"Guitar payers never listen
to lead singers."
- Steven Tyler
I hadn’t picked it up for quite some time.
There is little reason not to, it sits
quietly by my desk, as it has done for the past five years. Sometimes it has a whimsical expression,
well, I suppose as whimsical as an inanimate object can have.
It’s an Epiphone, and truth be told not the
first in my life. You know, sometimes solo is not enough – there were moments when that guitar was my only companion. There was a time when
I couldn’t put it down. It had been a comfort
and a friend when alone was all there was.
It had been a hard week, so I did what I had so often done in the past...I picked her up and played a little.
As a familiar song or two emerged, I thought of him.
Things
always have a beginning…
It began after the war in 1970. A group of us moved off base a few miles from
Fort Rucker, Alabama. We were on the
back end of a three-year commitment and had just returned from Vietnam. We had a little rank and that gave us the privilege
to move away from the open barracks to which we had become accustomed during
our military service….communal sleeping, showering and whatever other personal
hygiene issues that were part of our daily routines. Yes sir, the last year we were on our own.
My best friend and I rented a trailer – first
position on the left when entering the mobile home park. Sometime that year he borrowed my car for a
weekend visit home. When he returned, he
didn’t come alone. The car was packed
with stuff, and to my surprise, another person – the product of an unexpected
(at least to me) and a hastily arranged marriage. Little doubt, the dynamic of our lives had had
taken a turn.
During that time I had a job as a waiter at
the Officer’s club and was playing basketball for the Ft. Rucker post
team. It occupied a lot of time and kept
me away from home…however, with newly weds in the trailer, it wasn’t quite
enough time.
I
found a friend…
I’m not exactly sure how it happened, but I
somehow got my hands on an old guitar. I had no idea how to play it, but the price
was right and it was clear anything keeping me away would be good for all of
us. You know, something to take up time as our living arrangements got sorted out.
Sorted out, eventually meant moving to another place. I liked the Beatles and picked up a book of
their songs with picture chords. That’s
how it began…
I lugged that old thing around with me
after the military, and would sit quietly with Paul, John, George and Ringo –
pretending I was singing along with them…better said, attempting, yet one more
time to play, “She Loves You” without having to stop, look at my fingers, and
sing two words at a time.
By the time I started my doctoral program
in the mid 70s, that guitar had become a real friend. I wasn’t very good on it, but had written a
song or two, and in moments of loneliness had a companion that brought a sense
of completeness to my world.
“The”
community…
Somewhere early in the final years of
school, I became involved with a spiritual community. It was fulfilling, and I figured would be a
good anchor until I graduated and moved on.
Graduation came on time…moving on?
Well...as it turns out..took 30 years!
This little church had a band, and I was
encouraged to play with them. Undaunted,
something that happens when one does not know how truly unskilled they are, I
said, “Sure.” I quickly discovered my
talent was, to put it politely, second tier.
Over time, however, I got better and moved from 'not so good' to mediocre
where my skills plateaued and have remained to this day. I was the rhythm guitar player in the band…a
well-known euphemism for “Keep that thing in the background sonny!”
It’s hard to say how gratifying it was to
play with other folk…a team effort…a group with a purpose…focus! There is little more fulfilling than finding
something in common and exercising it with like-minded people.
Over the years, we played and wrote a lot
of music – all of it homegrown. While spiritually
oriented, it came with a variety that was truly amazing – folk, rock,
semi-classic, richly rhythmic…sometimes ‘a capella.’ Yep, it truly was a ‘band of brethren.’
The
player…
The piano players and singers rotated,
depending on the song, but the rest of the group was constant. There was a bass, rhythm guitar (you
know who), a marvelous horn player (trumpet and flugelhorn) and a lead
guitar. It was, however, the lead guitar that for me brought the soul to our little band. He wasn’t the leader…he was a rock. He wasn’t in the front, but he was always
there. He would say he had been simply
terrible, but just kept at it like the long distance runner who knows the race
is only completed by putting one foot in front of the other again and again and
again…That was Billy. By the time we
met, ‘terrible’ was more distant than the ghost of Christmas past…
While Bill was not the decision maker for
the music, I do not remember ever a time when he wasn’t ready and willing to
play at the drop of a hat. He wrote a
few songs and had one of those haunting voices that could be sweet and gentle or
hard and gritty…He felt the music when he played, and it was impossible not to
‘feel him’ as his fingers caressed those strings. Playing with him could be transcendent.
In those days it seemed that things would never
change…that we would play “…forever and a day…” – that we would always find an
excuse to pick up our instruments…just to see what happened. When we played together, in spite of my
average skills, he made me feel complete.
It
has been patiently waiting…
As I picked her up and played a
little of the music that had been so much a part of my life for those
decades, I felt a warmth as familiar words
slipped out of the recesses of my mind.
There was nobody around…it was just me and that six string Epiphone. In truth, it was pretty rough around the
edges, but I could hear Billy’s firm and gifted hand embracing that lead guitar
and the sweet harmonic voice that had been as much a part of me as the sound of
my own.
Those who were privileged to hear him play
knew there was something special that worked its way through those fingers that
seemed to have a life of their own. The
following words from the biblical book of James will not mean as much to those
who never heard him sing them…BUT for those who did…they will reach inside and
touch a very special place
“My
life is but a vapor, here for a moment
Then
it vanishes away
And
like a flower of the grass
It
shall fade away.”
It has been a while since we have
communicated, but at last contact he was still playing, honing his hand with
that six-string seductress.
As I plunked away on my old guitar, I
couldn’t help thinking how powerful music has been in my life and what an honor it had been to play with that man…an honor
indeed.
Yes sir that boy could play a guitar.
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