The Wild, The Innocent & Born To Run

            It’s been 40 years now since Bruce Springsteen’s Born To Run album was unleashed on an unsuspecting American public.

            The street had been buzzing about this galvanic talent for some time; Springsteen had recorded two albums: Greetings From Asbury Park and The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle, and many of us had been blown away by his incendiary live shows. It wasn’t a question of whether Bruce would make it, but to what pedestal he would ascend.

            Neither was it a surprise that he had inspired a substantial group of doubters, for back in the 1970’s there was a gaping divide between devotees of British and American Rock. 

            David Bowie and T-Rex reigned among glittery Anglophiles while The Dead and The Allman Brothers were favored by the flannel-shirted masses. Where would Bruce fit in this delineated spectrum?

            For many the fact that he hailed from the Jersey Shore - mecca of cover bands – was criminal in itself. Yes, indeed, people took their rock music seriously back in those delirious days!

            Bruce’s case was not helped by opening for Anne Murray in Central Park; but hey, a gig’s a gig and the Snowbird never knew what hit her – people were still shouting for an encore 30 minutes into her easy listening set. Wherever he played stormy chaos ensued; at Lincoln Center the stage collapsed during the riotous encore.

            I’ll make no bones about it - my favorite Springsteen album is still The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle. I remember every word, every guitar lick, and back in his pre-superstar days I saw the man any chance I could. 

Hence I was exposed to many Born To Run tracks as they were being written and rehearsed; I still prefer a number of these songs in their nascent form. Brue often performed them with just the marvelous David Sancious playing piano. He delivered these anthems in a highly theatrical manner and at funereal tempos where every word was dramatically articulated.

            One such song was Thunder Road. When done in the original manner you could almost hear that “screen door slam,” and Mary was more like a tragic Eugene O’Neill character than the heroine of a rock saga. The song is cinematically intense either way but 40 years later I still pine for the original Jersey Shore Mary “whose dress sways as she dances across the porch.”

            Born To Run was a wildly anticipated album, as much because Clive Davis, President of Columbia Records, had promised to “break” it. So imagine my delight as I passed the Bottom Line on 4^th Street to discover that tickets had just gone on sale for a ten-show album release run. To top it all I had a pocketful of money – a rare enough occurrence in those East Village days.

            Throwing rent and caution to the wind I purchased three tickets for three nights and so Pierce Turner, Jacques Delorme (a French poet) and I attended three of the greatest rock ‘n’ roll shows. 

Not only that but we lined up outside The Bottom Line with quarts of beer in the early afternoons so as to snag front table seats. In my delirium I even grabbed Bruce by the foot as he leaped from atop the grand piano, earning myself a smiling lecture from saxman, Clarence Clemons.

            In those sweaty, adrenaline nights Bruce Springsteen made the transition from street poet to superstar, and he did so without sacrificing any of his principles or street smarts. What set him apart?

            Well, he had an encyclopedic knowledge of Rock and Soul music. I still hear traces of so many influences from James Brown to Eddie Cochran, Phil Spector to Woody Guthrie. But more than anything he possessed Eugene O’Neill’s ineffable “touch of the poet” – and he’s never lost it.

            Born to Run coalesced all that was great in Rock ‘n’ Roll up to that moment. Just in time too, for Punk was about to explode in CBGB’s, a couple of blocks over on The Bowery.

            How thrilling that Bruce is still making a principled, ecstatic difference 40 years later!

The Priest and the Fireman

            Anyone knocking around Manhattan in those days knew people who perished, but for me it all comes back to the priest and the fireman.

            Even ten years later I can look offstage and imagine where each would be – Father Michael Judge standing by the bar, impeccably coiffed, surrounded by friends; and Richie Muldowney NYFD, darting around the room bantering with all and sundry, crooked smile lighting up the joint.

            Though both frozen in time they summon up the city as it used to be. For New York changed ineffably on 9/11when the spirits of so many unique people departed. They’ve been replaced, of course, great cities do that, but it’s not quite the same, is it?

