing.
When the group arrived in St. Croix, those onboard took a dingy to shore to look for some dinner. But Kelly and his girlfriend were both still sick and weren’t interested in eating at that point.
The group got its food and decided to head back to the boat to spend the night. Kelly and his girlfriend looked out into the harbor and saw the boat’s mast swaying back and forth, and instead opted to stay in town overnight rather than risk more seasickness on the boat.
There was only one problem: Due to his extreme seasickness and disorientation, Kelly had left his wallet on the boat and had no money or credit cards for a hotel. He and his girlfriend tried to find a hotel to stay in that night, but none were that welcoming.
After being turned down at a second inn, Kelly’s girlfriend said, “It’s a beautiful night. Why don’t we just stretch out on the beach?”
“And that’s all I remember very clearly,” he told The Vinyl Dialogues. What happened next would change his life forever.
What happened after that was pieced together through bits of Kelly’s own memory and the recollections of other people. According to those accounts, while sleeping on the beach, Kelly and his girlfriend were the victims of a vicious St. Croix street gang. Kelly was severely beaten by five gang members wielding baseball bats. His girlfriend was raped by the gang leader and the rest were in line. But Kelly’s girlfriend later reported that Kelly regained consciousness during the attack and fought back, making enough noise to scare off the attackers.
With Kelly drifting in and out of consciousness, the two managed to follow the lights along the shore, eventually making their way to the only St. Croix hospital.
“I woke up to the sound of my hospital roommate screaming in pain. Finally the screaming stopped and I heard two doctors talking about him. ‘That’s it, he’s gone,’ said one doctor about the other patient. ‘What about him, you think he’s gonna make it?’ And the other doctor said, ‘No, I doubt it.” I realized they were talking about me,” said Kelly.
Kelly did make it, though. He spent several days in the St. Croix hospital, eventually returning to St. Thomas, where he stayed at a friend’s house while he recovered. Eventually he was healthy enough to get back to New York, where doctors at New York Hospital were able to re-break and re-set the bones in his face and address his other injuries.
Returning to his home in Ithaca, New York, still in pain and with constant headaches, Kelly was in no shape to be in a band. But that didn’t prevent him from writing songs.
And it was during this period of convalescence that he began to write some verses for a song, verses that would later become the lyrics for “Dancing in the Moonlight.”
“I envisioned an alternate reality, the dream of a peaceful and joyous celebration of life. It was just me imagining a better world than the one I had just experienced in St. Croix,” said Kelly.
We get it almost every night
When that moon is big and bright
It’s a supernatural delight
Everybody’s dancin’ in the moonlight
Everybody here is out of sight
They don’t bark, and they don’t bite
They keep things loose, they keep ’em tight
Everybody was dancin’ in the moonlight
Dancin’ in the moonlight
Everybody’s feelin’ warm and bright
It’s such a fine and natural sight
Everybody’s dancin’ in the moonlight
We like our fun and we never fight
You can’t dance and stay uptight
It’s a supernatural delight
Everybody was dancin’ in the moonlight
Dancin’ in the moonlight
Everybody’s feelin’ warm and bright
It’s such a fine and natural sight
Everybody’s dancin’ in the moonlight
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