a coherent collection of random statements regarding God, words and tunes

“All you need is love and a bulletproof vest….”

         Hard to believe it’s been 25 years. We all have our indelible moments, and like many of the other ones in my life I was more or less the last to know it, and at a most ironic time. (Case in point: I found out about the Towers, 15 miles away, via an intercom message from the CEO of the company I was at then, excusing us to go home “due to the events in New York City…” I got the full story from the guy in the urinal next to me a few minutes later…. “WHAT??? Are you SERIOUS???”)  

             On Monday evening, December 8, 1980, unlike much of the country, I was not watching Monday Night Football. I didn’t have the TV on at all, in fact, although I was at home. It was “the winter of Tension Envelopes” (not quite the Summer of Love, but as meaningful to me, anyway). Mike Hegger, our drummer, and Richie Puetz, our all-purpose sound man and whipping boy, were over, as were a half-dozen or so teenage girls from Bloomingdale, NJ — noticeably younger than us. Don’t worry… mostly nothing happened.

              But here’s the thing there: My musical horizons — and what I thought a great album looked like — were expanding exponentially at the time. A lot of it was byrnes’ fault, but I had also made enough discoveries on my own. Plastic Ono Band was one of those discoveries. To-the-bone, heart-wrenching stuff. My parental situation wasn’t as bad as John Lennon’s – my mother was (and is) still alive, as was (and is) my father — but they did divorce when I was seven and I was already moved out from my mother and her abusive pill-addict 2^nd husband pretty much the minute I turned 18 (and I was 19 at this point), so I had more than enough hubris to help me scream along with “Mother” or “Well Well Well.” And Lennon’s description of God at that point worked as well for me as anything else back then.  

            All of which leads up to the fact that on this evening, of all the possible evenings I could’ve chosen, I abandoned my undying allegiance to The Who’s Quadrophenia (which almost singlehandedly carried me through my 18^th summer for reasons you can well imagine) and declared Plastic Ono Band the best album I’d ever heard. (And I still put it in my top 3, by the way.) 

            So when I got up the next morning, picked up the paper in my front yard, and began to read, it was a damn good thing the side of the house was there to catch me. 

            I’m pretty sure the first person I called was our guitar player, Rick Neblung. Heck, I’m pretty sure Rick was the first person everyone we knew called. Rick was a Beatlemaniac to the core; even had one of Lennon’s drawings on his wall (let’s just say Yoko was enjoying the moment being depicted), long before he could’ve become independently wealthy by selling it. Rick wasn’t having the easiest year either, as his parents were in the middle of a divorce (and as he worked for his dad — and for that matter, their industrial-sculpture studio was where we practiced every night — it was that much more difficult to avoid thinking about it constantly). Actually, maybe that’s why Rick was handling it far better than any of us expected. It was probably almost a welcome distraction. Like the rest of us, he was numb, but not in pieces.

            Today was an even better excuse than normal to skip college, so we spent the day cruising around, talking. Needless to say, the airwaves were filled with nothing but Beatles/Lennon music, so in a way it was also a celebration of a life and a body of work that only a handful of people could touch. The first real snap back to the reality of the moment was when “Whatever Gets You Through the Night” came on. I’m pretty sure Rick was groaning audibly even before the line came across…. simply in anticipation of it…. “Don’t need a gun to blow your mind…. oh no, oh no….” (I suspect even the DJ didn’t realize it until it was too late. Since this was still only 1980, at least no-one had the bad taste/insensitivity to play “Happiness Is a Warm Gun” that day.)

            We got through our day, and decided to rendezvous at tim’s basement apartment in Mahwah that evening. I’m thinking Mike wasn’t there, but the other three of us were, as well as our manager Roger Waters, and our number-one fan whose real name I forget because we always called him Hoja (John?)Higgins — kind of a jolly lumberjack. There may have been someone else there; I forget now (Richie?). I seem to remember it snowing lightly that evening. I don’t remember for sure, but it would have fit perfectly if it had.  

           Again, just left the radio on, passed around the chemicals, and remembered and soaked in the music. It was a fairly calm night. We all felt it, but none of us quite expressed it. You know, typical man behavior, even in the face of the brutal and wasteful death of a less-than-typical man. 

          And then it came on. 

         “And so this is Christmas…. And what have yooooooou done….” 

          Suddenly, the room was transformed into five or six guys looking despairingly at each other, trying their damnedest not to cry. I think we more or less succeeded. No-one wept openly, in any case, but the misery was palpable.

          It was probably our loss that we did succeed in keeping it in. It was certainly our loss that day, no matter what. All of our losses.

Posted by: burninglight at 14:19 | link | comments (1)

#1  09 December 2005 - 19:00

 

well put, Carl, brought me back.

timbyrnes