Never Say No To A Rock Star

by Berger, Glenn

  To “live” by avoiding the demands of our nature may be temporarily more comfortable, but we do so at our peril. Jonah ends up in the belly of the whale until he follows God’s dictates.

  There are a few lucky moments in life when we are truly put to the test, when we are selected for a unique and important task. Parenthood is one of those times. For me, this was such a moment. Everything, including the music on the jukebox, was telling me that this was not my choice. Instead, I had been chosen.

  “I get it. It’s not about me throwing a ball or fixing cars. It’s about me being a good person. It’s about me doing the right thing, no matter what. That’s what I couldn’t do before you came into my life. You’ve shown me that I can trust myself.”

  Now, I knew what the tears were about at Madison Square Garden. Time passes, and it doesn’t come back. My friendship with Duke had faded. I couldn’t take back the times I was cruel to him when we were kids. I couldn’t take back all the mistakes I made in life because I was afraid. I would never be sixteen again, seated in the fourth row at a Stones concert in 1972. I’d never be nineteen, with Mick singing solo to me again. I’d never get a chance to go out on the road with the Stones. When it comes to time, there are no second chances. If you miss the moment, it’s gone forever. To quote from another famous song of theirs, time waits for no one.

  I did not heed the call with Mick, and there is always a price to be paid when we avoid the directives of the cosmos. Back with him, I was still a boy. At that young age, I’d shown some damn good gumption by pushing my way into that room to be with him in the first place, but I didn’t have what it took to close the deal. Remorse was the toll exacted on me.

  I could not undo my past mistakes, but I could find redemption in what I would do right now, in this present moment. Now, I was a man. The radio at Billy’s told me so. I knew exactly what I had to do.

  I smiled at Sharon, and as I looked in her eyes and saw the love that was there, I felt she knew everything that was in my heart. I said, “I’ve always been looking for a father ‘out there.’ With all the men in my life, whether it was Phil, or the stars I worked with, I was always asking myself, Are you my father? Are you my father? But none of them were, and I was always hurt and disappointed. Then I’d run away, thinking I was punishing them, but I was only hurting myself. I’d achieve some success, but then I’d sabotage that, ruining things in the end.”

  Sharon listened intently and sympathetically. “I get that. I understand now. But if you hadn’t have gone through all that, you wouldn’t be right here, right now.”

  “You’re right! I had to go through all of that to be here, with you, doing this. I was never going to find that father, because I couldn’t go back and have the father I needed as a child. But now, I’ve been able to find something so much bigger. I’ve been able to find the husband, the father, the man, where I should have been looking.” I pointed at my heart. “I’m ready. Let’s go get our son.”

  That Saturday would be the last day that I would get to hang with the lead singer of the Rolling Stones. We finished up the mixes. Mick complained about the recorded performances, saying the band rushed, that they played too fast. It was ok for a radio broadcast, he figured, but they were too embarrassing for anything else. Listening to those mixes now, with the wabi sabi that comes with age, the frantic tempos just sound like blistering enthusiasm. Though I assumed our mixes would only be heard once on the radio, since then they have become legendary. They are the only top-quality mixes of the Stones from a time period that many consider to be the ultimate live moment for the greatest rock band in history. This was guitarist Mick Taylor’s last tour with the band, and many believe that the Stones were never as good after he left. This recording also occurred before the band was dragged down for a number of years by Keith’s heroin addiction.

  These mixes have found their way onto multiple bootleg releases and are generally known as “Bedspring Symphony.”

  When we faded out the final applause, with the concert and our week in the studio together done, Mick stood up to say goodbye and purposefully walked to my end of the control room to give me one last punch and tousle. He said, “See ya, Gin-jah!”

  I took one last look, paused, and said, “Goodbye, Mick.”

