Ringing the Bells
The first time Richard Bell ever let his anger loose on me was when we were setting up a show in Arnoldsville, the old train depot. I was plugging a cable into line 1 of the PA head, and he barked, “Gil. Gil! Use the mic cable. Gil! THE. MIC. CABLE.”
I didn’t have an extra mic cable and he blamed that on me. Our show went off without much of a hitch, though I certainly didn’t want to harmonize with him. Our voices went together that night like syrup and salt.
We rode together to a gig in Augusta soon after that. We were both smokers, so it made sense. When I asked him where to dispose of my butt, he pointed his thumb out the window. I said, “Seriously?”
“What? You’re gonna go all environmental on me now?”
“What if I just put it inside this cassette case?”
“Gil. Put. the. butt. out. the. window.”
“Got it.”
I don’t always blame Richard, and neither does his beautiful wife. We know he’s in pain, physical pain that is at times debilitating. Lydia confides in me. I always listen.
Sometimes, however, I wonder if she’s telling me everything. It’s not just the occasional reddened cheek or quivering voice. I know Richard, and have for a long time. I’ve seen him throw his stand-up bass case out into where the audience had been standing while not listening to us in Johnson City. I’m not sure whom he was mad at — us or the crippling indifference of American culture.
I used to give him cds of songs I was proposing for the band to play. Next time we rehearsed, I’d say, “Wanna work on those songs I gave you?”
“What songs?”
“On the cd.”
“I didn’t get any cd.”
So then I’d pull out a lyric sheet for one of the songs, and he’d say, “What’s this?”
“One of the songs I wrote. It’s easy, just A-Em all day long until the chorus, when it goes to G and C.”
We’d start playing, and I’d sing, “I wish I’d been my own damn dad…”
“Gil.”
“Be so much nicer than the one I had, so much…”
“Gil!”
The song would stop. “What’s up?” I’d ask, cheerfully as I could.
“I don’t know the chords!”
“Well I…”
“How am I supposed to remember?”
Then we’d just play a few Dead songs and call it a night.
Then there was that time at the infield of the speedway, an hour before the waving of the green flag, the four of us standing on that pathetic little platform built out of the hood of a mangled stock car, Richard seeing that little cloud in a cloudless sky and saying, “That little fucker better not come our way.” I knew then his blood sugar was low.
“One-two-three-four?” Melanie counted off, and we launched, haltingly, into her song “Heads Bent Low,” which laments the plight of the poor yet hails their resilient spirit. The cloud was getting bigger. During my “solo,” Melanie commented, into the mic, “Ya, it’s getting clozer.” She’s German.
“Fucker better not,” chimed Richard. “This is a $1500 bass.” His stand-up bass was and is his pride and joy, which probably explains why he still hasn’t handed it down to his only child, Ezra, who also plays bass.
I tried to ignore them, but punctuated their complaints with “It’s okay,” “don’t worry,” and “we’re good.”
The cloud begged to differ, and within seven minutes of its first sighting, it was over us, dark and angry. As it let loose, 35,000 drunken racing fans sighed in unison in relief, the rains dousing their burning, red flesh. Robert picked up his bass and leapt from the stage mid-song, slaloming around picnic blankets and prone rednecks until he reached the speedway, where he evidently thought he was home-free. He wasn’t, Lydia told him in his hospital room. “Gordon Johncock Jr. hit you and you flew up into the air.”
“The bass,” Richard whispered. “The bass?”
“Landed on the hood of Dick Trickle’s car,” said Lydia. “He picked it off the track and had it repaired.”
Though she was hampered by what they used to call a club foot, Lydia bent down and pulled the bass from its case and laid it next to Richard. He spooned with it and fell quickly back to sleep. The next morning he was put in a back cast. It, his back, hasn’t been the same since.
His marriage to Lydia, however, hadn’t been the same since Ezra’s birth, which set off a series of events that led to his alcoholism and his ouster from the house, whose spirit lifted immeasurably soon after. Lydia thrived, not even thwarted by her congenital condition, still attending music shows, including my poorly attended solo performances, which were decidedly bassless and drumless. I shouldn’t have kept on, but music is what I do. (I also do deck-staining and light carpentry.) Music is my sustenance, and my undoing, apparently. I’ll always do it, and always be undone.
