THE NIGHT JOHN LENNON DIED:

The night John Lennon died I was watching TV and just about to turn it off and go to bed when they interrupted the program with the news. To say that I was devastated doesn’t come close. I was just getting started in my career and would go on to make my living in music for many years. I played piano bars, taught jazz at the New School and ran a rock ‘n’ roll pop – jazz – blues band. Music was all I lived for, and nobody personified that dream more than The Beatles.

The phone rang a minute later. It was my drummer, Steven “Machine Gun” Missal, an amazing talent who lived around the corner from me on the Upper Eastside. We met on 2^nd Avenue and slowly and sadly walked the neighborhood. In those days there were about 7 clubs in the area, all with live music. Many were little holes in the wall brimming with the greatest undiscovered talents of my generation. There was J.P’s, and Friends, and Home Bar, and Dr. Generosity’s, and Eric’s, all within a twenty block radius. And elsewhere in Manhattan there was Trax, and the Bottom Line, The Bitter End, Kenny’s Castaway’s, Folk City, CBGB’s, Max’s Kansas City… My band would go on to play in many of them regularly. New York was at a very bad point economically. The rents were low and the music was high. Many stars came to the clubs. James Taylor would take the stage after we were done at J.P.s and sing until 4 or 5 A.M. Keith Emerson of Emerson, Lake and Palmer sent us two bottles of champagne one night with his compliments on our work. Joey Kramer from Arrowsmith (a friend since high school) would sometimes attend our shows. I met Joni Mitchell, Al Kooper, Barry Manilow, Robin Williams. Spent nights doing bad things to my nose with many, including Bonnie Raitt, got drunk with Tom Waits; the list goes on and on. New York was so alive in those days. Of course you had to race to a cab and not walk down dark streets. It was dangerous, frightening and wonderful. And one night maybe a year before his death, at Home Bar on 2^nd Avenue, I had drinks and a lengthy discussion with Mr. Lennon as we watch the band. It was perhaps the highlight of my rather dreamy life. I was so young; I knew my dreams would never die.

That night Steve Missal and I went to J.P.s first. It felt most like home. My band played there regularly, and it had the best sound system in Manhattan, built by the sound genius, Jim Reeves. The mood was dark. The band had stopped playing, and as we went to all the other clubs in the neighborhood we found that all the bands had stopped. How could you play and sing when the very foundation of all you believed in was lying in a morgue downtown?

I drank a lot that night but couldn’t get drunk. My soul wouldn’t hide in a bottle. It needed to feel all the pain. Over the next week I wrote a song called “Where Does the Music Go When the Song is Over?” It was about John’s death, but I didn’t mention him in the lyrics. I’m not Elton John and Lennon wasn’t my good friend. He was my hero and my inspiration. That was the relationship we had and I needed.

The years that followed in New York in the 80s and early 90s were heady and quite amazing. I never did become the rock star many thought I would be. Some nights my audience had as many record executives checking us out as fans. I wrote hundreds of songs and made an album, and put “Where Does the Music Go” on it. I had a nationally charted single called “Love Isn’t Easy to Find” and eventually my path led me to Wall Street and other things. I continue to write songs when the muse visits me, and I still try to get my work placed in movies, TV or on country albums. I am finally putting up a website with my music for anyone who wishes to hear it. I’ve moved on to my careers as an astrologer and novelist, though I still love music more than anything on the planet. But only Peter Pan and the Rolling Stones can remain in Neverland.

And as I move forward, some things stay right next to me and never will leave. When I lost the great loves of my life, each a marriage I believed would last forever. When the friends I can never replace went away; some to their final rest and others to the sanctity of lost causes. When I lost my dear dog Goldie. Every memory a part of who I am. But each year at this time I always think of when we lost John Lennon. I’m thankful for having experienced all of it; even the pain of saying goodbye to those I thought would be here forever, for it’s often in loss that we truly find ourselves. I think back on all the nights my band got to play to the smiling faces looking up at me. And all the love I shared with the people who now seem a distant memory. And I realize that without my heroes I probably wouldn’t have done what I did, and perhaps in some small way I was someone’s hero. And I’m thankful for it all.

So please forgive my nostalgic meandering. This isn’t really about me. It’s about the clubs and a city so alive it was wonderful, and awe inspiring, and frightening. It’s about youth and arrogance, and hope, and the future. But mostly it’s about the music. And one chilly December night when the music stopped.

So rest in peace dear John. Even in our sorrow for what more you could have done, you gave us so much to be happy for. Imagine.