It's hard to believe that The Captain & Me: On and Off the Field with Thurman Munson will be released a week from today. The passage of time has been so strangely blurred over the course of the last year, it seems like just yesterday that Ron Blomberg and I had our first phone conversation about collaborating on this project... but it also seems like about ten years ago.
In any case, I am incredibly excited to have the book finally coming out (via Triumph Books, who have done a marvelous job with everything from the cover art to promotion), and incredibly pleased with some of the reviews we've gotten for it so far — most notably in the pages of no less than the Wall Street Journal, where Ben Yagoda wrote that he "gobbled The Captain & Me up like a packet of Famous Amos chocolate-chip cookies." (Extra points for the period-appropriate pop cultural reference, Ben!)
So far, at least, the response makes me feel like Ron and I accomplished what we set out to do with this book — give people a better sense of who Thurman Munson was as a teammate and a pal, as well as shed additional light on what it was like to play for the New York Yankees during those promising-but-frustrating seasons in the first half of the 1970s. If you dig the Yankees, New York City, 1970s baseball, moustaches, delicatessens, mobsters, locker room japery, and heartwarming tales of friendship, I think you'll find much to enjoy herein. And for those of you who have asked if I was aware that The Captain & Me shares a title with a Doobie Brothers album, I was indeed; in fact, the Doobies were one of Thurman's favorite bands, which is something we get into in the book.
In a normal world, Ron and I would be up in NYC next week to do in-person signing events. While we still hope to be able to do some later this spring and summer, the sad fact is that it would be difficult/irresponsible to put on such events while the pandemic is still raging. So in the meantime, we've got a virtual Zoom event happening on April 21 with Bookends in New Jersey; Ron and I will be talking about the book, and all "attendees" will receive a copy of it with Ron's signature. Ron's a great talker, and it should be a lot of fun.
If you would like a copy of the book with my signature on it, the best way to do that at this point would be to buy a copy from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Booksamillion, Bookshop, or your local bookseller, and then send it to me with a SASE so I can sign it and get it back to you. Message me via the email link on this blog, and I'll let you know where to send it.
As always, I'd like to thank everyone who has supported and encouraged my writing over the years — especially all of you who bought Big Hair & Plastic Grass when it first came out, thus propelling me on this amazing journey. I hope our paths will cross again, sooner than later.
Hank Aaron hitting home run number 715 is my first vivid baseball memory. Before that, baseball was always something that my dad had going on the TV while I was busy playing GI Joe or reading Mad Magazine or building models or drawing comics. Sports in general wasn't my thing in those early elementary school days.
But when the 1974 baseball season was about to begin, with Hank all but certain to break the Babe's home run record in the first week or two of April, my second grade teacher Mrs. Crippen brought the topic up for class discussion, and impressed upon us the sense that history was about to be made. I knew what a legend Babe Ruth was — after all, there was a gigantic, gilt framed photo of him hanging on the wall of Bimbo's, our favorite Ann Arbor pizza parlor — and even though I didn't understand much about baseball yet, I didn't mind when my dad made us watch Monday Night Baseball on April 5 instead of The Rookies, which was what I usually watched on Monday evenings. And I remember getting chills when Hank actually hit the record-breaker out of the park, which thankfully happened before my 9 pm bedtime.
A few weeks later, my dad had to go to Atlanta for a social work convention that my grandfather was also attending, and he took my sister and me with him so we could hang out with our grandparents. My two most vivid memories of that trip are of getting absolutely tanked on Mountain Dew while watching It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World on the TV in my grandparents' hotel room, and of my grandfather driving us by Fulton County Stadium so I could see where Hank had hit his record-breaking homer. Unfortunately, the Braves were on a road trip at the time; so instead of spending the evening at the ballpark, we had dinner at an Italian restaurant in Underground Atlanta, a now-long-vanished tourist attraction that managed to be both strange and strangely underwhelming.