            I often thought of Mychal as a mirror, he was so empathetic he seemed to reflect your own hopes and fears. I never knew anyone who helped so many people; he was always concerned, forever providing a shoulder.

I guess he came to see Black 47 to let off a little steam. I’m not even sure he liked our music – his own taste ran towards the more conventional – but the rhythms, juxtapositions and overall message fascinated him and, anyway, he liked to be in the thick of the action.

            Richie was hard-core Black 47. He knew all the words, the players, the other fans. He delighted to show up unexpectedly at out-of-town gigs; the moment you saw him you knew it would be a good night. To think such an irrepressible spark was extinguished so early.

            I remember jaywalking across Times Square the first September Saturday the band returned to Connolly’s. The “crossroads of the world” was so deserted in those immediate post-9/11 nights it felt like a scene from a cowboy movie where sagebrush is blowing down the street.

            But cops, firemen, emergency workers, the mad, the innocent and those who just couldn’t stay at home needed somewhere to go – to let the pressure off – and that was the band’s function.

Those first gigs were searing. You couldn’t be certain who was missing, who had survived, who was on vacation, who just needed a break from it all. When a familiar face walked through the door the relief was palpable, someone else had made it.

The atmosphere – though on the surface subdued - was charged with an underlying manic energy, a need to commemorate, celebrate, to show that life was going on. That would be some small revenge on the bastards who had caused all the heartbreak.

And yet, what an opportunity was missed in those first weeks. That smoldering pit down on Rector Street had galvanized the country. We were all so united; we would have done anything asked of us.

Republican, Democrat, Independent, we all came together as Americans. We would have reduced our dependence on foreign oil, rejuvenated poor neighborhoods, taught classes in disadvantaged schools. You name it - nothing would have been too big, too small either.

But no sacrifice was asked, much less demanded. Instead, 9/11 was used by cheap politicians to get re-elected; patriotism was swept aside by an unrelenting xenophobic nationalism that brooked no dissent. The US was converted into a fortress and the lights were dimmed in the once shining city on the hill. Worst of all, our leaders sought to use the tragedy as an excuse to invade Iraq.

Look at us now, dysfunctional, walled off from each other and the rest of the world. That began when the national will for a positive response was squandered in the aftermath of 9/11.

Though he was finally hunted down, sometimes it seems as though Osama Bin Laden won, for we’ve become a fearful, partisan people, unsure of ourselves, uncertain of our future.

But then I think of Mychal and Richie, their smiles beam across the years and I know that the current national malaise is just a patina that covers the soul of the country – it can be wiped away. It’s not permanent. We have greatness in us yet.

That’s the hard-earned lesson of 9/11 and will always be the message of the priest and the fireman.

Joe Strummer, we hardly knew ye

           A wave of melancholy swept over me when I played Joe Strummer’s version of The Minstrel Boy on SiriusXM last Saturday morning. It was the last song of my Celtic Crush show and I was in the midst of putting the studio in order for the next host.

I was surprised, to say the least, for though Joe was a friend and like many I mourned the passing of The Clash leader, still, that was over twelve years ago and life moves on.

            His Minstrel Boy featured prominently in the movie, Black Hawk Down. The song obviously lends itself to marital issues for I used it myself in Black 47’s Downtown Baghdad Blues. Then I remembered a night in Paddy Reilly’s back in the early 1990’s when we’d talked about the transforming power of old Irish melodies.

            Joe was familiar with a lot of Irish music and was aware of Thomas Moore who wrote The Minstrel Boy.

            The most famous Irish poet, singer, and songwriter of the 19^th Century, Moore was a friend of Robert Emmet and Lord Byron. A diminutive bantam-cock of a man, Thomas Jefferson famously mistook him for a child, which probably led to Moore’s distaste for the slave-owning third president of the United States.

He cared little for Daniel O’Connell either dismissing the Liberator as a demagogue; nonetheless, Moore held an exalted place in Irish society, for The Minstrel Boy was the national anthem of its day – particularly to the millions forced to emigrate during the Great Hunger of the 1840’s.

