The Last Time I Saw Richard

"Drink the sunshine, warm to the rain
Keep the glimmer alive for all of us
And a million matches in the night
Will help to light the way
When one light goes out
A part of all of us cries"

- Howard Jones, "A Little Bit Of Snow" from the album One To One.

Frustrated, I found myself driving back across town, back past the muffler repair shops and the fast food taco joints, back through the downtown area with its hotels and its noisy bars, back to the west side of town where the businesses became less frequent and the properties less cared for, back past the rust and the peeling paint and the broken windows and the facades of unoccupied buildings which once housed mom-and-pop stores in some recently-forgotten past. I was heading toward the interchange where I-80 and I-25 intersect, out towards the edge of town where the railroad tracks veer close enough to main drag that you can feel the vibration in your rib cage every time a train goes by. Any other day and I might have parked by the side of the road and casually enjoyed a light lunch while watching the trains pass. But not today. Today I was coming out here to draw a line in the sand. I was trying to encourage somebody to change direction. I was offering "tough love." And it was killing me.

I stopped the truck by the side of the road and pulled the keys out of the ignition. Perhaps Rick didn't believe that I was capable of going through with it. Perhaps he thought that he could appeal to our many years of friendship, and the ambitions and experiences which we shared. Perhaps he felt that he could appeal to my empathy, or the part of me which still harbored as-yet-unrealized goals, but this was not to be the case. I had attempted to help him. I had attempted to reason with him. I had attempted to talk some sense to him. I had done everything that I could think of in an attempt to avoid what I was doing now. And even as I drove across town toward the railroad tracks, I wasn't sure that I could actually do it. And I wasn't completely sure if what I was about to do and say was the right thing.

Following my lead, Rick stepped out of the truck. We stood at the crossroads of Lincolnway and the entrance to the last business property on the west side of Cheyenne and silently reviewed everything that had occurred in the last 24 hours. And now, here we were, at the same spot where I had picked him up just a few short hours prior, where the train tracks began to cut through Cheyenne, heading either east or west. And as we looked toward the western horizon, a thousand miles beyond the scope of our vision in the direction of our shared hometown in Northern Nevada and the location of his friends and his parents and all of the people who loved him dearly, I laid out the decision that he had to make.

"What you need to do, Rick, is go back home and get yourself into a treatment program. You're in trouble and you're not thinking clearly. You need to put everything on hold for a bit and take care of yourself. Until then, your music is going to have to wait. You're not going to have anything to offer anybody until you come out of the other side of this thing, anyways. I want you to call me as soon as you get home."

No comment from Rick. He slowly turned his head from the western skyline to the east. It was obvious what he was thinking, without his having to utter a single word.

"Well, yeah," I continued, "On the other hand you could go ahead and try to make it to Nashville and try to succeed as a musician, even though you don't have any songs, don't have a demo tape, and don't even have a guitar. But that would be a big mistake. That's not what you really need right now.

"If you get yourself into treatment, I'll do everything I can to be there for you and support you. But if you head for Nashville..."

I couldn't believe it had come to this. I couldn't believe I was saying these words.

"... then our friendship is over and I don't ever want to hear from you again."

There. I had said it.

"That's how important this moment is, Rick. I don't know how I can continue to be your friend if you make the wrong choice here. Everybody who knows and cares about you knows what you need to decide right now, and we're all pulling for you. You need to go back home and take care of yourself. If you turn your back on everyone and head down to Nashville, then don't bother trying to get a hold of me again."

I could see that he was disappointed, maybe even angry with me. In his mind, I was now no better than anybody else whom he felt had attempted to crush his dreams. I was now just another antagonist who simply didn't didn't believe in him, or care, or perhaps I was just another sellout who had abandoned his artistic ambitions and taken a straight job. In his blurry, convoluted thinking, this was a stinging betrayal. Suddenly I was Brutus, the one whom he thought he could always count on for support and encouragement, clutching the fateful dagger that had inflicted the mortal wound.

There was nothing left to say. I climbed back into the truck and headed into town, away from the railroad tracks and the now-symbolic crossroads. Rick had a decision to make, and it all came down to either heading west towards home and help or heading east towards unchecked delusion. I resisted the urge to look in the rear view mirror as I considered the years of our friendship, and the disparity between the Rick that I had known and the Rick who had been riding across the country like a hobo - and looking and smelling every bit the part - and laying out his illogical, irrational plan to conquer Nashville and become an overnight sensation in the music business.

