BURNED - Living Through the 80s and 90s as a Rock Guitarist

by Bobby DeVito

  The next morning I spent walking all around the town. San Severino Marche is very close to the famous religious town of Assisi, and is one of the most spiritual places in Italy. I went around and walked the gauntlet of monk’s caves and other religious sites. As I wandered through the town, I came upon a very large, very ancient church. The doors in front of this impressive building were at least 15 feet tall. The church appeared to be closed, but I really wanted to see the inside, and something drove me inside of the structure. I managed to crack one of the doors open enough to slip inside, and began to marvel at the sheer beauty of the church. I walked the stations of the cross almost automatically. I could feel that I was in the presence of a power much greater than myself. In the program, they call this your “higher power”. At first, many people get caught up in the “God Thing”, where they can’t accept what the Program is trying to say to them because of a smattering of religious language in the text. But a “higher power” can be anything. For me initially, it was my wife’s Siamese cat, Tai-Chi. Trust me, if you had known that cat, you would have recognized his utter superiority to you and the people around you. He was my higher power for a year, at least. I think I liked him more than his owner.

  As I made the stations of the cross running on some sort of power that was guiding me, I was transfixed by the beauty of all the art in this church. The sun was streaming into the stained-glass windows, casting iridescent shards of light onto the wood floors. Finishing the last station of the cross, I went to sit in one of the pews. Looking down, I ran my hands along the smooth, grooved wood prayer rails, and thought deeply about the fact that thousands of people for hundreds of years had knelt and prayed here. I stopped for a moment and said a brief prayer myself. Rising from the pew, I started to walk out of the row and headed towards the church door. As I made it to the back of the church, I was suddenly once again struck with a VERY bright white light, and I was forced to my knees. I felt like fainting and I felt like running, but I could not move.

  I was in this state for several minutes. The fainting spells and experiences I had undergone during junior college that had lead me to burn all of my occult journals and books, had completely obliterated me like an atomic bomb. If the previous experiences were precursors, this was an exclamation point.There were some specific thoughts communicated to me during this time, but the basic message was “I AM GOD AND YOU ARE NOT!”.

  I was on my knees for a long while. The church was empty, save for myself and the presence of something much greater. I felt like the slate was wiped clean, that it was a fresh start, and was immediately in tears. I could feel them warmly tracing their way down my cheeks. All of the clichés you may have read about “religious experiences” were here in some form or another. But this was no intellectual exercise, no philosophy study, no spiritual debate. It was the announcement to me that I was not the center of the universe, and that there was a power much greater that was at work in my life and always has been. I eventually was able to rise unsteadily to my feet and wobble to the door. As I left the church, the bright sunlight burned my eyes as I staggered into the brick street. I looked around me as my eyes slowly adjusted, and the world suddenly seemed to be infinitely more colorful and alive. There was an iron gate near one of the prayer caves, and it was covered with a purple bougainvilla that was the most intensely colored flower I had ever seen. I focused on the bricks on the street, and made my way back to the hotel room, shaken AND stirred.

  One thing I had always admired about Sherman was his spirituality. Sherman was not your typical blues musician by a long shot. He would usually be found reading the Bible on our long van trips to the next gig, and I never saw Sherman drink. For someone who made a living playing the blues, Sherman was one up-tempo and happy guy. I managed to catch him alone at his hotel room, and asked to talk to him privately for a little while.

  Sherman and I sat down in his room, overlooking the brick streets of San Severino. I tried to put into words what had happened to me. The sheer power of even trying to relate this experience to Sherman again made me burst into tears. Sherman was taken aback as I told him about being knocked to my knees by this power. He said to me “Bobby, God is trying to tell you something son, and I would urge you to pay attention”

  I knew that Sherman was right, and that I had been squandering my life away with drinking and drugs. My musical abilities were equal parts gift and practice. From the first time I had played guitar, it was obvious that I had a special gift for being able to play nearly anything I heard, and had an inherent “feel” that people enjoyed listening to. While over the years I had done some charitable activities for the Humane Society, I had lived in an existentialist “live and let die”sort of vague secular antihumanism. I was not your typical card carrying fundamentalist Christian – I was the guy reading Nietschze and Crowley, studying Yoga and meditation, and working with Tarot cards. But there had been an invisible thread that had sewn itself into the fabric of my life, weaving in and out in places that were hard to ignore. And they tended to appear the more the fabric was worn down and getting threadbare.

  I managed to get back to my hotel room and collapsed. The experience had drained me completely, and thinking of it today I can still feel the power. God was indeed trying to tell me something, but I still wasn’t getting it. Bob Uzzo says I’m a “problem case”.The thinkers always have a tough time with the Program, and most alcoholics are thinkers. The problem with having a somewhat inordinate amount of IQ is that it’s probably more of a liability than an asset. Especially so in my case. The next day we headed to Calabria, the “tip of the boot” in southern Italy. It was a beautiful day, and we got a hotel right on the water by the Straits of Messina. The water was impossibly blue, and one could see Mt Aetna smoking lightly in the background. Jason, our road manager Emanuele, and myself had hit the beach as soon as we unpacked and it was amazing. We were surrounded by beautiful European tourists, and made friends with a pair of beautiful German girls who were lazily sunbathing topless. They were out on a sunbathing platform about 30 feet from shore, and I remember how easy it was to simply float in the high-salinity seawater there as I swam out to chat them up. I also remember how amazing these girls looked. I still can’t figure out why we Americans are so uptight about topless sunbathing. It should be legal in all fifty states.

