Should Have Been a Rock Star 5- Larry paul Debbie and Jerry

Larry Paul Debbie and Jerry

Larry
Kiefer High School was by no means the center of the world as far as rock and roll. Kiefer didn’t even sit on a metaphoric exit ramp or side street leading from the center of the world. What it was is this…a small fading oil town that remained after the big oil strikes in pre-statehood Oklahoma. Kiefer had its oil day boom and bust. What was left was a small town of about 800 to 1000 people. It had a few churches, a long time drug store run by the oldest living graduate of Kiefer Schools and a school. There were a couple of gas stations and a tiny family market. It was the kind of place a kid who was short 5 cents on buying a Pepsi and candy bar was told, “Bring it in next time. I know your daddy.”
We had a couple of AM radio stations that played a variety of rock music. KAKC at 97.5 and KELI at 1430 on the dial. Both were from Tulsa, just 20 miles away. They played a mix of music that isn’t seen on radio today. Anyone tuning in might get anything from the Beatles to the Supremes, or Steppenwolf to the Carpenters.
During junior high, my friends and I carried pocket-sized transistor radios. They were just the size that a person could pull out at lunchtime as you walked the 3 blocks to Minerva’s Drug Store and hear a few tunes from the Bee Gees or Temptations. We were never very far from the music even in this little country town.
Larry and I had been friends since we were six years old. He moved in next to my grandma’s house in town. My family lived about 4 miles out in the country. I spent a lot of time at grandma’s house, especially on weekends. Larry and I would play every kind of sport imaginable, listen to records on his stereo or talk while he strummed his guitar. Along that path, we developed a love for similar kinds of music. Larry was really into a boogie style of music that is something most rhythm guitar people like to play. Through high school, that had him playing things like “Long Cool woman” by the Hollies or “Spirit in the Sky” by Norman Greenbaum. Larry was always a huge paul revere and the Raiders fan, they hosted their own shows on TV with variety music such a “Happening” that was on TV around 1968 or so.

Larry was an only child. He lived with his mom and her parents. His grandmother and granddad had always seemed old to me but I loved them. His granddad would tell us army stories dating back to the world war one era. Grandma cooked all the time. She was always trying to get Larry to eat and drink something besides Pepsi.
One of the saddest times I ever knew was when Larry’s Mom passed away suddenly. She couldn’t have been older than somewhere in her thirties. One of my strongest memories of her was a time I brought a small reel to reel recorder to Larry’s house. We would sing in it, amazed at how much we thought we sounded like the Beatles. His mom, Pauline, sang into it too. I still picture her sitting on the edge of the bed singing a hymn into that microphone held in her hand.
When I got to my Grandma’s house, she told me that Pauline had died. She worked with Pauline at a pottery plant. She asked if I wanted to see Larry. She thought it would be a good idea and called Larry’s house.
We met at the fence that separated the two yards. At that time I was unfamiliar with death and was unprepared for the grief that I saw in Larry’s face. One of his family was there with him holding him up to keep him from collapsing. He cried and cried and told me, “I don’t want the money! I don’t want the money! I want my Mom!”
Apparently some idiotic person had told him he would get some insurance money. There, a young kid’s world has just been turned upside down and some asshole was trying to cheer him up with money. Here it is some 40 years later and I am still angry about that. Maybe it is because I felt so inadequate, so vulnerable at that moment. I wanted to help but I didn’t have the tools to assuage his grief. Even today, as I think about those m0oments at the fence, I don’t remember anything that anyone else said except those words “I don’t want the money! I don’t want the money! I want my Mom!”
Years later, it would be Larry who talked me into playing in front of people at the church. He played his electric guitar. I played my standard. We played a couple of reggae style songs we stole from Eric Clapton. Clapton had recorded a reggae version of several songs, but on his “There’s One In Every Crowd” album, he did “Swing Low Sweet Chariot.”
We played it. We played two songs. The guitar didn’t break. The fingers all worked. The guy wasn’t sitting in the front row laughing at me like it had seemed in the college recital. Every thing went great except for one old lady who complained later that the electric guitar ‘hurt her heart.’
I still appreciate Larry for doing that with me even if my guitar playing days were numbered.

