60 Years On From The Bathtub - October 30th, 2025

Longtime and/or serious readers of Growing Old With Rock & Roll might remember The Bathtub, the first full-length entry in the blog back in 2012, that served as a kind of "origin story" to the rest of the proceedings. 

Rather than just posting a link, I've decided to reprint the piece in its entirety here.......

The Bathtub

I was 13 years old in October 1965. Eighth grade just was not working out. I had been a shy, book-reading child, now hormones were kicking in. I loved rock & roll but I just knew I was NEVER going to know how to talk to girls. (This was years before I got ahold of a guitar.) One really bad Saturday night I decided to kill myself. I had it all worked out. I had seen a mafia movie just that week about a guy getting electrocuted when a radio was tossed into the bathtub he was in. (I was a very impressionable child.)

After everybody had left for the evening (my mom and dad were working their second jobs; my sister was on a date; my brother was at the bar) I went around the house and found a radio with a power cord long enough to reach the bathtub. I ran the bath, plugged in the radio, settled into the warm water, said a little prayer for forgiveness, and let the radio drop. What I hadn't factored in was that although the cord was long enough to reach the tub, I hadn't filled it full enough. Right when the radio hit the water the plug pulled out. I got a nasty shock, I was seeing big purple and black blobs in my field of vision, but it didn't kill me.

I lifted the radio out and laid there in the water a few minutes to let my head clear. I got out and ran some more water in the tub until I was certain I had the right water level for the job at hand. I plugged the radio back in and what was playing? "Get Off My Cloud" by The Rolling Stones. I stood there naked, dripping and chilly, eighth-grade skinny, and listened to the entire song. Right at that moment I quite literally loved that song more than I loved life itself. And then a thought came very clearly into my head: "What if the next Rolling Stones single is even BETTER than this one, and I never get to hear it?"

I set the radio down on the sink, got back in the tub, took a bath and went to bed. If "Danke Schoen" by Wayne Newton or "Roses Are Red" by Bobby Vinton had been playing at the moment I plugged that radio back in I'd be dead now. Long live The Rolling Stones. So began a life of rock & roll.
　
© 2012 Ricki C.

Employing research tools available on the InterWideWeb I've managed to figure out the exact date of that suicide attempt; using the date of the Bob Dylan show I saw two weeks later, a calendar of October, 1965, and the Billboard chart rankings for "Get Off My Cloud" by The Rolling Stones, among other signposts.

That date was Saturday night October 30th, 1965, right around 9:15 pm. 

I was 13 that night. I'm 73 now. 

Here's what's happened in between.

ME AND DAD

My dad figures heavily in my Life of Rock & Roll.  There are entire blogs about him in Growing Old With Rock & Roll.  I'm going to link one here, but it's not integral to this part of the narrative, so feel free to just circle back to it later.

Today Is Father's Day 

Looking back on that suicidal Saturday night I realize how selfish an act it would have been.  It would have very nearly killed my dad, I think, if I had gone through with ending my life.  He would have felt like he failed me somehow.  But he had ALWAYS encouraged me in anything/everything I had ever wanted to do.  He had never once made me feel like the disappointment I imagined I was to him.  I wasn't an athlete.  I was not yet a musician.  I really wasn't really much of anything but a friendless 13-year old kid who read a lot of books, listened to a lot of 45 rpm rock & roll records alone in the basement, and didn't know how to talk to people.

In 1967, within two years of surviving that night dad bought me my first guitar, an acoustic; then my second, a beat-up secondhand electric Stratocaster knock-off that looked exactly like the guitar Jimi Hendrix played at Woodstock, a guitar I loved with a passion.  In 1968 I joined my first rock & roll band.  

Dad died of a heart attack in April, 1970, less than two years after that. 

One night in 1990 - after I had debuted my solo acoustic rocker act - I played a show opening for Willie Phoenix.  Afterwards a bunch of my fellow musicians, their girlfriends or wives, and a sprinkling of friends & strangers were sitting around a big table at Bernie's Bagels.  I was talking about how dad had been the entire reason I ever survived to become a rocker but died before he could ever see me actually play a show.  A girl I had never met said, "Weren't you talking onstage about being Catholic?"  "Yeah," I replied.

"Well then, given everything you're supposed to believe in, don't you think he's seen EVERY show you've ever played?" she said quietly.

I never saw that girl again in my life, but I thank her to this day for that question.   

THINGS THAT WOULD NEVER HAVE HAPPENED IF I HAD DIED OCT 30th, 1965 

(in no particular order)

I would never have written a song.

I would never have tasted shrimp.

I would never have heard an Elliott Murphy song.  

I would never have seen every Bruce Springsteen tour from 1976 through a couple of years ago.

I would never have learned to worship Mott The Hoople in general and Ian Hunter in particular.

