The Boy Who Cried Freebird

by Mitch Myers

  “Oh, I survived,” the old man replied. “But that wasn’t the worst of it. We were still getting along pretty good until members of our group started to die. It always seemed like an accident or a suicide, but it kept getting harder to accept.”

  “Tell him about the T-shirts, Harold.” The old woman was standing in the hallway. She hobbled into the room and sank into an over-stuffed easy chair. “Tell him about the tie-dyes.”

  The old man sighed and explained how Sam, who was supposedly a cousin of Bobby Beausoleil, had made these special tie-dyed T-shirts and handed them out to several “chosen” members of the clan.

  “And?” Adam asked. “What happened to the people who wore the tie-dyes?”

  The old couple looked at each other. “Let’s just say nothing good ever happened to any of them,” the old man answered.

  “Nothing good at all,” the woman added. “I thought the T-shirts were dyed with blood. That’s why I never wore mine.”

  The old man nodded, “That’s when we decided to leave the group.”

  The old woman became silent, clicked on the television, and began staring into space. “I’m going to have to ask you to leave now,” the old man said. “There’s nothing more to tell.”

  Adam returned home calm and resolute and began formulating his plan. The first thing he did was clean his apartment. Next, he went to the store and bought some groceries and a few bottles of wine. Then he came back home and waited.

  He didn’t wait long. The next day was Friday and his phone rang early in the morning. “Baby, it’s me,” cooed Tina. “I’m sorry I didn’t call sooner. I’ve been in a horrible mood. You know how upset I’ve been since Andrea died. I’ve just been staying home. Can I come see you tonight? I miss our weekends together.”

  When Tina arrived, Adam was cooking up a storm. It was a vegetarian delight with steamed eggplant, couscous, black beans, fried tofu, sautéed vegetables, and a spinach salad. The lights were dim and tall candles were burning on the dining room table. A bottle of red wine was already uncorked and the XM radio was playing classics from the ’60s.

  “Did you bring any weed?” Adam asked.

  The question caught Tina off guard. “What? Oh yeah, I did,” she answered. “We, uh, I have a connection for this great homegrown.”

  Adam laughed and said, “Well, get rolling, honey, we’ve got a big night ahead.”

  Their dinner was sweet and gentle, with just a hint of sadness. They each played their own familiar part and it almost felt like old times. After the meal, much wine, and smoke, Adam took Tina into the bedroom and tenderly made love to her.

  Through it all, Tina declined to remove her shirt.

  Afterward, Adam whispered, “I’m going to take a shower, want to join me?” “No, I don’t think so,” she sighed. “Come on,” he urged. “I’ll scrub your back.” “I said no!” she snapped. “Just take your shower and quit bugging me!”

  In the shower, Adam calculated his next move. He thought he would distract Tina with more sex but when he came out of the bathroom she’d already left the bed. The music was turned up loud, but he could hear her moving their dinner plates into the kitchen. Adam threw on a robe and came out into the living room.

  Then Adam realized that he was feeling very strange—kind of lightheaded and queasy but more than just that. He sat down on the couch and stared at the Persian rug under his feet while Tina cleaned off the table and washed the dishes. The music seemed to whirl around his head and he could almost see the notes as they streamed from the speakers. Finally, it occurred to Adam that Tina had slipped him some sort of hallucinogenic drug.

  He wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but when he looked up Tina was standing in front of him. She wasn’t smiling.

  He confronted her—almost without words. “Why?” he asked.

  “I thought it would bring us closer together,” she answered. “But that’s never going to happen. You’re too uptight.”

  With that, Adam’s rage came pouring forth. He swore at Tina, insisting that the T-shirt was cursed and demanding that she take it off so that he could destroy it. The dispute degenerated into a tirade of mutual resentments as they screamed and brought up old grudges. Haunting rock music blared as Jim Morrison intoned, “This is the end, my only friend, the end.”

  Adam tried to rip the tie-dye from Tina’s body. She picked up an ashtray and swung it at his head. He tackled her and they began rolling around on the floor.

  Somewhere in the course of their struggle Adam began to get aroused and Tina started moaning. “Fuck me,” she cried, pulling his hair. They toppled over a bookcase as Adam raised Tina’s legs over his shoulders. He was seeing vivid colors all around him and the music of the Doors was pounding into his brain.

