26 Nov The Road Crew – Part Three

Seems that the festive season is nigh upon us, Gentle Reader(s), and herewith I offer you some respite from the turkey and the football and the lip-sync parades and the dish washing and the caroling and Black Friday madness and all manner of holiday stuffe that rolls around at this time of the year. You will find that this section is longer than the preceding two as we commence a deeper dive into the internal dynamics of the Cretins and the rather fraught background of the Goof. The Cretins are revealed to be a complicated band with differing objectives and philosophies despite being but a trio. Perhaps that’s the way it always goes: I suppose even a solo act can be beset with internal conflict and tension, depending on the particulars of who’s involved. The Cretins are no exception and the stage is set, as it were, for the band’s excursions into the dark heart of early 1980s mid-America. Buckle up and please don’t hesitate to weigh in with your thoughts via the Contact page on this very site. Stayed tuned for Part Four, scheduled to drop in the second week of December.

Part Three

The Cretins had always been the Goof’s band. He was the founding member and the oldest, and, at its core, the band was a reflection of his sensibilities and style. Beano was the youngest. He was unarguably an exceptionally talented drummer and at least an adequate singer. He had been a genuine musical prodigy and had started playing professionally with the Goof’s early bands when he was still a runty kid in his mid-teens. The bass chair had rotated around a bit before Rob arrived on the scene but once Beano settled in behind the drum kit he remained there throughout the lifespan of the band.

Beano’s musical ambitions had grown over the years and he now authored a steadily increasing proportion of the group’s songs. Through the process of developing new material in rehearsals the Goof and Beano both expected and allowed a degree of editorial input into one another’s compositions, but they rarely sat down to write songs together. Beano managed to come up with a reasonably catchy hook every once in a while but lyrically and conceptually his material just wasn’t up to the standard of the Goof’s. At least not yet. Lyrically, some of his songs were just flat out insipid, but in order to maintain harmonious relations the Goof and Rob went with the flow and put their best effort into performing Beano’s material with a reasonable show of conviction.

Despite the Goof’s indisputable status as the group’s founder and de facto leader Beano’s aspirations had evolved into a persistent low-grade insurgency to challenge the Goof for the title, or at least to achieve equal billing. It was an uphill battle and while the Goof was certainly well aware of Beano’s intent, he seemed to consider it beneath his dignity to actually acknowledge it.

To belabor a musical metaphor to the breaking point, if the Goof was the band’s John Lennon, then Beano was its Donny Osmond. If the Goof aspired to be an angsty singer/songwriter/guitar god, then Beano yearned for pop idolatry. While the Goof would probably continue making music regardless of whether anybody else gave a shit or not, Beano lived for the adulation of the crowd. He loved nothing more than to get an audience clapping and singing along with one of his tunes.

Clapping and singing along was all well and fine but if it wasn’t essentially spontaneous, as in not requiring a lot of goosing and goading from onstage, it didn’t really mean shit. Beano was, however, a born gooser and goader. Beano’s signature move was to stop abruptly amidst an extended drum interlude that was featured in one of his songs, jump to his feet behind the kit, arms raised in triumph, to yell ‘HOW’M I DOIN???’ to the (hopefully) gobsmacked throngs. At this moment the audience was expected to roar back its deafening approval.

For the rest of us, this particular display embodied the essence of ‘cringeworthy.’ Rob and the Goof typically made themselves as inconspicuous as possible at the edges of the stage during Beano’s ‘HOW’M I DOIN?’ routine.

It was no secret that Beano’s musical ambitions revolved around the concept of himself as a frontman, but the fact remained that he was a drummer. Drummers rarely got to be legit front men. Sometimes they sang but even as lead vocalists they remained anchored to their kits towards the back of the stage while other vocalists, guitarists and bassists could emote and strut about unencumbered. This perplexity added to the dynamic tension within the Cretins.

Beano had light brown hair that he had lately taken to dyeing platinum blonde. He piled it up in a poodle-like pouf on the top of his head and was always clean shaven, like the rest of the band—though it seemed doubtful that Beano would have been capable of producing much in the way of convincing facial foliage anyway. A significant growth spurt in his later teens had ended up with him being an inch or so taller than the Goof, who was just shy of six feet, and, like the rest of us, he was rail thin. He affected an insistently up-beat, bouncy persona that was based around some vague notion having to do with the beneficial aspects of ‘positive energy.’ He drove the rest of us nuts with this bullshit, particularly the Goof, who didn’t suffer fools gladly—bouncy ones in particular—and generally had no truck with concepts such as ‘positive energy.’