  Before our show that night, I was really excited. All of the various DeVito family members are all from Calabria initially, and here I was playing a major concert in my family’s hometown! We were performing a large outdoor show at a horse racing track. As I dressed in my blues finery, I decided to make a quick call home to check on Erika and say hello.

  Sherman says this is ALWAYS a mistake for a traveling musician. “Bobby, you call once when you arrive, and once when you are leaving. NEVER CALL IN THE MIDDLE OF THE TOUR!”

  But I never listen to reason and experience, usually. I called Erika, and happened to catch her in a very pissed off mood. She informed me that she was already sick of my touring lifestyle, as it left her at home lonely with no one to admire her. And, she had recently begun to hang out with one of the gym teachers she worked with, and they were going out tonight. This phone call ended up costing me $250 American at the front desk. I had only been gone a matter of weeks, and Erika was already beginning to date other people…and we had only been married a couple of weeks.

  I ended up completely losing my mind over this incident. Of course, Sherman helpfully reminded me that he had told me not to call. As we got to the concert venue, I headed backstage in search of booze, any kind of booze. As a backstage area, we were basically herded into what was usually some sort of snackbar. I pressed up to the counter, and asked them for wine or beer. The kid behind the snack bar indicated that they didn’t have any alcohol, and I was furious, nearly at the end of my rope. Luckily for me, an older woman in the kitchen had heard our interchange, and came up from the back room with a huge green bottle of wine with no label and a cork stuck in the top. Our road manager took one
look at what was happening, and pulled me aside. “They are giving you a bottle of their own homemade family wine”, said Emanuele. “It is a very generous offering and a sign of respect”. I thanked both the kid and the old woman profusely, and immediately pulled the cork and took a swig. The wine was deep, rich southern Italian red wine, and it felt good immediately. I never drank during a Sherman show, but there was always a first time for everything in my life. Emanuele looked at me with my homemade wine and challenged “You will never be able to drink that whole bottle”. I laughed at him openly, and told him “I’m a professional Emanuele, I could drink TWO bottles of this easily”. He just laughed at me knowingly.

  The show went off pretty well, other than my bottle of wine being hidden behind my amplifier so Sherman wouldn’t see it. It was a bittersweet show, as the phone call had essentially ruined what had been such a peak experience. One of the strangest things of the entire tour happened at the end of that show. Sherman usually let me have one or two guitar solos per show, and I had already done one earlier in the night. As Sherman played his last number, a slow bluesy gospel number, he “broke it down” in the middle and had the band at a whisper as he testified into the Calabrian night. An attractive young woman made her way down to the front of the stage, walked right up to Sherman, and attempted to get his attention.

  “Yes my dear?” Sherman said to her kindly.

  “Mr. Sherman, would you please let Bobby DeVito play another solo?” I could see the look in Sherman’s eye. He couldn’t believe this woman went through all that trouble to hear me play another solo. But Sherman is a professional, and professionals give the people what they want.

  “Sure, darling. Ladies and Gentleman, Mr. Bobby DeVito on gui-tah!” Usually in Italy when my name was announced, I got a really great crowd reaction. I was an Italian boy made good, playing with the real American bluesmen. That night, I took that solo of mine and basically tried to play it as good as Sherman would. Let me make one thing clear

  – when it comes to electric blues guitar, Sherman could outplay me with one hand, I consider him the greatest living Texas electric blues guitar player on the planet. But that night, I caught up with him a little bit. On the van ride to the next city, we had fast forwarded the tape of that night to my solo, although we did not know where we were in the tape. Sherman heard the guitar solo, and said to Cat Bauer “Yeah man, I was PLAYING it last night”. About 30 seconds later on the tape we could hear Sherman say “Bobby DeVito on the guitar, ladies and gentleman, BOBBY DEVITO!”. The look on Sherman’s face was priceless, as I had copped his feel just well enough to fool even him. I knew my job was about over at that point, and I was right.

  We had a week where we had no shows scheduled at all, and settled into a small mountain town called Toricella Peligna in the Abruzzo region. Toricella was one of the most beautiful places I have ever been in my life, a quiet town of perhaps 2,000 inhabitants situated in a small mountain range. The town jutted out from the mountainside almost in spite of the sky in places, with beautiful views all the way down into the valleys. We settled into the Hotel Cape for our weeklong stay. I was the first one out of the van when we finally arrived, and I stumbled into the hotel with my guitar. As I got to the desk, I locked eyes with one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen in my life. Federica was her name, and she was working the front desk. We immediately connected in a significant way. However, the quite large and imposing Italian guy right behind her had a sudden cooling effect on my ardor. I fumbled with my keys, and tried to stare at the floor, the walls, the ceiling, anything but Federica. We were in Italy, and you don’t mess around in Italy, unless you’d like to get cut.