And as I recognized the part that I had played in helping to create and build some of those very same hopes and aspirations, and as I realized that I had failed to get through to one of my best friends when perhaps he needed to hear my voice now more than ever, I fought the urge to pull the car over and simply cry until there was no more water left in my entire body to convert into tears, sensing that if I were to start, that I might find it difficult to stop. Egotistically, I had assumed that my words would register where others had failed, that my voice would be the one that could break through the haze and make a difference when others could not. I felt that I had been given an opportunity to save my friend, and that, if, in the universal scheme of things, that everything happened for a reason, then the reason why he had come to Cheyenne was because I was the one person that he needed to talk to in order to get his life back on track. I honestly, perhaps arrogantly, believed that I was capable of having such a powerful, positive influence. As if he had been delivered into my hands, that I might be the instrument of his very salvation.

But I was wrong. I possessed no such power.

And now my friend was lost.

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Music was the common, recurring theme that ran throughout our friendship. We were introduced through it, as members of the Carson Junior High marching band. We played the same instrument (and hated it equally), sat near each other, and shared observations about the girls in the flute section... if you know what I mean.

Later, we would work together for the local newspaper in jobs that allowed us to have the radio on at all times, frequently leading to discussion about the sounds, songs and artists that we heard. We became good friends. One day, joking around during a lunch break, I made him laugh so hard that he suddenly bolted for the men's room. I had, quite literally, made him laugh so hard that he peed his pants. No, it turns out that it isn't just an expression. It can actually happen. Heh heh. I have dozens of memories of good times and laughter that involve Rick. We helped make high school fun for each other, like good friends do.

When I wrote and directed the school play during my senior year, he worked backstage helping out with light and sound cues. Whatever creative project I took on, he was right there, willing to help me out.

We lost touch for a little bit when I went away to college, but when I came back and worked during what would have been my sophomore year before heading back out of state to finish school, we picked things up right where we had left. And during that year, our mutual interest in music increased exponentially. Music advanced from being something that we enjoyed listening to, to becoming something that we wanted to create. For those of you who have read my other posts, this was the year that I bought my first electric guitar and started putting together my keyboard and computer setup. I was working for the MGM Grand in Reno (which would soon become the Bally's Grand and is currently the Hilton), and was making money hand over first for someone my age. On several occasions, we went to concerts by artists that we weren't particularly crazy about just to see what types of performances were being put on. We'd make notes about equipment and critique what we had heard. We'd cruise the casino lounges in Reno and Sparks to see what equipment the local bands were using. Many nights we'd hang out and watch MTV late into the evening and comment about what we liked and disliked, or we'd decide on the spur of the moment to head up to Tahoe to catch the Busboys ripping the place up at Caesar's. Whenever the art-house theatre showed a concert film, we were there. We were throwing ourselves into the music experience, and having a great time.

We both started taking piano lessons, and I took guitar lessons. Rick bought a synthesizer and I would torture him with what we called "nightmare music" as I tweaked parameters learning how to program and create new sounds. Before long, however, Rick lost interest in piano and dropped the lessons. Instead, he went out and bought a bass and discovered that he enjoyed it much more than the piano. As his birthday approached, he expressed concern about his abilities as a songwriter. He wasn't sure what he wanted to write about, or why, or how, and didn't really know where to begin. I bought him the 3 CD set of Bob Dylan ("Biograph"), and told him that I thought the most respected lyricist of the rock era would be a good place for him to start learning about the craft of songwriting.

When it was time for me to return to college after a year's absence, Rick was struggling to find his voice as a songwriter while continuing to develop his skills as a bass player. We stayed in touch over the years, but this time I had left Northern Nevada for good and we both knew it. While I was taking college courses and getting heavily involved with theatre and producing my first original recordings, he became involved with a band called Second Nature that played regularly at local clubs. Before long, they were in the studio recording their debut album "What Comes Natural," and some of the songs were written by Rick and featured him on lead vocals. (Amazingly, an R&B vocal group calling themselves "Second Nature" also released an album titled "What Comes Natural" about a decade or so later! Not to be confused with Rick's band, though. )

All told, the album was a success. There were several good songs, the production was clean, and the performances were strong. My own early efforts at recording my own music had been easily bested by Rick and his band. I was proud of him. Maybe even a little jealous. He had clearly achieved his goals as a songwriter, bass player and vocalist, and he could hold the results in his hand. It's a pretty good album!

