Credit Karma

Years ago, when I was an emerging bassist with a passion for eighth-note pulse-rock, I was flown to London for a unique opportunity.  The gig was to replace a weak album track for a well-known, high-charting band whose bassist was apparently struggling with issues.  At the time, digital instruments were not common, machine-generated instruments were obvious and the management decided to 'fly in' another player.  For the biggest paycheck I'd ever received, I was to lay down a simple, basic, eighth-note, pocket-heavy part, on what was to be a chart-topping single.  I got to play along to a band whose music I paid for on vinyl, in those days.  The catch was, I had to sign serious documents swearing I would never disclose my identity.  

Of course I was told that my work only 'might' be used on the recording, although the authorship would be attributed to the regular band members.  I signed, received a fat 4-figure check, a taxi back to Gatwick where I boarded a prepaid Virgin flight home. Not even an overnight stay.  In New York City, the music scene for sidemen was pretty male-dominated.  I felt like bragging but I couldn't.  I'd sworn away my rights and I take these things seriously.  So while I banked the check, I was stripped of the notch in my musical belt--the credit, the album listing-- things which musicians crave and hoard like trophies. Still, it gave me some personal swagger.  I felt 'heard' if not seen.  

Some years later, when Bill Wyman quit The Rolling Stones, bassists world-over were salivating to audition for the gig.  I was a young single mother playing mostly bars in the city, unable to tour.  One amazing Saturday night, at a well-known dive bar in the east Village, Bobby Keys came to drink and sit in with our band.  He ended up playing an entire 7-hour marathon night-- insisting, during breaks, that I was going to be the next bassist for the Stones.  I've heard a lot of alcohol-fueled talk in my day, and every single deserving career-bassist in New York was gunning for this miracle opportunity. Meanwhile, a sober Bobby called me during the week-- left messages on my voicemail.  He'd talked to Keith, he said... and sure enough the management called me to schedule. But I declined.  They called again.  I declined again-- I had a young child-- that was my priority. Again, they offered babysitters... other kids were on the road.  Just come... play... Well, I knew I'd be a sideman, not a band member... and did I want the larger-than-life thing? Me-- in a semi-glorified studio apartment with my little boy, my books and my 8-track tape machine?  I was happy. And I couldn't really fathom Mick Jagger welcoming a woman as anything but a back-up singer.  Bobby called back; again and again I declined.  I also knew the shortlisted guys and they were my heroes... it was a place for which I didn't want to compete, nor did I really belong in their company. I mean-- Darryl Jones played with Miles. I worshipped him, saw him every chance I got.

A couple of weeks later I was on 48th Street and one of the store clerks actually noticed me... Hey, he remarked, I read you were on the Stones' shortlist.  Not me, I answered.  But from that moment on, I was given the retail-respect most players were used to.  So while I didn't share, divulge or brag... there were some perks.

In and out of college, it's a thing... people ask.. will I get credit? It seems to make all the difference. I once judged one of those King of the Blues contests at Guitar Center alongside the late Bill Sims and the also late incomparable Hugh McCracken.  Before the judging we had to fill out a form with our 'credits'.  Hugh kept peeking at my pathetic sheet and asked me what he should put down.  He played rhythm on BB King's The Thrill is Gone.  Doesn't that just about knock us all out of the park?  What a humble, quiet genius he was. Credit? Plenty.  

But how about all those amazing pocket-players who graced the old records that made our hearts jump and our feet tap as kids?  Some of them remain uncompensated, unnamed.  I think about them-- about the great talents who died penniless or under-acknowledged while instagram celebrities of this culture are regaled and overpaid for nothing but popularity contracts... hype.  It's hard to even know what these airbrushed people actually look like, let alone sound like, in the naked dark.  

I wake up to my old clock-radio alarm and there's often some ironic reminder of my past.  I Love Rock and Roll.. my dear best friend and bandmate Alan Merrill who struggled and strained for credit for his hit song.  On a morning two weeks ago, 'my' song came on.  Even with the plastic old speaker, I could recognize my bass fingers in a heartbeat.  The song will live; the credit will die.  It gave me a little jolt for about a minute-- me the aging old songwriter/poet whose anonymity is almost ensured.  

Some of us get credit for what we didn't do... taking the rap for a friend.  All those writers who claim they are responsible for anything we find in their poems or work. After a while, resonance is built-in-- a signature... a voice.  I've been reading Javier Marias... he often played with the concept of authorship... in Tomorrow in the Battle..' he ghostwrites for a ghostwriter, shows up with the imposter's identity at a government office.  It gets complicated. 

Didn't you play with Patti Smith, a medical person asked me this week as I got up from his chair? No, I didn't, I replied. Browsing the shelves in Barnes and Noble, she has her own little section.  Kind of amazing. The irony of life-- of fame, of random success or failure... the luck of some draw.  My ex-husband, the poster child of under-acknowledged rock players, was once asked, as we sat down to eat in a restaurant, 'Aren't you famous?'  He looked at me, looked at the flirtatious waitress, and replied... I'm hungry, pointing to the menu.  

To the unacknowledged, undercredited greats, I salute you, my heroes... Heaven stands still.

Tolite Hostias

When we set out as teenagers to find our so-called path, few of us consider what we will not be, how we will fail at our dreams.  Of course, many of us lack the opportunities of more fortunate friends... and of those, few have the courage to fight the down-winds and up-currents that seem to prevent any version of success as we imagine it.  Fewer still have the genuine nugget of talent that blossoms into valued accomplishment, and the vision and stamina to break new ground.

