"Young & Tender"
Written by Dave Caruso
Produced by Eric Morgeson and Caruso at Studio A, in Dearborn Heights, MI in 1987.

The Musicians:
Dave Caruso: Lead vocals, backing vocals, piano, keyboards.
Rob Caruso: Drums, lead vocal on the third verse of "Young & Tender."
Bradley Davenport (a.k.a. Dave Bradley): Electric guitars.
Wally Piotrowski: Acoustic guitar
Eric Morgeson: Synclavier programming

From the Album: "In the Face"


(left to right) Joe and Rob Caruso

The Song:
"Released as the B-side to 'London,' 'Young & Tender' is for me the most successful original composition and recording on the "In the Face" album.  It's about the bittersweetness of meeting adulthood head on, shaking hands, and finding out that it' s not always as easy or painless as you planned. 

Having been encouraged early on as a musician and writer, with no real interest in sports, I was pretty sensitive in middle school and I had a rough time adjusting during that period in my life.  Even as I grew older, I related to the glut of teenage angst movies like the ones that brought fame to writer / director John Hughes and a host of young "Brat Pack" actors in the 1980s.

The 'pain of growing up' theme has appeared often in my writing, because for me, it isn't only about our teenage years.  We continue to learn and grow throughout our lives, and every time we think we've got it all down, life throws us another curve and we have to deal with it.
"Aside from the theme, another surprising aspect of the song comes from the structure of the lyric.  There are purposely no rhymes at all in the verses, yet somehow it sings so nicely that most people never even notice.  The opening lines, 'An image of youth / shattered on the floor / you're standing in the mirror / but there's no reflection,' indicate that a person who is looking in the mirror, due to changes and events, can no longer see the person of their youth.  It's intentionally unclear as to whether it's merely the image of their youth, the actual mirror, or both that now lay shattered on the floor.

The bridge to the chorus is short.  It begins by blending two overused phrases, 'love is blind' and 'the ties that bind' into a single, fresher phrase, 'love is the tie that blinds.'  Using sound-alikes rather than rhymes, the concepts of [blind love] and [what we choose to see] move us quickly toward the title.  This is accomplished seamlessly by ending the statement in the last line with the first line of the chorus.

The chorus sets the hook in several ways.  First, it starts with the title.  The word 'young' and the phrase 'and tender' are each punctuated by short pause, forcing the listener to reflect on the meaning behind the words, instead of letting them roll by as a familiar-sounding phrase.  Second, the chorus contains the song's only two rhymes, both internal, and by now very welcome.  The first rhyming couplet is 'you keep losing track of you / but I'm in there somewhere too.'  This couplet leads us back to the title a second time with 'when you're...Young and tender.'  Each time the word 'surrender' comes around, creating the only other rhyme in the song, it is introduced differently: 'you're fighting in the face of surrender,' 'you struggle in the grip of surrender,' and 'you're drowning in the sea of surrender.'  Each new phrase reinforces 'surrender' by making it fresh each time.

In the second verse, I enjoyed writing and singing the line 'dancing is the only thing that's easy,' because in reality, learning to dance can be awkward and embarrassing, but it's trivial when compared to some of the other things we have to face.

After much of the lyric has expressed a tone of desperation, the third verse lifts up the listener with a voice of encouragement from a friend or lover, in lines which alternate with the narration: 'Don't be afraid (You feel you can't recover) / Dry your tears away (But you always do) / Take one day at a time (You wanna grow up faster) / Take it slow and easy (I will wait for you).'"
 

"Rob suggested that I add echo lines in the last verse, inspired by Jules Shear's song, 'If She Knew What She Wants,' which scored a hit for The Bangles."  He sang the first 4 of these echo lines on the recording, and also contributed backing vocals on the chorus.  After I left Caruso, Rob became the lead singer and primary writer for the band.

On the original demo and in our live show before releasing the album, Young & Tender sounded quite a bit heavier, and more guitar-based.  As we began recording, we found that the album's new direction for the song was more appropriate to the title and theme. 

Eric Morgeson contributed some really great musical ideas, in addition to the beautiful production.  He was also very accommodating to any and all ideas we had.  We were concerned about being able to reproduce all the material from the album in our live show, and Eric kept that in mind as we arranged the instruments and vocals and produced the album together.

Young & Tender is still one of the most requested original songs in my live show."

Dave Caruso, January 1999

The Video:
Video Storyboard by Dave Caruso
Video Production by Debby Malchie
and Dave Caruso

"About two years after the release of the Caruso CD 'In the Face,' I wanted to put together a video retrospective of Caruso's work as a band, to be assembled from home movies, road video, live & studio production footage, and scrapbooks.  At that time, a piano student of mine named Debby Malchie was taking video production classes, which allowed her access to some video equipment.  I chose the source material and did the storyboard, and we produced it together.  The quality and synchronization isn't the greatest, due to the equipment that was available to us, but it really shows off all that Caruso accomplished together, as brothers and as a band.  I dubbed in the recently re-mastered digital audio track for this version.

The video starts out with the four Caruso brothers as kids in early family home movies, originally taken in color but converted to black & white to set up the earlier time frame for the viewer.  The story of the band progresses through our career via concert posters, the postcards we sent to our fan base each month, publicity photos, newspaper articles, our albums and singles, videos produced to promote the records, and live footage of the band.  The live footage includes a glimpse of one of our local TV appearances, home movies from a concert at the incredible Milwaukee Summerfest, and several scenes from one of our last public concerts, which took place outdoors at the Canfield Center in Dearborn Heights, MI.  The guitarist you see in that show was Lee Thomas, a good friend from Waterford, MI, and the last guitarist for Caruso during my tenure with the band."

Dave Caruso, January 1999

Reviews...

"Young and Tender" shows Dave's talent, not only as a fantastic singer/songwriter but also as a multi-talented musician and a natural performer.  The fantastically written and catchy song tells of the joys and hardships of growing older.  Not only does the song deliver a very strong and uplifting message, but the lyrics and musical composition of this song will make it an instant favorite for anyone who has the pleasure of hearing it."

Mike Bigsby
Niles, MI / 2008