I would never have kissed Joyce.  I would never have kissed Marilyn.  I would never have kissed Linda.  I would never have kissed Jodie.  I would never have kissed Teresa.  I would never have kissed (and married) Pat.  I would never have kissed Kim (and ended that marriage).  I would never have kissed Mary Jo.  I never got to kiss Jenny, but goddamn did I want to badly.  I would never have kissed Sharon.  I would never have kissed (and married) Debbie, my little love.

I would never have seen a picture of Lou Reed in a black t-shirt and altered my wardrobe forever.

I would never have fallen under the sway of Tom Petty and Joe Strummer, my polar opposite rocker discoveries of 1976 and 1977.

I would never have read a book by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

THE TEN BEST YEARS OF MY LIFE

From the dawn of the 21st century - 2000 to 2010 - I served as the road manager for Hamell On Trial, a solo acoustic rocker whom I have often detailed/explained as "a four-man punk band rolled into one bald, sweaty guy."  We traversed the entirety of America - from sea to shining sea, as it were - 5 or 6 times in that ten years, hitting 44 of the 48 contiguous United States along the way.  (And Hamell played Alaska, but the promoter wouldn't pay for me to go along.)

It was the best of times with no worst of times.  Ed Hamell was a solo acoustic act; we traveled in one car with an amp-stack taller than he was, two guitars and our luggage.  Ed did not EVER want to see daylight.  He would stay up 'til 5 or 6 in the morning while I slept 2 am to 8 am.  I'd wake him up at 11 am in whatever Motel 6 we were in in whichever city, he'd shamble into the car and sleep until soundcheck in the next town, then go back to the car to sleep some more.  I'd instruct the opening act to let me know when they were 3 songs from the end of their set, then head back to the car with a can of Red Bull, wake Ed up, and he'd head into the club to tear things up with 90 minutes of some of the best music I've ever heard in my life.

Then, if need be, Ed would drive all night to the next city while I slept in the passenger seat.  He'd wake me at 8 am, and again - if need be - I'd drive the rest of the way to the next tour stop. 

The next day we'd do it all again.

For ten years.

It was heaven.

WATERSHED

Five years into that process - 2005 - Colin Gawel came into Ace In The Hole Music Exchange (my day-job throughout the traveling years when I wasn't on the road) and asked if I might be interested in touring with his band Watershed as a merch person & guitar tech when I wasn't out with Hamell.

My first reaction to that job offer was, "Who died?"  I'd been a fan of Watershed since 1990, 15 years earlier and they had exactly the same band line-up (with one drummer change) and exactly the same road crew that entire time.  It turned out longtime roadie Rob had finally had enough of the almost-constant traveling Watershed indulged in and got a straight job.

I got in that van with Colin, Joe, Dave, & Biggie, and never looked back.

I have that job to this day, 20 years later. 

THINGS THAT WOULD NEVER HAVE HAPPENED, part two

I would never have met and worked for Willie Phoenix, who improved my songwriting by about 85%.

I would never have marveled in silent wonder at the guitar playing of Mike Parks; one time in 1970 when I was still in high school, then countless times in the 1990's & 21st century with Willie Phoenix & the True Soul Rockers and The League Bowlers, when I was lucky enough to serve as his roadie.

I would never have met Jim Johnson, a Rockin' Gibraltar of a drummer.

I would never have met John Vincent, my guide & mentor into the Columbus solo acoustic scene.

I would never have gotten to play at Midgard Comics - probably the all-time highlight of my musical existence in popularity terms - and formed a decades-long friendship with owner/rocker Keith Cretin.

I would never have met Dave Blackburn - my high school best friend - who taught me everything I know about music, and whom this song is about.

WINDING UP

Okay, let's start winding this up.  The last twenty years or so of the story have been pretty well covered in this blog.  I have grown old with rock & roll as the title implies.  And that's not necessarily all hearts & flowers.

I sometimes look back in 2025 and question my behaviors.  In my late 20's in the early 1980's I used to fly to Boston on People's Airlines on weekends just to see a band called The Neighborhoods.  I now sometimes find it difficult to muster the will to drive 13 miles to WORK A GIG with one or the other of Colin's bands at Natalie's Grandview.

In my 30's and 40's I would work 40 hours a week - 9 to 5 - at a catalog showroom (a class of retail store that doesn't even EXIST anymore) called Service Merchandise; unloading trucks and pulling orders, relatively hard physical labor.  I would then roadie for Willie Phoenix from 7 pm to 4 am on Friday and Saturday nights; saving Sundays to roll out of bed at noon, not get dressed, and watch NFL football for up to 10 hours.  And then do it all over again the next week.

Nowadays I find it a lovely day when I can feed and watch birds & squirrels outside my living room sliding doors and spoil the local geese with cracked corn paid for with my Social Security cash.  

