A Beautiful Song: A Musical Soul Story

by Michael Cantwell

  We met Elise in New York a few days before the performance. I also met with Carl to discuss future plans. He was still not getting much interest for our Evolution recordings. I told him to put them on the shelf. I would pick a better time to release them. I had to be back in town soon for rehearsals for the tour with The Overture. I told Carl maybe once The Overture was in the public eye again, we would try and find interest in the other recordings.

  The performance came off as well as could be expected. Elise ended up playing three songs and did a terrific job. We were all so proud of her. I think it was good for her daughters to see Elise perform. They knew she had in the past, but at their ages, it was hard for them to understand without seeing it. Of course my dad had to make sure he told her what a fine musician she was because “You have played the 1812 Overture with one of the finest orchestras in the world. Not many can say that including my son.” I knew it was more a running joke at this point, but when I told him that I was invited to perform as well his only response was “When you do, let me know.” I know Elise really enjoyed her evening and I think impressed the others. She truly was qualified to play with such a lofty group.

  Elise and the kids returned home. I stayed in New York for rehearsals with the band for the upcoming tour. I was looking forward to playing live with the band. The band other than Linda and Debby still seemed more interested in other projects. I was starting to wonder if this would be the last time we would work together as this combination of musicians. If it was, I wanted it to be memorable shows. My physical abilities had recovered quite well. However, my mental focus was lacking. It was not that I was really angry any longer. It was more except for the exception of my family; I didn’t really care about too many other things. Even though I wanted The Overture to continue and make strong music, I didn’t sweat all the details the way I had in the past. I let the band pick the play list for the upcoming tour. In years past I controlled that very carefully. It was still mainly songs from our past song lists, but we did add two from Billy’s band and one Duke wanted to record but never did. With four from Linda’s old catalogue and one each from the sixties and seventies releases, we were down to about twelve songs that were strictly Overture recordings. With three being from the new release, and four that we had to play every night or face an unhappy crowd, it left me few to pick from our past. On a few nights we planned to add two with just Linda, Debby and I from our recordings that were never released. I wanted to see if that would create a bit of a buzz for those songs.

  This time we started in Boston at the Garden. Sasha came out in a skin tight jump suit with a shamrock and the Boston Celtics logo on the sleeves. She had learned very well how to draw attention to herself. The band played well. I was pretty much standing off to the side and would take a few solos but it was not like years past. Before the show, I would want to perform but as the show would go on, I would start to lose interest. That really bothered me. No matter how hard I tried to change, I still failed.

  We did our usual three shows in New York City, with the last one having all the proceeds go to the Veterans groups. Even the administration at the Madison Square Garden didn’t charge the promoter rent the last night. The proceeds were huge for the veterans. I tried my best to focus. I am sure I did just fine, but it was not the same. I knew it. Skunk came the first night and we talked a bit after the show. He told me that Gordy asked him to come and check on me. “Stu, I listened to you play dude and you can’t fool me. The fire in your belly is gone. I know it and I know you do too. Gordy wants you to come and see him. Maybe you can get the fire back.”

  I told Skunk “I have never once stopped Gordy from seeing our shows and he has an open invitation to my home and he knows it. Tell Gordy from me that if he’s that concerned, he can find me.”

  “Stu, I am really disappointed in you” he quipped. “Gordy cares deeply about you and if you don’t know that then you are much more miserable than you seem.” I did my best to convince Skunk that I was perfectly fine but this was a man who knew me since before I could find A minor in first position on the neck of a guitar. He was not easy to fool. “Gordy is right Stu; you have lost your soul.”

  The tour moved on down to Philly then Washington and later to Raleigh North Carolina where Elise showed up with the girls and her parents. Her parents had never seen the band live, nor had my daughters since they were too young to understand. I think even Elise sensed this could be the last time we were together as a band. I think it’s why she made a big fuss about seeing the show.

  Elise joined the band on stage and played one encore with us. Sasha let her play her violin. I tried so hard to focus. I didn’t like the fact that I had to try so hard now to perform. It was once all so easy. I knew I still had the ability. Maybe Gordy and the others were right, I had lost my soul. The fire or whatever you wanted to call it was missing from my playing and my life. I was now taking too much Valium. I was sure combining that with the anti depressants was not helping, but I felt helpless to the addictions. It seemed like a very slow slippery slope.

  The studio album was released and sold well. We had three top 40 hits and it went quickly went gold. The record company was ready to sign a deal for another release but no one was in any hurry for another record, including me. The tour ended in Miami. After the show we all said our goodbyes like somehow everyone knew the end was staring us in the face. It was a very odd feeling. We still all had great chemistry as a band, but I no longer had the desire to keep it all together. I could not even keep myself on the right path, let alone a band. Maybe it was time to start a solo career. Possibly take a year off and see where my mind would be then. It was time to go home and be with my family.