It feels very weird to me that Hank's gone now, even though he had a long, full, heroic and rewarding life. His figure has always towered over baseball, or at least my perception of it, even though I never saw him play in person. I never met or interviewed him, either; and as I said to a friend the other day, I don't know what I could have possibly said to him had our paths ever crossed. It's like seeing the Grand Canyon in person — whatever comes to your lips will inevitably sound lame and insufficient.
My one great Hank Aaron story is actually a Neil Diamond story, and it didn't actually happen to me. In fact, it may not even be true, but it's too good not to share. It was told to me in the early 90s by a guy named David, who was a regular customer at See Hear, the record store I worked at in Chicago from 1989 to 1993...
In 1989, David was living in Atlanta, and a friend of his who was working as Neil Diamond's costume (or hair or makeup) person invited him to come and hang out backstage when Neil came to town and played the Omni. David was a friendly and easy-going guy, the kind of person you felt like you'd known forever the first time you met him, and Neil apparently took an immediate liking to him when they were introduced. After giving David a personal tour of his wardrobe and pointing out some of his favorite stage outfits, Neil invited David to join him, his band and crew for dinner, which was being catered by a local restaurant of note.
David happily accepted the invitation, and enjoyed the dinner immensely — at least up until the point when Neil turned to David and asked him, "David, how come there aren't more black people at my concerts?"
David just about choked on his food. For one thing, what a question! For another, David was just some white, Jewish dude from Georgia. "Why the hell is Neil even asking me this?" he thought to himself.
He chewed on the question — and its proper response — for a minute before answering. "No offense, Neil," he said, "but I just don't think black people like your music very much."
Neil, to his credit, did not act at all offended; he merely seemed mystified. "But why not?" he asked David, completely straight-faced. "I'm a SOUL singer!"
Flash forward to that night's show: David takes his seat, which — thanks to the hookup from his friend — is located right in the first couple of rows. He turns back to take in the rest of the arena, as one does in such situations, and immediately notices (much to his great surprise) that Hank Aaron and his wife are sitting directly behind him. David tries to play it cool; as naturally garrulous as he is, even he can't think of a way to break the ice and strike up a conversation with the legendary Home Run King. Still, he can't help himself from looking back from time to time throughout the evening to see what Hank is up to — and sure enough, Hank is genuinely digging the show, knows the words to all the songs, etc.
After the show, David goes backstage to say goodbye to his friend, and winds up passing Neil in the hallway.
"Hey Neil!" he shouts after him. "Hank Aaron was in the audience tonight!"
Neil stops in his tracks, punches the air and yells "YES!!!"
***
Oh, and speaking of baseball and Jewish guys from Georgia, my book with Ron Blomberg — The Captain & Me: On and Off the Field with Thurman Munson — will be released via Triumph Books on April 20, and is currently available for pre-order at Amazon.
Yeah, it's been a rough year for most of us, with good news often in short supply. Happily, one of the big projects I've been working on came to fruition in 2020: Stompbox: 100 Pedals of the World's Greatest Guitarists, has now been officially released. Co-edited by James Rotondi and myself, and featuring the stunning photographs of Eilon Paz and written contributions from an impressive variety of musicians, music journalists and pedal aficionados, Stompbox is a deep dive into the culture and history of guitar effects pedals, exploring the many reasons and ways that guitarists (and other musicians) use them.
Stompbox features effects used by some of my personal favorite guitarists of all time, including Jimi Hendrix, Ernie Isley, Davie Allan, Marc Bolan and Mick Ronson — but it covers a wide stylistic spectrum which includes everyone from Tom Morello and Radiohead's Ed O'Brien (who wrote the book's foreword!) to Jack White and Dimebag Darrell. If you love guitar pedals and/or are fascinated by how gear plays into the creative process, this is a book you can get lost in for hours. But hey, don't just trust me on this — check out the sweet write-up the book recently received from WNET's ALL ARTS!