A typical Goof response to invocations of this sort of vibe would be something along the lines of yelling ‘Alright, butt-munch—I got some goddam POSITIVE ENERGY for ya!’ as he put you in a head lock and tried to set your hair on fire with his cigarette lighter.

‘Typical,’ as in it was something that he actually did. On occasion.

When faced with obstacles or setbacks, be they conceptual or concrete in nature, Beano’s philosophy was to ‘manifest positivity’ with the belief that things would somehow, magically, resolve themselves to his, or our, inevitable benefit. I considered myself to be an optimist by nature but half-baked homilies of this sort just didn’t fly with me. When faced with adversity I figured the best course was to present a patient, well-considered counteroffensive with the belief that common sense and attrition would win out.

My dispassionate attitude functioned as a counterbalance to the Goof’s default response to crisis, which was to simply go apeshit. With the addition of Rob’s levelheaded consideration and Vinnie’s (allegedly) professional savvy, our diversity of ideologies managed to achieve an equilibrium of sorts that allowed our scabby little enterprise to maintain sufficient forward momentum.

Beano’s faith in the power of cockeyed positivity was one of the primary manifestations of his adherence to some sort of obscure New Age-y spiritual ideology. There were also arcane rituals of an aquatic nature. When Beano felt as though he was being treated unfairly or when his blinkered world view was being intruded upon by the harsh indignities of objective reality he would become very quiet and retreat into what the rest of us referred to as his ‘holy man’ routine. Adopting an expression of aggrieved humility, Beano would arrange himself in the lotus position on the bus sofa and sit silently with eyes closed. After an excruciatingly long pause he would slowly open his eyes and begin to pour water back and forth from one glass to another. Back and forth, forth and back, from one glass to the other. He brought a pair of glass tumblers on the road specifically for this purpose—plastic or paper cups were apparently insufficient to the gravity of this mystical undertaking.

Whether the water-pouring ceremony was something that Beano had invented from whole cloth or if it was the sacrament of some cut-rate cult that he had been indoctrinated into beyond a 7-Eleven one day when no one was looking, I did not know and did not feel compelled to inquire. Beano’s spiritual pursuit did not seem to possess a name. Or perhaps it was just too holy to verbalize.

As best I could discern, the water-pouring ritual was Beano’s process for achieving equilibrium, of establishing himself—or reestablishing himself—as an exceptional and enlightened spiritual being. This, unto itself, was all well and good, but in a tight-knit situation such as ours the larger implication of Beano’s sacraments was that the rest of us were not. Not exceptional and spiritually enlightened, that is.

Whether I gave a shit or not, the result was the same because it drove the Goof out of his mind and thus made life on the bus fraught. Whenever Beano started positioning himself to initiate holy man mode the Goof would mutter and curse under his breath, slam things around the bus, and, if we were stationary, stomp off somewhere to smoke in solitude. The rest of us just did our best to regard Beano as part of the furniture until his ablutions were complete.

Petty grievances aside, the primary problem with Beano was that he genuinely believed in this transformative, mythical creature known as a ‘rock star.’ He yearned desperately, urgently, miserably to be one, and somewhere along the line had decided that the best strategy for actually becoming a rock star was to simply manifest the notion that he already was one—the old Fake It Till You Make It ploy.

The fact that we were out there, dragging our bedraggled whiteboy asses around the country for weeks on end, meant that we all bought into the rock star fantasy to one degree or another. We had to—otherwise, what was the point? We might as well just stay home. But agreeing to believe that we might possibly have what was required to have a reasonable shot at the big time was not the same as considering it as ours by destiny or divine right. We all wanted to get there—to rock star Elysium—but we had a long, long way to go before we got anywhere close and the odds of going the distance were obscenely slim, at best. It was a job, and the truth of the job was that it was an unrelenting slog. Pretending otherwise was just self-deception.

It drove the rest of us mad when Beano had a flare up of rock star pretentiousness, even though he usually had the decency to restrict himself to inflicting it on people outside of the road crew. Usually. As in not always.

