Keith Richards & My Wrong Turn at Albuquerque
My forty-year journey from washed-up tween to middle-aged performer.
Back in 1983, I accepted, with great sadness, that I would never be a rock star. This happened while sitting in a dark movie theater, watching Let’s Spend the Night Together, Hal Ashby’s concert film of The Rolling Stones’ tour. While I had previously seen The Stones perform “Emotional Rescue” on Solid Gold, this was my first long (and unsanitized) exposure to Keith Richards. Watching his arm swing through a Marlboro cloud before striking a chord, I felt a deep desire to Be Like Keith, who that day came to embody for me — and remain permanently — the personification of Rock n’ Roll. Unfortunately, I had also bought into the dumb and broken notion that if a child doesn’t start something by age eight, then you might as well not bother. So I sat there, just shy of twelve, thinking it tragic that I hadn’t begun guitar back in 1979, when my brain was still a sponge.
Nevertheless, my desire to be in a band did not go away. In fact, it stalked me like a monster until I felt as frustrated as some confused, Christian teen trying to Pray Away the Gay. Then, during my senior year of high school, Keith released Talk is Cheap, his outstanding debut solo record that also showed a more mature and soulful side to him. He was forty-four at the time and I thought that if someone as insanely old as that could start a new chapter, perhaps I wasn’t too decrepit at seventeen to finally pick up the guitar. Some friends began teaching me chord shapes and after learning “House of the Rising Sun,” holy crap was I off to the races. Within weeks, I was playing and singing along to Zeppelin, The Doors, and even The Stones.
Then, I leveled off.
For about twenty-five years.
I did, however, make another wrong turn at Albuquerque: Back during the fall of my senior year of college, two guys invited me to rehearse a set to take to a local bar. I signed on and this was a mistake for two reasons:
1. They were both first-year law students and would soon get buried studying case notes.
2. I had hitched my wagon to two guys who aspired to become attorneys. (And for whom the fantasy of being in a band may have helped make the medicine of their actual chosen paths go down.)
When it fell apart, I felt as crushed as though two girlfriends had broken up with me at the same time. But by then I was also writing every day. Taking shape of the chasm between Talkers and Doers — and convinced I was a Doer of the Highest Order — I decided that I would move to Paris after graduation and become a writer; then I would only ever have to count on myself.
And I did.
With the discipline of a heroin addict (in that not writing left me feeling out of sorts) I never let myself down, but holy crap what a lonely couple of decades. While I spent years working as an editor, and later published some books, I never achieved my dream of earning a modest paycheck solely by writing for myself. Meanwhile, Keith — despite being a leading Dead Pool candidate since 1971 — just kept pushing the notion of how old a rock star can be, forever fueling my fantasy of being in a band. I tried to fend it off with karaoke, guitar singalongs, and by performing to unresponsive shower tiles. Singing on long drives, I’d forever picture myself on stage, becoming the musical equivalent of a kid who had watched every Kung Fu movie but never fought in an arena outside of his own imagination. And I never imagined that I would. Until 2014 when I left New York City and moved on up to Beacon.
In Dogwood, a local bar, I met a photographer who recounted playing guitar in a rock-band “bootcamp,” led by an instructor. They learned The Clash’s London Calling LP and then performed the entire record right there in the bar. The following day I called The Beacon Music Factory; two days later I was in a practice room, rehearsing songs by The Ramones. And on New Year’s Day, 2015, we took the stage at Quinn’s, another local bar. While setting up my guitar, I found myself confused by what plugged into what, and realized I was wracked with nervousness. I confessed my fear and discomfort to the drummer.
“It’s okay,” she said. “Just focus in on your bandmates because we’re all here for each other.”
I took my position and she began hitting the kick drum to “Do You Remember Rock n’ Roll Radio” and then the crowd began pumping their fists. My discomfort lessened and my excitement began to build and once I hit that first crunchy and reverberating chord, I felt like I was seventeen again and had just stolen fire from the gods.
I kept performing whenever possible and while Fear and Nervousness kept showing up, they now feel like reliable friends that can be corralled in an intense and exhilarating way. (You’ll be reading this some hours after my first performance with The Sunday Papers, a Joe Jackson tribute act.) What’s most important for me, however, is my progression from feeling like I was past my prime at eleven, to now — forty years later — telling myself that I’m not too old to still get up there. Besides, Keith is seventy-eight. Not only is he still touring, he even quit smoking. I love his defiance of the Dead Poolers and his persistence with Life, which feels like his most transcendent act of rebellion ever.
While being a writer is part of my identity, being a musician is not. But playing in a band is a fun and challenging way to counteract the loneliness of writing. Besides, I’m grateful, at long last, to finally be a part of something in which the sum is greater than the parts.
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