  Once home, I didn’t hear from anyone in the band for months. I went to my kid’s school functions and played dad and husband all winter and spring. I went to my sessions with Dr. Summers as well as sitting at times with Pastor George. Dr. Summers started to lessen my medications, but I was still taking Valium without him knowing about it. Pastor George was constantly trying to get me to look at my faith. I would let him know that I was secure in what I believed. He was never convinced and would constantly tell me “You can’t make peace with yourself until you make peace with your God.” It didn’t matter to me what he or anyone else thought any longer. I wanted to live my life one day at a time. It was time to be a husband, dad and solo musician, in that order. There was no room for anyone else in my life.

  I took a trip to my parent’s house. My dad and I went to opening day at Veterans Stadium for the Phillies home opener. The band had played a few times across the parking lot at the Spectrum, so it was nice being back in the area. We put on some good concerts in that arena over the years. I thought my dad’s main goal was to take me to a ball game. On the way back home he rambles into a speech about “Taking ownership in being a man, confronting your issues and not running from them. Drugs can destroy lives and families” and so on and so on. I asked my dad “What is this all about?” “Well my son, I have seen things since the accident. I was hoping the doctors would get you straight. Elise is very concerned as well as your mother and me.”

  I felt like I was now involved with a one man intervention. I was doing fine and really felt like a nice day with my dad had been ruined. We snarled back at each other for the rest of the ninety minute ride home. When we got back at their home for Sunday dinner, my brother and sister and all their kids were there. You would think someone had just died. They all acted like I had leprosy or something. It was all very uncomfortable. My brother invited over a few old friends later in the evening. Even they were acting like I was a stranger. I could not wait to leave the next day to get back to North Carolina.

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  Chapter 23

  The next year was a blur. I sat home with the family and never left the area. We had planned a trip to my parents over summer break but it never happened. I think part of it was my dad and brother came down for hunting season and they started in on the “Yo
u need help with your drug habits.” I really didn’t see I had any issue with drugs. I was not into cocaine or pot. Sure I was now taking Valium without a prescription, but my anti depressants were cut in half over the past two years. I could handle life as it existed.

  My dad always instilled in me the value of a dollar. I didn’t have houses all over the country or own several race cars. We had a modest home but it was nothing spectacular. It suited our needs. Granted it was one of the finer homes in the area we lived in, however it was still a modest home with low taxes. Money was not really an object. Carl and his group had invested well for me. I was never one to spend on restaurants or “The next best thing”.

  We had enough to retire. But retirement was not in my plans. I was starting to receive offers to create a movie soundtrack. I could not tell if Elise wanted me out of the house or she liked having me around all the time. I think Diana liked having her dad around for the last two school years since she would take me to school for career day. Her classmates, although I think more her teachers, enjoyed having someone who was on an actual recording come to their classroom. I knew there was a local picker who could play almost as well as me, but then again I was the one with the giant poster of myself hanging in the local record shop.

  Mr. Altos called me to see if I could get the band together for another album. No one really wanted to do it, other than Linda and Debby. I would have done a second album with those two but the first one was still on the shelf. Not one company wanted to take a shot, other than on a very limited basis. I started to show up at a local bar that had a talent night just to play to a crowd. I don’t think I ever won the darn thing. I also don’t think I was really being counted as a real contestant. There were some who were pretty good, but I was still at a level better than most, even in a semi drugged stage. There were times I started to feel guilty for wasting my talents. The problem with an admission like that would be that I would have had to admit I was given special talent from God. I was not in a mood to accept that premise any longer.

  Life had become a daily routine of playing guitar, trying to write songs and physically spending time with my family. I say physically because I knew mentally they were only getting about fifty percent of a dad and husband. As much as I wanted to break from this trend, I could not. That all changed the day Elise told me that her cancer had returned. She had been doing so well. Everyone was hopeful she was rid of that horrible disease for good. It was not to be. This time it was spreading quickly and her health rapidly fell apart.

  The next eighteen months were possibly the worst of my life. Maybe I wanted to block out seeing my Elise in such misery, or maybe I was too far gone from all the pills, but I started to take even more pills. I should have been strong for her, but I resorted to more drugs. I was mentally weak. Elise was the one in real pain, not me. She was the one who was strong, not me. That is the pain I will take to my grave. I should have and could have done more to relieve her pain. I failed her.

  Some of her last words to me were “Stu, you are the only man I ever loved and ever wanted to love but you are no longer that man. My dying wish is that you become that man again for your daughters. It is too late for me. I will always cherish the times we had. I know you’re still there somewhere, please go search and find that man again. Your family needs Stu, not Dylan.” We buried her soon after that day, overlooking the mountains that she loved so dearly.

  Elise’s parents, Rose and George Andrews were salt of the earth people. I knew instantly the first time I met them. It was obvious where Elise got her personality and the everlasting smile on her face. They don’t make finer people than those two. They worked hard all their lives to make a living for each other, as well as for Elise. They gave to their community where they could, as well as being the best grandparents my daughters could ever wish to enjoy. They had fought me so many years ago when I paid off their mortgage. The gesture meant little to me in monetary terms, but was a huge mountain for them to climb. They were not ones to accept gifts from others.

