The Free Spirit

Brothers' Demise; 1973 (Part One)

"Tell it all, brother... Before we fall, tell it all, brothers and sisters, tell it all... Tomorrow just might be too late."

To put it plainly, the year 1973 was not a good year for the Everly family. From a medical scare to more of Don's alcoholism, from the inevitable breakup of the Everly Brothers to the bitterness that followed, the year 1973 was the roughest yet, even rougher than the patch Don and I had when we'd nearly divorced nearly ten years before. Right off the bat, things were bad for our family, which started out with Phil and Don not being on speaking terms over the interview that Don gave for that newspaper article in December. "He's bein' a big baby about this shit! We agreed on a peaceful split later this year and I'm already thinkin' 'bout my next album. I'm gonna do it with the same people," Don said when I asked him about his brother shortly after the new year.

"Don't you owe RCA a solo album?" I asked him.

"We're tryin' to get out of that contract. We think we can break it but we gotta talk it over with all the fancy legal people," Don slurred at me, clearly drunk, and I rolled my eyes and let out a sigh.

"Whatever you think is right," I told him, throwing a hand in the air and simply walking out of the living room and into the kitchen, where Stacey, Maggie and Elton were doing their homework. "How're we doing, kiddos?"

"This sucks!" Maggie exclaimed over her math homework.

"Maggie, don't say that!" I said to my younger daughter.

"No really, Mum, it sucks," said Elton. "They've changed maths since I was in second grade."

"How can they just change maths? Maths is the same! Two plus two will always equal four!" I exclaimed, surprised to hear that mathematics had changed that drastically between my two children.

"They want us to do it as one plus one equals two plus one plus one equals four," said Stacey, trying her best to explain it to me, but I was quite baffled at the simple and stupid way teachers were teaching mathematics.

"Why, that's the silliest thing I've ever heard. Why make something so simple so difficult?" I asked my children, and all three of them shrugged. "What about you two, middle schoolers? What're you doing?"

"I'm writing an essay," Elton said.

"I'm reading this chemistry textbook," said Stacey.

"Chemistry? It's been quite a long time since I even looked at a chemistry textbook. Have they changed chemistry, too?" I asked my oldest daughter.

"Probably, there's been discoveries since the thirties," said Stacey.

"The thirties? How old do you think your mummy is, Stacey Anne? I studied chemistry back in the early fifties. In fact, I was in school when they discovered the shape of DNA! I remember it like it was yesterday. They said it was Watson and Crick who discovered it, but really, it was a woman called Rosalind Franklin," I told her.

"I can imagine how annoyed she was that men stole her work," Stacey replied, and I couldn't help but chuckle to myself.

"Darling, you have no idea," I said. I left my children to do their homework and went to check on Marley in the living room and Don was passed out asleep, a sight that became all too common. Pippa's second birthday passed and I called Phil and Patricia to wish her a happy birthday, and it was received, but the call was short and Phil didn't let me speak to any of his family members except for himself. I also called Phil on his thirty-fourth birthday, but he didn't pick up the phone. Don's thirty-sixth birthday came and Phil didn't call him. Margaret did, and she asked him why he was causing so much trouble for his brother, so he hung up the phone on her. The brothers completed their tours for most of the next few months, getting separate hotels, separate dressing rooms and separate cars to the venues, and only uniting onstage. But they didn't speak to one another and hung out with their own friend circles, which didn't overlap at all.