The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto
Page 19
The next night, I met with Paul McCartney at this private club, and he took me for a ride around London in his new Aston Martin DB5. I mentioned Frankie to Paul and he got all excited and said somebody told him Frankie had been in Elvis Presley’s band. There was a party later that week at one of the Rolling Stones’ houses—at that time, all the big British bands hung out together—and Paul said I should bring Frankie so he could ask if it was true. Everyone looked up to the Beatles, but the Beatles still looked up to Elvis.
So the next day I found out where they were shooting Frankie’s movie, and I dropped by. It was a warehouse off Carnaby Street, where we got our clothes back then—you know, the stretch jeans and the black zipper boots? I found Frankie just sitting by himself in one of those director chairs, sort of half asleep. He perked up when he saw me. He introduced me to his wife, Delores Ray, who was a big TV star in America.
I told Frankie about what Paul McCartney said, and Delores seemed really surprised. “When did you play with Elvis?” she asked, and Frankie said it was just a stupid rumor. When I invited him to the party, Delores got excited. She said, “The Beatles and the Rolling Stones? We’re coming!” But later, when she was shooting a scene, Frankie said he didn’t think it was such a good idea. I got the feeling his wife embarrassed him.
We talked more about guitars and I asked if he wanted to come by that night and jam at the hotel. He showed up a half hour early. He had this really old case and he pulled out a beat-up acoustic—I don’t even know what make it was, the label was covered—and we started playing. I noticed his hands were huge. A lot of great players have big hands, you know, like Jimi Hendrix, the way he could get his thumb over the neck? It gives you great control.
Anyhow, up to that moment, I thought I was a decent guitarist. But after twenty minutes, I didn’t even want to play. Frankie took these solos and created these really unique voicings and when I’d ask him, “What was that?” he’d mention some classical composer—Giuliani, Haydn—and then I’d say, “What was that?” and it would be Antonio Carlos Jobim or Wes Montgomery. And he wasn’t trying to show off. He was just so good, he couldn’t hide it.
We did the basic stuff you jam on, like “Midnight Special” and Jimmy Reed’s “You Got Me Dizzy.” And we played some Beatles songs. He had their arrangements down cold. At one point, he started smiling and I said, “What’s so funny?” and he said, “Nothing, I just haven’t really played guitar in a while.” And again, I wanted to crawl in a hole, because if this was how he sounded when he hadn’t played, you know? But I got the impression that he felt he’d sold out. I’m sure a lot of early rock and rollers felt that way, because in those days, everyone wanted you to do the same thing, over and over.
Frankie said he missed being in a band and I joked that he could join the Byrds if he promised not to break a string when the Beatles were in the audience. He looked at his guitar and he said, “Roger, do you know how old these top three strings are?” I said no. “Twenty years,” he said. No way, I said. They hadn’t broken? That’s not possible. And he shook his head and said, “I know. But it’s true.”
So, okay . . . the Beatles story. The party was in one of the Stones’ houses, maybe Keith Richards’s, sort of a fancy brownstone, three stories. I remember they showed us how the butlers would roll joints for them and leave them on the steps in the morning. There were a lot of drugs at that party—at any party during those years.
About an hour into it, Frankie showed up. I said, “I thought you couldn’t make it,” and he said, “I can’t stay long.” So I introduced him around and everyone was pretty cool. I remember me, Frankie, George Harrison, and Eric Clapton got into a discussion about Leadbelly, the old blues player, and Frankie knew all about him because he’d lived in Louisiana. He said that Leadbelly was so good he got pardoned from prison twice after the wardens heard him sing—once for killing a man! We laughed and said we should try that if we ever got busted.
I remember Frankie met Paul and Ringo, and they got along fine, even though Paul was disappointed when Frankie denied playing with Elvis. But when Frankie met John, John made some remark about his hair, because he was wearing it kind of mop top. John laughed and said, “The great Frankie Presto. Are you trying to look like us now?” I don’t think he meant anything, but it bothered Frankie, you know? He left soon after that.
I saw him a few days later and he still seemed upset and I told him to forget what John said, he was just that way. I said he should really get back into his guitar playing, he was so good, and if he ever wanted to jam on our records, we’d be lucky to have him.
We went back to America that week. I don’t know what happened with the movie Frankie was doing. I heard he walked out. I also heard he split up with his manager. The next time I saw him was the last time I saw him, maybe four years later, in a club in Greenwich Village. He was with this rock band, just standing in the back, playing rhythm. He didn’t sing. He had on dark sunglasses. I wasn’t even sure it was him until after the show. I went up and said, “Frankie?” and at first he seemed happy to see me, but after talking for a few minutes and remembering that party, he sort of clammed up. I asked if he wanted to jam sometime, but he said he couldn’t, he had a lot going on, his wife was expecting a baby. Maybe he was embarrassed to be playing in such a dive. I really don’t know. He asked if the Byrds were going to play at Woodstock and I told him no, we’d done enough festivals for a while. Then he excused himself to go to the bathroom and he never came back.
