This is a MUST read for anyone over 30

[DavidE]

Here's an interesting article from the NY Times, written from the

perspective of a semi-baffled spouse.

whm

Sleeping With the Guitar Player

By JEAN HANFF KORELITZ

IN the Ages of Man, there are the classics - infancy, childhood,

adulthood. We have the Midlife Crisis, of course, so dear to therapists

and second wives everywhere. There is adolescence, which in some men

seems to last, oh, well, when does it end? But in the last few years

I've experienced, via my husband, another masculine stage, one I'd been

blissfully unaware of. This is the time of a man's life that I must now

and forever think of as the Guitar-in-the-Basement phase.

Six years ago, when my husband, Paul Muldoon, a poet who teaches at

Princeton, brought home an electric guitar, carried it down to the

basement of our house in New Jersey and plugged it in, I was laughing

too hard to absorb the enormity of what was happening. I knew he loved

music. Growing up in Ireland during the 1960's, he was present at the

birth of British rock, and he knew far more about American blues and

its influence on both sides of the Atlantic than I had ever cared to

learn. He leaped into action when the U2 tickets went on sale and had

dragged me, over the years, to many, many concerts I despised. (I once

fell asleep listening to Bob Dylan at the Beacon Theater.)

Still, I failed to realize that the very loud sounds coming from

beneath the living room floor portended great changes for our family. I

was pregnant with our second child at the time, and to be honest, I

wasn't focusing very well. When Paul played his guitar in the basement,

the whole building vibrated, and I would sit there, one story up,

swaying with nausea. When I couldn't stand it any longer, I went to the

top of the basement stairs and flicked the light to get his attention.

"Please. Stop." He stopped. But not for long.

This was not, I would soon discover, a mere matter of purchasing a

single musical instrument. We were on an acquisition conveyor belt of

more guitars and related equipment, the charms of each soon negated by

the undulations of the next. After that first guitar, a Cort, and its

sidekick amplifier, Paul ordered up a Fender Stratocaster, a Gibson Les

Paul, a Marshall amp, a reissue of a 1952 Telecaster ("like the guitar

Keith plays"), an Ibanez acoustic/electric and a Fender Acoustasonic

amp.

It was a new and unwelcome side of a man I thought I'd known pretty

well, a man who never shopped, who wore a watch with a cracked plastic

band, and who drove an old unlovely car, knocked askew by a deer a

decade ago. Now he was making special trips to Sam Ash in New York City

(I imagined the salesmen nudging one another, "Here comes another

Guitar-in-the-Basement dude, dude."). It was getting crowded down there

under the floorboards.

Gradually, I began to understand that it wasn't just him. There were

hoards of men out there, roughly his age, frolicking in guitar

wonderlands and shoring up amp arsenals in their own basements. In the

weeks after Sept. 11, when I began each sad day with the Portraits of

Grief in The New York Times, I read again and again of men commuting

home from their working lives, descending their basement stairs, and

rocking their Jersey or Westchester or Long Island houses to the

rafters.

Once, at a friend's dinner party, Paul was seated next to a terribly

dull financial manager I'd been shackled with during cocktails. To my

surprise, they quickly began an avid conversation, which lasted all

through the meal. I kept my eye on them, at a loss to imagine what they

might possibly have found to talk about, let alone with such animation.

"He has a Stratocaster in his basement," Paul said happily as we drove

home. "He just got a wah-wah pedal."

Inevitably, Paul started to play with some of these men. There was a

lawyer who possessed an entire recording studio in his apartment, then

a professor of Renaissance poetry with a vast collection of guitars.

Initially, heading out after dinner with the guitar packed into the

back seat was a grand occasion, a thrilling adventure for him, if not

for me, but soon it became a more routine outing. "You don't mind if I

rehearse tonight, do you?" he'd ask. Rehearse? I'd think, baffled. He

was still learning basic chords on the instrument. Rehearse?

It took a long time for me to figure out what I was dealing with. But

I'm a woman, which means that, in my heart of hearts, I have long

understood that certain things are never going to happen in my life. I

won't, by way of example, be modeling swimsuits for Sports Illustrated,

representing my country as an Olympic gymnast or dancing Coppélia for

the New York City Ballet.

I have dealt with these disappointments and, in the idiom of our age,

moved on. But my husband - my wonderful, endearing husband, who is

extremely successful at writing and teaching poetry - believed, at the

age of 53, that it was utterly possible for him to become a rock

guitarist. On a stage. In front of an audience.