There wasn’t an Irish saloon in the world where glasses were not raised to its soaring melody, while the toast was often a vow to return home and finally rout the perfidious English invader. The Irish on both sides in the American Civil War chanted its stormy lyrics and the Fenians sung it when invading Canada.

Without losing any of the song’s essence Strummer’s version is distinctly contemporary – dry-eyed and defiant; and as I listened I remembered the first night the Prince of Punk strolled into The Bells of Hell.

David Amram, Pierce Turner and I were gathered around Al Fields who was ripping it up on the perennially out-of-tune piano. Al was a fiery player, especially when fueled by a vodka-based concoction he labeled “kerosne.”

Strummer sidled into our group and without the least pretention joined in the raucous merry-making. He was enthralled by Al’s playing which was heavily steeped in Stride, Boogie-Woogie and other African-American styles.

Much later that night Al took me to one side and inquired if I’d ever heard of The Clash? Would they be like The Rolling Stones, he wondered. I told him that if one were to stretch a number of points there were indeed similarities.

This brought a mercenary gleam to Al’s eyes. He confided that Strummer had invited him to play on a track from the next Clash record and wondered if he might demand the then dizzying fee of $500. I told him to go for it but be prepared to accept $100 along with the glory.

The next night Al showed up ordering doubles of kerosene. He’d been paid “his worth,” he smirked, but he might have to see a doctor. Since he always stomped to the beat while playing, the producer had insisted he perform with his shoes off; consequently Al had strained an ankle. The dangers of the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle!

All of these memories came flooding back as Joe’s brilliant reimagining of The Minstrel Boy washed over me in the sterile studio.

Given the quantities of kerosene I saw Al imbibe in both lean and flush times I doubt if he’s alive today. Thomas Moore is definitely long gone to meet his maker, but The Minstrel Boy lives on.

Joe Strummer walked away from The Clash when they were about to become the biggest band in the world. True to his Punk ideals he refused to be limited by other people’s expectations. Instead he swept the dust off a stagnant anthem and returned The Minstrel Boy to us – alive, vital, and dangerous – the way Thomas Moore always intended it to be.

Ah, Joe, we hardly knew ye.

            

The Joyful, Glorious, and Sorrowful 15th of August

           The 15^th of August always seems radiant to me now. But then I come from Wexford in the “Sunny South East,” so perhaps my memory is not playing tricks.

            The date marks the feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin into heaven. Since we believed implicitly in Catholicism this miraculous event was no less plausible than Original Sin or Limbo. Of more concrete importance, the 15^th of August being a national holiday, I had a choice to make – which grandparents to spend the day with?

My paternal side would take their usual leisurely trip down to their farm near Carnsore Point. On the 15th, however, they would also visit Our Lady’s Island where the faithful commemorated the feast day with hymns, rosaries and a banner-led procession.

We never marched for my grandfather didn’t approve of such gratuitous displays of holiness, preferring his own somber, silent faith.

The old rural Ireland was already beginning to fade, and you could now catch the occasional Roy Orbison song leaking from some huckster’s transistor radio and mixing uneasily with O Sacrament Most Holy or O Salutaris Hostia.

Unfazed by such sacrilege, those seeking relief from diverse maladies hobbled along in the wake of the procession. Cures were not uncommon and the faithful lustily rejoiced in the afterglow of these supernatural happenings.

            Despite such heavenly signs I usually opted to spend the day with my maternal grandfather. He had been a widower for some time but still followed his wife’s family tradition of driving the 50 miles to Tramore in Co. Waterford on the 15th. 

He would cram as many of us grandchildren as would fit into his old blue Morris Minor and with a roar of the engine we would thunder off down the long and winding road. Despite his many years of driving he had never mastered the interplay between clutch and accelerator, and had gained the nickname, Dan Dare, in honor of a rocket-propelled, science fiction radio star of the time.

Tramore was a wonderland back then - its name derived from the Gaelic, Trá Mór, or Big Strand. The beach is enormous, and though we would often emerge from the Atlantic blue from the cold, still we spent hours frolicking amid the crashing waves.