  I finally got assigned to my room, and went to unpack. It had been a long tour so far, and with the previous blowup with Erika, I had a lot on my mind. I was pretty much resigned to going home and getting a divorce after the tour. As I unpacked my guitar and changed my strings, I was feeling in need of some serious coffee. And for anyone who loves coffee, Italy is the promised land. I made my way downstairs to the coffee bar, and there was Federica again. I nervously made my way to the empty counter and ordered a cappuccino.

  “He’s my brother” she immediately said. Laughing and sighing a huge sigh of relief, I sat down at the counter and had coffee with this beautiful creature. Federica and her brother were the DiSangro family, and they owned the hotel and restaurant. She had attended boarding school in England, and was quite educated and cultured. Somehow we both discovered that our favorite author was Herman Hesse, and we looked at each other like giddy little children. I knew this was going to be trouble.

  As the week progressed, it was obvious to everyone that Federica and I were spending a lot of time together. Her brother called me one night and asked me out to drinks. I knew it was either going to be a talkingto, or an ass-whipping. He met me at my room, and we headed to the only local bar in town. Rico was the sort of man referred to as “swarthy”, he was stout and hairy, with jet black hair and brown eyes with a unibrow. And he was big enough to easily take me down, so I watched my step. However, despite our language barriers, we had a ton of fun out drinking that night, and we had to walk each other home at daylight. I stumbled home to bed, confident that I had passed the first family test.

  The next afternoon, I was hung over severely. After morning coffee at 3 p.m., I lazed most of the day away in my hotel room, attempting to write some music. It was not a productive afternoon, and I degenerated into merely looking out my window down into the beautiful valleys below. The peaceful town was seeping into my bones little by little. As I sat at the window, my peaceful afternoon was interrupted by the ringing telephone next to my bed. It was Federica’s brother again, thanking me for the previous evening. And, he mentioned that he was taking his girlfriend to a concert in the next town that evening, and Federica was coming along, and would I like to go along with them. He had my attention immediately. I showered and got dressed nicely, awaiting the two of them in my room. I knew that this was a natural progression, and that I actually was going to get a date with Federica. Although, the date would be chaperoned by her very large Italian brother, and I could have easily “accidentally” fallen off one of those cliffs.

  Federica did not look like most Italian women. She was a natural blonde, with lighter blonde highlights that had settled into her shoulder length hair during the hot Abruzzo summer. She had soft brown eyes, and a very curvy and shapely body that really made my blood simmer. Many women seem to be obsessed with being a size two, but trust me ladies

  – men love it when women have curves. She wore a simple gold Italian chain with a cross pendant hanging from it, and a pair of diamond stud earrings. The three of us loaded up into her brother’s little Fiat, and we headed to the next town over to pick up his date. After we had retrieved this woman, they sat in the front while Federica and I sat in the back seat and held hands. We headed onwards to our destination.

  Riding with Federica was just amazing, looking into her soft eyes and discussing literature. We both seemed to be voracious readers, and had spent many an hour talking about our favorite writers and books. Somehow we managed to discover we both loved Herman Hesse and had read all of his books. She had gotten a degree in education in London, but knew that she had to return to Italy to take over the family business along with her brother. It has always amazed me, this sense of familial duty that some cultures have. Both of her parents were still alive and working at the hotel, but it was no secret that they were grooming Federica and her brother to take over the business soon. We drove through the mountains and eventually got to our destination, another local town about 15 miles away from Toricella. We went to see the concert, and it was quite good – a local Italian band that played mostly American rock and blues music. Everywhere I went, I was regarded as a celebrity, and it was fun to be a “rock star” here. After the show, the four of us all piled back into the Fiat, and went to get ice cream. I may have been a late bloomer in high school, but this date was making up
for it. I was finally having the perfect high school date experience with one of the most beautiful women I had ever known, and in the most beautiful part of Italy I had ever seen. Screw high school, this was much better and worth waiting for. Most of my friends who were big men on campus in high school are now living in trailers with fat wives and too many kids. Give me the slow gradual rise anytime.

  The next day, I was finally allowed to take Federica out on a date by myself. After being inspected and primped by her mother and father, I awaited her entrance down in the lobby of the hotel. Federica did not disappoint, she came down the stairs in a beautiful white linen dress, with sensible shoes and a white gold chain with a small diamond pendant. She looked positively radiant, and I could see the misty look in her mother’s eye…and the caution radiating from her father’s eye as well. I knew this was meant to be a date, and nothing more. You can easily get yourself stabbed, beaten, or killed in Italy for messing around with the wrong woman. There’s a very rigorous family labyrinth that any suitor must negotiate, and every move has to be approved by the family. Luckily for me, everything had gone well that week, and off Federica and I went in her brother’s Fiat.