My sainted Italian father died at 56.  I am now 73.  I have outlived him by 17 years, the exact same amount of time we had together before a heart attack took him away.  What if guardian angels really exist and dad has been mine for all this time?  

I live in Ohio.  I play the guitar.  Not because I want to, because I HAVE to.  I have to. 

I still write songs.

I still play gigs.  

And I still say, "God bless Keith Richards and The Rolling Stones for saving my life in that bathtub."

It's been 60 years.  It's 9:15 pm.

Richard Cacchione at 13

Ricki C. at 73

Ricki C. is 73 years old and has two drawers full of black rock & roll t-shirts, which he wears incessantly. He also has a hand-tooled leather hippie belt from 1972 that still fits. He has congestive heart failure and prostate cancer and KNOWS that all this rock & roll nonsense has to stop someday.

But not yet.

blog © 2025 Ricki C.

It Was 50 Years Ago Today / Mott The Hoople, The New York Dolls and Elliott Murphy

Today is the 75th birthday of Elliott Murphy; my favorite rock & roll songwriter of all time. In honor of that milestone I'm running this piece that originally appeared on Pencil Storm, a blogsite to which I now contribute stories. You certainly won't be sorry if you also check out that site.

I was 21 in 1973. I had already been listening to rock & roll for 16 years, thanks to the lucky break of my bother & sister being 10 & 7 years older than me and the fact that my sister Dianne LOVED spinning the radio dial of my sainted Italian father’s Oldsmobile, so that at 5 years old I was already plugged in to the first wave of rock & roll - Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard.

I thank the rock & roll gods and especially thank my Dad for buying me my first guitar when I was 16 in 1968. I joined my first band only a few short weeks later. The first song I sang in public was Steppenwolf’s “Magic Carpet Ride” at a classmate’s basement rec-room birthday party. Life was good. By 1973 I had progressed through girl groups, surf music, the British Invasion, psychedelia, nascent heavy-metal, country-rock, sensitive singer-songwriters and prog-rock.

By that time, though, I was itching for a change. From my perspective of the rolling over of rock & roll every 10 years (Elvis Presley 1954 > The Beatles 1964) I was waiting for The Next Wave of Rock & Roll. For me, that next wave’s arrival was Mott The Hoople, The New York Dolls and Elliott Murphy. The Dolls were gonna be the New Rolling Stones, Elliott was gonna be the New Bob Dylan and Mott was gonna be the new Dylan backed by the new Rolling Stones.

That didn’t pan out, of course: Mott and the Dolls had broken up by 1975, and I’m forced to admit that (other than with rock critics and rock aficionados) Elliott Murphy never really broke through in any meaningful way. (Though he remains my most prized & favorite rock & roll artist of all time and continues to record & perform to this day; as does Ian Hunter from Mott and David Johansen from the Dolls, 50 years later. Look ‘em up.)

By 1976 my dream of Rock & Roll Regeneration was over. Lee Abrams & his ilk jammed AOR radio down everybody’s throats; tight playlists came in, corporate-rock (Styx/Journey/Foreigner) flourished, and the soft-rock likes of Eagles and Fleetwood Mac towered over everything. Rock & Roll had gone from Little Richard to Don Henley in 20 short years. Rock & roll was now safe and neat & tidy. It made me wanna puke. (Of course at that point, punk had to get invented, but that’s a whole other blog for a whole ‘nother time.)

Fortunately for me, the producers of the Midnight Special - the early 70’s late-night rock & roll TV show (along with Don Kirschner’s Rock Concert) - fed a steady stream of the great (and not-so-great) rock & roll artists of the day into American television sets every Friday night. Now they have started putting their clips on YouTube. Here are some of my favorites of those clips.

These clips are not drawn from the Midnight Special, but NEEDED to be included here.

A link to my previous birthday tribute to Elliott - On Elliott Murphy's Birthday - appears here.

bonus Growing Old With Rock & Roll video (not included in the Pencil Storm blog)

right, Rick Cacchione; hippie, Loggins & Messina and Batdorf & Rodney fan.

left, Ricki C; rocker and Dolls fanatic, two pictures worth 2000 words.

 

© 2024 Ricki C.

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On Elliott Murphy's Birthday

This piece originally appeared on www.pencilstorm.com, the blog I now write for regularly, after I folded Growing Old With Rock & Roll back in December 2013 (see Goodbye blog).  I recently decided to start bringing some Pencilstorm entries over to this blogsite, and maybe to start working up the occasional brand-new original material for Growing Old With Rock & Roll.   

I bought Elliott Murphy’s debut album – Aquashow – at the Discount Records store across from the Ohio State University campus in late November or early December, 1973, the same week I quit college, moved out of my mother's house and got my first apartment.  I didn’t know it when I bought it, but the first verse of the first song on Aquashow – “Last Of The Rock Stars” – contains the lines, “I got a feeling on my back like an old brown jacket / I’d like to stay in school, but I just can’t hack it.”  It was a rock & roll match made in heaven.

