Music defines our lives. That's true of the present, when what we listen to tells us who we are. And it's true of the past -- music kindles memories.
There's nothing original about these insights, but there are times when they're more apparent than at others. Last May, Gregg Allman's death triggered powerful memories that I talked and tweeted about. But I didn't write about them. At the time, I wasn't blogging. Today, the death of Walter Becker had the same effect. I'm blogging again, as you can plainly see, so here are some words on music and memory.
For a few years, when I was in my twenties, the Allman Brother's At Fillmore East was my favorite album. I spent a lot of evenings listing to it in lousy apartments, almost always by myself, usually depressed, and often drunk or stoned. I was listening to plenty of other things, back then, but At Fillmore East is the album that I remember the most.
It wasn't the lyrics that got me. It never has been for any kind of music. Singers and words, I can take 'em or leave 'em. No, what got me about the Allman Brothers was the guitars and the drums and the sense of community. I loved the soulful, countrified virtuosity of guitarists Duane Allman and Dickey Betts, whose lines looped in and around each other's and whose solos sounded like they were singing to you.
Two guitarists, two drummers. I'm still astonished that Jai Johnny Johnson and Butch Trucks never seemed to get into each other's way, no matter how complex -- and funky -- their rhythms got. It mattered to me that Johnson was black and that jazz, soul, and the blues were part of the Allman Brother's sound. I was looking for ways to live out an uneasy racial identity, and a racially integrated southern band that paid homage to black musical styles offered an all-too-rare model. Jim Marshall's cover photo -- a band of brothers -- sealed the deal.
I don't mean to slight Gregg Allman's singing and keyboard work or Berry Oakley's bass playing. Both were essential parts of the Allman Brother's sound. But the first thing I heard in my head when I learned that Gregg had died were guitars and drums, "In Memory of Elizabeth Reed."
Gregg's death was also a time for remembering who I was when he and his brother and the band were so important to me. I was hurting and hurting bad. I had no answers at the time, and the end of all that hurt was a long way away. The band's music was solace and balm. That little community of theirs made me think that I could find one, too. The Allman Brothers helped me get through those days, and I'll be forever grateful.
Today, Walter Becker died, and I'm think about who I was when the music he made with Donald Fagen -- the music of Steely Dan -- was part of the soundtrack of my life.
Steely Dan's music never felt as personal to as the Allman Brother's. It couldn't grab me by the throat or plunge a dagger into my heart or make my spirit soar. I don't think I ever bought a Steely Dan LP, and, if I ever listened to them alone, it was because one of their songs happened to be on the radio. I almost always heard the band in public, not in private, and especially at parties. In those settings, it always felt exactly right.
When Steely Dan released Aja, I was a slightly over-aged undergrad at the University of Cincinnati, a music school dropout who had no clear idea what he was going to do with his life. I was taking classes in history, biology, and psych, but I was putting more effort into driving one of the university's shuttle buses than in studying -- and I was having more fun driving, too. I had dropped out of music school a couple years earlier, having come to the realization that no one would ever pay me very much to play the French horn. When I explain the experience to people, I ask them to think about a minor league baseball player's slowly growing awareness that he's never going to be called up to the big leagues. Some people respond better than others. I had no Plan B.
Hanging around UC was part of developing that plan. It took a good long while. Figuring out a plan involved figuring out who I was and who I wanted to be. That was hard. At the time, I just wanted to find a place to call home, a community that I could call my own. But I wasn't sure that any such place existed, and, if it did, I was certain that I didn't know how to find it. But, since I also believed that I couldn't get on with my life until I found somewhere that I belonged, I was truly stuck. Directionless, floundering, living day to day, hoping that someone would come along and save me.
In the meantime, I survived. Among other things, I hit it off with another shuttle bus driver -- a grad student in city planning -- and he introduced me to two sisters from Lancaster, Ohio, who were known for their epic parties -- lots of people, lots of booze, generally good vibes. And they loved Steely Dan. When I hear Becker and Fagen's music, I think of them.
I never became close to either of the sisters, but they were fun to hang out with. I wish that I could remember their names. I don't remember much about their parties either -- just hazy images of crowded apartments with the party spilling out onto the fire escape. Boys and girls, music and beer, a college scene. The parties were easy and mellow, just like Steely Dan. And just about everyone there was white, except for me.
