Nine Days' John Hampson now teaches English at Wantagh HS

When Paul Guzzone joined Wantagh High School as its principal two years ago, someone pointed out that he had a rock star on his staff. Guzzone took it as a figure of speech: “I know, you’re all rock stars!” he replied. “But they said, ‘No — literally.’”

It’s an open secret that English teacher John Hampson once fronted a rock band called Nine Days, known for its hit single, “Absolutely (Story of a Girl).” With its skip-along rhythm and singalong hook, the song was inescapable during the summer of 2000, peaking at No. 6 on the Billboard charts. When rock stardom proved more grueling than glamorous, however, Hampson found a new career in education and contented himself with making music on the side.

Today, “Absolutely (Story of a Girl)” is being heard by millions all over again. It popped up last year in “Everything Everywhere all at Once,” the oddball sci-fi-comedy that is widely expected to win Best Picture at Sunday’s Oscars. It’s also been featured in “Shrinking,” the Apple TV+ series starring Harrison Ford and Jason Segel as mental health therapists.

“It was time for this song to come back,” said Mark Fried, a Great Neck native and CEO of Mojo Music and Media, the independent publishing company that helped place “Story of a Girl” in “Shrinking.” An entire generation “fell in love with it, they got sick of it and then they went on with their lives,” Fried said. “But when you’re at a place 15 years later, you have a nostalgic longing for hearing it again.”

One person who remembered the song was Daniel Kwan, the 35-year-old co-writer and co-director — with Daniel Scheinert — of “Everything Everywhere All at Once.” Two years ago in March, Hampson was pumping gas when he got an email alerting him that the filmmakers wanted to talk. It turned out Kwan had accidentally written a line of dialogue — “Your clothes never wear as well the next day, and your hair never falls in quite the same way” — that came from Hampson’s lyrics. A Zoom meeting with Kwan and Scheinert followed, and Hampson wound up recording altered versions of “Story of a Girl” to fit two of the movie’s typically bizarre scenes. (One involves a raccoon, the other a dominatrix.) The lyric-inspired dialogue stayed in as well.

“It just continues to amaze me that the song has a life,” Hampson said, sitting in his home studio in St. James on a late February evening. Quoting F. Scott Fitzgerald’s famous dictum that there are no second acts in American lives, he noted: “That just seems patently untrue to me.”

Hampson, 51, grew up in Shoreham and Calverton and began playing in bands while a student at Riverhead High School. In 1993, while living in a Deer Park duplex and working as a guitar salesperson at Music Land in Lindenhurst, he formed the band that eventually became Nine Days, coalescing around fellow guitarist-vocalist Brian Desveaux, drummer Vincent Tattanelli, keyboard player Jeremy Dean and bassist Nick Dimichino.

Hampson established a label, Dirty Poet, to self-release the band’s albums. (The first, 1995’s “Something to Listen To,” was recorded at Sabella Studios in Roslyn Heights.) As Nine Days began generating music-industry buzz, a friend gave Hampson some advice: “He said, ‘Write a hit. You can do it.’ ”

And Hampson did, during Memorial Day weekend of 1998. Nine Days was booked at a venue in Island Park, and the singer was bickering with his girlfriend. After she stomped away, Hampson recalled, “I thought, ‘She drives me nuts — but I absolutely love her when she smiles.’”

The words became lyrics, and within half an hour Hampson had the basis of “(Absolutely) Story of a Girl.”

“It just came,” Hampson said. “And I knew.”

A demo of the song led to a deal with Epic Records, which released the single in March 2000. Nine Days’ major-label debut, “The Madding Crowd” (partially titled after a 19th-century novel by Thomas Hardy), came out in May. And so began Hampson’s journey into the music-industry hurricane.

“It’s everything you think it is,” Hampson said. “I had a schedule from six in the morning until I got done playing my show that night. It was filled with radio visits, radio handshakes, radio shows, acoustic shows, promos …”

The pace slowed after a follow-up single, “If I Am,” underperformed. A second album was recorded, but Epic declined to release it. In the meantime, Hampson had married the song's inspiration, Teresa Savino, of Nesconset, who was teaching Italian at Wantagh High School. By 2004, they were expecting twins. For Hampson, being an absentee father in an ever-touring rock group began sounding less than ideal.

One morning, Hampson recalled, “I looked over at her, and I was like: ‘What the hell am I doing?’ ” That day he registered at Suffolk Community College in Selden, the first step in his path toward a teaching career. (Hampson eventually earned a master’s degree in English literature from Stony Brook University.)

Today, "Mr. Hampson" is known schoolwide as The Guy Who Wrote That Song. “He’s so humble, it’s crazy,” said Rachel Rissland, a 16-year-old junior at Wantagh High. “We try getting him to talk about it and he refuses.”

Hampson still makes music: While teaching he has released six albums, three with Nine Days and three as a solo act. Most days, he and his wife commute together to school — "Mrs. Hampson" still teaches Italian at Wantagh High, upstairs from his classroom — then drive back home. Their twins are now in college.

“I am incredibly fortunate, because I’ve dreamed of being on stage and playing music since I was a very little kid,” Hampson said. “I didn't get some of the things I thought were part of my dream. But I got enough amazing experiences that I'm very content.”

He added: “I got a great second act.”

By Rafer Guzmán

rafer.guzman@newsday.com@raferguzman