Paul
In junior high, one of the weirdest kids I knew moved in town. He had one strike against him right away. His dad was the new math teacher and oddly enough, in a small town where nearly every boy at the high school played football, Paul did not.
Paul Lawrence. He was skinny and blonde. He wore wire-framed glasses while I was still wearing the Woody Allen like black frames. He didn’t mind making a fool of himself and was likely to go into his ‘retarded’ act when he entered any store. He made jokes about aardvarks, especially the invisible one he called “Orly.” The only sport he played was basketball, almost unheard of in Kiefer at that time. In fact, we eventually let Paul join our Kiefer Electric Football League. It was made upof myself, my brother Tim, Larry and the Baptist preacher’s son, David. Paul broke all tradtion with our teams that scurried around on those vibrating boards. The rest of us painted and names our teams after NFL teams. Paul painted his named them the UCLA Aardvarks….UCLA meaning University of Car Lubricators at Admond, Ohio.
It only took a bit till we realized that Paul was someone with a quirky sense of humor and after a visit to his house, which sat on school property about 100 yards from the school building, we found a true common interest. Paul was a big music fan. He was especially into Bob Dylan at that time. I can recall the first visit, sitting in his room listening to Dylan singing, “watching the River Flow” with Tulsa product Leon Russell playing the accompanying piano.
I began to draw stories about us as if we were a superstar band. I drew them in the format of a teen magazine with us (I wish I could remember the name I gave the band… some thing like “Asylum”) responsible for every hit song in the past ten years. It was kind of like Bill and Ted’s “wild Stallions” from “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.” We developed a whole history of the band and the music.
Paul lived in Kiefer two years, then his family moved away when his Dad took a new teaching job. When I found that Paul was going to move, I rewrote the whole “Jesus Christ Superstar” libretto into “Paul Lawrence Superstar” with illustrations. The story went from the last days of Jesus through the eyes of Webber and Rice to the exploits of superstar basketball player Paul Lawrence as he is dared by doubting coaches to “dribble across my swimming pool” as Herod implored Jesus to walk across his swimming pool in the original.
The last thing I ever got to do with Paul involved both his fave Dylan and my Leon Russell. The movie “Concert for Bangla Desh” had just been released. I talked my mom into taking Paul and I to see i8t as a going away gift to him.
I wonder. Is Paul still listening to Dylan? Did he like his ‘religious’ period? Has he been wired at the various biographies made about Bob in recent years?
I hope so.


Debbie

I dated a girl in high school named Debbie. We were inseparable for a long time until eventually she made me suffer seemingly unlimited agony… but more on that later. Debbie would borrow my albums all the time and if she had one fault, it was not her looks or character, it was in the fact that she could not or would not put records back in their sleeve and cover. It drove me crazy. For a collector, it was like a cardinal sin.
For example, she borrowed my 2 lp set of the best of the Four Seasons, only to leave it scratched and skipping. She mangled David Bowie’s “Aladdin sane.” Against my better judgment, I gave into love instead of good sense and loaned her my copy of “Abbey Road.” When we finally ‘found’ it, stuck in the recesses of the stereo sliding top panel, the Beatles could no longer harmonize on “because” or blissfully announce the melting of the ice on “Here Comes the Sun.” Instead they skipped from line to line or repeated over and over “You Never Give Me Your… You Never Give Me Your… You Never Give Me Your… You Never Give Me Your…”
Now, I do have to give Debbie this point in my life’s soundtrack. She was the first person I ever danced with in public. It was a little complicated because I came from a Southern Baptist family. My Dad definitely believed that dancing was something we weren’t supposed to do, so when the school had dances, I and my sister Mary ( she was next oldest to me) sat in the library while the rest of the school danced. It was tough, especially since my girlfriend wanted to go to the dance. I was jealous. I was mad.
So, when it came time for my senior prom, I had decided that I would go, take Debbie and somehow, I would dance with her. After all, how hard could that be? People did it on American Bandstand all the time! Surely the guy who was graceful enough to play football, to play basketball and baseball could muster enough ability to dance?
We actually practiced in my room. I’d put a record on the stereo and Debbie and I would slow dance. It seemed easy enough. We even tried some dancing to faster songs. I thought I could pull it off.
When prom finally arrived, I was a nervous wreck. I was dressed in my suit, had my corsage, but I was sweating like a dog. It wasn’t a first date or anything like that, but the anticipation of dancing on that floor, in front of other people had me terrified. I’m not sure if I could feel the fires of hell threatening to burn to a cinder of desire should I take that fateful step on the dance floor, but the universe was defiantly out of alignment. So bad that when I picked her up, I stepped on the back of her gown, tore it at the waist and her mom had to stitch it before we left.
WE went to the dinner and dance, but somehow the dinner didn’t seem to set well. I was more nervous than I would have been if it had been 4th down and a yard to go for a playoff berth. Hitting someone seemed much easier than swaying to music.
Finally the tables were cleared and the band arrived and set up. We actually had live music instead of canned. Better for those who wanted to play air guitar along with it rather than dance. I even remember the name of the band – “Ram.” The seventies must have n been good times for prom music. One of my college buddies from Chicago had that new band “Styx” as the music for his junior prom. Ram never went anywhere beyond Tulsa as far as I know, but they played an integral part in my fear for that evening.
We sat at the side with friends as the music started. Several songs played as others moved on and off the dance floor, but still I sat sweating. I could tell that she was growing impatient, but fear soaked my jacket and weighted my feet. I think of a song that Nils Lofgren would do later. Nils had his own band “Smile” and also played for Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen, but on a solo lp called “Cry Tough” he used the title song to tell the story of a guy who goes to the doctor to find a way to dance with his girl so he wouldn’t lose her.
“Doctor Feelgood, I promised this lady. If I can’t dance, she’s gonna break my nose.”