I felt awful when I heard he died. I was touring in France and I thought I owed it to him to come to his funeral, because he made me a better guitarist. He really did. That first night we played, I realized how far I had to go. Music can be competitive that way. Iron sharpens iron, like the proverb says.
Someone told me he made it to Woodstock, but I never found out for sure. . . . We would have known about that by now, right?
41
ALLOW ME TO ANSWER MR. MCGUINN’S QUESTION. Frankie did indeed make it to Woodstock. He would even play. But it was not the way anyone imagined it. He was not invited. No one asked him to be there. He went in the deluded hopes of recapturing what he once had, large crowds cheering his music. But no bands needed him, and, as you are about to hear, things went terribly wrong. His attendance became a sad chapter for a man who lost his way—and the end of a major movement in his symphony with Aurora York.
It was the minuet/scherzo, conducted in 3/4 time. If you tap your fingers to illustrate—1-2-3, 1-2-3, 1-2-3, 1-2-3—you sense an almost giddy rhythm. Indeed, the word scherzo translates to “joke.”
It was a word Frankie had begun to apply to himself in the mid-1960s, “A sad joke.” (Is there sharper counterpoint than that?) He felt his music was no longer taken seriously. He felt his desires were not being heard. That burning feeling he’d experienced in Tappy Fishman’s office had intensified and the comments John Lennon made about him being an imitation had heated it to an angry boil. In its bubbly wake, these are the things Frankie Presto did in the remaining months of 1965:
He walked away from the movie in London. That destroyed his film opportunities.
He walked away from Tappy Fishman. That destroyed his business opportunities.
He walked away from Delores Ray. That destroyed his marriage, and left him entangled in legal and financial complexities, most of which, to his detriment, he ignored.
He cut his hair.
Like Samson pulling the pillars down around him, Frankie crumbled all the things he’d become attached to in an effort to be free of them. Then, in the years that followed, he lost himself in the rubble. He fell into substances, believing, as I have lamented, that my truer powers might be discovered inside them.
He took up residence in New York City, in a dimly lit, ground-floor apartment on West Twelfth Street in Greenwich Village. He kept odd hours. He slept badly. He practiced incessantly,
and when not practicing, was often in an altered state. He worked for whatever group would pay him, played in whatever studio session would use him, took cash for leaving his name out of royalty reporting, and if they didn’t have money, he accepted pills, smoke, alcohol.
He found himself thinking about his childhood.
“Why do you drink so much, Maestro?”
“This is not a music question.”
“Are you sad, Maestro?”
“Again, not a music question.”
“I am sad sometimes, Maestro.”
“Practice more. Speak less. You’ll be happier.”
“Yes, Maestro.”
Everyone joins a band in this life.
Sometimes, they are the wrong ones.
42
1968
* * *
BUT BACK TO THE LOVE STORY. THE MINUET. A SHORT DANCE. One December day, Frankie answered his door in Greenwich Village, half dressed, bleary-eyed, and there she was, Aurora York, wearing a scarf and gloves, her blond hair tucked under a hat.
“Are you done with that actress?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Paperwork finished?”
“Yes.”
“We can get married now?”
“If you want.”
“The real way?”
“The real way.”
“I just came to make sure.”
“Will you stay?”
“No.”
He didn’t see her again for several weeks. On a Thursday afternoon, she knocked again.
“Are you practicing?”
“Yes.”
“Are you playing?”
“When I can.”
“Are you taking drugs and drinking?”
“Sometimes.”
“You have to stop.”
“I know.”
“Then do it.”
“Will you stay?”
“No.”
The next month, she came again. This time she spent a few hours. The next month, she came and spent the night.
She repeated this pattern, short dances—a minuet defined—throughout the winter and into the spring, until, on a Monday morning in the middle of a blowing rainstorm, she appeared again. This time, she was holding an umbrella in one hand and her yellow suitcase in the other.
Frankie smiled.
“Will you stay?” he asked.
“I’m pregnant,” she said.
43
1969
* * *
IT IS TIME WE FINISH THE WOODSTOCK JOURNEY. Frankie had finally reached the backstage area. By this point, the festival had dissolved into mass confusion. Helicopters had brought the performers to a landing area, where they traversed a wooden bridge to reach the stage, but they were left waiting for long stretches, and many did not know when they were supposed to play. The rain wreaked havoc with the electricity. Amplifiers frizzled. Supplies ran out. By the dark hours of Sunday morning, the event had the feel of a lingering party, one that had no real end anymore, just hordes of people fighting sleep and trying to keep dry.
One story often told is that the drinks backstage were laced with hallucinogenic drugs. I cannot confirm this. But I do know that when Frankie finally got there, he was beyond thirsty and drank the first thing he saw, from paper cups arranged on a fold-up table. His face was streaked with mud and his white shirt was filthy. He rolled his head from side to side.
“Aurora . . . baby . . . breakfast,” he kept mumbling.
He stared at the other musicians, who smirked at him or looked away. A large bucket of water sat near some paper towels. Frankie splashed his face and wiped off the mud.