            But it was the slot machines, the dodgems, swings and general carnival-like atmosphere that captivated us. Though heavenly in its own way there was little hint of devotion to any virgin - sacred or secular - in this mad, swirling rural Las Vegas.

            The crowds rivaled Dublin’s O’Connell Street on All-Ireland Hurling Final day. Buskers the like of Maggie Barry and The Pecker Dunne cast their spell over the hundreds gathered around them on street corners. Con men and tricksters from the nearby city of Waterford plied their wares and skills on unsuspecting culchies.

 Everyone wore their Sunday best: the men uniformly attired in heavy dark suits, the collars of their white shirts sportily thrown open, their sensible ties rolled neatly and deposited next to rosary beads in jacket pockets. Many sat on the beach like so many penguins or rolled up their pants legs and waded in the surf and transient tide pools.

            When the shadows deepened we would tumble back into the old Morris Minor, sunburned, and sated by bottles of Miami Orange and bars of Cadbury’s Chocolate.  

Somewhere between New Ross and Wexford Town my grandfather would begin the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary, never the Glorious or Joyful. I suppose that says something about his nature or, perhaps, the still keenly felt loss of his wife.  We would answer by rote, some of us dozing in the soft evening light.

            We had no idea that change was so close and would soon sweep this world away. The Beatles were already making a name for themselves in Hamburg, Martin Luther King was on the march in Alabama, and up the road in the partitioned North of Ireland Catholics were beginning to question their second-class citizenship.

Everything seemed permanent and in its appointed place as we thundered on, scattering Hail Mary’s and Glorias in our noisy wake on another glorious and joyful 15^th of August.

            

Rave on Mr. Yeats

          William Butler Yeats was born 150 years ago. He was an outsider in so many ways – a Protestant from the merchant classes never entirely at home in the big houses of the landed gentry, a nationalist with a pronounced Anglo-Irish accent, a poet revered in universities who never sat for a degree, the list goes on.

            Renowned for his glittering and insightful poetry, there was so much more to Willie Yeats. A shy and introverted man he felt that the artist should not only develop his craft but fully engage in public affairs. Thus, he immersed himself in the “national question” and thoroughly embraced his Irish identity.

            He believed that knowledge should be shared, and traveled widely around Ireland giving lectures to workingmen and women. My grandfather told me of a talk “Mister Yeats” gave at the Mechanics’ Institute in Wexford on “The Necessity of Creating an Irish National Theatre.”

            Apparently the lecture was stirring but what impressed the workers most was that Yeats refusal to leave the building until every last question was answered.

            He did create an Irish National Theatre with Lady Gregory from the ground up - finding suitable premises, hiring actors, writing and soliciting plays, down to counting the proceeds and paying the bills. All this from a man with little experience of handling money – his father was an impecunious artist who ended up in New York City dependent on the charity of others.

            Though aware of his own genius, Yeats was generous to anyone with talent. A world figure at 39, yet he listened to both the personal and professional criticisms of a supremely confident, but unpublished, 20-year old James Joyce.

            He never doubted that Synge’s Playboy of the Western World would be performed wherever people loved great playwriting. Likewise, he stood by the prickly Sean O’Casey through thick and thin, taking to the stage when the Abbey Theatre audience rioted in protest against the young socialist’s attitude to sex and religion in The Plough and the Stars.

            A man of many interests, Mr. Yeats went mano-a-mano with the scandalous Aleister Crowley over the stewardship of The Golden Dawn, a hermetic magical society. Crowley, a man of powerful intellect wrote with some glee that for all Yeats’ gifts he could not imagine the gangly, ungainly poet engaged in any kind of sexual endeavor.

            And yet, the cerebral Mr. Yeats was not without his successes with the ladies. Alas, the one closest his heart, Maud Gonne, led him a not-so-merry dance. The poet wrote “White Birds” immediately after his proposal of marriage was refused by the wily Maud who promised that instead of a plunge into matrimony they would forever be united like “white birds on the foam of the sea.”