When I would speak with him, however, he would seem almost defensive. When we spoke of his music or his band, he would make comments implying that the music that he was creating wasn't really the kind of music that I would appreciate or respect. It was almost as if he expected me to criticize and dislike his songwriting if it didn't equal that of Dylan or Lennon or Costello. Great songwriters might set the bar high, but that doesn't mean that one's work is somehow to be considered illegitimate unless it can compete at that level. I didn't really understand what was going on, or why there was so much attitude directed at me regarding his music. Instead of being merely defensive, he seemed almost aggressively so - in spite of the fact that I had not been critical of his work. I certainly wasn't attempting to diminish his success in any way.

Something was happening with Rick. A change was taking place. The band and their album had provided Rick with a taste of local success, but he began to indulge himself with the spoils of that success. And he got involved with drugs. Now I have tended to have a laissez-faire attitude toward drug use. It isn't my scene, I've never indulged in it myself, and am generally uninterested in hearing about any aspect of it. And while I certainly don't encourage it, I have known some people who are occasional users of some form or another of so-called illicit drugs, and I've known people who approach it somewhat responsibly and ensure that they don't pose a threat to others (unlike drunk drivers, for example). Rick, on the other hand, was out of control. Years later I would speak with one of his band members, who would tell me that Rick seemed to want to out-do everybody. If people were drinking, he wanted to be the guy who drank the most. Same thing with drugs. But nobody knew what to say to him, so nobody did.

When I heard about Rick's drug use, I decided to keep my mouth shut. He was already oversensitive about his music, and I figured that the last thing that he needed was to think that I was judging him about his lifestyle.

What I didn't know, what nobody could have guessed, was that Rick was about to experience the onset of a very serious mental illness, and that his drug use might have been making things worse.

His expectations for his band became more grandiose and less realistic. During one telephone conversation he informed me that he and his band were going to attempt to open for supergroup Genesis during their early '90's global tour. He was convinced that by merely sending a copy of their new album to the band's management, that Genesis themselves would hear the music of this little band from Carson City, Nevada and decide to bring them along on tour. In spite of the fact that Genesis didn't tour with an opening act (and hadn't, at that point, for well over a decade), or that even if they DID tour with an opening act it would more than likely be a signed band with a current album and possibly even a top 40 single. I tried to explain to Rick that I had read that everybody in the music industry except management companies and music attorneys was antsy (for legal reasons) about receiving tapes from unsigned artists (who might turn around later and sue claiming that their song had been stolen), but there was just no explining to Rick that this plan of achieving superstardom for the mere price of international postage simply wasn't based in any kind of reality. To even attempt to do so was to be branded as negative and unsupportive.

The first real red flag came about as a result of Rick heading for Seattle at the peak of the grunge movement in the early nineties. The music industry was fixated on that region, and every record label was signing acts that appeared to be part of the movement, so Rick figured he'd go where the action was and see if he could get discovered. The rest of the band stayed in Nevada. I don't really know what his plan was, or if he even had one, but it couldn't have been much more than a hope of meeting up with someone from a label out of pure luck and getting them to sit down and listen to his tape.

I don't know exactly what happened during Rick's time in Seattle, but I know how it ended. Apparently he became convinced one day that he was Jesus Christ and he gave away all of his personal belongings - including his car. If this had occured simply as a result of his being way too drunk or way too stoned, the story would probably be sort of a funny one. You know, the kind of playful anecdote that he'd never really live down. And if you knew how much he loved his car - with its custom paint job and personalized license plates - you'd be tempted to tease him a bit about it yourself.

Unfortunately, this incident marked the point after which nothing was ever really the same with Rick. I wouldn't hear from him for long stretches of time, and then he'd call up out of the blue and be talking a million miles a minute, or he'd be depressed, or he'd be incoherent. He'd lay out plans that made little or no sense. He'd get angry or defensive without any provocation.