I started buying records in 1964, I continue to buy them now in 2017, and Aquashow remains to this day my favorite album of all time.  I bought Aquashow largely because of the blurb in this article about New York Rock, written by Dave Marsh in the December 1973 issue of Creem magazine, my Rock & Roll Bible of the time……

I conducted the following long-distance interview with Elliott Murphy via e-mail in February, 2017.  We're running it today - March 16th, 2017 - Elliott's 68th birthday.  He will be playing two birthday shows at The New Morning in his adopted home of Paris, France, this Friday & Saturday, March 17th & 18th.  We encourage any of our Continental friends to attend.  (I wish I was.)  Details on those shows, pertinent info about ordering all things Elliott Murphy - CD's, books, etc. - and a host of Elliott's prose writings can be found at www.elliottmurphy.com.  You should check it out at your earliest convenience.

THE PENCILSTORM ELLIOTT MURPHY INTERVIEW, WINTER 2017   

1)    You've recorded 35 albums since your debut, Aquashow, in 1973: do you know how many songs?  Also, what are your five favorite songs you've written, and - in as many words as you want/need - why? 

I don’t really know how many songs I’ve recorded and that’s a job better suited for a true archivist than myself (any volunteers?) but I suppose it’s around 300, and maybe I’ve written another 100 that I never recorded. And the saddest part is that I’ve probably started another 500 that I never finished. When asked about my favorite songs it always comes down to those I’ve written and those I’ve recorded. Songs that stand that test of time like LAST OF THE ROCK STARS are essential to me but there are a few songs from my upcoming album PRODIGAL SON that I’m particularly fond of, such as LET ME IN and ABSALOM, DAVY AND JACKIE O, which is an 11-minute opus of a dozen verses. I think my favorite recorded song is ANASTASIA, because for me the production is as close to perfection as I can imagine. But I’d have to throw COME ON LOUANN in there too, as well as YOU NEVER KNOW WHAT YOU’RE IN FOR..… and on and on.

2)    The first prose piece I ever read by you were the liner notes to the 1969: Velvet Underground Live album, released back in 1974, and still to this day in 2017 I consider it one of the five best essays I have ever read on the subject of rock & roll.  How did your authorship of those notes come about?  (And, while we're on the subject: tell us a Lou Reed story we've never heard before.)

I first met Lou Reed in 1971 at a Mitch Ryder show at the Café au Go Go in NYC. (Mitch had covered Lou’s "Rock and Roll" with his band Detroit.) The Velvet Underground had such an avant-garde reputation and a menacing ambiance of sadomasochism in songs such as "Venus in Furs" that introducing myself to Lou took all the courage this 22-year-old nascent rocker could draw up. But I had just returned from a European sojourn, so I had a certain hip bono fides under my belt, having busked in the Paris Metro and appearing in Fellini’s film Roma. But to see Lou standing there in that Mickey Mouse T-shirt, chatting amiably with music business heavyweights didn’t fit the picture of the legend I had heard about. Come on, this was the composer of "Heroin"! The only thing I remember saying to him was that I too was from Long Island. “Oh really?” was his dead-panned response.

A year later my great discoverer, the late Paul Nelson - legendary rock critic and friend of Bob Dylan - who was then an A&R executive at Mercury Records asked me to write liner notes for Live 1969, the posthumous live VU album. Remember that all of this was months before I even began recording my own first album Aquashow, and still to this day fans bring me that VU album with my “It's one hundred years from today …” notes to sign as if it was my very own record and indeed I’m honored. 

I guess you could say that those liner notes contained hints of the suburban fear & loathing that was apparent all over the lyrics of Aquashow and befittingly, I wrote them on the Long Island Rail Road. Paul Nelson passed on my liner notes to Lou for his approval and - much to my delight - Lou liked them a lot, because shortly thereafter he actually called my mother and had a fairly long chat with her, as I wasn’t home at the time. At the end of the conversation my mom told him how excited I would be to hear from him and Lou asked her why.

“Because he’s a great admirer of yours,” said my mother.

“Isn’t everybody?” Lou responded.

My mother - who is in her nineties - still remembers that conversation and I still remember seeing Lou in the Mickey Mouse T-Shirt at Cafe au Go Go, so I guess you could say that Lou made a big impression on all those he came into contact with. When Aquashow came out critics imagined Dylan's Blonde on Blonde as my great inspiration but the truth was I listened to the Velvet Underground's Loaded over and over before daring to even put my toe in the rock 'n roll sacred waters.......