But wait, there's more! In the process of putting Stompbox together, Eilon and I began to come in contact with pedal aficionados whose collections contained some mind-glowingly rare and cool effects; though not specifically used by legendary guitarists, they definitely deserved to be showcased in a book of their own. Thus was born Vintage & Rarities: 333 Cool, Crazy and Hard to Find Guitar Pedals, which is available in a limited first edition run by itself, but can also be purchased in tandem with Stompbox as part of the slipcovered "Stompbox Brick" (so called because it's truly heavy on a variety of levels). If you have a guitar player on your Christmas list — or you're a guitar player who wants to give yourself a nice present (c'mon, you deserve it) — you really can't go wrong with either (or both) of these books!
And while you're at it, scroll down to the bottom of the Stompbox Shop page to enter The Stompbox Motherlode Giveaway, which includes pedals from JHS Pedals, Keeley Electronics, Death By Audio, Earthquaker Devices, Electro-Harmonix, AnalogMan, Walrus Audio, Strymon, Fairfield Circuitry, Wampler, Thorpy FX, Chase Bliss Audio, MXR, and Dunlop, as well as a yearly All-Access guitar lesson subscription from Trufire. The winner will be drawn on December 30, so be sure to enter before then. (And follow the Stompbox Instagram account for more opportunities to enter, as well as to see cool excerpts and outtakes from the books.)
Hope you're all staying safe and taking care of yourselves during these dark times. Hopefully we can all rock together again once summer rolls around!
I knew this was coming, but I still haven't been able to fully wrap my mind around it.
I don't remember ever learning about the existence of Tom Seaver, just like I don't remember learning about the existence of the Empire State Building; both were just always there, iconic symbols of the greatness of the city I'd been born into but didn't really begin to experience until I was almost 13. By then, of course, Tom was no longer there, having been shipped to the Reds in 1977 as part of the most heartbreaking trade in Mets (and maybe even MLB) history. And by then, seeing a Mets game at Shea Stadium was kind of like watching a Hubert Robert painting of Roman ruins come to life; you knew that greatness had previously occurred on these once-hallowed grounds, but actual traces of it could no longer be found anywhere on the field or in the neglected, urine-soaked structure.
I think I only got to see one Hall of Fame pitcher play in person while he was in his 70s prime: Jim Palmer, who efficiently beat my Tigers 3-1 with a complete game, 8-strikeout performance on April 24, 1977. And I got to see Luis Tiant, who SHOULD be in the Hall, throw a three-hit shutout against the A's that August. Both are among my most treasured 70s baseball experiences, but I really wish I could have somehow witnessed Seaver in action during his 1967-75 prime, that absolutely Olympian nine-year stretch where he won the NL Rookie of the Year award and three Cy Youngs while averaging 16 complete games and 233 strikeouts a season with a 2.46 ERA, and helped pitch the Mets to two pennants and one World Series championship. If I had to pick one pitcher from the era to take the mound for a crucial start, it would be that dude.
Still, I got to watch Seaver many times on TV from 1976 to 1979, when he was still pretty damn great; even when his fastball lost its zip, as it clearly had by 1979, he was such a tough and smart pitcher that you would have been foolish to bet against him.
But perhaps my fondest Seaver memory is of watching him pitch in an all-star softball game that was televised as part of (I think) ABC's Wide World of Sports during the spring training of 1977. Unlike his regular season starts, when he was "all business" on the mound, he was in total prankster mode that day—tossing a golf ball to one unsuspecting hitter, and lobbing an actual grapefruit to Thurman Munson, who duly (and grumpily) juiced that baby with a vicious swing...
My other favorite Seaver moment? This 1976 Sears ad for "The Travelknit Fourpiece," an Astroturf-colored set comprising a blazer, a leisure suit jacket, and two pair of trousers. In it, you can glimpse the many moods of Tom Seaver; the guy second from the right is clearly the grapefruit-throwing Seaver from the softball game, while the one at far-right appears to have wandered in from the set of The Rockford Files, where (in my dreams, at least) he's playing one of Jim's old army buddies who has sought him out for help with a business situation that is NOT WHAT IT SEEMS...
I don't know what else to say right now, other than I know how badly this must hurt for my Mets fan friends, especially the ones slightly older than me who grew up with Tom Terrific, and who got to see (or hear) their hero take the mound every fourth game. As rough as his trade to the Reds was for you folks, the news of his passing might be even rougher. Peace to you all, and to Tom Seaver, too.
