When Life Gives You Lemonheads

We picked up the white Mercedes passenger van at  Heathrow, the kind that's all over Euro highways,  and loaded it with guitars, travel bags, cymbals and the stroller. The plan: drive to the hotel across the street from Finsbury Park to meet our old Dutch tour manager, Jan, who was back in the saddle for our three show mini-tour with The Lemonheads. We had a night to settle in before the first show in Camden, and I, by virtue of my sterling driving record, settled into the driver's seat. It is an odd feeling the first time you drive in England, what with the wrong side-of-the-road discombobulation and all, but really the oddest thing was the clutch for the manual transmission being on the right foot with brake in the middle and the accelerator on the left foot. And I wasn't going to get any practice. A couple of lurches forward and stall-outs, then Doug navigated our way out of the confusing loops and merges of airport infrastructure while I tried to reconcile muscle memory with stress.

Jan came down to meet us to help sort out the general mess of assigning rooms, and writing down where we would all be spread out throughout this somewhat dingy hotel, where not so successful businessmen congregated in the small carpeted room off the lobby to smoke.  Doug and Jimmy (our guitar tech), Wink and Jan, Jerusha, our wonderful nanny from Louisville, and Janet, me, and 15 month old Matt took turns in the claustrophobic elevator to various upper floors to unwind. Matthew, restless from the long journey, grabbed everything in sight in the room, knocking the phone off the hook and putting the cord in his mouth. Time to take a walk.

Finsbury Park was just across the busy road, and there was, to our delight, a carnival in the process of going up. Bumping the stroller over thick electrical cables linking generators to rides, we wheeled Matt through the puddles past rising poles and canvas, pneumatic arms and nicked up oversized teacups. The American carny is a legendary figure--the hardest, most ornery breed of alcoholic pill-freak in wife-beater t-shirt and trucker hat. But the British carny was a different breed altogether. I certainly had never seen one on television or in the movies. Where the American brand had tobacco stained teeth, the Brit carny had few teeth to discolor. The fashion sense featured long stringy unwashed hair under a cap--the kind AC/DC singers used to wear.  A good stroll through the park did the trick and put the kid out, and after a little dinner and a pint at the closest pub it was time to retire. The next day was the first show in Camden.

Pulling up to soundcheck was the first indication of how the Lemonheads were strapped to the rocket to stardom. A gaggle of giggling tweenagers lined the stage entrance, and as we walked in we saw lead singer and guitarist Evan Dando surrounded by television lights and photographers. If you tried to engineer a teen idol, Evan with his good looks and who-me? personality would make any record company see green. He shot us a nod, then stared back into the sun.

We had known Evan and the band for a couple years by then, we had both been signed by Bettina Richards at Atlantic in 1990. We crossed paths occasionally, playing shows together, as we both garnered good college radio success, but languished comercially in our little corner of a mid-level floor of 75 Rockefeller. Then they put out a single preceding their second record.

Mrs. Robinson was a hit.  It's a Shame About Ray was a great power pop record, but the punked up cover of the Simon and Garfunkel song from The Graduate was  "the ticket" as Jon Lovitz was saying at the time. Every A&R rep in the nineties would try to jump start careers with a well-placed cover after that. Our version of Wire's Ex Lion Tamer apparently wasn't what they had in mind.

So, on an overcast April day in 1993 our paths crossed again. This time, Atlantic was throwing us a bone, or at least a life preserver. We were somewhere in the middle of our El Moodio tour, we had already hit the road with The Chills on the West Coast, and had done our South by Southeast duty in the motor home. While the shows were going well, and decent reviews poured in, our bar code was not getting zapped enough in the Towers and Best Buys of the world. As I looked around at the buzz surrounding the Lemonheads, I felt a bit invisible.

The show was great. The girls down front tolerated us, saving their vocal chords for Evan, but we went over well in spite of their indifference. A lot of times it stinks to be the opener, but there is something special about a tightly packed thirty minute set where you can expend every ounce of energy. I don't usually play to the crowd anyway. I close my eyes and let the songs carry me off. It varies how long it takes on a given night, but I can usually lose myself in the moment, a zone, a space  without a place. I came off stage sweaty, dazed and ecstatic .

But that feeling doesn't carry over long for me. I get a sense of despair. If someone outside the band enters the dressing room I have to look for an exit. I don't want to talk. This show was no exception. I recognize now looking back that there was something deeper at work--I was entering a period of depression in my life.

I don't know how you can possibly know it when you're in it. I mean, I was happy, I thought. Artistically I felt like I had succeeded beyond my wildest dreams. I was in the middle of touring the world on our third major label record, I had been recognized as a songwriter and guitar player, and it was what I was doing for a living. I got to be with my family while I was doing it. But I was also 35 years old and it was becoming evident that commercial success probably wasn't coming my way. That is a weird feeling--not caring about fame, but craving attention to satisfy an over-sized ego, at the same time realizing that a lot of people around you are banking on you becoming famous.