  They were screwing under the dining room table when Tina accidentally called him Clem. Adam locked his hands around her throat and shouted, “Clem? I should have known! I could kill you!” The pair flailed violently, knocking over the candles on the dining room table. Flames shot up around them as they fought.

  By the time the fire department arrived, the apartment was consumed in flames. The building had to be evacuated and it took five hours to extinguish the blaze.

  A few months later, the old hippie couple opened their garage door for another sale. And while Harold put up a sign on the front lawn, his wife slipped another tie-dyed T-shirt into the bottom of the box on the makeshift counter.

  Then she sat down, and began staring into space.

  —The End—

  ALMOST

  Did I ever tell you about my young friend Danny Whitehouse? Danny was a teenaged rock obsessive who listened to all the current music—then he saw the movie Almost Famous and it changed his life.

  Danny really loved Almost Famous and after watching it about a dozen times, he began buying old vinyl from the ’70s, specifically albums by the artists featured on the Almost Famous soundtrack.

  He was a methodical music fanatic and began by getting every old Allman Brothers Band album he could find. He loved Greg Allman’s voice and the way Duane Allman’s slide guitar burned around Dickey Betts’s stinging leads.

  From there, Danny moved into the southern rock stylings of Lynyrd Skynyrd and their famous three-guitar attack. Danny thought Skynyrd weren’t quite the musicians that the Allmans were, but they rocked a lot harder and singer Ronnie Van Zandt wrote some meaningful songs.

  It wasn’t long before Danny was scouring the used bins for albums by Led Zeppelin and the Who. Almost Famous used an instrumental piece from the Who’s rock opera, Tommy, and while the tune showcased familiar riffs from Pete Townsend’s guitar, it was John Entwhistle’s rumbling bass that captured Danny’s imagination. And while Led Zeppelin’s dynamic, blues-based music was exhilarating, he actually preferred the softer, more romantic side of Jimmy Page and Robert Plant.

  Danny really began picking up speed as he acquired old albums by Simon and Garfunkel and Cat Stevens. While he treasured Tea for the Tillerman, Danny found Cat’s later recordings less interesting. The same went for Elton John and Rod Stewart—Danny cherished their early stuff but decided that they had lost artistic depth as they aged.

  Then Danny immersed himself in the arty eclecticism of early Todd Rundgren and the lighter-than-air psychedelia of midperiod Beach Boys. He loved the fact that Rundgren played all of the instruments by himself in the recording studio. Beach Boys albums like Holland and Surf’s Up convinced Danny that Brian Wilson’s orchestral pop harmonies and acid-tinged production were the work of absolute genius.

  From there Danny went on to the prog-rock of Yes and the androgynous glam-punk of David Bowie. Danny imagined that the Yesmen had studied classical music and thought that Bowie had gotten a lot of mileage out of imitating Lou Reed.

  Danny delved into psychedelic garage-rock and spent a big chunk of change on a pristine copy of the original Nuggets collection.

  I was impressed when Danny pursued the seductive R&B of the blind soul singer Clarence
Carter. Carter’s version of “Slip Away” was used in Almost Famous as well as the film Wonder Boys. I assumed that Danny would begin another acquisition process based on Wonder Boys’ retro soundtrack, but he never even bothered to see that movie.

  Instead, he purchased a copy of Thunderclap Newman’s first album, the one with the song “Something in the Air.” Danny paid a premium for vinyl with the original cover art and was happy to learn that Pete Townsend had produced the record.

  But there was one tune on the Almost Famous soundtrack that really turned his world upside down. Stillwater’s “Fever Dog” begins with a bone-crushing riff and a hearty wail from the group’s lead singer. With the song’s sinuous bass line, stratospheric guitar, and Cro-Magnon drumbeats echoing in his ears, Danny was eager to purchase any and all albums by Stillwater—but it was not to be.

  You can imagine his disappointment when a clerk at the record store told him that Stillwater was just an imaginary band, created expressly for Almost Famous.

  At first, Danny couldn’t believe it. “But ‘Fever Dog’ sounds so great,” he cried. “If their music is totally contrived, what does that say about all of these other records that I’ve been buying? They don’t sound all that much better than Stillwater!”