  It took me a long time to make them realize it was not Elise and I looking down on them but merely a sign of respect for all the love they had given to my family. Every time my dad and brother visited for a hunting trip they would bring over the best homemade pies this side of the Mississippi. They truly cared for me as if I was a natural born son. There was nothing I could do that would ever be enough for me to repay them in my troubled mind. I know her dad had lost some degree of respect for me when I tuned out because of the pills, but he never blasted me for it. He stayed away from me. Rose and I had words once over my dependence but only once.

  As much as I wanted to show them I could be a good father after losing my wife, I was failing yet again. Rose would come over and cook us dinner a few nights a week and make sure the girls had clean clothes for the next day. I would try to do laundry and fill up the dishwasher when I could, but I would go and sit at the gravesite for hours on end hoping that maybe the search could end for the old Stu at my wife’s gravesite. This went on for weeks, if not months, until one day Rose was not feeling well with a cold and I had to take over for homework duty. We made it through all the math sections. I think I faked my way past the science homework. Not sure she got her best science grade on homework that night. The real issue was after homework.

  My younger daughter Deborah asked if I could teach her to play guitar. I was surprised. Neither girl had shown any interest in playing an instrument, despite seeing mine all the time. We sat down and I tried to show her a few chords to play a simple song. Her tiny hands and fingers were having a hard time getting around the neck of the instrument. Her fingers hurt with the heavy strings I used. But she did her best. My issue was that even though I was happy she wanted to learn how to play; it should have meant more to me. It meant more to her than it did to me. It should have meant so much more to me. The idea that my flesh and blood wanted to learn music should have moved mountains. It hit me hard that I was not a good father in this condition. I called Rose the next morning and told her that I was going to clean myself up. I would return back as the father my children deserved.

  Two days later I left for Italy. Maybe seeing Lorenza would help me clean up. I was so lost. My reasoning powers were next to zero. I went to where the last place I knew she lived. Sure enough she came walking out early during the first morning I was there. She looked a bit frail and her hair was showing some grey. I was not that close but down the street with binoculars. I wanted to see her before she saw me. I didn’t look the same since the last time she had seen me. I was pale and had lost forty pounds. My hair was longer and not always brushed. After she walked out of the door she was walking in the opposite direction. I remembered she could walk to her school house but who knows if she was still there or not. I followed from a distance as she walked into the small stone school house. I was too afraid to say a word. I did that same routine for several days until I realized I didn’t have the courage to let her see me. I would follow her to and from school and even walk past her home and try to look in the window as I passed. Once I realized what a horrible idea it was, I flew off to London.

  I had decided I would spend a few days in London, then head to New York and enter a drug rehab center. I didn’t know which one but I knew Carl would handle it for me. My in-laws only knew I was leaving to go “Get better and return to be a father.” I had not spoken with Carl or anyone in the band for months. They all attended Elise’s funeral, but that was the last I had seen any of them. I stopped going to see Dr. Summers after Elise took ill again. I didn’t want to leave her side. Pastor George would stop in to see Elise on a weekly basis but he spent his time with her. He didn’t say much to me, other than to support her. So I knew I was out there on my own now, with two children waiting desperately to meet the father they had yet to know. They only knew the one who traveled much of the time, then later the angry and later still the foggy minded one who could not always figure out where to put the dishes after cleaning out the dishwasher.


  I realized I could not stay too long in Europe since my stock pile of pills was running low. I would get them from a pharmacy not far from my house in North Carolina. I found a store employee who had a knack for getting prescription note tablets from a local doctor and filling them in to make them look like real prescriptions for a handful of cash. He warned me that “I can’t do this forever, only until my car is paid off.” So I sat here in a London hotel room knowing my time was about to expire on so many levels.

  When you are in such a state of mind, you see things in ways that are so twisted to reality yet you believe it’s all for a reason. I decided to walk by one of my two personal treasures for music playing in The Royal Albert Hall. There was a small line at the ticket office. I walked up to see what attraction was on sale. It was for Bob Dylan. I thought this was a sign that I was here for a reason. This was my send off back home. I would see Bob Dylan here in London, then leave the next day and return home. I didn’t take notice that the show was scheduled for three months later.

  I walked to the back of the line and waited patiently. After a few minutes in line, the lady behind me tapped me on the shoulder. As I turned around, she seemed to glare at me and stated, “We do have soap and water here you bum, I would suggest you find some.” I was a pretty big fan of British accents until that moment. I just ignored her. When it was my turn for tickets I handed the young lady my credit card. “I am so sorry Sir, but do you have another card, this one does not seem to work”, the ticket agent said with a disappointed look. I looked in my wallet and grabbed the only other one I had with me and handed it to her. She again looked sheepishly and once again said “I am so sorry Sir but this one has been canceled.” I told her “There must be some kind of mistake, I have plenty of money and my bills are always paid on time. I have people who handle all that for me.”