  As those world-famous hips sauntered out of the studio, and his narrow frame receded into the distance, with a lump in my throat, my voice caught. I cringed, envisioning Duke’s disappointed, judging, eye-roll. In my head were the words, “Hey, if you ever need someone to help out on the road …”

  Now, about forty years later, sitting in my minivan, my son and daughter clipped in their car seats in the back, Sharon looking so hot behind the wheel, I press the button on my smart device. “Brown Sugar” blasts through our JBL Surround-Sound system. My son grooves to the beat. Whenever I can, I play-wrestle with him and give his hair a rub. He’s perfect in his imperfect human way. He loves dogs, Legos, and his mom, and when I woke him up the other day, the first thing he said was, “I love you, Dad.”

  Riding down the highway, I hear Mick’s voice in my head, saying, This one’s for you, Gin-jah! and I know that my job is to get these kids as close to ecstasy as I, or anyone, can bear. When the end of the song comes, in my best Mockney accent, I shout out to my family, “I can’t hear you!” and we all join in with my old pal Mick, singing at the very top of our lungs, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, WOOOOOOOOOOOO!”

  I wonder if my revelation about the universe was true. But whether there is a grand master plan, or if the only meaning in a meaningless world is the meaning we give to it, the answer is still the same. You can hear it in Keith’s guitar. He plays it, holding nothing back, just so he can ring that cosmic bell again and again. Because this is his only chance in a very long eternity to do so. Because that’s the way the universe sings.

  POSTLUDE:

  It Was All Them

  I left the tape recorder and the box of tapes downstairs through the days, weeks, months, and years, as I recalled, and wrote down these stories. I’d been changed by the process, and I’d learned a great deal along the way, but there was still something essential that eluded me about the emotions I experienced on the day when I listened to Aretha with my client. My wife complained about the clutter, but until I could find that missing piece, I didn’t know what to do with all that old jazz.

  I worried that I would never find what I was looking for. I came to realize that there was no way to fully grasp the complexity of experience, shaped by meaning, and transmuted by time and memory. Whatever I wrote about these events, and my place in them, there was always something I left out, a new way of seeing it all, after I called the story finished. But that didn’t keep me from my pursuit. I went back to the box one more time to see if I could find something, anything, in it, that would clarify and resolve this confusion of feelings.

  Once more I listened to Paul Simon’s “American Tune,” with its rhymes of “mistaken,” “confused,” “forsaken,” and “misused.”

  Again, this triggered associations. Neurons connected to neurons. Patterns that hadn’t lit up in decades illuminated my brain. I floated back to a time when I was particularly incensed at what I considered to be some unconscionable behavior on Paul’s part.

  I ran up to the second floor and stormed into Max’s office, throwing up my arms. “You will not believe what just happened!” I said indignantly.

  Max nodded knowingly with mock-sympathy, closing his eyes. He said, “Tell me.”

  I went into the story, which was some variation of the theme, “This guy Simon is a total prick!”

  Max opened his blue eyes wide and said with great exaggeration, “But Glenn, of course he is!” Then he paused for effect. “So?”

  Having the intended impact, I replied with incredulity, “So? So? He … he … can’t do that!”

  Max leaned back in his chair and let out a giant throaty laugh.

  “I don’t see what’s so funny!”

  I didn’t then. I was a kid wh
o was looking for heroes and villains, a story that made sense, a drama where I could be on the right side, if I could only find those on the wrong side.

  Max stopped laughing. He looked at me with affection, understanding, and the wisdom that can only come from the perspective of having been young once, and now no longer being so.

  As I remembered that moment, and I imagined how he looked at me, I could suddenly see through Max’s eyes, as he sat there with me, all those years ago. I saw myself sitting in Max’s chair, as old as I am today, looking across that desk, at the young boy I was back then.

  In Max’s skin, I understood that the studio world we lived in — with all the craziness, drama, egos, disasters, pricks, triumphs, and astounding accomplishments — was precious.

  From Max’s point of view, having escaped Minneapolis to come to the Great White Way, where he was living the exact life he was meant to live, what could be better than this? After all, we were in show biz. Sure it hurt, and Paul could be mean, and Phil acted like a nut, but it beat selling handkerchiefs.