And then one night the phone rang at about 2:00 AM. It was Rick, and he was calling to let me know that he was jumping on a train and heading for Cheyenne. I told him I'd look forward to seeing him, and went back to bed. Then the phone rang again, and it was Rick's mother. She wanted to warn me that Rick was having some problems and wasn't really himself. Okay, now I was worried. Then, a short while later, Rick's father - whom I had never met and never spoken with and who disliked me because of the religion I was raised in (he is a fundamentalist evangelist preacher) called me to warn me that Rick had done a few things, including breaking into the homes of his parents and stealing items to sell for drugs. Rick had had access to a fully stocked recording studio, but instead of producing any music, he stole all the equipment and sold it for drugs. Rick knew that I had quite a bit of equipment, and had even asked about it on the telephone that night. I had been told by his own parents that he couldn't be trusted. And I was told that we were dealing with something even worse than drug addiction - a very serious mental illness.

I did not sleep for the rest of the night.

I got ready for work, but the process was solemn. At first, I had been excited to see Rick, but now I was understandably concerned. Part of me wanted to believe that he'd never try to do anything like steal my equipment - no, he wouldn't do that, not to me - but then I never would have guessed that he'd do something like that to his parents - especially his mother. I was probably the closest thing that he had had to a brother. I had a roomful of equipment - my studio - that I had struggled for years to obtain. He knew how hard it had been for me to put together what little I had. I had a wife and a new infant son. He wouldn't try anything, would he? I kept playing back the telephone conversations of the previous night in my head.

The phone rang. He was in town. And could I come and pick him up?

I didn't take the Honda. I took the piece-of-shit pickup truck that I had inherited when a business deal fell apart. Fortunately, it decided to run that day.

And I followed the strange instructions to come and pick him up way out on the west side of town to discover that when he said that he was jumping on a train to come to Cheyenne, he wasn't talking about Amtrak. He had been hoboing it. And he looked 15 to 20 years older than he was - which is a polite way of saying that he looked horrible. And he wasn't travelling alone. Some equally filthy fellow traveller was journeying with him. I tried to pretend that it was good to see him, but it really wasn't. Not like this.

I drove them to my office, where there wasn't anything of any value worth stealing. As much as Rick said that he was looking forward to seeing my wife and our baby, I knew that THAT wasn't going to happen - I could only imagine the germs and viruses that I would be inviting into my new baby's environment. We all sat down and I listened to whatever story he was going to tell me. And he told me about how Nashville was where music was happening now, and how he needed to be in Nashville because that was where the industry was focused. And I asked him what he thought he was going to do when he got there, and he answered with something non-specific like "chase the dream" or some other such nonsense. I asked him if he had any songs. No, he didn't. I asked him if he had a guitar. No, he didn't. I asked him if he had a tape. No, he didn't. I asked him what the odds were of an unsigned artist with no songs, instruments, or demo tapes getting anybody's attention in Nashville. He said something about how his friend - the other hobo that I wasn't told about - knew how to set up a publishing company to collect royalties. The question was thus avoided.

"But you're not even a country artist!"

It didn't matter. Country artists, apparently, were getting signed. I remembered that not being a grunge artist hadn't stopped him from heading for Seattle a few years earlier and redefining himself as a flannel-wearing slacker.

"But you don't have any music! There's no reason for a label to sign you!"

"Well, we were thinking about that. Don't you have a recording studio?" The other shoe had finally dropped. They wanted me to produce a demo tape for them, for friendship's sake, and it should only take a week or so, and by the way how big was my apartment and would I mind if they stayed and hung out with my family while we worked on the demo, and did we have any food and they hadn't eaten for 48 hours...

No. Not happening.

We got back into the truck and I took them to an all-you-can-eat buffet. I don't remember the details of our conversation, but I remember hearing layer upon layer of the most irrational, nonsensical, illogical bullshit that I had ever heard. And I sat there and I watched not one but two complete strangers go on and on about chasing the dream while spewing bits of food with every syllable. I listened to two homeless hobos expound on their ridiculous hopes for stardom while devouring free food like wild animals.