By the end of that tumultuous year 1974, My life had irrevocably changed; not only had my first album exploded on the scene garnering rave reviews from Rober Christgau (Village Voice) and Bob Hillburn (L.A. Times) and Paul Nelson himself (Rolling Stone) but there was my name for all to see on an actual Velvet Underground album. It was almost too much to handle! Or to quote the title of The New York Dolls’ second album – Too Much Too Soon! 

The last time I really spoke to Lou was when he came to Paris in the early 90’s and called me out of the blue and we had a café and we were crossing one of the bridges of the Seine and it was windy and Lou had his collar up and a passing French woman thought he was a priest! Lou didn’t like that. Then we stood on the bridge and Lou asked me what had happened with my life and career and I told him how it got difficult for me in the US during the 80’s and I moved to France and got married to the love of my life and now we have a son together, Gaspard, and my career took off again in Europe and Lou put his hand on my shoulder and said “So it all worked out okay, eh?” like a benediction from a priest!

3)    Who was the biggest influence on your prose writing? (And, I guess while we're on the subject: on your songwriting?) 

When it comes to songwriting I’m just a product of my generation: step one was watching Elvis on the Ed Sullivan show; step two The Beatles conquered America; and, step three Bob Dylan changed the possibilities of lyrical content in a rock song forever and ever. In my case, my father brought me to a lot of Broadway shows when I was a kid so I was introduced to the story telling aspect of songwriting right away. When it came to prose the first “important” book I read was EAST OF EDEN by John Steinbeck when I was 12. I had seen the James Dean film on TV and then searched out the book and it was such a larger universe than the film. After that there was of course F. Scott Fitzgerald and I related to GATSBY especially because it took place on Long Island where I grew up and also because I shared some of his romanticism, or as Scott said, “Show me a hero and I’ll show you a tragedy.” But there were so many other writers I admire all the way from Graham Greene to Kerouac to Raymond Chandler to Joyce Carol Oates to Hemingway to Wallace Stevens to John Cheever….. the list could go on and on. But honestly, I can’t say that any of them ever consciously influenced my style, they just showed me what great writing could be and how important it was to get it right.

4)    In your early career (circa 1973-1977) you made it a point to dress above/apart from your hippie rabble contemporaries (sharp white suits as opposed to patched bluejeans 'n' plaid flannel shirts): What was the worst fashion mistake you ever made onstage?

I think I avoided the worst mistake when Polydor Records hired an ad agency to promote Aquashow and they came up with the brilliant idea that I was the “prophet of my lost generation” and should wear long robes. I could live without seeing a few of my Miami Vice 1980’s shirts but aside from that I don't have many sartorial regrets. And my boots were always correct, which is the most important thing!

5)    How hard was your decision in 1989 to leave New York for a new home and life in Paris?

It was more gradual then you would imagine. I first played in Paris in 1979 and by 1989 I’d say most of my career was Europe-based. I had a good record company in France -New Rose - and I was touring all over the continent and in Scandinavia. I didn’t know how long I would last here because there are legal matters like visas and working papers, but then when I married Françoise everything worked out. She has been my guide through the French bureaucracy so it’s been fairly smooth even if I get stressed out like any immigrant. But leaving New York was not so hard; I had a bad memory on every street corner and it was time for a second act. 

6)    Were you already playing guitar when The Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show in February, 1964?  And what was the very first rock & roll song you sang in front of an audience?

I started playing guitar when I was 12 (around 1961) and the folk boom was happening, so I think the first song I performed in front an audience was "This Little Light of Mine" by the Kingston Trio. When “Murphy went electric” in 1964 my father bought me a Kent guitar (same guitar as Bruce S. had!) and my band did mostly surf music instrumentals. So probably “Walk Don’t Run” or “Wipeout” was the first rock ‘n roll song I sang. For a guy best known for his lyrics it’s ironic wouldn’t you say?

7)    Circa 1975, after the split of Boston bands The Modern Lovers and The Sidewinders, you hired Ernie Brooks, Jerry Harrison and Andy Paley as your backing band: What or who was your Boston connection?

Well, let me see..…when I came back from Europe in 1972 and was hanging around in Max’s Kansas City there was a lot of talk about The Modern Lovers although very few people had actually heard them play because they were really a Boston band. Then they opened for the NY Dolls on New Years Eve at the Mercer Arts Center (I played there a week later) and I think I said hello to Ernie Brooks and we became friends. The touring bands I had for Aquashow and Lost Generation never really worked out because they weren’t the same musicians who were playing on the albums and that was frustrating for everyone. So when I started to plan Night Lights I thought I’d get a band together, do some shows, and then go into the studio, which is kind of what happened. Ernie introduced me to Jerry Harrison (who 10 years later produced some cuts on my album Milwaukee) and also to Andy Paley because, I think, he had gone out with his sister. We opened for Sha Na Na in Canada, which had to be the worst pairing of acts in the history of the music business. But we did go into Electric Lady Studios and record quite a few songs, including "Diamonds By The Yard."

l > r: Elliott Murphy (guitar), Ernie Brooks (bass), Andy Paley (drums), Jerry Harrison (keyboards)

8)    As with Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen, your career is no exercise in nostalgia, you’re constantly recording new records and playing shows, what new releases do you have coming up?