  I now understood what he knew then: this was a passing moment, our one short spin on the turntable. These artists would fade, the studio would one day be gone, the scene would end, all too soon. For that one speck of eternity — midtown Manhattan in the 1970s — we were living at the center of the universe. And Max knew how to savor every loony moment of it. He accepted it all: black, white, and gray, like a Hindu sage.

  “Enjoy it kid,” I heard him say to me, “one day it’ll make a great book.”

  But back then, I had no idea what he was talking about. “Max, you don’t understand!”

  “Look, Berger, it’s getting late. You doing anything right now? Let’s go get a bite at The Tunnel.”

  It was Friday night, and our work was done for the week. I agreed to join him. Pierre au Tunnel was the French restaurant that was our hang right down the block from “322.” When we entered the old-fashioned French restaurant, Jean Claude, the gallant proprietor, greeted us warmly. The room was suffused in a golden glow with a gentle aroma of wine and garlic.

  The usual crowd was there. There was Tony, going from table to table, schmoozing with the stars. Plotnik was there, avoiding going home to his wife, joking around with Holley. The receptionist was at the bar, passing a bag to the latest up-and-coming schlepper. Sterling was three sheets to the wind. A couple of horn players sipped their Remy Martin VSOP, trying to take the edge off the blow.

  Emile Charlap walked in right behind Milton, and the three of us hung at the banquette near the bar. I spent a minute or two kibitzing with these two old-timers.

  Max said, “Emile, you should know this kid. He’s a firecracker. He’s coming up. He’s our next hot shot.”

  “Good to know, good to know,” Charlap acknowledged.

  I didn’t get, or appreciate, that Max was doing a shidduch. He was making a match between me and Emile. He knew that if I played it right, Emile could book me on a lot of dates.

  Instead, I was distracted by a sexy, wannabe girl-singer, who was hustling me for free studio time. Maybe, I thought, if I promised to get her into R-1 this weekend, I’d get laid. Without a thought, I blew off Max and Emile.

  As I cavalierly walked to the door of the place with my arm around the girl, I suddenly remembered Max and turned around to say goodbye. He looked at me, and I thought I heard him say, “Take it in. Take it all in. Now. Before …” And then I couldn’t hear him anymore.

  The neuronal pattern in my brain, and along with it my memory, dissipated, and everyone was gone. The restaurant was dark and empty. I looked to my side, and the hot chick had also disappeared. What did she look like? Oh yeah, she was the one who blew me off for Steve Jordan …

  I found myself, like in a dream, transported to the studio at “799.” The halls were quiet now. There was no red light lit above the studio saying “closed session.” There were no messengers sleeping on the couch. No one running down the hall with a fire extinguisher. No smell of brass and wood, no sound of bass and electric guitars. The old gear, the Pultecs and the Fairchilds, the MM-1000s, and the Macintoshs, all were dusty relics, unused. The studios were empty. There was no more music. Just silence.

  I felt the same pang that I had when sitting with my client and listening to Aretha sing Paul’s masterwork.

  Then it hit me.

  I didn’t recognize, or appreciate, the gifts that were being handed to me by a benevolent universe. I didn’t see what Max was doing that night when he was creating a singular opportunity for me by hooking me up with the great Emile Charlap. I didn’t appreciate the open-hearted generosity of all the people I had worked with, who had welcomed me into this amazing world of music, and gave me the chance to witness and participate in this fantastic creative adventure. I was so focused on what I didn’t get, that I didn’t take in the value, the love — what I did get from this extraordinary group of people. My attention elsewhere, only thinking of pussy, I didn’t linger with Max and Emile.

  I didn’t recognize that the dad I was looking for wasn’t the glamorous star, who not only didn’t want the gig but was incapable of it, anyway. The guy who fit the bill was the man in the dandruff-covered suit. The closest thing I got to the dad I never had was Mr. Milton Brooks, better known as Broadway Max.

