Memorial Eurythmics

I attended a zoom memorial tonight for the inimitable Buddy Fox, a true stalwart of the NewYork music scene and a friend and supporter for many years.  It got me thinking-- reminiscing, in the true spirit of memorial services-- afterward watching YouTube footage of various events he produced and organized with the greatest enthusiasm and spirit.  These people who dedicate themselves to the arts for sheer passion are of a dying breed. 

It occurred to me on Thursday that the death of John Lennon, 42 years ago, was a sort of wake-up call for my generation.  Like the assassination of JFK, we all remember where we were.  In 1963 I was a little young to sense the generational significance... but in 1980, the shooting at the Dakota was like a massive loss of innocence. 

Of course, the pre-internet spread of news was slower and the moment of apprehension maybe more memorable.  I was at my job in a highbrow art gallery and of all people my mother called to tell me the news, knowing I'd be devastated.  At the time I worked in an Upper East Side townhouse and took the call in the downstairs kitchen-- on a black rotary wall-phone. The kitchen was visible from the street-- it was a huge vintage 1940's/50's room with the classic red and white vinyl floor-tile and antique, rarely used appliances.  It was like a movie set, and several film directors rented the house out for shoots.  I remember the future Mrs. Spielberg did a romantic comedy there; although they paid for the downstairs rooms, I was allowed to keep working, and I somehow bonded with the actress. She had a nude scene and sat with me on a daybed, between takes, shivering and wrapped in a blanket while we drank coffee.  They also borrowed my old Armstrong silver school flute for a scene... I remembered this all these years later, because it happened close to the time of Lennon's death. 

On that December afternoon I was first disbelieving then inconsolable when my mother phoned; she was still beautiful then, and sympathetic.  Surely I had not yet broken her heart and become a full-time bassist in LES clubs. She knew I'd come across John many times-- in the club he supported, in his home where I visited his neighbors.  We in the city took his presence for granted.  Yes, there were photographers on Central Park West and 72nd Street but for the most part he lived like any New Yorker-- shopping, walking, eating out, etc.  People gave him his freedom from celebrity.  New York was like that in former days.  On December 8, 1980, the news spread quickly-- not instantly like today-- and people began to gather in dazed grief outside the Lennons' home. It was the saddest day in the city... and there we were at the epicenter of a generational wound. 

It occurred to me today that the sorrow of that killing may have had something to do with my commitment to music-- as though one could somehow remedy a tragedy by following a path. I moved shortly thereafter into a loft apartment in a converted factory building... and I felt forever changed, redirected;  it had been a kind of coming-of-age.  The image of that vintage kitchen in the townhouse on 92nd Street (where I met people like Claus von Bulow and Gregory Peck) is forever linked to the sad news.  Time-stamped.

My son and I laughingly confessed to one another that we'd secretly binged on Sex in the City episodes during the pandemic.  I'd shunned this kind of television long before, but I was so homesick for my city during quarantine that I obsessively trolled the Manhattan-Before-1990 site, and watched almost any film with vintage scenes of New York as it was, with the Towers watching over from downtown.  This is the version my son recalls; we spent a year or so of his childhood looking at apartments-- seeking a permanent home, exploring neighborhoods and breathing in the air of old rooms.  We surveyed our home-island from the roof Observatory of the South Tower and sneaked into Windows on the World a few times where I knew a guitar-playing waitress.  

So 9/11 was the second loss of innocence of my life.  My son was only 11, had been to the post-Lennon Dakota for a playdate, but we both felt a sort of cement-bond here, in the tragically sad widowed version of New York.  Things heal, but loss remains like a scar, no matter how many new buildings have changed the skyline and face of the city.  They distract but do not replace.

After the memorial tonight I remembered the also-inimitable Stan Bronstein, who played saxophone in Lennon's New York band, and passed away some years ago.  I was lucky enough to share stages with so many of these fallen heroes of the music scene, many of which were 'orchestrated' by Buddy.

I'm reading World's End by Upton Sinclair.  At the beginning the protagonist, more than 100 years ago, is studying the Dalcroze method of Eurythmics-- an academic and obsolete unique approach to music education.  Thinking back, recalling not just the memorial speeches but the vanished dazzle of the local New York music scene, I feel a little Dalcrozean-- brown-edged vintage, 'on-the-shelf', like a dusty box of souvenirs and old postcards.  I remembered how once I tried to keep up a column where I reviewed $1 cds-- for the surprise, for the back-ended discovery.   There were bins of these-- mostly demos and overlooked efforts, but occasionally I found something-- some gem among the proverbial garbage and flowers.  The shops are gone, for the most part.  Instagram and Tik Tok have their own popularity analytics...  anything can make the statistics today.  

But we are all changed since the Lennon days.  Maybe we were punished for the freedom he was allowed to wander publicly, unprotected.  We were taught some kind of lesson.  But celebrity without instagram, etc... well, it seemed a little more tolerable, a little more human.  One had to earn it.  Not to mention that fame and notoriety were a little more separate... artists were more original and unique... even comedy seemed better.  

As we age, our memories are less accurate; it took a roomful of people to describe the deceased tonight and still we did not do him adequate justice.  Thank goodness most of us can recall the landscape we find in old photos-- and can honor musicians not for what they are but what they were.  Many of them are still here in the city-- the scarred and human version that remains in my mind and heart and will not necessarily rest in peace.