There are over 34,000 graves in Rosehill Cemetery, the largest cemetery in the City of Chicago. Those interred at the sprawling North Side burial ground include captains of industry, Civil War infantrymen, fifteen Chicago mayors, sixteen U.S. Congressmen, half a dozen 19th century baseball figures, and legendary sportscaster Jack Brickhouse. “Louise is somewhere in there, too,” my mom told me, right around the time I moved back to Chicago in 2015.
Louise was not quite a relative, but much more than just a family friend. My mom, sister and I first met her in January 1980, shortly after we’d moved from Los Angeles to join my then-stepfather in Chicago. We’d just finished hauling the last of our stuff into our new 9th floor apartment in the Mies Van Der Rohe-designed glass box at 910 N. Lake Shore Drive, when Louise (who was friendly with my stepfather) invited us to lunch at her apartment somewhere on the upper floors of our building’s next-door twin. Despite knowing almost nothing about her in advance, I had a weird premonition on our way to her place that she was going to play a very important role in my life — a premonition which turned out to be right on the money. A tiny, worldly, hilariously ribald widow in her early seventies, Louise was warm and welcoming to us from the moment we met. She and my mom hit it off immediately, and soon formed a deep bond that would last for over a decade. Louise and I clicked as well, once we each realized that the other was deeply interested in art, architecture and (especially) archaeology.
The shelves of Louise’s living room, whose floor-to-ceiling windows offered a gorgeous panoramic view of Lake Michigan, were filled with books on the aforementioned subjects, not to mention a wide array of ancient artifacts from around the globe. Soon I was going over to her place by myself on a regular basis, and we’d spend hours discussing everything from Bauhaus architecture and surrealist art, to Greek and Roman myths and the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt, to her extensive and eventful travels in pre-WWII Europe. Despite the fact that I was only thirteen, Louise spoke to me like I was a learned adult, as opposed to an adolescent whose enthusiasm for these topics far outstripped his actual knowledge. When I graduated from the eighth grade that spring, Louise’s gift to me was a copy of Immanuel Velikovsky’s Oedipus and Akhnaton. I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that not too many other eight graders received the same graduation gift that year…
The intellectual confidence that our friendship instilled in me turned out to be especially significant, as my stepfather — threatened by the closeness of my relationship with my mom — would spend the next two years doing everything he could to eradicate any semblance of self-esteem I might possess. When my mom (who certainly had her own issues with him) finally got fed up and moved us out, all the friends we’d made through my stepfather immediately dropped us — all of them except for Louise, that is. She sided firmly with the three of us, and did whatever she could to be helpful and supportive as my mom gutsily rebuilt her own life and ours.
I confess that, as much as I appreciated Louise’s love and encouragement, I found her presence increasingly difficult to take as I grew older. Louise would think nothing of enlivening a dinner conversation by, say, bringing up an artist she knew in 1930s France who would mix paints with his own shit to achieve a particularly impressive shade of brown; and she could always be counted to kick it up several notches when we were out in public, to flirt madly with any man we encountered, and maybe even “misappropriate” a wine glass, cutlery or some other grabbable item when no one was looking. I was desperately craving some kind of order in my life, and Louise represented chaos to me — charming and massively entertaining chaos, of course, but chaos nonetheless. I can vividly remember her advancing towards me through the crowd at a post-show reception for one of my high school plays, and me feeling both genuinely happy to see her, yet also silently praying that this pint-sized dynamo with the flashing eyes and crimson lipstick wouldn’t do anything to embarrass me.
I don’t recall seeing much of Louise while I was in college, but thankfully we managed to reconnect during the few years between my graduation and her passing. Never exactly a robust physical specimen to begin with, she was now exceptionally frail, but her personality and sense of humor remained as atomic-powered as ever; slightly more grown up and considerably less uptight than I’d been in my high school days, I could now just relax and enjoy our time together. When she died in 1992, after struggling with a variety of illnesses, my mom was there at her bedside. “Daniel — that’s my guy,” Louise told her. She left me her lime-green couch, a heavy stack of archaeology books, and an antique brass nutcracker in the form of a pair of female legs, which was really about the most “Louise” item imaginable.
