SAME SCENE, DIFFERENT ANGLE

More old stuff... written on location in Spain while I was there working on a film many years ago.  Back in the late 80s/early 90s, my beloved friend Carrie White -- celebrity hairdresser and now bestselling author (Upper Cut, the L.A. Times besteller!) -- used to host regular poetry readings at that dearly-departed, ultra cool hangout in West L.A., Lulu's Alibi.  I had the confidence of youth and thought I had something to say, so I often read my little bits o' verse at her poetry happenings.  Carrie always had themes for each week, and while I can't remember what the theme actually was for the week I read these two pieces, it could have easily been SAME SCENE, DIFFERENT ANGLE:

MELTDOWN
He treated her
as the womanchild she was
plying her with sweets
and grown-up conversation.
She was enchanted,
though aware it was fantasy,
adult eyes seeing clearly
that he would always return
home to another
despite his gypsy soul,
or perhaps because of it.
Still, tears streak her face,
make-up rivulets dribbling
like the illicit ice creams
down the side of her life.
The frustrations of a child,
the appetites of a woman...
She'd learned in kindergarten:
don't take what isn't yours.
 
      -- written in 1989


A GIRL LIKE YOU
A girl like you
should have a guitar
so men could serenade you
up close, not from afar

A girl like you
should have her own fleet
to conquer the world
and lay it at her feet

A guy like you
should go home to his wife
stop writing cliched poems
and face up to his life

A guy like you
should quit wasting time
on a girl like me
who knows all your lines
       
    -- written in 1989

Beanie Baby departs

                                                        Where's Waldo?  Where's that beanie headed?        


                                                                             MY BEANIE BABY DEPARTS

Tomorrow, my firstborn, my son Nick, will move out of his cluttered, pungent-smelling teenage boy bedroom and into his Freshman dorm room at USC.  I am trying to remain calm by keeping busy and not really letting the facts of this inevitable situation sink in yet.

I think pretty much every mother facing the departure of her first (and more frequently, it seems, ONLY) child goes through some pattern of emotional turmoil: recollecting the miraculous sensation of your child moving inside your belly, remembering the day the kid was born “like it was yesterday,” rifling through photos of his childhood -- either literally or mentally -- lamenting to anyone who will listen about how quickly the years have flown by... It’s helpful to commiserate with other parents facing the same scenario because nobody else really wants to hear your whining about how much you are going to miss your kid.

But, oh, how I am going to miss my kid, my Nick, my Beanie Baby. Anyone who knows Nick well will understand the “Beanie Baby” reference.  Up until very recently, Nick wore a red and black checked beanie everywhere, every day, all the time.  The SAME beanie... every day for over five years.  (See previous post “My Beanie Baby” for further background, if you care to... )  So even though the beanie is no longer ever-present, Nick will always be My Beanie Baby in my heart.

When you send a child off to college, you hope to hell that you have done your best to prepare him for the bigger world out there.  And you know you have not done enough.  At least I know I haven’t.  I have over-protected Nick and his sister Chloe. I have certainly over-indulged them (with a lot of help from my accomplice:  their dad, my husband Gary).  I have tried to give them the life I wish I could have had as a kid.  Some of it has been for the best, some of it has probably served to keep my kids unprepared for “the real world.”  But all that I did was done with an excess of love.  I gave up an exciting career and innumerable dear friends in Los Angeles to move to Minnesota for Gary’s new job when Nick was an infant, all in an effort to give my boy the best life possible... I have poured my heart into both of my kids and have probably put too much of my energy into them - to the point that I am not sure who I am without them... so subtracting Nick from the equation is going to throw my life off balance for a time, no question about it. 

It’s a parent’s job to raise kids and send them out into the world - but somehow when that time comes it’s still a shock.  I hope I have helped my son establish enough of a sense of himself for him to forge his own path... without screwing things up before he even gets out of college.  I barely held it together when I left my parents' nest and went off to UC Berkeley, too naive and unworldly to feel secure.  I immediately fell into a pattern of heavy drinking to mask my self-consciousness.  Nick is very much like me - so of course I worry.  I guess only time will tell... but it’s now up to Nick to succeed or fail on his own.  No Mom and Dad there to smooth his way or help him out of jams. I truly WANT him to move on to college and have an unforgettable, amazing time.  The hour has come for me to let him go - but he’ll be forever tethered to my soul.  I am not sure how ready I am for this transition, but I will do my best not to mortify him by falling apart when I finally walk out of his dorm room tomorrow.  I’ll report back on how that goes... 