When we were on the road, and to a lesser degree when we were at home, Beano could run his routines with the civilians if he was moved to do so. He could play the part when the band was on stage—a certain degree of mythic posturing was more or less required in performance—but there was a line between self-confidence and self-deception that Beano was unable or unwilling to discern.

It wasn’t that I, or any of the other guys, really thought that Beano was an actual bad person or whatever. A bit of harmless bamboozlement with the hoi polloi was all well and fine, and all of us could be in on the joke. Life on the road was made more bearable, enjoyable even, by the bonhomie of all of us being in on the joke together—all for one, one for all and such—but trafficking in bullshit within our own ranks was not cool.

Spread the manure out there in the fields, but not here at home.

Rob and Vinnie did a pretty good job of limiting their impatience with Beano’s delusions and fantasies to sotto voce groaning and discreet eye rolls. The Goof had no such compunctions. When Beano was on one of his rock star jags the Goof’s response to the situation was often something along the lines of snarling ‘Can the crap, shithead!’ or ‘Lose the bullshit before I slam your goddam HEAD in a goddam DOOR, ya goddam fucktard!’

Diplomacy was not typically one of the Goof’s strong suits.

On any given day on the road the relationship between the Goof and Beano could reside anywhere along a sliding scale that ranged from spirited brotherly love to simmering resentment and low grade sniping to open warfare. On the odd occasion, physical altercations did break out but they were typically perfunctory and one ever ended up with much more than a bruised ego. Or two.

These sporadic bust-ups actually had the beneficial effect of bringing whatever tensions that might be brewing amongst the road crew out into the open and allowing the band to air out its grievances. After things boiled over peace and equilibrium would reliably return to the realm, but it was rare that the pot was ever completely off the simmer.

As the Goof’s ostensible nursemaid, trying to act as a buffer between Beano and the Goof was one of my unspoken jobs on the road. Actually, it was everyone’s unspoken job and not one of us was getting paid enough for it. In truth of fact, I wasn’t actually getting paid anything at all.

The gentlemen’s agreement regarding my ‘employment’ (not that there were any actual gentlemen involved) was that all of my basic animal necessities would be taken care of while we were on the road, but that I shouldn’t expect anything beyond that. My presence in the road crew was considered to be a luxury add-on for the band—a leap of faith, the value of which would be evaluated at some nonspecific future date when accounts were settled up. Since this was my ostensible job, it was in my best interests to stay on the road as much as possible. With no real income I could scarcely cover my basic animal necessities while at home. When we were on the road at least I got fed.

Signing on with the Cretins and their quest held that my faith would eventually be rewarded. Someday. Somewhere in the mists of an unknowable future when the band became more successful and more solvent.

Okay, why not? I was in. But I wasn’t holding my breath for the prospect of any future financial bonanza.

There were complicating factors, largely manifest in the person of Sonny Ulrich, the band’s manager. It wasn’t long before I discovered that the Cretins were deeply in hock to Sonny and that the band’s performance fees were earmarked for paying off this burgeoning debt, first and foremost. We subsisted on the bare minimum allowed us to keep the enterprise moving forward and not starve to death into the bargain.

It hadn’t entirely escaped me that my ‘no remuneration’ arrangement with the Cretins was somewhat unusual, but I managed to rationalize it as one of the idiosyncratic aspects of being part of the road crew. My situation seemed more like a form of indentured servitude than an actual job, but the Goof was my best friend and he wanted me along for the journey.

I swallowed any misgivings and signed on the imaginary dotted line. It was a faith gig, I suppose, and, like Beano, I labored under my own fair share of rock & roll-induced delusions.

Beano, in his wisdom, had taken me aside at one point before we headed off into the unknown and had advised me that this quirky detail of my ‘employment’ was on a strictly need-to-know basis. As far as the outside world was concerned the Cretins were riding high and rolling in dough. A complete and utter load of crap.

The question of whether I was actually employed at all, seeing as how I wasn’t getting paid, was never openly discussed after I came onboard, although it became a running inside joke between the Goof and myself. I was eventually able to suss out that Sonny was, in fact, paying the boys a stipend of some sort though no one would actually admit to it. I figured that Vinnie must have been getting paid as well, considering his exalted status. The only thing that I knew with absolute certainty was that I wasn’t getting shit.

Despite the tensions between them, the Goof undoubtedly valued Beano as a talented drummer and as an essential component of the band. It’s fair to say that the Goof didn’t actively dislike Beano or anything—after all, he could be prickly with just about everybody from time to time. I guess what it came down to is that the Goof needed Beano but he also considered him to be a Grade-A Moron. Beano was fully aware of this and it was an awareness that rankled.