I was actually writing a lot of songs and making demos and about ready to start a new album right before we decided to do AQUASHOW REVISITED (wherein I re-recorded the songs on my first album in a new way and through the ears of my son and producer Gaspard Murphy), so I gently put those songs aside and dug back into my past, like Proust searching for lost time. And then, when I revisited these new songs again after letting them lay dormant for about a year or more they had..… improved! Or at least that was the impression I had when I went back to the demos, and so I thought OK it’s time to put together that album again. I was haunted by this idea of working with a gospel choir and Gaspard found four great singers and a wonderful young piano player by the name of Leo Cotton who played like Leon Russell. We're looking toward a spring release. I don’t know how any artist can live in nostalgia-land. 

9)    Tell us about Jorge Arenillas documentary The Second Act of Elliott Murphy; any idea when we will see it in America?

I first met Jorge Arenillas when he was involved in some kind of futuristic horror film as a writer, I think, and the director wanted me to play a role in the film as a crazy rock star living like a hermit in a haunted house. That film never got made but when Jorge directed his next film - Another Summer – he asked me if he could use my song "Summer House" (from Just A Story From America, 1977) over the end credits, so I went into the studio with my son Gaspard and we made a new version of "Summer House" that went into the film. It’s a great film, by the way, about a haunted man who is trapped in his memory of a summer romance. Anyway, following that Jorge said he wanted to make a film about..…me! I was shocked and doubted that he could pull it off, but you know what? He did! Jorge started following Olivier Durand (my great French guitarist) and myself around on tour in Spain and soon we became used to his presence, almost like he was haunting us. He filmed a concert in Bilbao, where I’ve been playing for over twenty years, and it really was a magic night. So the film was finished and was even shown at one festival in Spain but Jorge said it needed something else. I asked what? He said … Bruce Springsteen. So I called Bruce and asked him if he would agree to be interviewed for the film and being the generous wonderful man that he is, he agreed. And then it just so happened that I was back in touch with Billy Joel around this same time because I came across a photo of Billy, Doctor John, and myself backstage somewhere and sent it to him. So I asked Billy if he would agree to be interviewed as well and being the generous wonderful man that he is too, he agreed. Jorge jumped on a plane and interviewed Bruce in New Jersey and Billy in Florida and voila! 

The film is available on DVD but in PAL, and will have its U.S. premiere at the Stony Brook Film Festival on Long Island this summer. 

Hopefully a release on Netflix or Amazon will follow…… 

10)    Tell us Ohio boys about a spring Parisian twilight……… 

The best part for me is always to be crossing one of the beautiful bridges that span the Seine on my Vespa scooter at twilight and to see the Eiffel Tower in the distance and all those gold-domed buildings and just the wonderful Parisians themselves all decked out, each in their own universe and to pass all those cafes and think of Hemingway and Fitzgerald and Picasso and even Jim Morrison and to know that you are really at home. At least that’s my story from America.….

(editor's note: Previous Elliott Murphy blogs on Growing Old With Rock & Roll can be found by clicking on How I Spent My Summer Vacation and Elliott Murphy in Piermont, among others.)

(c) 2017 Ricki C.

How I Spent My Summer Vacation - Elliott Murphy Live at the Bottom Line, New York City, 1992

I've been to New York City.

In and of itself, that's no great pronouncement, literally MILLIONS of people have been to New York City.  (And, of course, millions of people LIVE in New York City.)

But when I was a child, growing up in Columbus, Ohio, in the 1950's and 60's and watching endless hours of television shows about educated, cultured, erudite (not to mention rich) people living in New York City, I couldn't imagine ever actually visiting there.  I realize this says more about my lack of imagination as a child of the West Side of Columbus than it does anything else, but there you go.  The idea that I could share a sidewalk or a Sardi's with the likes of Danny Thomas, Barbra Streisand, Mary Martin, Dick Van Dyke, Ed Sullivan, etc. was just a non-starter, ya know?  (And once I read Hubert Selby Jr.'s Last Exit To Brooklyn as a teenager in 1968 I was scared shitless to step foot in N.Y.C.)

Anyway, I've now been to New York City any number of times: on vacations, on my 2001 honeymoon at The Plaza, on rock & roll missions with Watershed and Hamell On Trial.  (At one point in 2005 when Hamell was formulating & finalizing what would become his acclaimed The Terrorism Of Everyday Life one-man show, his management company was flying me back & forth from Columbus to N.Y.C. once a month just to run lights and stage-manage the work-in-progress run-throughs at a tony Manhattan comedy club.  I felt like a rock & roll star, except there was no dope, hookers or Chinese food.) 