Our 12-year-old daughter dubbed the new band Freaks With Guitars, but

the actual name encompassed a more subtle humor. They were called

Rackett, and by now the three older men had been joined by three cute

young guys, just out of college. They started writing songs: the

Renaissance poetry professor on music, my husband on lyrics.

A COUPLE of those cute young guys could really sing. The Renaissance

poetry professor was a superb guitar player, actually. Within months,

the recordings made in the lawyer's studio were sounding not all that

different from the music my 12 year old was blasting in her room. The

keyboardist, who runs his own breath-mint company, began to talk about

producing the eventual CD's.

I no longer bothered to try to talk some sense into my husband. What

sense, after all? My notion of reality had departed the day I came home

to find Paul playing, over and over, a recorded phone message from one

of the few rock stars we both revered, Warren Zevon. Mr. Zevon had read

some of his poetry. When Paul hit "play" on the answering machine, I

heard the author of "Werewolves of London" and "Excitable Boy"

pronounce my husband "The best damn poet on the planet."

In due course they would meet, become friends, and write two songs

together, including "My Ride's Here," the title track of Mr. Zevon's

penultimate album. Books about the music business began to accumulate

in our bathroom. Paul formed a publishing company to register his

lyrics, and became a member of Ascap. Copies of Spin and Guitar World

began to arrive monthly, along with an inexhaustible supply of Sam Ash

catalogs. Rackett was offered its first gig, in a Greenwich Village

club. The band's catalog of original songs stretched to 30, then 50.

Bruce Springsteen produced a live recording of "My Ride's Here" for

Warren Zevon's posthumous tribute album.

I refuse to conclude from all this that I have been unknowingly married

to a rock star for nigh on 18 years. I simply could not have been that

unobservant, failing to notice the spandex in the closet, the tour bus

in the garage, the groupies at the mailbox. Nor is this a story about

years of hard work, prodigious innate musical talent and patient honing

of "craft" reaching their inevitable, just conclusion.

It occurs to me that much of his success in this odd endeavor derives

from the fact that he just didn't know the whole thing was impossible,

that his dearth of musicality, advanced age and lack of Rock Star lips

meant that it was flatly impossible for him to become the thing he had

decided he wanted to become. Then again, some of that obtuseness might

have derived from being male in the first place.

Unlike women, for whom menopause serves as an unignorable transition, a

line dividing one part of life from another, men have no midlife marker

to brake before, or even to steer around, in the hinterland from their

youth to their age; there is only a great, elastic middle. Is it any

wonder they lose track of where they are, and think they can do

anything? And evidence being what it is, I'm forced to concur. Should

Paul waltz in tomorrow and announce that he has decided to become an

engineer, a painter or a matinee idol, I'm afraid I will be forced to

give him the benefit of the doubt.

ON stage, he looks like a middle-aged Irish poet, bespectacled, dressed

in the same rumpled suit he teaches in. He is not a great musician and

still can play only seven chords (which is four more than you need, he

points out). But to succeed at anything is just so unlikely in the

first place. Why should the fact that he's 53 and a musical neophyte

make watching his band rock out on stage any more bizarre for me? Why

should I be so surprised by the possibility of being surprised?

Then again, one of the great pleasures of being shocked by some amazing

thing a loved one does is being aftershocked by something in ourselves.

I'll admit that I have now done things I never thought I'd do, like

bounce up and down in the dark basement of a rock club with a host of

20-somethings, an activity that might have recalled my lost youth had I

ever done it when I myself was a 20-something. I have seen things I

never thought I'd see, like a group of college students raising a sign

with Paul's name on it in the audience at a Rackett performance.

And I have said something I never thought I'd say, at the stage door of

a New York club, as I attempted to carry his guitar - one of his

guitars! - downstairs to the dressing room. The bouncer, after giving

me a very dubious look, wondering, perhaps, if I hadn't just wandered

in off a New Jersey soccer field (which was precisely where I'd been a

few hours earlier), asked if he could help me.

"That's all right," I told him, hoisting the guitar. "I'm with the

band."

Jean Hanff Korelitz lives near Princeton, N.J., with her husband and

two children. She is the author of three novels, including "The White

Rose" (Miramax Books).

[tobereeno]

that totally rocks!