A lovely memorial gathering was held at Louise’s apartment, where I’d spent so many wonderful afternoons hearing her stories. But I have no memory of there being a funeral, and I had no idea of what happened to her remains until my mom mentioned her in conjunction with Rosehill. Now that I was living in Andersonville, only a twenty-minute walk from the cemetery, I thought I might try to find her grave and pay my respects.
Unfortunately, my mom was pretty sure that Louise’s ashes resided somewhere in Rosehill’s gigantic two-story mausoleum — and most likely in a section devoted to the maternal side of her family, whose name we’d both completely forgotten after two-plus decades. And while I occasionally went for meditative, head-clearing strolls through the cemetery, the mausoleum’s doors always seemed to be locked whenever I visited...
My move back to Chicago, after twenty-three years in Southern California, was a positive one on many levels: I reconnected with old friends, made a few new ones, enjoyed some quality time with my mom, finally banished some lingering ghosts from my difficult adolescence, and somehow even managed to show up in time to witness the Cubs win their first World Series in over a century. But on a professional level, it was a total, deeply dispiriting bust. One promising work opportunity after another either slipped through my fingers or blew up in my face; the countless job applications I sent out resulted in only a small handful of interviews; and none of the book proposals I was writing seemed to be getting any traction. So in the fall of 2017, when a book agent I knew reached out about maybe helping hair-metal veteran Chip Z’Nuff pen his memoirs, I immediately said yes. The project was kind of a long-shot, given that Chip’s band Enuff Z’Nuff didn’t exactly have the name recognition of, say, Motley Crue or Guns N’ Roses; but I figured I’d at least get some funny rock n’ roll stories out of him — and maybe we’d even get lucky and land a book contract with a decent advance…
After a brief preliminary meeting with Chip at the Chicago Recording Company, he invited to come down to his house in Blue Island for a lengthier discussion of the project. Unfortunately, I didn’t own a car; and since riding the CTA all the way down to Blue Island from the North Side would take hours (and maybe wouldn’t be the safest course of action), I decided to rent some wheels for the weekend. But as the Enterprise outlet near me had recently jacked up their rental rates, I had to turn to their considerably cheaper branch over at the corner of Western and Peterson, right across from the northwest corner of Rosehill Cemetery. Two days later, when I returned the car to the branch, the Enterprise people offered me a lift home, but I declined. The early October morning was a spectacularly beautiful one, and I didn’t have any pressing deadlines, so I thought I’d treat myself to a leisurely walk home through Rosehill.
Unlike Graceland, which is built on a perfectly rectangular lot, Rosehill warps outward along its southern border as it proceeds to the west, and none of the cemetery’s paved paths or roads resemble anything close to a straight line. These factors, combined with the sheer vastness of the place, make it pretty easy to lose your bearings, even if you’ve been there many times. On this particular morning, I entered the western end of Rosehill via the Bryn Mawr Avenue gate, which I’d never done before; I took a left at the first fork in the pathway I came to, a right at the next, and so on, slowly wending my way more or less in the direction of the Ravenswood Avenue entrance on the other side. Though this part of the cemetery was pretty unfamiliar to me, I figured I’d eventually see some recognizable landmarks that would help guide me to the other end.
I had originally intended to walk straight home, but since the day was starting to get fairly warm, and my wife was texting me with questions about our Thanksgiving travel plans, I decided to find a shady place where I could stop and sit for a few minutes. I noticed a small Egyptian Revival-style mausoleum coming up on my left — after all these years, I’m still a sucker for ancient Egyptian design motifs — so I walked over and sat down on its cool front steps. I immediately felt very relaxed and happy sitting there, so I decided to hang out for a while and savor the moment, letting my eyes wander dreamily over the tranquil landscape of gravestones, tombs, obelisks and colorful trees.