I could never stand my own writing.  The gap between what I could do and what my 'heroes' did was just too broad.  Be true to yourself, my mentors advised, and like so many, one winds up consciously or unconsciously mining one's own life for material.  This is both our truth, and our betrayal.  While a few ex-boyfriends and husbands might relish finding themselves written into a song, I am one of those people who cringes at old photographs.  Facebook has always been the bitter pill I wash down with joyful memories of actually making music.

While I doubt posterity will be deciphering the messages in my songs and poems, I keep at it.  A few of my friends are urging me to write memoirs; it seems I look back on things with a particular kind of telescopic/microscopic viewfinder that entertains them.  Whether or not my narratives would appeal to a general public is ambiguous; it's hard enough enough to find sufficient audience to support my poetry projects.  Few of us sell many cds, in my circle. I chose this path; like crime, it doesn't pay much.

My parents died several years ago, so I can no longer offend them. My friends-- well, I could flatter them, but I rarely flatter myself, and while I can show up badly dressed and confessional, it's hard to be truthful and not betray people in the process.  Eulogies are kind to me... grief is my companion of late, and the songs I sing in memoriam are uncontested.  

I grew up with a circle of girlfriends who were joined at the hip, at that age when intimacy is easy and secrets are passed like a shared lunchbox.  One especially-- I met her in middle school-- at age eleven? She was sweet and beautiful in my eyes, although my mother described her as 'chubby'.  She was terrible at sports, which was critical among the criteria for mean-girl popularity.  She was not a mean girl.  I defended her to that crowd... I held her hand and chose her. For me her talent-- her intelligence, and her artistic genius... well.. she had the natural ability of a da Vinci... she won the national Carnegie Mellon scholarship... I mean, her draughtsmanship was extraordinary.  She made me things-- she drew me, my dogs.  And we sang-- in choir, at school, in church-- on the way to school... she the alto, I the soprano... it was perfect.  

She and I loved the Kinks, The Who, the Beatles, the Stones.  She had this habit of buying multiple copies of whatever she loved.  Albums in duplicate... Hendrix, Cream... The Who, Traffic.. the 60's... we loved most everything.. we sang.  She introduced me to jazz... we listened to Beethoven, Miles, Ian and Sylvia, Tim Hardin, Simon and Garfunkel, Donovan, Dylan.  A new release was a major event; we lay around at night reading album-cover notes like sacred texts... memorizing lyrics. I played guitar... she drew, I drew, but nothing like what she produced.  It was like love... we slept in the same room most of the time... we roller-skated to school, we did our homework together... we crushed and suffered... she had an old red Valiant she called Red Devil... she picked me up and we had adventures... I was too young to drive. 

Anyway, all through college we wrote, we visited one another... she met all my boyfriends; she married young, some someone with a kind of title who cheated on her with a teenager... and I think it devastated her.  She was never quite the same... immersed herself in Buddhism, with work in a bakery, lived in a sort of ashram for a time. Nevertheless she faithfully attended gigs, exuded great love and support... had a strange new group of people but still came to my Thanksgiving, showed up at my rock and roll impromptu wedding with a home-baked cake, was thrilled when my son was born, etc. Never bitter, never competitive.. always sisterly and loving as my own sister was not.  

So she suffered some terrible griefs and losses, began to shift focus to pathological resentment of her father.  All our fathers post-war were fucked up.  The war, their disappointments and responsibilities... PTSD, their drinking and their quiet suffering wives. I left mine at sixteen and tried not to let his mistakes become mine... but we are never sure about these things.  We share our truths, their lies and deceits. 

Anyway, my beloved friend ended up in and out of various hospitals with serious medical issues, then ensuing emotional problems.. eating disorders and syndromes.. it was relentless.  She was on all kinds of meds... none seemed to help. Me-- I selfishly missed my beloved talented genius companion.  I wanted to shake her out of her emotional quicksand, to get her on the track of extraordinary greatness she deserved, and could not.  

There was an early Elvis Costello song in her name... we loved it. Her highschool boyfriend was a singer/songwriter and wrote one for her.  I had this dream that I would become famous and call her up on stage to sing 'Tolite Hostias' or 'When Life Begins to Fail Me' a-cappella in two-part impeccable harmony.  Her voice was pure and true. Like so many artists, she could see through music; she had a perfect ear. 

At a point in middle age we parted ways.  She refuses to speak to me although I have reached out to her many times.  The tough-love approach I used with my son did not work with her.  I am sure she found me harsh and uncompassionate... mean.   Looking back, all these years later, trying to swim against some time-current, I remember she had encephalitis as a girl-- was so ill; perhaps this altered her brain environment.  It was not all self-indulgence and metaphoric illness but a legitimate diagnosis.  

Some of my old friends will recognize her here.  I doubt she follows me; she unfriended me long ago and shuns me.  Parts of life are unforgiving.  I am surely betraying her here, although I have spared the devil in the details. In writing memoir, one discovers the devil is the details.  I insist here (a perfect word for a proverbial sibling), the loveliness of her remains like a visual afterimage behind closed eyes.

Organizing a life, rather than milestone to milestone, we often skip from betrayal to betrayal.  This is maybe the true value of autobiography; no one knows us like we know/reveal ourselves, at least the writers among us-- outside of a few of maybe our oldest companions-- the ones who propped themselves on the bed beside us at the windowsill, sketched us as we sketched them, harmonized, exchanged clothes, sang to us, read, memorized, cried, ached and longed with the innocent shared honesty of adolescence.  It was not my job to keep her on some path to acknowledgement; it was her choice to veer off. 

I miss her-- her large sedentary cat we called Brick, her red Valiant, her roller skates and her record collection-- our special created language only we spoke, her grace and beauty which like mine has wizened and aged into something unrecognizable.  She is still mentioned in my nightly prayers-- along, tonight, with the request that she forgive me for this and other betrayals.