In all of those visits, though, right up through last summer on a Watershed tour, I have never been able to shake the feeling of being a fish-out-of-water-hayseed Midwest boy staring up at the tall buildings in the Big City.  The visit detailed below - penned for the late-lamented Elliott Murphy Newsletter that manager-extraordinaire Charlie Hunter published in the 1990's - was no different.

(readers, employ your zoom feature.......or is it your bang/zoom feature?)

 



© 2013 Ricki C.

Murphy piece © 1992 Ricki C.

appendix to I Love Distortion, part four - Elliott Murphy (Bonus Video Friday)

(This is the final installment of May's series; appendix to I Love Distortion.  In June we'll return to  
 the rather more random nature of Bonus Video Fridays.  I fully realize there was a lot of nostalgia,

 a lot of looking back in May, but I felt it was necessary to set up the May 27 blog entry - which was  
 largely concerned with The Twilight Kids' live show - so readers would have some rough idea
of what that band might have sounded like.  Intro to this last installment by Sean Richter;) 

Elliott Murphy's song "Rock Ballad" figures fairly prominently into the story of I Love Distortion.  First, I believe it's one of the ten best songs ever written in the rock & roll idiom, period.  And second, it provided me with the go-ahead to begin the affair with Nicole all the way back to the first night I read her poetry.  (see blog entry I Love Distortion - chapter three, March 13th, 2013)

I remember putting Elliott's album Just A Story From America on while I was reading those poems, listening with headphones so as not to wake Melanie and having the following verse waft in my ears;

"And these jobs and these schools teach romance is for fools

And the dream always ends upon waking

And we all kept our cool like a hustler shoots pool

And soon your whole life is spent faking

'Cause to try is to fail and as the wind left your sails

All you heard was the sound of their laughter

But I was running so fast with the wind racing past

All I heard was a voice say, 'Go after her.'"

- Elliott Murphy, 1977

I didn't have a whole lot of people to confide in that late March night, in that dark livingroom on the West Side of Columbus, Ohio.  My last band had ended in December, 1977; I was facing a future in retail store middle management; my four year old marriage had cooled to an extended friendship.  I needed advice and I needed it right then.

If you think it's insane to change your life based on the lyrics of a rock & roll song, I guess I can see your point, but I can also see that you haven't been following the message of this blog or the story of I Love Distortion very well.

All I can say is; at its best moments, when love & music ruled over guilt & sadness, this song is exactly what my life felt like in 1978. - Sean Richter

© 2013 Ricki C.

Elliott Murphy in Piermont, N.Y.

 (This piece written Sunday night, May 20th, 2012, 9:30-10 pm.)

It makes no rational sense, really. I drove 600 miles yesterday - from Columbus, Ohio, to Tenafly, New Jersey - to see Elliott Murphy perform tonight in Piermont, New York.

It's cool, though, gasoline is under $4 a gallon and I’m staying at my wife's parents' house in Jersey, so no hotels.  For those of you who find crashing with the in-laws iffy, let me say this: I started dating in 1968 at age 16.  From then until 2012 I've dealt with a LOT of parents.  (When I was 17 years old an irate father, who was profoundly disturbed by my ties to rock & roll and radical politics and who was deputy sheriff of a small Ohio town west of Columbus, actually pulled a gun on me.  And he wasn't joking around.)  None of the succeeding parents have been as easy to get along with as Debbie's dad, none has had a better sense of humor than Debbie's mom.

It makes no rational sense, really, that Elliott Murphy is playing at The Turning Point, which, while it is a great little listening room, has a capacity of 55 people, with seats for 36.  I came from Ohio, but Elliott came from Paris, France, for Chrissakes.  It makes no rational sense, really, because Bob Seger notwithstanding, rock & roll DOES forget.  It forgets that Elliott Murphy was once just as much a "New Dylan" as Bruce Springsteen until "Born To Run" roared into amphitheatres & stadiums and "Drive All Night" ran off the road into a ditch.  (Elliott deals with this disparity with a great one-liner during the show: "Bruce and I agreed years ago to divide up the venues, he took the 60,000 seat arenas and I chose the 90-seat clubs.")

But really, let's face facts, we're all adults here.  Elliott and his lovely wife Francoise did not fly across the Atlantic just so Elliott could play The Turning Point tonight and Rockwood Music Hall in New York City Monday.  They made that trip to witness their son Gaspard graduate from SUNY Purchase College, just a little ways over the Tappan Zee Bridge from Piermont. (Elliott’s one-liner for Gaspard’s graduation; "That cap & gown he wore is the most expensive piece of clothing I’ve ever bought in my life.")