To keep myself company on the walk, I’d been listening to “Lord Queensbury’s Codpiece,” a Spotify playlist I’d compiled of over two thousand tracks of 1960s British psychedelia, to be played in shuffle mode. The combination of jaunty melodies, fanciful lyrics and pastoral introspection meshed perfectly with both the warm autumn day and the melancholy atmosphere of the cemetery. Even more perfectly than I could have expected, in fact: For while I was relaxing there on the steps of the mausoleum, “Egyptian Tomb” by Mighty Baby suddenly popped on, as if to make sure I was aware of where I was sitting. It was an odd and eerie coincidence, to say the least.
Thinking this might be some sort of sign, I looked up at the name carved into the front of the mausoleum — Ferdinand Siegel — and decided to check Google for any interesting information I might be able to find out about my “host”. There wasn’t much out there, however; Mr. Siegel appeared to have been a German-born real estate investor who’d died in 1928 at the age of 79, presumably after having done well enough in his new country to build an impressive monument to himself. But compared to the fascinating stories of some of Rosehill’s other “residents,” the basic facts of Mr. Siegel’s life didn’t seem to warrant further research. So, feeling refreshed and ready to head home, I put my phone back into my jacket pocket and got up to go.
After I'd walked about ten feet back towards the road, it suddenly occurred to me that I hadn't actually looked into the mausoleum. Tombs of this size and era typically include a stained-glass rear window, and I silently scolded myself for nearly passing up the possibility of spying some beautiful 1920s glass work. I headed back to the Siegel tomb, walked up its front steps, and peered through the bars of its oxidized iron doors; sure enough, I could see a gorgeous stained glass window set into the far wall, depicting the Nile flowing languidly past a palm-dotted landscape, as if seen through a pair of ancient Egyptian “papyrus” columns. I took a photo of the window, then tried to make out the name plates on the wall below it.
The third one down read, "Louise E. Mora, 1908 -1992". It was Louise. Our Louise.
I stood there in shock for several minutes, first weeping, then laughing. Somehow, in this 350-acre repository of over 34,000 remains, I had found her — or maybe, she had found me.
Cynics reading this will say it was all just a lucky series of coincidences that led me to Louise’s grave. And perhaps it was. But if I hadn’t decided to take a chance on a Chip Z’Nuff book project (which also never panned out, unfortunately), hadn’t needed to rent a car, hadn’t been forced to go to a cheaper rental outlet, hadn’t refused their offer of a ride home, hadn’t taken several semi-arbitrary turns along a series of cemetery pathways I was only vaguely familiar with, hadn’t needed to answer Katie’s texts, hadn’t decided to rest in the shade at that very spot, and hadn’t suddenly thought to walk back and check out the mausoleum’s stained glass… well, that’s rather a lot of coincidences, isn’t it? And really, what were the odds of “Egyptian Tomb” coming up, out of over two thousand songs, shortly after I’d sat down?
“I was born in a world that can easily bring you down,” goes the first line of “Egyptian Tomb”. But for all the soul-crushing horror, cruelty and disappointment of this world, I can hereby attest that there’s still some magic left in the universe. Louise proved it to me on that warm October morning, from her resting place along the banks of a stained-glass Nile.
This January 20th marks what would have been the 104th birthday of the late, great Pardo Frederick DelliQuadri, AKA my maternal grandfather, AKA my beloved Grandpa Fred.
I always think a lot about him around this time of year. And the other night, while combing the Internet for some photos from his time in Washington, D.C., I struck serious gold — actual film footage from June 21, 1968 of him being sworn in at the White House as Chief of the Children's Bureau of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. (The full clip is embedded below at the end of this post.)
I had absolutely no idea that this clip existed, but it popped up in the collection of the LBJ Library on a roll of film outtakes from the summer of 1968. President Johnson indeed makes an appearance, saying a few remarks — sadly, the clip doesn't have any audio — before Supreme Court Justice Byron "Whizzer" White performs the swearing-in ceremony with my grandfather. Then my grandfather guides LBJ over to meet some of his family members, including my mother (who is totally killing it in a Marimekko print dress, though I know she now regrets her choice of hat), his wife (my Grandma Velma), and some of his brothers and sisters, who have traveled all the way from their home of Pueblo, Colorado to be there for the event.