Time passed. I squirmed. Finally, noting the look of exasperation on her face, I excused myself to the bathroom. There, I carefully checked to make sure no one else was in the room, hidden in the toilets or behind a door. Then, with the echoed booming of a song by REO Speedwagon playing through the door, I watched my self in the mirror as I danced clumsily in the boy’s bathroom. At least I could move and by god, some of the guys on the floor looked pretty bad. Surely I could look less bad than they did.
I returned to our chairs and told her that as soon as a good song started, we would dance.

Luckily for me, and thankfully to whatever vinyl LP gods or muses there are, the band slowed down and started playing Chicago’s “Color My World.” Debbie and I walked on to the floor, and slow danced to the song. I was giddy. I was nervous and perspiring, but I managed to do it without stumbling, stepping on her gown ( a second time) or looking so ridiculous that the rest of my school mates rolled on the floor in agonized laughter.
Since then, I have managed to dance many times, but my wife still thinks I dance like I’m waiting to be struck down by an angry god for the lust the dance inspires in my heart.

And you know what? It does!


Jerry


When I started dating Debbie, I also met another guy in her class, Jerry Reale. Jerry was slightly wired, it seemed. He was always moving and talking. Jerry was a skinny little guy with a Joey Ramone type haircut. Hr wore glasses and had a wide smile that easily reminded me of the Ramones lead singer. He was really into whatever he was doing. One of the things he was into was progressive rock music. I couldn’t think of many people who could have named more than “Ina-Gadda-Da-Vida” when ti came to discussing the Iron Butterfly, or who knew the liner notes to all the Yes albums, but Jerry was it.
In the early ‘70’s, there was no progressive rock radio in the area. It wasn’t until 1974 that the first FM stations that played progressive rock squeaked their way in to our lives. When they did, it was something completely new. Instead of listening to songs like “Billy Don’t Be a Hero” or “Sunshine on My Shoulder” as part of the play list, we heard “White Bird” by David Laflame or tunes by Jethro Tull and Bloodrock. The FM jocks didn’t talk halfway through the songs like the AM DJ’s did and they were laid back, almost as if they had gotten stoned before they went on air.
We did get the occasional progressive tune when someone like Emerson lake and Palmer released “Lucky Man” as a single, but the new FM rock was slowly shifting radio music away from singles on 45 RPM to the album oriented rock. The albums were developing themes instead of being a collection of possible A and B side single releases.
Jerry and I became collectors. We would drive to Tulsa and scavenge the record stores. The two most prominent were Starship records, a business run in a multi colored old house by long haired guys who called you “hey man,” and Greers Records and Tapes which had a series of stores across town all heralded by an annoying Linda Greer in her local commercials. When LP’s were selling for less than 5 dollars each, we bought things in a feeding frenzy.
Jerry lived close to my grandmother’s house in town. It was in his house that my head and ears received something that changed my musical tastes forever. Jerry had me sit in his bean bag chair, pull on the padded over sized headphones while he keyed up the Yes album “Close to the Edge.” It was in that darkened, poster covered room I heard this new rock.
It was like this- the first time my first born tasted ice cream as a baby, he sat, wide-eyed, with his mouth open, absorbing the cold sugary swell of pleasure that came from the first taste of that addictive concoction. I felt the same way as that album played, richly textured and layered. It rocked, but it was something much, much more. It was like Mozart on acid.
No sooner had I finished that Lp than he also had me listen to the entire “Dark Side of the Moon” by Pink Floyd through the headphones. It was almost too much. Sure I had heard experimental music on Sgt Pepper and the White album, but this was a whole new game. It was something that appealed to the artistic side of the listener. And I had discovered it in the darkness of jerry Reale’s house.
Jerry and I started to visit a new phenomena, the ‘Used Record store.’ We took to trading and searching the racks for lost gems, sometimes finding out of print items or European pressing. I even found an original John Lennon and Yoko Ono “Tow Virgins” LP in the original sleeve and bought it for $2.98. I would hang on to that record till the summer of 1980, when I sold it for $40. Of course, Lennon was killed in the winter of 1980. I have never bothered to see how much that original album became worth after his death. It seemed too morbid. Jerry and I were music archaeologists. We searched for the nuggets of gold where ever and when ever we could. We read about them in the Rolling Stone and other music magazines and traded for bootleg recordings and live bootlegs of our favorite bands.
Long before the Beatles anthology came out, I had most of those songs in LP format, We found live recordings of Rundgren, the Who, Electric Light Orchestra, and Yes.

Ironically, years passed amd Jerry and I drifted our separate ways. I ended up teaching his daughter in high school and actually ran into Jerry at a Yes concert in Tulsa. Jerry had stepped outside for a smoke and my wife and I were forced to leave early due to a really bad asthma attack she was having. I introduced Jerry, we exchanged news and pleasantries and we moved on.
I wonder if Jerry is still a Yes fan, sitting in a bean bag chair, making musical sounds with his mouth while he listens to tunes through some padded headphones?

I hope so.