It makes no rational sense, really, that by some wild coincidence I decided back in Columbus to bring my original Aquashow album cover from 1973 for Elliott to autograph and now discover in Piermont that he’s playing that classic slice of wax (my favorite album of all time, see The Best Of Everything blog entry, January 2012) all the way through in sequence to open the show.  And man, do those Aquashow songs sound great solo acoustic here tonight, almost 40 years after their release date.  I can’t really say there’s one dated concept or irrelevant lyric present here on this evening in the 21st century.  After the show I’m standing on The Turning Point stage telling Elliott goodbye and saying, "Can you believe it’s been 40 YEARS that I’ve been listening to these songs?  I don’t feel like a day older than 21 when I hear them.  They could have been written yesterday."

It makes no rational sense, really. I just drove 600 miles for a rock & roll show.  But that rock & roll show is by Elliott Murphy, an artist whose music I have loved for almost 40 years, since I first bought Aquashow at the Discount Records on the Ohio State University campus when I was 21 years old.  So right now it's 9:30 pm on a gorgeous spring Sunday evening in Piermont, N.Y., I'm leaning on a guardrail by a gazebo, underneath lovely starlight looking at the Hudson River running to the sea and the blinking red lights on the Tappan Zee.  It makes perfect sense, really.


© 2012 Ricki C.

Elliott Murphy “Caught Short In The Long Run” (Bonus Video Friday)

It still relatively amazes me that, courtesy of YouTube, I can watch anything, from my favorite California garage folk-rockers The Leaves performing "Hey Joe" on some SoCal teen show IN 1966 to a performance from Elliott Murphy not even two weeks ago in a Swedish city I have no idea how to pronounce. This week my rock & roll weekend will consist of road managing my good friend Colin Gawel and his band The Lonely Bones on Friday night, then setting out Saturday morning to drive solo to the East Coast to catch Elliott Murphy in from his home in Paris for a couple of rare shows this side of the Atlantic. Sometimes it’s just so cool to be an American with a car.

inspirational verse; "They say, romantics run free in the darkness / Oh, but come the light, they’re the first to kneel." – Elliott Murphy, 1976

© 2012 Ricki C.

Elliott Murphy “On Elvis Presley’s Birthday” (Bonus Video Friday)

Okay, quite simply stated: Elliott Murphy is the best singer-songwriter ever on the planet.  Yes, the best.  Yes, I am aware of Bob Dylan.  (In fact I witnessed Dylan’s first electric tour November 19th, 1965, at Veteran’s Memorial Coliseum when I was in the eighth grade, but that’s a different blog for another time.)  Yes, I am aware of Leonard Cohen.  I am certainly well aware of Bruce Springsteen, a contemporary of Murphy’s back in the days of the "New Dylan" sweepstakes, and probably my second favorite singer-songwriter of all time.  (Or is Bruce just a flat-out rocker?)  Yes, I am aware of Neil Young, Lou Reed, Richard Thompson, Steve Earle, and a host of others, hundreds of others, since rock & roll became my way of life in 1964.  For my money Elliott Murphy is better than all of them.  (He would almost certainly disagree.  In my admittedly limited personal dealings with him I have found him a humble, gracious man.)

The song presented here is "On Elvis Presley’s Birthday," Elliott’s elegy/memoir/tribute to his late father, whom he lost to a heart attack in his teens.  I also lost my father to a heart attack when I was 17 years old in 1970.  I would say it was one of the things that first attracted me to Elliott’s music, but I wasn’t aware of the fact until much later, certainly after I bought Murphy’s first LP, Aquashow, the day it was released in 1973, on the recommendation of Creem magazine, my rock & roll bible.  (I was hitchhiking to my after-college job at a hospital parking lot and intentionally scratched up the door of a Corvette when the driver who was nice enough to pick me up on that rainy day badmouthed Elliott, but that too is another blog for different day.)

It might have been the deep-down vein of sadness shot through with an almost unhealthy dose of romanticism that first hooked me into the music of Elliott Murphy back in those long-lost days of the 1970’s.  I remain hooked to this day in 2012.  It just now occurs to me that next year I will have spent 40 years with the music of Elliott Murphy as a constant in my life.

That music has been a gift for all of these 40 years.  Tonight as I type this in Ohio, somewhere across the Atlantic Ocean Elliott Murphy is likely headed from his home in Paris to a gig in Aurillac, France, according to his website, http://www.elliottmurphy.com/, which you should definitely check out, if only for the brilliant, insightful, gorgeous prose musings Elliott regularly posts (but don’t you dare call it a blog).  Elliott is still on the road after all these years, still bringing people just a story from America.

Elliott Murphy & the Normandy All Stars: Belgium, July, 2008

　

reproduced below is a piece I wrote for the old Elliott Murphy Newsletter (LMN) in 1992

about an only partially disastrous bus trip to New York City

© 2012 Ricki C.