It's such a treat for me to watch my grandfather — who's been gone for nearly 30 years now — in this clip. That shy-but-warm smile, that glint of mischievous humor in his eye, that palpable sense of being completely comfortable in his own skin in any situation, even at a White House ceremony presided over by LBJ... that's absolutely the Grandpa Fred I knew.
There's more to this story, though, and now seems like the perfect time to tell it. I was two years old at the time of this ceremony, and I was supposed to be present for it. In fact, my parents dressed me up for the occasion in what my mother tells me was a very sharp yellow plaid suit — both because they wanted me to look nice, and because there was a plan afoot for me to do a photo op with LBJ.
By 1968, public sentiment over the U.S. military presence in Vietnam had begun to turn, and the chant "Hey Hey LBJ/How many kids did you kill today" had become a favorite at peace marches everywhere. Aware that my grandfather had asked for me to be allowed to attend his swearing-in ceremony, someone at the White House concocted the idea of putting me and LBJ together for a photo — this was for the Children's Bureau, after all, and wouldn't it be good for the President's image to have a pic of him cuddling a cute little kid?My father, who was very much against the Vietnam War, tells me now that he had serious misgivings about the whole thing. But rather than make any waves, he went along with the plan, carrying me into the White House with him. But as it turned out, I made some waves of my own...
I was, let us say, a rather odd child, and one of my biggest quirks around Age 2 was that I'd developed an absolute and all-consuming horror of painted portraits. My parents will both attest to this: If we went over to any of their friends' houses for a visit, they would have to ask them in advance to remove any portraits they might have hanging on their walls; otherwise, I would have a major meltdown as soon as I saw them. Of course, the White House is filled with large, painted portraits of Presidents and other historical figures, and of course no one thought to ask them to take those down before we arrived...
You can pretty much guess what happened next. I don't recall the specific portrait that set me off, but I was screaming hysterically within seconds of entering the Cabinet Room. President Johnson himself apparently tried to calm me down, but I simply wasn't having it. Finally, my dad (with a couple of Secret Service agents in tow) had to take me out into the hallway so that my grandfather's ceremony could proceed undisturbed by my shrieks of terror.
Until the day he died, Grandpa Fred never let me forget about what a scene I made on his big day. Not that he was particularly disappointed by it; in fact, he thought it was kind of hilarious. "Hey Dan," he would chuckle, "Remember the time you cried in Johnson's face?"
I love you, Gramps. It's so nice to see you again.
There's something about films made and/or set in the New York City of the 1970s that always keeps me coming back for more, and the same goes for the London of the same period. Maybe it's because childhood visits to both of these cities vividly imprinted themselves upon my fragile eggshell mind; while these were clearly not easy cities to live in, the vibrant energy of citizens going about their daily business against a backdrop of faded grandeur and crumbling glory captured my youthful imagination in the same way that Hubert Robert's paintings of "life among the ruins" would later fascinate me. Though there were signs of decay everywhere, there was also beauty in that decay — a beauty so profound that even a midwestern boy raised on TV and the intrinsically American philosophy of "newer is better" couldn't fail to notice.
I recently finished reading Rob Chapman's Psychedelia and Other Colours, a fascinating and occasionally frustrating book that is less of a history of the original psychedelic era than a series of free-associative essays about why and how LSD impacted popular music the way it did. One of the best aspects of Chapman's book is the way he lays out the differences between American and British psychedelia — not just stylistically, but also culturally. In his British chapters, he repeatedly underlines just how dingy and drab life was in post-WWII England, especially when compared to the space-age shininess of life in the US; and how even at the height of "Swinging London," most of the grumbling grey city still felt barely a few years removed from the traumas and deprivations of life during The Blitz.