That didn't strike me as strange at the time. That's the wrong way to put it. It felt strange when I thought about it. But almost everything about my life felt strange when I thought about it, so I tried to do as little thinking about it as possible.
It would be more accurate to say that being a flake of pepper in a shaker of salt was a familiar experience. I had a white childhood. I'd grown up as one of the few and often the only black kid in my crowd -- on army bases in Germany and the U.S., in a small college town in Ohio. That stayed true even in my racially integrated high school in Cincinnati. High schools are full of cliques, and my cliques tended to be mostly white. When we moved to Cincinnati, where there were plenty of black people, from that small college town, where there were almost none, I gravitated toward the white kids. They were the ones I understood. They liked the same music and TV shows I did. They told the same jokes. And I sounded just like them.
Black kids, the first that I'd ever met in such large numbers, were foreign to me -- their music and jokes and slang and fundamental understanding of the world. I didn't get black culture because I'd never been exposed to it, and, most importantly, I didn't sound black.
Yes, I know, the whole idea of "sounding black" or "sounding white" is complicated. But it's also real. It was real to the black students who instantly judged me by the sound of my voice. It's been equally real to apartment managers who are friendly over the phone and change their tune when they meet me in the flesh.
There were a few other kids in my high school who didn't sound black. But they'd nevertheless grown up as part of a black community. Being black, for them, was as natural as breathing -- at least it seemed that way to me. I envied them. For me, blackness seemed to be something that I had to study, like I studied algebra. (I flunked algebra the first time I took it. Had to make it up in summer school.) I didn't know that there are a million ways to be black. I wish someone had told me at the time and had shown me how to do it. I was left to figure it out on my own.
I was still groping my way toward an answer when I got to know the sisters from Lancaster. Their parties were fun, easy, comfortable. Nobody ever seemed to notice that I was black, and I'm sure that they'd have all be surprised to find out that it was something I noticed all the time.
One evening, I'd been invited to two parties. One was at the sisters apartment. I'd been invited to the other by a friend I'd gotten to know in music school. I went to that one first.
I can't remember if I knew what to expect at that first party. Did I know? Did I half know? Was I completely surprised? I can't answer those questions. I do know that what I found was an apartment full of handsome, gay black men, dancing to Donna Summer's insistent beat. I remember it as a vortex of blackness and gayness swirling around me, threatening to pull me under. It was too much, too fast, too loud, too physical. I felt as though I couldn't breath. Time was either standing still or speeding up; I couldn't tell which. These were not my people. This was not my scene. Yet the friend who invited me thought that they were and it was. I panicked. I left. I fled into the night and drove away. Out of Avondale into Clifton. Out of blackness into whiteness. Into white girls' soothing embrace.
How long had I been at the party? I have no idea. Tell me it was five minutes, and I'll believe you. Twenty minutes? Maybe. A half hour? I don't think I could have lasted that long.
I'm sure that I heard Steely Dan in the distance as I walked up to the sisters' apartment building. I could feel my muscles relax, my heartbeat slow, my breathing deepen. Inside, there was nothing vortex-like about the scene, little that was black, nothing that was apparently gay. Just white college kids, getting drunk and carrying on to Aja's gentle grooves. These weren't my people, but they were familiar. It wasn't home, but it was comfortable. At that point in my life, comfortable and familiar were what I thought I needed.
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John, thank you for providing some missing pieces of the puzzle of your life after we were in school together — in that period I saw you only once after graduation, in 1978, when we took pictures of ourselves with our VW bugs in Cincinnati. Then we lost touch for many, many years.
I can only dimly imagine what it must have been like to be ‘a flake of pepper in a shaker of salt’, especially during those intense years of youth.
I remember our discussions about this around age 20. I could relate, a bit, being gay in a sea of heterosexuality, but the similarity ends there. Your experience was poignant and personal, encompassing many aspects of your life: professional, social, sexual, in a way that most white people don’t understand.
Sometimes I am amazed that we survive these challenges into adulthood, and I for one am very glad that YOU stuck it out and are still around! Your life is a variegated success story, dappled with disappointments and triumphs. An authentic, complicated life that you continue to live — hopefully with more understanding and joy than you had many years ago in Cincinnati.
Posted by: Cameron | 04 September 2017 at 12:06 PM