And I was a father. Matt hadn't been diagnosed with his rare condition by April '93, but he had been having multiple seizures, been delayed walking and talking, and judging by his frequent crying, very agitated by something in his beautiful  little head. It was difficult to prepare for a concert with Matt on the road with us. Before Matt was born, my nervous energy would send me walking in the hours before a concert, exploring whatever city it was we were playing, but with Matt, Janet and I did our best to be parents. After a concert, I was emotionally spent.
So, when this show ended, and Janet said that everybody was going out clubbing, I immediately volunteered to drive back to the hotel with Matt. I had my usual after concert funk and it was a relief to think I could drop out of the social scene. I've never been good in a crowd. In a small group of people I can talk it up and have a great time, but hanging out in a crowded bar drinking and smoking was never my thing.

The plan was for me to drive the van back with Matt in the car seat, and everybody would cab it back on their own. The route was not an easy one. The club was some distance from the hotel, and while I had paid attention on how we got there earlier in the day, the prospect of retracing the drive in an unfamiliar vehicle on the opposite side of the road was daunting to say the least. Jan wrote the directions for me, but it was dark and rainy, and I had to rely on adrenaline and luck to get back. Which I did.

I got up early with Matt and consumed bangers and a boiled egg in the dining room, Janet groggily joining us. Lots of stories about the evening. Party night on the West End. Fashion models hovered around Evan. He and Janet sang Gram Parson songs until the wee hours. Wink, Jimmy, Doug, and Jan liquored it up. Eventually the traveling party managed to pull together to drive to Manchester.

Manchester succeeded in matching my greying mood. Driving in, I realized the influence of geography on art, and saw how my heroes in Joy Division could emerge from such a place. We had a good hang and pre-show backstage, post-soundcheck dinner with the L-Heads, then played to another massive and adoring crowd there to see the headliner. Teenage Fan Club was the middle act and were fantastic. Janet and I skipped The Lemonheads though, and walked across to a nearby university where The Jayhawks were playing in a campus student center.

The next, and final stop was Glasgow, Scotland. It was a beautiful, but long drive on an off-day, and I remember entering the city from high elevation where you could see roof tops extending for miles. The hotel was close to the city center and after settling in we explored on foot with stroller. There was a great bookstore, but browsing with a baby cut that shorter than I would have liked. That night, in the dead of sleep, a deafening and persistent alarm rang out and hotel employees ran up and down the halls urging everyone to get out. Standing outside in pajamas with dozens of other guests, the rumor eventually passed close enough to hear that it had been a bomb threat.

Made it through the day to a late afternoon soundcheck in a cavernous beer hall in an especially dingy part of the city. The concrete floor had that smell of stale ale and bleach, a smell that still sears my memory. The concert however,  left no impression on my mind, which leads me to believe that it was just another concert. And the end of the "tour".

We had a few weeks of rest when we got home in preparation for a return to Europe for a five week jaunt through Germany, Belgium, Netherlands, Denmark, Switzerland, and London again. There was absolutely no buzz on our record. Radio wasn't playing Making Like a Rug, and Atlantic seemed to be giving a collective shrug. The Lemonheads went on to more success,  the spotlight explored other Chicago bands, and I gravitated toward the darker pole of the el moodio persona. (Note: El Moodio was a nickname first given Wink in honor of his moon child star sign which I also share and is characterized by moodiness and the tides/ pull of the moon. I have self-identified with the nickname and co-opted it. My apologies Wink.)  After a long and exhausting tour that ended with a wonderful birthday in Jan's home town in the Netherlands, I unofficially retired from the grind in July. Teacher would soon displace musician in the employment box on my tax return.

I include a write-up I recently found in a box that sparked this memory. It sums up the miasma of emotions whenever I look in the rear view mirror. Bartender, lemonade for all my friends!

The Witches of Marcee Lane

The witches lived in the storage crawlspace behind the wet bar in our rec room. I felt their presence even while my family watched The Ed Sullivan show on a Sunday evening, but when I sat by myself or alone with my sister on a Sunday morning watching Flash Gordon or Tarzan, the cool dampness that permeated the room like an invisible fog, chilled my bones even on a summer morning.

For years I was afraid in the place of my childhood, and even after I moved out to go to college, I would get a creepy feeling whenever back alone in that house. It was nothing that couldn't be explained. The expansion of the ducts as the furnace came on caused creaking. Cleaning out the crawls revealed no supernatural habitation. No witches. But I was terrified to be alone. Up until middle school I would ask my dad to  walk me upstairs to bed.