My Beanie Baby

My Beanie Baby

It was bound to happen... somehow I thought it might be some drunken frat rat at USC who took my kid’s beanie after he started college this fall.  As it turns out, it was probably a fellow concert-goer at a Waaves show that took place at the Del Mar Fairgrounds right after the horse races a few weeks ago.  What’s the big deal about a hat?  Plenty... 

My “kid” Nick is 18 years old, 6’4” tall, toothpick thin, with a fantastic mane of tangled red-brown hair that flows down to his waist.  When he was in 7th grade, he took to wearing a little pork pie fedora.  At that point, Nick’s hair was not yet touching his shoulders.  He started to be harassed on the bus riding to and from middle school -- for daring to express his individuality, wearing a hat and growing his hair (“You look like a girl!  Are you a girl?” and other such BS that adolescent boys sometimes say to anyone who dares to be at all different).  Nick didn’t like being picked on, but he was determined not to give in to peer pressure.  He had fallen in love with rock music and wanted to look the part of the musician he aspired to be.  He had begun to take drum lessons in elementary school and it awakened a sense of purpose in him.  He kept going to his drum lessons and tried to ignore the bullies on the bus.  Then some kid whose name he didn’t even know slammed his head into a table at school and everything started to go south.  Nick kept the hat on, but he hid in his room, feigned illness, balked at riding the bus, said he hated school.  He was in a bad place. This is the age when parents know their kid's future is at stake.  If they check out emotionally, you may never get them back on the path to health and happiness.

My husband and I knew something had to give.  We had to find a safe haven for this kid.  We found an amazing little independent boho school (and I do mean little: 135 kids TOTAL enrollment, grades 6-12) which was willing to take him with only 7 weeks left in the school year.  I told the headmaster that I needed Nick to be somewhere that he could feel safe being himself, and I thought that if this school stuck to their dress code and told Nick he could not wear his hat, that might be a deal breaker.  This kind man made an exception for my struggling son - the hat stayed... and so did Nick.

Over the summer before 8th grade started, Nick came upon a red and black buffalo plaid Billabong knit beanie at a surf shop near our home.  He decided this would be the basis of his new image.  He donned that beanie and never looked back.  It became his signature, his trademark.  He never took it off.  When I realized I would from time to time have to wash it while he slept, I decided to see if I could buy some back-up beanies, just in case - God forbid - something happened to Nick’s favored hat.  The surf shop had only one more of that same beanie left, so I bought that, then went online.  I had some vague inkling that this beanie was so central to Nick’s self-image that having extras might come in handy some day... I supposed that maybe I would stage a photo with a bunch of his friends all wearing the cap, something like that.  I just thought it would be a good idea to get more.  So I bought 10.  We now had a round dozen... that should be enough!

But as time went on, it became clear that none of the “back-up beanies” would ever be worn.  Nick attached some sort of magical powers to that original beanie.  It had been with him to some of the most important events in his life:  The Led Zeppelin reunion at the O2 in London, our 2-week family trip to Italy, 3 years at Grammy Camp, and covering the red carpet as the official Grammy teen reporter at the 2010 Grammy Awards... (backstage in the pressroom, Grammy host Stephen Colbert called on Nick with: "You, in the hat"!)  He was invited to be motion captured for one of the Guitar Hero games - and there’s his avatar, sporting the beanie. Nick drummed onstage at the El Rey theater in L.A. during a Grammy Camp showcase, and met countless famous musicians he admired, all while wearing his beanie. (Lucky kid had a dad in the business and got to see lots of shows from side stage). Nick became recognized by many of the rockstars he idolized as “the kid in the beanie” even if they didn’t know his name. 

As the years went on, Nick seemed to think that the hat carried some kind of karma... it was the keeper of his most treasured memories.  The more frayed and faded and snagged the cap got, the more Nick loved it.  This beanie had lived life with him. It was his lucky charm and his signature piece. It was both baby blankie and talisman. He could not leave the house unless that damn hat was on his head, and many mornings were spent with me yelling that it was time to leave for carpool while he raced around tearing apart his bedroom, looking for the beanie.  Once he had it on, all was right in the world.