The Goof had wavy reddish-brown hair that was currently dyed shoe polish black, highlighted with streaks of blond and henna. It was cut tight against the left side of his head and hung long on the right. He wore a couple of earrings in his left ear and had some dangly metal shit, like fishing lures, tied into his hair on the long side. The Goof had a high forehead, slightly discolored teeth from years of chain smoking Marlboros and the toxic tap water in Amarillo (or so he claimed) where he had spent a significant portion of his youth. His pale gray eyes betrayed a disconcerting lupine gleam that hinted there was more to the story than surface appearances might suggest.

With the Goof, there was always more to the story.

The Goof and Beano were both good looking boys, no question about that, but Rob was indisputably the band’s dreamboat. He had straight black shoulder length hair and was shorter than Beano and the Goof but well built. He was the only one in the band who actually paid any particular mind to maintaining his physique. He worked out regularly but he was careful not to overdo it, keeping lean and fit without becoming musclebound. In addition to being rather extraordinarily handsome, Rob had a adopted a very cool stage demeanor—he didn’t ham it up like Beano or throw himself about and grimace as much as the Goof and he almost never spoke to the audience. He knew how to hit good rock n’ roll poses without being obvious about it. All he really had to do was to arch his neck, suck in his cheeks a bit to accentuate his highly fortunate facial architecture and the chicks (not to mention a fair proportion of the guys) would swoon. Not a dry seat in the house.

Rob wasn’t a flashy musician but he was solid and steady and a good harmony vocalist. He was generally pretty quiet offstage and was definitely the lowest maintenance and most level-headed member of the band. This was tacitly acknowledged by Beano and the Goof as they let Rob handle the money while we were on the road. Rob exuded the kind of quiet self confidence that exceptionally good-looking people of reasonable intellect and emotional stability can have regarding the various advantages proffered upon them by their God-given gifts.

In my early days with the road crew I studied Rob carefully in order to pick up tips about style and comportment. He seemed to have the touring routine pretty well down and I chose him as my role model, not that there were many other reasonable options available.

As the author of the majority of the band’s songs—the best ones anyway—the Goof sang lead on most of them. He had a soaring tenor voice, an excellent ear for harmonies, and was a genuinely gifted musician. He was considered a veritable guitar god amongst the rock & roll cognoscenti in Albuquerque and his playing was flashy and passionate but precise. As a stage performer the Goof was possessed of considerable charisma and he knew how to work a crowd. In performance he was energetic and spontaneous and prone to idiosyncratic bits of stage craft such as short bursts of James Brown/Prince-inspired choreography. He would introduce the band at the end of a set with impromptu exhortations like ‘Thanks for coming! That’s Mrs. Calabash on drums and Peter Cottontail on bass! My name is Porky Pig and I endorse this message! Remember to trip your waitresses and never EVER give gum to a robot! Good night and good luck!’

Regardless of whatever lighthearted hijinks and tomfoolery we amused ourselves with day in and day out, the Goof’s psyche harbored a darkness that was deeply rooted in the core of his being. The product of a conservative evangelical Christian upbringing in West Texas, the Goof frequently railed against what he perceived as the ruthless tyranny of God, Jesus, the Holy Ghost, the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Apostles, and Their assorted followers and acolytes all down the line from the Pope to Mother Theresa to Billy Graham to Rudolph the Red-Nosed goddam Reindeer.

The Goof believed that all of them had it out for him—personally.

Jesus did, however, present somewhat of a conundrum. The Passion of the Christ appealed strongly to the Goof’s highly developed persecution complex, so Jesus often got a pass. He was most frequently invoked in the persona of the Sweet Baby Jesus—an ecclesiastical peculiarity of the Goof’s which I soon picked up on. Various and sundry saints also got a pass, largely dependent on the circumstances by which they achieved their martyrdom: The more gruesome the better.

When beset by life’s inevitable disappointments and obstacles the Goof would scream and shake his fists at the sky, cursing the Almighty and demanding accountability for what he had done to deserve such persecution and injustice. The silence that followed seemed as a further rebuke.

The Goof would have done well as a biblical era apostate, wandering the desert as a ragged outcast, searching in vain for evidence of the divine amongst the scorpions, snakes and stones. At the very least, the romance of the misunderstood outsider was something that he strongly identified with.