            Despite this greatest of literary kiss-offs, Willie persevered with his suit for further decades. However, he did gain the ultimate revenge by proposing to Maud’s daughter, Iseult. One can only imagine Mama’s reaction.

            And yet, the world is a much richer place because of the many lovelorn lines penned by Mr. Yeats in the pursuit of his stony beloved.

            Is there a more profound yet succinct poet – one who gets to the heart of the matter with the least fuss? I often think his following lines perfectly distill and encapsulate the tragedy of our national and religious divisions:

 “Great hatred, little room, maimed us at the start

I carry from my mother’s womb a fanatic heart”

            While his pithy statement “a terrible beauty is born” says so much about the flawed redemption of the 1916 uprising.

            Perhaps more than anyone Yeats saw that the new Ireland created in 1922 had merely exchanged masters – Catholic bishops for British royalty. In a speech in 1925 when the Irish Free State was about to outlaw divorce, he spoke somewhat presciently, “We (Irish Protestants) are no petty people. Your victory will be brief, and your defeat final, and when it comes this nation may be transformed.”

            Outsider he might have been but this often-unworldly poet had his finger on the pulse of Ireland, and could see that theocracy of any kind limits and ultimately damages a society.

            Rave on, Mr. Yeats, 150 years young, your words and actions still resound across the ages.

Here's to The Catskills and O'Shea's Irish Center

            We were fired from The Casino on Cape Cod immediately after we stepped offstage. It came as a total surprise as we’d been hired for the summer and it wasn’t yet Memorial Day.

Not a good night for Turner & Kirwan of Wexford, we were flat broke, our money spent on immigration lawyers and a new van.

            After three nights of cadging drinks around Falmouth I called Mike O’Brien of the infamous Trinity Two - a mentor of sorts to us.

            “Fired again,” says he. “What did you do this time?”

            “Nothing, Mike, everyone loved us, honest to god!”

            “Oh yeah? Well, you’re in luck. The band here just got fired too, and the owners are looking for some bowsies who can make people dance.”

            “No better men,” I volunteered. “Where’s the gig and when do we start.”

            A man of few words, Mike rattled off, “O’Shea’s Resort, Leeds. Tonight!”

            “Where’s that?

            “The Catskills, buy a map. Be here no later than 7pm.”

            With that he hung up.

            Leeds was not as we expected. We sped through the village a number of times, eyes peeled for an Irish Grossinger’s replete with golf course and Olympic style swimming pool.

            Eventually we found the more utilitarian O’Shea’s Irish Center and thus began one of the great summers of my life. It didn’t start too auspiciously, for we knew none of the waltzes and foxtrots favored by the regulars. Luckily, a large group of young waiters from a nearby Italian resort dropped in and we bopped them ‘til they dropped.

            Within a week we were the toast of the town – such as it was – although I suspect people came as much to look as listen. I hadn’t shorn my hair or beard for over a year, and Turner’s cut was akin to David Cassidy’s on steroids.

            If we looked different, we fit right in as regards carousing, gambling, and all the other pastimes that back then attended the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle. Though it was the mid-1970’s, that summer the 60’s hit Leeds with a bang.

            Not that Jerry and Mrs. O’Shea seemed to notice. What a lovely couple! Forty years out of Kerry and you could still cut their accents with a knife. Mrs. O’Shea’s specialty was a formidable meatloaf that she served with great regularity; perhaps more to the point she had a kind word for everyone’s hangover.

She did insist that all her staff take three communal meals a day; this caused no end of problems at the breakfast table as few had hit bed before dawn.

            Mr. Jerry O’Shea had been a boxer. His favorite pastime was to feint the unwary with a left hook, then hammer home a straight right to the shoulder that caused near paralysis. Needless to say, his staff was always on its toes.

            Down the street in Gilfeather’s Sligo Tavern, the late, lamented Joe Nellany held court. Joe may have occasionally played his accordion without a lit cigarette dangling from his lower lip, but never in my presence.

Gerry Finlay and Tommy Mulvihill, the soundest of musicians and gentlemen, were stalwarts in his Sligo Aces, while in nearby East Durham, Dermie Mac belted out rockers and, to our considerable chagrin, was adored by the ladies.