  Then the regret hit. I never, never properly said thank you. It was worse. I had been cruel and callous. Not only had I been unappreciative, but in my anger, I had left in a rejecting way. I never said I’m sorry.

  The regret morphed into longing.

  I remembered those rare moments, a long time ago, when I really had it, when I was at my peak, when the cosmic wind blew through me. It was like the entire universe thrummed around me and everybody stood up and cheered. But each time it happened I got scared. I wasn’t ready. It was too big. I couldn’t handle it. I remembered that place, that feeling, and I wanted it back. I’d know how to deal with it now, I told myself. I want to feel it again before I die.

  But I had to face it. It was too late. Not just my moment, but the whole thing was gone forever.

  And then the longing became sadness. Whenever anybody asked if I missed the biz, I always said no. And I believed it when I said that. But it wasn’t true. It took all of this to find that the answer to my quest was a simple one. I never wanted to admit it, but those days in the studio were important to me. I guess I just never wanted to feel the loss.

  It was all gone, and I missed it in the painful core of my eternal being. My tears were tears of grief. One good reason I cried with my client was because I missed my days when I was the schlep with Phil and Paul at A&R Recording.

  That feeling of duende — the Spanish word for the awareness of death, that I got remembering the Sinatra story — I really got it now: I’m getting old, youth has passed, and the moment will never, ever come back.

  I was feeling it. It hurt, but strangely, I felt so alive.

  Suddenly, something cracked inside of me. Light started pouring through. Pain. But wait a minute. It wasn’t only my pain. What about … their pain?

  In that one moment, everything changed. It was like someone knocked the stopper off the bottle, and I could feel all this anger just draining out of me. Everybody, Phil, Paul, Fosse, Dylan, they were all in so much pain! That’s what was going on. We were all in pain! How could I have not seen that? It’s so obvious now!

  I wanted to contact Ramone right then and there and say … but I didn’t, because I received a text telling me that he had died.

  Phil. My mentor, my sensei, my guru, my rabbi — dead. Phil gave me the greatest of gifts, which has earned him a permanent esteemed place in my inner world. I dreamt of him just last night. What he birthed in me was a standard of excellence. This vision of quality was, and remains, the meaning and purpose of my life. This is the part of him that lives in me in every waking moment, whether it is in the work I do now as a psychotherapist, in my marriage, as a father, or in the creative work I do. It is that aspiration to magic (with a lit
tle less of the craziness, I hope) that I aim to pass on to my own children.

  In the way Phil treated me, and in what he demanded of me, I experienced a lot of pain. But what I learned from him was that life and art demands that we rise above our own comfort to fulfill a cause greater than ourselves. And when I followed Ramone into that breach, I lived life to the fullest.

  All of us who worked at A&R under Phil’s tutelage share an ineffable bond. When we get together now, from our experience of having lived in the Great One’s presence, we know something that no one else in the world knows. We each and every one of us will say that our years at A & R, under Phil’s leadership, no matter how hard, no matter how insane, were the most thrilling and unforgettable of our lives.

  That was what you got with Ramone. The lunacy, the pain, the glory, and the pride. We were the best, and we got to be a part of history. And as crazy as he drove me, none of this would have existed without Phil.

  What I would have said, if only I’d had the chance, was,

  “Look, I get it now. I get what it’s all about. I know your suffering was something I can only begin to imagine. But the beautiful thing is, you made my life meaningful. You made all of our lives meaningful. You were our mad captain. You had a mortal wound that inspired you to fight nature itself, and we all knew that you were doomed to fail at the end. But we were all ready to go down with you. And you know why? Because, in work, in art, in life itself, we rarely, if ever, get to take something all the way, to do our absolute best, to be able to say, this is what I am made of, this is what is in my heart. But you made it possible for me to do that. You pushed me past my limit and gave me the opportunity to find the best within myself. You fought the good fight so I could be great. And I will always love you for that. I love you.”