Of course, the band didn’t officially end; rather, it petered out from lack of interest in my new songs. I made cd after cd for the band to listen to, and they didn’t. Finally, at a show outside a creamery, I announced it was our final one. No one, neither in the sparse audience nor my former bandmates, protested. So I knew it was the right call. The Naybs were finished.
I formed a few solo bands, including the Lone Gunmen and The Noodlers, but neither took. I kept in touch with my bandmates, but couldn’t entice any of them even to jam with me. I was left with no options other than to jam with my sons, who laughed inwardly at my antiquated song tastes, but gave soulful performances that augmented my soulful, if unskilled, attempts at vintage pop. It was fine. I was with my boys and that was all that mattered.
I kept in touch with Melanie, but her husband was retired and all they did was travel. Will, the drummer, moved to Johnson City and made knives in his shed. Richard retired to his recliner, set up so that he could watch his five basses set up on stands and the TV before him in his cabin. And he did just that, daily, augmented by hourly bong hits, for a full year. Then Lydia called me.
“I’ve gotta get out of the house.”
“Okay.”
“He’s driving me crazy.”
“Yeah.”
“He’s so mean.”
“He’s probably in pain.”
“Yeah, he is. But does he have to put me in pain?”
We decided we’d go on a “date” to see Tony Levin’s band, The Stickmen, downtown the following Friday. It was great. She eased into Levin’s path before the show, and engaged him in conversation while I stood to the side, so happy for her. She was the only female King Crimson fan I’d ever met up to that point, and after. She dutifully took videos and photos of the fantastic show before we walked back to her handicapped parking space and she took me home. As we said goodnight, a thought entered my head that I’ve regretted every since: This woman is starved for romance.
The car idled. I said, “Can I say goodbye to your neck?”
She sat back. “Sure.”
I leaned over and gave her neck the most soulful kiss I’d given since the last kiss my ex-wife, Amy, and I had at the reservoir just after she’d asked me for a divorce.
Lydia leaned back as if expecting more, and I demurred, hesitant to do my abusive ex-bandmate like that. Maybe I should have. I’ll debate that one for as long as I have to live.
She dropped me off, and the next time I saw her I took the movie “The Russians are Coming, The Russians are Coming” too her house to watch and cheer Richard up.
Norman Jewison, the movie’s director, had just died. I thought I was paying tribute to him by showing it to a few folks who’d never seen it.
Everything was going fine; Richard, planted in his recliner, laughed at the Alan Arkin character going through his hostage’s purse looking for car keys. Lydia, seated next to me on the couch, starting breathing heavily just after the scene where the Russian navy men run through the streets, chanting, “Emergency! Everybody to get from street.”
Which is so fucking funny. My laughter woke her up for a second, and then she lay her head on my shoulder.
Richard noticed. From that point, his attention to the movie was diverted in favor of, well okay, his wife’s head planted on another man’s shoulder. And I knew it. I pretended not to, but I did. I was swooping his bride from his arms. Richard looked our way about half the time through the end of the picture, after which he let the credits run and stared at us.
“Cool,” I said, “Richard Lester was a creative consultant. You know he did the ‘Batman’ TV show and the Beatle movie ‘Help’…
“I don’t fucking care what he did, why is my fucking wife’s head on your shoulder?”
“She’s tired. She’s had a long day,” knowing Richard would know exactly what I meant about that. I was being cruel.
He smiled and began nodding his head, almost in rhythm to a song in his head, probably, “Smile in Your Face” by the Ojays. “I see,” he said, partly to himself, as if working it out in his head as he spoke. “The way you tried to do with Melanie.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Like how you tried to wreck her home too. But she wouldn’t have you, would she?”
“Richard, if I told you that it was when I was very drunk.”
“Which means you really meant it.” Richard was a recovered alcoholic.
“Yeah.”
“You bastard.”
“Yeah.”
I disentangled myself from his wife, stood up, and scooped her in my arms. She stirred, and smiled.
“You can keep the movie.”
“I sure will, you bastard.” That was the last thing he said to me before I walked out the door, carrying his wife, and took her to my car.
