Today I'm going to overshare about an insecurity that will probably be more relatable than the last few. As I've already said, I had the cards very much stacked against me from an early age: I had ADHD, I was a humanist thinker in a Fundamentalist family, and a pastor's son on top of that. My family relocated several times as I was growing up, and that only made it harder to actually make friends and fit in.
And as I grew, I developed this fantasy of what fitting in looked like.
Pop music was forbidden in our home when I was young, and rock? forget it. Adult Contemporary was as racy as my parents could get. Dad favored the Imperials and the Bill Gaither Trio.
But I rode a bus to school. And that bus's radio was always tuned to AM 89, WLS Chicago, 50,000 watts, the greatest rock station the Midwest ever heard.
This was a whole new world for me. McCartney & Wings; Three Dog Night; Elton John; Grand Funk Railroad; BTO; Neil Young... I had died and gone to heaven! At first I felt unclean, like the bus would pull over and my father would get on and spank me in front of everyone for not having my ears covered. But eventually the guilt subsided - I mean, it's not like I was the one turning the radio on and tuning it to WLS. What could I do?
Gradually I gave in to temptation. I gave myself permission to love this music.
Friends loaned me albums, which I played in my bedroom with the door closed and the volume very, very low. I bought music magazines - RS, Creem - and hid them in my closet like porn. And the fantasy began to build.
Though I owned two guitars, I knew my fate was behind the keyboards: ours was a musical family, where everyone had a solo-quality voice and us kids were taught classical piano and organ almost from birth. And there was this keyboard player in Creem, a Brit with long hair the same color as mine - a guy named Rick Wakeman. He didn't just play one keyboard, he built four stacks of three each, surrounding himself.
THAT'S who I would be. If I could be Rick Wakeman, other kids would like me. Girls would like me. I would like me.
Lo and behold, that's exactly what happened. My fantasy came true.
When we moved to Frankfort, Ky in the spring of 1976, I found myself socially rebooting yet again, but this time I had an advantage: having suffered 10 years of endless piano practice, I now had a grand piano at my disposal, in the school theater. So I would get up early, be the first car in the student parking lot, and have 45 minutes alone with that grand piano.
I played Beatle songs. I played Elton. I played Billy Joel. I played Manilow. I could read well by then, but didn't need to - I could do it all by ear.
And a girl appeared next to me on the piano bench. I damn near married her!
A decade later, I was surrounded by stacks of keyboards, Wakeman-style, year in and year out. I'm retired from live performing now, but I had almost four decades of my fantasy. I played in countless bands, wrote hundreds of songs, did a dozen albums. And many if not most of my close friendships were with bandmates. More than a couple of women walked into my life by approaching the stage after a show.
The thing is - fantasy and fun aside, I'm as insecure about friendships and getting to know others as I ever was. What music can draw to my shores, ADD can dissipate in a heartbeat.
And at this point I’ve handed that life off to my younger son. I'm too old to lug a dozen keyboards around...
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