The Goof’s family had moved back and forth between Amarillo and Albuquerque during his formative years, as dictated by the whims of the oil and gas business that provided their livelihood. His rebellious streak and contrary nature had become manifest early on and the conflicts of his childhood experiences had left deep scars. His relationships with his parents, his younger brother and extended family were contentious and would become progressively more so in years to come.

Over time, I got to know the Goof’s mother, Estelle. She recognized in me a moderating influence on her wayward son. When I helped to extricate him from one scrape or another, or to occasionally scrape him up off the floor, Estelle would write me thank you notes on stiff monogrammed stationery in an elaborate script of the type one no longer sees.

This genteel formality was in stark contrast to the shrieking gorgon portrayed in the Goof’s adolescent horror stories. One of the more notable episodes he described featured an enraged Estelle chasing the Goof around the family home in Amarillo, attempting to bash his skull in with a heavy glass ashtray in retribution for some alleged transgression committed while he was under the influence of powerful hallucinogens.

Assuming that it did actually happen as he described, it struck me as the kind of thing that could indeed make a lasting impression on a young, impressionable mind.

I never met or even spoke to Goof pére, but I got the distinct impression that Estelle was the ringmaster in this particular family circus. There was a steely resolve in the woman that made it clear she was not one to be trifled with. I considered myself fortunate to have remained in her good graces over the years, regardless of the ups and downs of her relationship with her son.

If not exactly rich, the family was definitely not without means and this became an increasingly volatile point of contention as the Goof’s abilities as a reliable wage earner gradually declined. Estelle was an advocate of tough love but the Goof was incredulous about the ‘love’ portion of the equation. In later years he prevailed upon me to try and broker a détente between himself and Estelle. Despite my reservations I did try to mediate a peace agreement, but, true to form, the Goof managed to torpedo the deal before any real progress could be made. Estelle professed to me her undying devotion and love for her oldest child but said she simply couldn’t take any more.

And that was that.

Everything that I had seen and heard over the years indicated that growing up Goof had not been an easy road. The boy had some hard bark on him, no doubt about it. But as much of a ball-busting sonofabitch as he could be, the Goof could also be weepy, maudlin, overly sensitive and sloppily sentimental. His snarly moods and occasional startling viciousness could give way to affability, magnanimity and flights of romantic fancy when the spirit moved him. Egotistical and disdainful by nature, he could fluctuate wildly between open-armed congeniality and fits of generosity to extremes of paranoia, pettiness, self-loathing and self-pity.

One of the Goof’s signature ploys was to dole out jaggedly hurtful putdowns and jibes to family, friends and band members only to turn wounded and aggrieved should anything similar be directed back at him. This kind of behavior would have been too destabilizing within the crucible of the road crew and, on some level, the Goof knew it. Despite the perpetual friction with Beano the Goof was generally better behaved on the road than off. Rob and Beano were both well aware of the potential pitfalls of casting their lot in with someone as volatile as the Goof but they had apparently determined that the potential benefits were worth the risk. After all, it was his band.

Despite all the hard work and patience and thick skin required to deal with him, it was understood that the Goof was the band’s essential ingredient. He was a madman, no doubt, but his creative drive had an urgency that insisted that things should happen. Whether he thought things out too much or too little or whether his thinking was totally deranged and misguided, his input and energy was still the critical motivating factor in getting things done.

He might not always be the prime instigator for everything single thing, but if the Goof wasn’t part of the process the song would not get written, the recording session would not take place, the Magic would not kick in, the party would not happen, the drugs would not be taken, the girls would not be seduced, the sparks would not fly and the crockery would not get smashed.

For all of his impulsiveness, the Goof’s urges—artistic or otherwise—were not to be denied. We all knew enough to stand aside and let him run when he was in the zone.

When working on a song he would hunch down over his guitar, quietly singing the primary melody to himself. He would search up and down the neck for the harmony, the required counterpoint that closed the circle and elevated everything to the next level. The melodic and harmonic connections were inevitable, lurking in there somewhere just beneath the surface, just waiting to be identified and pulled out and assembled in the essential order. If you played a note on another instrument or hummed or spoke or even thought too loudly while the Goof was in this mode he would snap ‘Shut the fuck UP, goddammit! I’m trying to figure this out!’ And he pretty much always did.