  So that was it for Danny and his record buying. As a matter of fact, he sold off all of the old albums that he’d been collecting so obsessively.

  Danny took that money and bought himself an electric guitar. Nowadays he leads a ’70s cover band and plays gigs every once in a while at a club downtown.

  Perhaps you’ve heard of Danny’s band. They’re called “The Cameron Crowes.”

  (Hey, what about the Oliver Stones?—ed.)

  A TRUE STORY

  I believe it was 1981. I was a college student at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. My sister, her boyfriend, my date, and I were attending a big Jeff Beck concert at the local arena. It was a little bit more than halfway through the show when I turned to my sister’s beau and said, “Do you have a comb?”

  He acknowledged that he did indeed have a comb and pulled it out of his back pocket to offer it to me. So I said, “Throw it on the stage.”

  He said, “What?” and I said again, “Throw it on the stage.”

  Of course, things were pretty noisy with Jeff Beck wailing away on his guitar and my sister’s boyfriend wasn’t exactly the smartest dude anyway, so he said, “What?”

  This time I yelled at him, “Throw it on the stage! Throw the comb on the stage!” The poor guy just looked at me, unable to see any purpose behind my command, and stood there frozen with the comb in his hand.

  Finally, I said, “Screw it” and grabbed the comb from him. I hurled it onto the stage where it fell about ten feet from where Jeff Beck was playing his guitar. For the next twenty minutes we watched Jeff Beck with rapt attention.

  “He didn’t see it,” my date said. “Just wait” was my measured response.

  Naturally, my sister’s boyfriend was kind of angry that I had thrown his nice comb onto the stage, but we were never that close and I wasn’t too concerned about how he might have felt.

  The show began drawing to a close and Jeff Beck was standing just a few feet away from the stupid comb. As he stalked the stage, Beck seemed to be walking all around the comb but never looked down or gave any indication that he might have noticed it lying there.

  “He doesn’t see it!” my date shouted. “Just wait!” I yelled.

  Then, Jeff Beck was standing right over the gosh-darned comb, his legs splayed in a classic rock guitar-god pose. We were going nuts in anticipation. “He doesn’t see it!” my date screamed as she pounded on my shoulder with her fists. “He sees it!” I screamed back.

  Suddenly, as if on cue, Jeff Beck reached down, grabbed the comb, and viciously attacked the six strings of his electric guitar making a raucous, buzz-saw squall with the teeth of the plastic utensil.

  Then he threw the comb back into the crowd.

  After the show was over, everyone kept asking how I’d known that Jeff Beck was going to use the comb I’d thrown his way. I answered then as I do now—with a shrug, and then a wink.

  And although I can’t ever seem to recall the name of my sister’s old boyfriend, you have to admit, it was a night to remember.

  SPIRITS, GHOSTS, WITCHES, AND DEVILS

  On July 21, 1967, Albert Ayler was dressed in white and blowing his saxophone up toward the heavens. Ayler often reared back and played with his tenor pointed high, but this time the gesture had a particular spiritual significance; he was performing at John Coltrane’s funeral services. At Coltrane’s request, only Ornette Coleman’s ensemble and Ayler’s group played at St. Peter’s Lutheran Church in Manhattan that day.

  Since Ornette Coleman was considered Coltrane’s equal—one who’d contributed greatly to the birth of a new, original music—it was easy to imagine Trane’s parting gesture as a passing of the torch to Ayler, the younger saxophone hopeful.

  The free-jazz explosion of the 1960s had been instigated years earlier by a few select visionaries: pianist Cecil Taylor, who combined his classical training with a doggedly improvisational approach; altoist Coleman, who brought his exceptional quartet from Los Angeles to New York in 1959 and blew everybody’s minds; astral bandleader Sun Ra, who claimed to be from outer space and led the most innovative big band since Duke Ellington’s; and the determinedly inventive saxophone giant, John Coltrane.

  Albert Ayler arrived on the scene well after those innovators, when New York was teeming with young musicians caught up in the sounds of the changing times. The music they made had many different names: the New Thing, free jazz, energy music, and avant-garde. Later on, it was called Black Classical Music or Great Black Music, though some practitioners were white.