And now the beanie is gone... whether it was actually snatched off Nick’s head or accidentally brushed off by another moshing teen, it doesn’t really matter.  Nick and his buddies looked on the ground and on other heads for it, but it was nowhere to be found.   They filed a late-night report at the fairgrounds Lost and Found, describing the beanie in detail -- sweetly naive to think someone would turn in a stretched out, discolored, unraveling hat. There are plenty of fans of his bands here in San Diego who might have wanted a keepsake of the wild-haired drummer -- maybe one of them was at that Waaves concert and took it for themselves.  Who knows? My belief is that the beanie either made its way into some knowing kid’s pocket or into the garbage after being found on the ground by the clean-up crew. 

Nick’s been mourning the loss of his “old friend” a bit, but he’s also been surprisingly OK... donning a new, never-worn duplicate beanie that was stored away in a drawer, as well as other hats here and there, but he’s also been going out bare-headed, with no cranial “armor” to speak of.  He’s becoming more and more OK with the idea of simply being NICK, not just the kid in the beanie.  Just in time for college... I guess it was time for a change. 

My Robert Plant Moment

(Author's disclaimer: Yes, I know there are problems with verb tenses switching in this essay - I will fix that... eventually... or not!!!)

MY ROBERT PLANT MOMENT

Many months after we attended the 2007 Led Zeppelin reunion concert in London, my husband Gary and I were lucky enough to be T Bone Burnett’s guests at the Robert Plant / Alison Krauss “Raising Sand” concert at the Greek Theater in Los Angeles.  Gary and T Bone had been meeting over business prospects during the previous months and  had become friendly - so we were welcomed onto his tour bus/dressing room prior to the show.

T Bone has a well-deserved reputation and one of the best producers in the music business, but he’s also a fantastic guitarist and was playing in the band for the tour.  He looks like a southern gentlemen from some bygone era, a riverboat gambler... Tall and fair, with a southern drawl and a laconic way of speaking, he has this wonderful out-of-the-past presence about him.  His knowledge of arcane music history is mind-boggling.  We were having a great conversation with him when there came a knock on his tour bus door, and who should pop in with a “Hello, Henry!” -- but Robert Plant. (T Bone’s birth name is Joseph Henry Burnett).

Having spent decades working (and playing!) around the film and music businesses, I am not easily impressed by celebrity. I rarely get nervous. I don't confuse talent with character, and I have many famous friends and acquaintances:  Emmy, Oscar and Grammy winners, and a good smattering of Rock & Roll Hall of Famers among them. But c’mon, this is Robert Plant!  For most women of a certain age, there is no way to avoid experiencing heart palpitations when he enters the room - or in this case, the very close confines of an over-air-conditioned tour bus. 

The golden god himself comes in and seats himself on the forward bench across from my husband, just diagonal from where I am perched.  He is wearing cowboy boots... that much I remember.  The rest is something of a blur.  He is charming and funny.  My husband Gary reminds him that they have met before when Gary arranged for his company to sponsor the Page/Plant Unledded and No Quarter tours.  Plant graciously says of course he remembers Gary.  If he doesn’t, he’s covering well.  I have had my photo taken with him and Jimmy at cattle calls backstage before various shows, but there is no reason he should recognize me, nor does he appear to.  I am just one more aging blonde in a never-ending sea of aging blonde fans.  

There’s a great deal of gray mixed in with his own blonde hair now, and there are sizable bags under those blue-green eyes... eyes that so many girls teenage girls dreamed of gazing into (OK, I'll admit it, myself included). Plant does not appear to be one of those skin-cream-slathering metrosexual rockers who fight the aging process. He’s grizzled, he’s weathered, his face and body are lived-in.  What could be more sexy? There are still strong traces of his black country roots in his reedy voice. There's no arrogance about him on this bus. He's a man who is comfortable with who and where he is. 

Uncharacteristically for me, I sit quietly. I'm not really nervous, but I don't want to just blither either.  I mostly listen to the chit chat between T Bone, Plant, and T Bone’s lovely lady-friend (now wife), the Oscar-winning writer (Thelma and Louise!) and director, Callie Khouri, who frequently comes and goes from the bus, as she is apparently tending to other guests backstage.  (How did we get so lucky as to be the ones on the bus?!!) Gary and T Bone and Robert Plant start discussing sleep problems they are all experiencing as they age.  They decide they should all go to a sleep clinic one of them knows about.  (For years to come, Gary will jokingly tell people, “Robert Plant asked me to sleep with him!”).  They are talking like a bunch of old guys and I can hardly stand it.  I want to shout, “NO! Stop this geriatric talk... you are Robert Plant!" 