Our house was one of two dozen split level ranches in a cul-de-sac twenty miles north of Chicago. The dirt roads leading out of the city had been paved into highways, and the collection of farms in the middle of oak tree savannah turned into villages where dads with briefcases could commute to the crowded city. My grandfather, my mom's dad, a comptroller from Pittsburgh, bought one of the two models available in 1954, planted by the developers who were busy sewing seeds for schools, banks, and churches.

It was a cozy house with three bedrooms, six stairs up the landing that separated upstairs from downstairs. My uncles shared the room facing south with a view of several mighty oaks and a creek that ran through fields of clover and brambles of wild berries. My mom, the middle child and high school teeny-bopper, slept in the middle bedroom while her parents Carl and Alice occupied the room that looked out over the rest of Marcee Lane. The rec room down the stairs off the kitchen was where the new black and white t.v. sat in the cool below-ground space. Two windows at ground level allowed light into the room with its brown/beige checkerboard tiled floor.

They called my grandfather Finny, a nickname given the tall Swede, lumping him in with all the other Scandinavians who found their way to the Midwest. He worked in the city, but enjoyed his new home where pheasant hunting on the weekends with his sons was just outside his door. He would stop at the old Cypress Inn after work, situated on the way home from the train station. Sometimes my uncles got to hang out with him there--David was approaching 6'4" and could arm wrestle his way to a free beer. He was putting himself through John Marshall Law School at night and working days. His younger brother Jay, who was barely out of elementary school, got to play skittle bowling while the men drank.

On a quiet March morning in 1958, Jay was away. He had been sent to live with cousins, a nurturing crew of fun-loving boisterous Swedish/German Pittsburghers in a place where Jay was born and where he could go to school and concentrate, and get away from the gloomy residue of his mother's death from cancer the previous fall. Finny hadn't been able to adjust. After caring for his wife, and on leave from his job, Finny drank himself into a false sense of comfort, and slipped into a depression, exacerbated by losing his job. 

There was another reason for Jay to go to kin. The house on Marcee Lane was getting crowded. My mom had married my dad, and I was a new addition to the family. 

My dad was a street smart city kid with a winning personality and Frank Sinatra style. After a short stint in the army between wars, he was making good money as a milkman for Bowman Dairy, a route that would bring him out to the suburbs. He had plans on becoming a lawyer, and had taken a semester at DePaul, but with rumblings out of Korea and an offer to get service out of the way that could get him out before deployment, my dad left college and did his stint. When he returned, however, he couldn't pass up the urging of a friend to join up at the dairy which was paying a decent salary. 

The route brought him out to Northbrook, where he often chatted with Alice and charmed her so much that she readily gave him permission to take her daughter Judy out on a date. Judy, a senior in high school, soon to graduate, was attracted to my dad and his charm, his red convertible and gifts of black lilies (an idea lifted from the Brenda Starr comic strip).

Next came baby (me), and moving in with the in-laws, and Alice gone to cancer, David swamped with the service, then school and work, and Jay in sixth grade, and off to Pittsburgh, Finny regularly into his cups. The Cocker Spaniel, Tokie, didn't like a baby taking her a notch down on the cute charts, and after a long Chicago winter it was difficult to imagine that it would roll over into spring. The Soviets were nuking it up and celebrating Sputnik. Ginsburg howled. Miles blew.

On a quiet March morning, just before sunrise, while everyone slept, my grandfather was at the end of a long and lonely night. Another day would not be possible. He took his gun out. Where was it? In a bedroom drawer? A handgun or his hunting rifle? He went to the middle bedroom. Where was I? That was the room where my crib was kept. I was not yet one year old. One shot fired. My mother awoke and screamed. That's what my dad said.

I didn't find out about my grandfather's suicide until I was in my forties. My mother was dying of cancer after a long, hard life of living with multiple sclerosis. My dad wanted me to know the secret. He wanted me to finally know that her pain was much deeper than physical malady. She had lived a life of joy and laughter, and had never said a word about her parents, although I knew she loved them because she always smiled fondly at the old home movies of her childhood. But, I had rarely heard their names spoken, or stories of their past She had raised me and my sister with the focus on us only. I don't know how that was possible.

My father remembers little of that morning. In fact he remembers nothing. Ambulances. Police. Funeral. He doesn't recall. He said he concentrated on taking care of my mom. With his dad's help, he bought the house.

I tried to look up the public records, but they have been destroyed. I thought to find the police chief from that year who was quoted in the small Chicago Tribune story reporting the death. He passed away years ago.

So I'm left with cobwebs, and in the still of the night, I listen for voices. For the witches who surely lived in my basement.