We spent our Mondays at the free concerts in Saratoga Springs or in Woodstock where one blessed night we sat next to members of The Band in Tinker Street Café.

            We wasted away steamy days in the river below O’Shea’s; it was on the nearby rocks I began my first novel – it was god-awful, but it hooked me on this writing business.

            The O’Sheas have long gone. But I bet there are many loyal Echo subscribers who remember them, for everyone in Leeds devoured this paper in those serene pre-internet days.

            Eventually, the summer ended and we all went our separate ways. I didn’t return until the 1990’s with Black 47. The world had changed immeasurably but everything in Leeds and East Durham seemed much the same. That’s the glory of the mountains – peace, continuity and simplicity.

            To everyone up there this summer, I wish you the best, and let’s raise a glass for those no longer with us. Here’s to the Catskills!

           

            

A Great American

            I didn’t totally recognize the voice on the other end of the line but he laid straight into his subject.

            George Washington’s refusal to become king of the newly liberated American states is hardly is hardly an everyday topic; yet the speaker was utterly convinced of its relevance to the then ongoing Iraq War.

            I listened to the laconic, yet impassioned, voice for further clues. But it wasn’t until he inquired, “And how are you, Lang?” that I finally concluded that Pete Seeger had called me.

            I first met him in an era when one wrote letters. He had given me his phone number but I just couldn’t get my head around ringing the great man.

            In my best Christian Brothers’ handwriting the two “r’s” in my first name apparently resembled an “n” and so he called me Lang. After he’d done so a couple of times I couldn’t bring myself to correct his mistake; it would have been akin to lecturing Mount Rushmore.

            He pronounced my new name with a vaguely Scottish burr, so perhaps he thought I’d been named after Robbie Burns’ New Year’s Eve song. It caused many a raised eyebrow when he addressed me in public, but eventually I got used to it - the fact that he was talking to me at all was reason enough for celebration.  

And now, a quarter of a century after our last conversation he wanted my help in crafting a play about a meeting between General Washington and his officers where he declined their offer to declare himself head of state.

            Though the subject was gripping I could sense straight off that it presented problems. From what I knew, old George was already sick to the teeth of public life and wished for nothing more than to get home to Mount Vernon where he could murder pints of homemade dark porter. So where would the drama be?

            Pete swept this niggardly consideration aside.

            “Lang,” said he, “I’m not sure you understand the analogy. The great George Washington could innately understand the dangers of overstepping his mandate, but our current imperial president has no such qualms about dispatching our young people around the globe in wars of choice.”

            There was no two ways about it, Mr. Seeger had a point, and once he had the bit between his teeth, no president or congress would sway his views – let alone some trumped-up Wexford corner-boy.

            I could foresee many aggravated trips up to his house in Beacon and many sleepless nights as I strove to put the great man’s thoughts into a coherent dramatic form. And so we talked on for an hour or more until he had to leave for his ongoing protest against George Bush’s Folly. This consisted of Mr. Seeger standing at a rural crossroads bearing a banner denouncing the Iraq War.

            You had to hand it to him. He’d spent a lifetime in such pursuits and now in his 80’s he showed no signs of flagging. He expected no less of those around him.

He seemed unaware of, or impervious to, any kind of danger. I remember Turner & Kirwan of Wexford performing for him outdoors in Beacon in the 1970’s.

            The show was running an hour late and we were about to take the stage when the soundman declared that our set would be cut to 15 minutes. When we protested the gentleman informed us we could play as long as we liked but we would do so acoustically as the town was dangerous and he would be on the highway with the PA system before the sun went down.

            I looked out and there was Pete strolling around like a pied piper surrounded by the local urban youth. Color, creed, nor class meant little to him. He thought the best of everyone until proved otherwise. And so we played our full set regardless of the soundman’s protestations and everyone got home safe and satisfied.

            We never did get around to writing the Washington play but I often think of Pete when confronted by the demands of principle and pragmatism. What a privilege to have had dealings with someone who embodied so much of what’s great about America.