I want to jump into the conversation, not to actually say that, but because there is something else I feel compelled to tell Plant. When there is a lull, I take my chance and say, “I just wanted to tell you that we were at the reunion show at the O2 and it was one of the greatest nights of my life.”  Plant lets out an exasperated sigh.  No, “Oh, thank you, yes, that was an extraordinary evening, wasn’t it?”  Instead he grumbles something about being unhappy about having done the show. I plow on, “Well I thought it was fantastic. We got to take our 13-year-old son with us and none of us will ever forget it.”  Gary chimes in with more positive feedback on just how amazing the concert was for everyone there.  But Plant is not swayed from his negative tone: “Well, it brought out all of the carnival barkers, didn’t it?  Now everyone is insisting we tour.”  Ah, so that’s what it’s about.  Other band members and all of those who serve to benefit from the HUGE income such a tour would bring have not stopped pressuring Plant, the hold-out, about cashing in.  He goes on to tell us something to the effect of (it’s been awhile since this conversation took place, so I can’t be sure this is what was said verbatim!): “I am not 23 anymore!  I can’t do that every night.”  He tells us that a special bass had to be made for John Paul Jones so Plant could sing in a lower key.  But I sense that it’s not just that it’s hard for Plant to hit all the notes anymore. My impression is that he doesn’t want to be bored doing the same thing and he doesn’t want to make a fool of himself or Zeppelin. Plant wants to leave the band’s legacy intact. 

He grouses a bit more, then says, “well, but there was one thing...”  And he proceeds to tell me a story I will not soon forget.  (I check the details out later with former Zeppelin tour manager, Richard Cole, who happens to be one of my closest friends.  Yes, that Richard Cole, the notorious instigator of many of Zeppelin’s most outrageous antics back in the day. He’s a pussycat now, clean and sober many years, and I proclaim my affection for him proudly.)  

The story Plant tells me - paraphrased from memory, of course - is this: “One of my best mates was really ill...”  Plant’s friend was dying.  When Jimmy Page broke a finger and the concert date had to be moved back by several weeks, this great pal of Plant’s managed to hang on.  Plant recounts what happened: for the day of the show, December 10, 2007, he arranged for a couple of male nurses to watch over this friend.  (Richard Cole later tells me that, in fact, it’s his understanding that the man was so ill Plant had to have him flown in by Medivac helicopter ambulance).  They set this pal of Plant’s up next to the sound board.  After the show, the nurses both handed Robert Plant back their paychecks.  The conversation, as best I can recall Plant relating it, went like this: “We can’t take this money from you.” And Plant says, “oh, you enjoyed the show that much?”  And the nurses say, “Well yes, the show was great, but more than that, watching your friend watch you up there on stage was a priceless experience for us.  To see the joy he felt watching you up there was something we will never forget.  We can’t take your money." 

So here I am, a middle-aged fan of this aging rock god, sitting on a tour bus, frozen, rapt, while Robert Plant recounts this truly extraordinary tale - and of course my eyes are welling up already - and then Plant says, “and he died just a short time later.”  

I have tears brimming in my eyes - and this is when I have “my Robert Plant moment” ... I lean forward toward him and say, “look, I don’t know you... so I hope it’s not too presumptuous of me to say this:  Maybe THAT is why you did the concert. For your friend.”  Plant locks eyes with me, and seems to consider this concept for a brief instant. He gives me slight smile and a nod of his head... and then the moment is over.  He soon leaves the bus, and Gary and I follow shortly thereafter.  

The Raising Sand concert was wonderful, truly memorable, filled with a lightness and subtlety not often associated with the Plant of Zeppelin days.  But the music is not what I recall when I think back on that night. 

Robert Plant may not remember a single bit of this non-event in his life, this little conversation -- with people whose names he may never remember -- on his friend “Henry’s” tour bus, but of course I will never forget it.  The love and devotion he showed to a desperately ill friend humanized him and forever endeared him to me. 

In the midst of the enormous pressure that came with mounting a massively hyped reunion concert the whole world was bound to be fixated on, he took the time and effort to do an incredible thing to bring joy to the last days of a dying man’s life... THAT's a rockstar move.