Finally, amid the blaring music of a band named Sly & The Family Stone, singing a song called “Stand!” Frankie twisted left and right, and began his final minuet.
“Aurora!”
He yelled it spinning. He yelled it staggering. He held up the egg carton.
“Aurora! I’m back! Aurora!”
He slipped. He got back up. His screams were swallowed by the music, and when a vocal popped or a guitar screeched, you could not hear him at all.
“Stand! . . .”
“Aurora!”
“Stand! . . .”
“Aurora!”
“Stand!”
She was nowhere to be found.
And so finally, when the band finished to great applause—it was 4:05 in the morning—the stage lights went off. All was black.
And Frankie decided to play his guitar.
To draw Aurora to him.
And change their fate.
What happened next is not pleasant to recount and, in defense of my cherished disciple, he was not himself. His body, mind, and heart were in three separate places. He stumbled up the ramp and approached the giant stage. No one stopped him because he had a guitar around his neck and moved like a musician who knew where he was going. A few workers had begun setting up for the next act (the celebrated British band The Who) but it was late and they were exhausted and paid no heed to the long-haired musician moving purposefully toward the wall of amplifiers.
Mumbling to himself, Frankie picked up the jack end of a gray cable and slammed it into the output of his guitar, which he had equipped with an electric pick-up. He could not hold the eggs and play, so he lay the carton down. The top popped open. In the limited moonlight, he could see that all the eggs were broken.
His eyes welled up with tears.
What you cannot know—what no one knew—was what happened a few weeks earlier, the night Roger McGuinn saw Frankie in New York. Aurora, pregnant, had moved into his apartment, under the strict agreement that Frankie straighten up, come directly home after playing, and prepare to be a good father to their baby. No drugs. No drink. No other women. She was five months along and their new arrangement had worked for a while. But Frankie, upon seeing McGuinn, was reminded of London and 1965 and the Beatles and the party and how far he had fallen from his once-worldwide fame—playing in this dank and smelly nightclub—and his ego was bruised and he grew depressed and he stayed out until dawn, drinking and smoking with musicians in the club’s basement.
Just after sunrise, he stumbled back to his apartment, ashamed of his relapse and preparing for a confrontation. But it was dark inside and he was quiet entering the bedroom, and he slipped under the blanket while Aurora slept. His movement nudged her slightly awake, and she rolled over to put an arm around him.
“Francisco,” she mumbled.
“Aurora,” he whispered.
“It means dawn.”
“I know.”
“I’m hungry. If you love me, you’ll make me breakfast.”
He sighed deeply. He was safe. She didn’t know. He would never do this again. He swore it to himself.
“I’ll get some eggs,” he promised.
All he had to do was stay awake.
But his eyes closed.
The night had done him in.
An hour later, having woken to find Frankie snoring into the pillow, Aurora decided to get her own breakfast and make something for him as well. There was nothing in his refrigerator, so she pulled on a jacket, took her handbag, and left the apartment. She purchased a carton of eggs and an onion at a grocery. On her way back, a block from home, she was accosted by three young men who sprang from an alley, pushed her, and grabbed for her bag. The strap was hooked on her arm and as she pulled back on it, she spun directly toward one of the attackers, who raised his leg and kicked her hard in the stomach. She fell to her knees, the bag still on her shoulder. He kicked her again to snap it loose. The other two cursed at him and ran away, and he turned and ran as well.
A taxi screeched to a halt. A man jumped out. Aurora made a small gurgling sound, then dropped to the pavement and began to shake.
“Who did it?” he mumbled.
She shook her head.
“How did they . . .”
She shook her head.
“Why . . .”
He was out of words.
“Where were you?” she whispered.
From that moment to the moment he started playing at Woodstock was a blur of weeks, and while Frankie could barely recall a thing, I can attest to the fact that he had not been sober a single day of them. He couldn’t face her. He couldn’t face anything. He staggered home from the hospital, grabbed his guitar and didn’t come back. He hitchhiked to upstate New York, taking any drug he could to avoid thinking about what happened. But his tortured mind could not forget. Instead, he imagined Aurora every day in every way, until reality and fantasy lost their distinction. Finally, at Woodstock, he imagined her sleeping on that hillside (“If you love me, you’ll make me breakfast.”) and set out on a pointless quest for eggs.
And now, in the darkness of the stage, wanting only to see her once more, he tried the last thing he could think of to change what had happened.
He stepped away from the broken shells and angrily spun the volume knob on his guitar pickup. He heard a hum from a giant amplifier. An empty beer bottle was sitting on top of it. Somewhere in his blurry memory, Frankie recalled a trick Hampton Belgrave had shown him. He smacked the beer bottle on the amp’s edge, breaking it cleanly in two, then took the neck portion and slipped his ring finger through the spout, creating a glass “slide”—a device blues players use to affect the strings’ pitch and vibrato. The moisture felt good on Frankie’s skin and he tapped his foot twice and ran the slide up the neck and fired a screaming B-seventh chord, as if to jangle the music loose.