  Race could be an issue, but it was the confluence between black and white bohemia—often occurring in the East Village—that allowed for much of the new music to develop. Free jazz wasn’t being played in clubs at the time, and the musicians were forced to create their own scene amidst a shifting urban backdrop.

  The culture wars had begun and avant-garde jazz coincided with the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, political assassinations, psychedelic consciousness, white and black radicalism, and the influx of Eastern philosophies. Old beats and young folkies were still cavorting in Greenwich Village cafés near the corners of Bleecker and Mac-Dougal, and rock ’n’ roll was rearing its head for the second or third time.

  Brandishing its deep black cultural roots, the “New Thing” came to life in Village coffeehouses like the Take 3 and converted performance spaces like the Astor Place Playhouse or the Dom. It thrived in outdoor parks, community centers, lofts, and the sawdust-and-spit confines of Slugs’ Saloon on the Lower East Side.

  “We were all in New York during the revolution,” remembered saxophonist Sonny Simmons. “And all them bad motherfuckers were rebelling against all that old, tired shit. We had Duke Ellington and Count Basie and all them swinging, jamming and jumping off of the rafters. Here comes the Beatles, and here comes James Brown talking about ‘Give it up.’ Here comes Marvin Gaye, all these people—Smokey Robinson, Janis Joplin, and Big Brother and the Holding Company. The brothers changed things, but Albert Ayler…was the only brother I know, other than Eric Dolphy, who shook Coltrane up. I was there and I witnessed it.”

  The voices of free jazz converged in Manhattan and then shot out across the world. Besides the groups of Coleman, Taylor, Sun Ra, and Coltrane, other improvisational collectives were emerging and a grand sense of unity pervaded.

  “We were all in the same place at the same time,” recalled drummer Rashied Ali. “It was so strange how we all were thinking about playing something different as far as the music was concerned. Everybody was so compatible—we were into the same kind of a groove and it was great.”

  In 1964, the free-jazz scene coalesced into a series of concerts—wryly called the October Revolution—held at the Cellar Café. Many of the renegades
who participated in the October Revolution also helped to form the (short-lived) Jazz Composers Guild. Albert performed with them, but he never joined the organization. Ayler was soft-spoken, articulate, and enthusiastic, and he followed his own vision.

  “I walked into the Take 3 one night in 1963,” said trombonist Roswell Rudd. “I heard something the likes of which I never heard before, which was Albert Ayler—in a green leather suit with a white patch on his beard—and Cecil Taylor and [drummer] Sunny Murray and [bassist] Lewis Worrell playing on the far side of the room. I was just shattered by what they played, so when Albert came to the front to go outside, I introduced myself. I said, ‘Who are you?’ He said, ‘Oh, I’m nobody.’ I said, ‘Well, it didn’t sound that way.’”

  “Albert was not only original, he was incredibly accessible,” maintained pianist/composer Carla Bley. “People who didn’t even understand music could get into what he was playing because it was that joyful kind of playing, upbeat and with some very maudlin elements. It was beautiful and we all just loved it—everyone I knew at that time, which was a bunch of freaks.”

  Ayler’s sonic journey essentially paralleled the emergence of free jazz. Many other free players enjoyed lengthy careers, but his time on Earth was cut short. On November 25, 1970, Albert’s body was found floating in the East River.

  His death at the age of thirty-four was an unexpected tragedy, mysterious at the time and still shrouded in a little bit of did-he-jump-or-was-he-pushed speculation.

  The improvisational scene that he helped to launch continues to evolve, but Ayler’s immense sound will always epitomize the free-jazz boom of the 1960s.

  Albert died the same year Jimi Hendrix did. Both men were cosmic musicians who spread a universal message before leaving this planet for places unknown to you and me (but not to Sun Ra). There were other similarities: They both enlisted in the armed services and later interpreted “The Star-Spangled Banner” (Albert three years before Jimi). Each used his instrument to create groundbreaking sounds, and both were hip minstrels who spoke in ecstatic terms (remember Hendrix’s vision of an electric sky church?). Both experienced undue pressure from the music business and died under abrupt, premature circumstances. Numerous concert recordings by both men have been released posthumously, and the mystique surrounding their deaths—and their cults of personality—endures.