Connected

Before you read this one, please listen first. Connected

Here’s the rest of the story

I wish there was one word, one sentence, that explained everything. I don’t want to relive the whole thing again, this was just the start, but all the wisdom passed down from people older than me over the years has come back to haunt me. It appeals to my dark side, like that Dutch winter cloud that lingers so low over the landscape. It’s like living in a fog. I’ve often said that rain doesn’t fall there, it just is, like some metaphysical absolute, waiting to invade every dry space in your spirit.

I’d be on the road, traveling to a gig, and this wet was everywhere, like another planet. The orange lights on the Belgian freeway haunted me, guiding me back to the Dutch border. Rain pumping with no let-up. This is why I longed for the sanctuary of that family living room. The drive to get back there was Herculean. I remember on some nights driving back through the villages, the glow of lights from open windows. The Dutch loved their windows open, as if desperate for any extra light, even at night. I would wonder what it might be like to be in one of those living rooms with the amber glow, a voyeur’s paradise. The houses were bunched close together.

Moment of Truth

The waiter brought the bill, and I remember hearing, “My parents want to meet you.”

I knew the moment of truth would come, and I also knew what I was going to do about it: get out of Dodge. There was no way I was EVER going to meet her parents, so I must have blocked out the rest of the sentence. I was only picturing Tommy Nieto lying dead on his girlfriend’s front lawn.

Tommy was responsible for getting us some of our major gigs back then. He ran Scenic Sounds and was working with Bill Graham, who was helping him book the Rose Palace in Pasadena. Tommy was a fast talker for a Californian. He was light-skinned. His background was unclear, but we considered him one of us. He just liked us, knew us from high school, and made sure we were on bills with some of the biggest acts coming through town. Led Zeppelin, Santana, whoever and now he was dead.

The rumor was that he got arrogant and went to his girlfriend’s house, hoping to resolve some argument, and her dad just shot him. Right there on the front lawn, like some throwback to the old Southern tales about the KKK. Hendrix was exploding on the LA scene, people were supposed to be enlightened, and Tommy got shot.

A year had passed since I heard the news and it was still fresh in my head even though I was now living a completely different reality. Rose was being insistent, with that smile and those green eyes that held something over me, a spell. She said her parents didn’t want her staying in hotels or out late without knowing who she was with.

Well, it was crystal clear that they were never going to get to know me. A 29 year old 6’5” Hendrix lookalike was never going to set foot in their home, meet her dad of all people, and wait to become a statistic. I was going to end it. A perfect excuse. The perfect out. Except I’d been hit head on by that smile and a comment I can’t even remember, except for the fact that it was in perfect English and made me laugh out loud.

I knew then this was not just sex. There was something deeper, and I instinctively knew I had to find out what it was.

Hearts Have Beats

I told Joe when I got back to the Heartbreak Hotel. We were living at the ass-end of Maastricht, at the southern tip of Holland, squeezed between Belgium and Germany. They used a soft G down there, not the harsh, aggressive sound that could confuse a native English speaker into thinking it was German.

The Heartbreak Hotel was the place where we all ended up after the record company rejected our self-produced third album. American Gypsy was still years away from breaking up, but this was where the tectonic plates beneath us began to shift.

It was a storefront entrance with a small room we had turned into a makeshift studio. One Tascam 4 track and a couple of JBLs. We didn’t know the difference between reverb and delay at the time.

There was a mattress on the floor. It seemed like there was a mattress on the floor in every room, even in the kitchen. I hadn’t slept on a proper bed in years. Not that I missed it, it was just the way it was. Joe had pinned a picture of that Tascam up on the wall months ago, almost willing it into existence. Joe, the eternal pedantic planner. It must have been some of his mysterious creative visualization, long before anyone had ever heard of The Secret.

We were all huddled there, lumped together like a piece of black Citral, our hash of choice. I put the question to Joe.

“She wants me to meet her parents. This bitch is crazy. She’s 17, and I will be killed. There’s no way. But I’ll go, maybe if you come with me.”

Joe and I were partners already, almost like a severely mismatched married couple. We called ourselves co-leaders of the band, president and vice president, though neither of us would define who was who.

We showed up at the address she gave me in Dordrecht, a city near Rotterdam. A beautiful, middle-class place much like one of the preferred neighborhoods we came from near Pasadena. It looked foreign to us after being on the road for the last three years, but under different circumstances, the alien Dutch landscape might have been inviting.

We parked and knocked on the door. I think Rose came into view first, then Annie. I was relieved her mother or father hadn’t shown up. We braced ourselves for the bob and weave, and a low crouch to avoid being struck by the shotgun blast, but the shot never came.

The Showdown

Once inside the door, there was a palpable excitement. The energy shifted: there were these strange men in a house so full of feminine energy. It was everywhere. Not obvious in the interior design, but in the feel of the air, the smell, the sounds. It was a small house by American standards: kitchen, living room, a small elevated dining room and a bathroom downstairs. That little bathroom saved me from many an embarrassing moment when I needed to get away for some privacy. Upstairs were four bedrooms, another bathroom and an attic.

Rose followed Annie, and by the time we made it into the first hallway, the girls were leading us excitedly to the slaughter. They were innocent and had no idea their father was going to execute us the moment we turned the corner into the living room. I didn’t know how he planned to do it, but it seemed inevitable.

They led us through the living room door to a small lounge, and Rose immediately disappeared into the kitchen. We sat down. Joe seemed infinitely more comfortable than I was. Maybe it was his Panamanian upbringing. He’d never seen the pictures of Emmett Till lying on that slab in Jet magazine, shot, hung, dragged and dumped in a swamp for whistling at a white girl. Joe wasn’t half as on edge as I was. After all, I was the sole reason we were here. If anything went down, I’d be the object of their wrath.

Corrie, Rose’s mom, came in, and Annie introduced us. She spoke very little English, just enough for me to relax, if only slightly. My radar was still at DEFCON 1. I don’t remember ever formally meeting Hans, who was in the kitchen cooking dinner. All I could think about was why Rose had been in there talking to him since the moment we arrived. Was she trying to calm him down? Talk him out of whatever plan he had for getting rid of the bodies? She was in there a long time.

We sat in the living room, making uncomfortable small talk with Annie, when Rose came over and sat next to me.

“Where have you been?” I asked, knowing she’d been speaking with her dad. “What were you doing in there so long?”

Her reply was my cue to either leave immediately or run.

She said, “Dad thinks it’s all right if we sleep here, if we’re going to sleep together, because he’d rather know where we are than worry about us out at all hours. So we can stay here from now on.” to be continued……..

Want to go back a little further?
Here’s one from earlier in the journey:

The Ponderosa

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May 11

The Ponderosa was just a fragment of the chaos yet to come. As we took up residence in The Room there was a certain cycle that started that at first seemed like an adventure. We slowly chipped away a…