The Goof cultivated the notion that he was possessed of an artistic temperament, but he seemed not to draw much distinction much between artist and maniac—not that there’s anything particularly unusual about the confluence of the two.

Perhaps the rest of us were more stable, more reliable and, yes, perhaps our steadying influence was an important factor in keeping the Cretins’ ship off the rocks, but the Goof had the gift. Everyone in the group was talented but he was the catalyst, the real Magic. And, as is typically the case with Magic, things could go in any number of possible directions. The Goof’s Magic went hand in hand with his torment. The torment was embedded deep in his soul and that was something beyond anyone’s control—the Goof first and foremost.

The Goof was nothing if not a disconcerting bundle of contradictions. He was a spiritual seeker, of a sort, and when I first met him he identified as a Premie—a follower of Prem Rawat, also known as Maharaj-ji. Prem Rawat was a youthful Indian guru, a couple of years younger than the Goof, who had become popular in the States in the early ‘70s. There was a community of Premies in Albuquerque that included a number of the Goof’s old hippie friends and and my pal Dave, a guitarist who worked at a spiritual/occult bookstore near the university called the Brotherhood of Life. The Goof and Dave had both attended a gathering of the Prem Rawat faithful at the Astrodome in Houston in 1973, but for some reason they regarded one another with suspicion—either as Premies or guitarists or both.

In the early days of our friendship the Goof had the guru’s photograph affixed to the dusty dashboard of his compact Honda. The photo eventually fell off, followed shortly thereafter by the Goof’s devotion.

The Goof lived to flaunt societal conventions of all sorts and one of his favorite incitements was to zero in on the more straight-laced males that fell into the band’s orbit and try to induce a bit of therapeutic gay panic. This usually took the form of blatant faux-groping of other members of the road crew (something which barely even registered with us anymore) or verbal ribaldry suggesting all manner of same-sex rumpy pumpy on the bus. This had the effect of sending the more timid sorts spinning out of our way but amongst the crew it was considered in the light of good, clean on-the-road fun.

In actual practice, the Goof was a shameless and relentless poonhound, though when in his cups he liked to give the indication that he was ready to jump on just about any receptive individual that happened along, regardless of gender. I was pretty well convinced that the Goof’s overly campy bi-pretensions were strictly for show—just another useful tool in his prodigious arsenal of provocations.

Whenever we were interfacing with the assorted mundanities of life in Middle America, which was most of the time when we were on the road, it was prudent to try and keep the Goof under wraps. Other than his distinctly non-mainstream stylistic tendencies he had an undeniable flair for incitement. When in one of his many moods, whether naturally occurring or chemically enhanced, the Goof could instigate a fistfight at a Quaker bake sale.

When he was in a mood to drink, which was often, he tended to drink like a fish, without regard for propriety or safety. He consumed with similar abandon whatever drugs came his way though I suspected he drew the line at needle play. When you came down to it, the Goof was primarily a boozer. Not necessarily a serious soak—not at this point, anyway—but booze was his happy place.

The Goof was the only member of the road crew that I was genuinely friends with outside of the bus. I hadn’t really known Beano or Rob and I had never met Vinnie prior to heading out on the road. When I had been hired for the gig it was not only because I possessed the requisite technical skills for sound mixing and guitar maintenance (plus the physical capacity for humping heavy mounds of gear) but because the Goof wanted me there. There could have been many other potential applicants with superior technical wherewithal, but, in all honesty, that was the least of it. There was no guaranteeing that the best guitar wrangler on the planet would have been able to put up with the Goof and his myriad idiosyncrasies for more than a few days.

And there was also the probability that other such qualified individuals might insist on trifling bourgeois conventions such as actually getting paid for their labor. BORing.

So it was down to me. In truth, there no one else better suited for the job. Beyond our friendship and familiarity with one another, the Goof and I shared a similarly warped sense of humor, an appreciation for the absurd, and a degree of cynicism that comes with knowing a bit too much for one’s own good. He had the liveliest intellect of anyone in the group and beyond music we had shared interests in literature, film, history, art and bargain basement philosophizing spiced with an invigorating dash of blasphemy.

During this period of my life, including the years leading up to my tenure as part of the road crew, the Goof and I were perpetually in each other’s close company and collaboration. I really didn’t give much thought to it at the time, but he was undoubtedly my closest friend.