[formula73]

I'm not sure how that makes me feel. At 25, I've felt about myself the exact dubious sentiments she voiced, but I think thoughts like that are waaaaaaay too deep for rock and roll. Fuck it dude, that rocks. "Never give up; never surrender!"

[Michael_]

Hey, I'm only 19 and I thought it was really great. Kind of a glimpse into the lives of the majority of my fellow forum members.

[alpep]

big deal I married my bass player.

[m chops]

sure sounds like our household.

[Lockbody]

Great read David, thanks!

[kizanski]

Wow!

That all sounded waaayyy too familiar.

Except for the success a recognition part.

[wyldbil]

Thanks David. Very poignant and makes me feel like maybe I'm NOT wasting my time! ;o)

[gregc]

That was GREAT!

gregc

[kurtsstuff]

I'm 44 (look 29...lol!) so....there's still a chance huh?? HEY MAN!...WE'RE PUTTIN THE BAND BACK TOGETHER DUDE!!! lol...

[belgian]

Great !!!

Recognised a lot in it. I am almost 49.

[bbobb24]

That's an incredible story, thanks for sharing it. So at the ripe old age of 36 it's not too late.

I'll have to print that and let my wife ready it

[GusS]

http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/...rts/11615.shtml

http://www.rackett.org

[John E]

That all sounded waaayyy too familiar.

Except for the success a recognition part.

I'm with you on that. I started out thinking, "man, this sounds familiar!" Then suddenly he was writing songs with Warren Zeavon and I was still wanking in the basement alone.

[ZR]

John E,

You DO mean playing your guitar in the basement right?!

[John E]

John E,

You DO mean playing your guitar in the basement right?!

Oh yeah. That too.

[copper blue]

perfect!! I've been really close lately to just saying fark it and residing myself to being a basement rocker or just fostering my kids' love of music...

It's been almost 4 years since I decided to start playing again after leaving it for years. I quit my first and only band to take on the responsibilty of being a grown up...well it's funny, because the guy I'm being totally fanboy about at this time, Nels Cline, was the catalyst for my picking up the guitar again.. I was listening to "Chinese Firedrill" from Mike Watt's Ball Hog or Tug Boat and it hit me..an epiphany..I had to play music again..

It's been a rough few years and many projects started and fizzled and I've been thinking how fruitless the searches for people to play with has been..I got really depressed last week thinking about it..

This gives me hope..

I'm 32 for the record..

Rob

[Brewmaster]

This guy is my age!!!!!!

[Nuclear Wessel]

41 here, with a lovely and supportive lady in my life, a vast collection of guitars, and a complete recording studio in my condo. No commercial success in sight, but like the guy in the story, I have no awareness that it CAN't happen.

Recognition? Friends and locals who hear my music think it's very good(Editted to add: And my parents still don't get my music!), and if that's all the success I ever achieve, that's fine.

Mid-life crisis? I'm having a blast!!!

[MCChris]

Just this past Saturday I got together with two of my oldest friends who also happened to be the bass player and drummer of my first real band. We ran through our old material, some of which we hadn't played in more than 15 years, like we had never stopped playing together. It was a blast.

[Guest cruster]

I'm 38 (well, I will be this year) and other than during my lessons, I've never played out. About the closest I intend to come to being 'in a band' is to buy a PA (hey, anyone recommend a good stereo PA setup for back yard, annoying the neighbors kind of fun? Bottom feeder friendly would be nice...) and set it up in the back yard this summer...have a couple of guys over and piss off the anal lawn freak next door.

[Nuclear Wessel]

Have you guys heard of Proto-Kaw? Kerry Livgren's band in probably the late 60's/early 70's, before he joined Kansas. When he left, these guys pretty much quit doing much musically, settled down, got regular jobs, raised families.

Now, 30 years later, they've gotten back together and are touring. I heard an interview with Livgren in which he said their first jam sessions were like they took up right where they left off. Never missed a step. These guys could still play these tunes they'd played together 30 years ago. Livgren said for him it's just another tour, but the rest of the band is just elated to be touring with this material after all this time.

http://www.protokaw.com/

[Buzzy Fretts]

Cool article. Hey David! Do you have a link to the original NYTimes story? Thanks.

[DavidE]

Cool article. Hey David! Do you have a link to the original NYTimes story? Thanks.

Sorry Buzz: That came off of a newsgroup.