If Chapman's book didn't exactly turn me on to any great psychedelic records that I wasn't already aware of, it did lead me to The London Nobody Knows, a haunting documentary filmed in 1967 by Norman Cohen (but apparently not released until 1969), which was based on the 1962 book of the same name by Geoffrey Fletcher. Narrated by James Mason, who also serves as the film's tour guide, the film explores London's seamy underbelly (and its Victorian remnants) at a time when the wrecking ball of progress was really starting to kick into high gear.
Chapman cites The London Nobody Knows as being particularly illustrative of how shabby the city really was, even at the peak of its pop cultural influence, and the film certainly doesn't disappoint in that regard. Though a few sequences here are speeded up a la Benny Hill for comic relief, the London we see here is a bleak place, indeed, one filled with rusting Victorian urinals, rotting pubs, splintering tenements, toothless street performers, and open-air markets filled with wriggling eels and shady pitchmen. The few minutes devoted to the city's fashionably-attired youth seems almost jarringly out of place, like they were only added (and possibly under protest) after the producers begged to see some of the mods and mini-skirts that London was famous for.
Again, though, there is beauty in the decay — and with his dry wit and seemingly unflappable countenance, Mason is perfectly suited to guiding us through it. Whether wryly cocking an eyebrow at the ugliness of the newer buildings along the north side of the Thames, or begging the pardon of a market patron that he's inadvertently bumped, he comes off more like a savvy local than a movie star. In one particularly moving sequence, he unselfconsciously sits down with several senior residents of the local Salvation Army, and lends a sympathetic ear to their hard-luck stories. (I'm guessing he prudently chose not to mention his own brush with Thunderbird wine.)
My favorite moment in the film, however, is a non-Mason one: A shirtless street performer of indeterminate age hectors passerby to bind him with a length of heavy chain, from which he then performs a Houdini-like escape. While the man's performance is quite entertaining in its own right, and certainly harkens back to an earlier London — there were almost certainly escape artists doing the same trick on the city' streets in the 19th century, if not hundreds of years before that — what blew me away was the realization that I had actually seen this very gentleman in action, seven years after this sequence was filmed. While I knew that I would recognize some of the London I experienced in '74 in this film, I had no inkling that I would actually recognize one of the people I'd encountered while I was there.
That year, my sister and I were living in Leamington Spa with my father, who was on sabbatical at Warwick University. On weekends, we would often take train trips to other parts of the country, and of course London was on our hit list. While my most vivid memory from our London trip is of ordering a plate of ravioli at a restaurant, only to find that there was nothing inside of said ravioli — London dining was significantly less worldly than it is today — our visit to the Tower of London also stands out for me, and not just because of the thrill of coming face to face with nearly 900 years of English history. On our way to the Tower entrance, we came upon this very same shirtless gent, who had attracted a rather sizable audience with his salty pronouncements and his impressive feats of escapism. (There was also a younger partner working with him, who was similarly swathed in chains and locks.) After busting free, the man passed the hat, and then cussed the crowd out for not putting enough into it. "There's not enough in here to get me into a pay toilet," he cried. "I hope every last one of ye gets bloody diarrhea tonight!" Oh, how my sister and I howled with laughter; I think I even asked my dad for a few coins to contribute to his cause, simply because I was impressed that anyone would loudly wish diarrhea upon a group of tourists.
Obviously, that's the sort of thing that sticks with you for decades after the fact, and when my wife and I visited the Tower of London last spring — her first visit, and my first time returning since 1974 — I half-expected that this guy would be standing outside the tube station, haranguing us into tying him up. He wasn't there, of course; I'm guessing he'd be around a hundred years old today, if he's even still alive. Still, it was a real thrill to see him again in this documentary, and to feel viscerally connected for a second to the London of 1967, even though I didn't actually experience the city until seven years later.
Anyway, watch the film. You won't regret it.
Dan Epstein
About Me
Dan Epstein is the author of Big Hair and Plastic Grass: A Funky Ride Through Baseball and America in the Swinging '70s and Stars and Strikes: Baseball and America in the Bicentennial Summer of '76, both published by Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Press. He writes about baseball, music and other cultural obsessions for a variety of outlets and publications. He lives in Greensboro, NC, and is available for speaking engagements.