And I reached the point where I wanted to hear what the plan was. And I didn't want to hear any non-specific bullshit like "we're going to chase the dream." I wanted to hear details. So, you go to Nashville. What then? Where do you go? Who do you see? How do you eat? How do you expect people to take you seriously when you look and smell like a homeless person, and people are willig to cross the street just to avoid you?

Well, that was just me being negative and by the way when was I taking them to my apartment to meet my family and see my studio...

And I never heard a single idea, not one single thought about what they planned on doing once they got to Nashville. Apparently, they would become superstars on the strength of their personalities and people would like them so much that they would be given free instruments and studio time. Or something.

I was angry now. Every word that came out of their mouths did nothing but piss me off further. I was angry because I realized for the first time that the Rick that I knew was not the person sitting in front of me. This was someone different, someone frightening, someone that was relying on the friendships that the Rick that I once knew had made in order to pursue some convoluted goal. And this new Rick wasn't above compromizing the ethics of the old Rick in order to achieve that aim. But with such a poorly developed plan, who could forsee how far this Rick would be willing to go when the desired resultsof his convoluted plan failed to come?

I tried to talk to him. I tried to reason with him. I tried to help put together an actual plan. I argued with him. None of my suggestions were considered, even for a moment.

And when we finished our argument, we climbed into the truck and headed out towards the railroad tracks, not speaking a word. At first, he thought we were heading for the studio. But then he recognized some of the landmarks. And he attempted to appeal to any aspect of me that would allow him to stay. Well, that didn't work, either. We pulled up to the crossoads near the railroad tracks.

I stopped the truck by the side of the road and pulled the keys out of the ignition.

---------

There isn't anything about that day that I can feel good about. While, in time, I was able to come to terms with the fact that I shouldn't feel guilty about my inability to save my friend, it doesn't make me feel any better to have abandoned him to the railroad tracks. While I realize that it isn't really my fault that things turned out the way that they did, I don't feel good about having encouraged him to pursue goals in music when it all ended up so tragically. Is it possible that things would have gone as poorly in some other field? Perhaps. Who knows.

The arts sometimes get a bad rap as a result of some of the tragic stories that it produces. People point to the Van Goghs and the Heath Ledgers and the Elvis Presleys and the Kurt Cobains and the David Carradines and the Michael Jacksons and attempt to draw some conclusion that the arts is a miserable minefield filled with nothing but the world's most unstable people. They conveniently forget that there's no guarantee of happiness and stability anywhere. Drug use and mental disorders cut across all professions and all walks of life. But when an accountant in Sioux City suffers a drug-related death, it doesn't become the top story on CNN for the next month. If people equate the amount of tragedy that occurs in the entertainment industry with the amount of news coverage that it receives, then it would be impossible NOT to think that the realm of the arts was inhabited by nothing but needy and unstable people.

The arts attract emotional people, certainly, as emotions are required in order to create art. An accountant may not be required to feel anything about the numbers he crunches, but an actor is expected to feel the words of the script. Artists, out of necessity, need to keep their emotions close to the surface, especially when they are actively working on a project. Some artists assume that they are entitled to special treatment - the excusing of behaviors that would be considered unacceptable if performed by anybody else. Not only is that incorrect but it damages the reputation of the arts. Emotionality used in the service of the arts and free-for-all emotional instability are not the same thing. And claiming to be an artist doesn't excuse an individual from respecting the same basic ethical and compassionate values that the rest of the world attempts to engage in.

There are casualties of the arts. The world will never hear the music that Jimi Hendrix would have produced in the 1970's and 1980's. The world has been denied an additional Lennon/McCartney song. And as a result of my friend spiralling out of control and enjoying sex and drugs so much that he lost perspective about the music that was once the ultimate goal, the world will never hear anything - ANYTHING - that he might have contributed beyond a couple of songs on "What Comes Natural."

My friend is gone. Like Syd Barrett before him, he leapt unknowingly into the abyss of madness, and it claimed everything about him. He is now institutionalized, having broken society's laws after leaving Cheyenne, but deemed mentally incompetant to stand trial. I received a phone call from the Secret Service one day, wanting to know if I felt that he was a threat to the sitting President. And that's the last I've heard from or about Rick.

I guess that there was a part of me that always knew that taking music seriously wasn't really for everybody. The stories of musicians who get blinded by "life in the fast lane" comprise part of the mythology that we create in our minds about those who stand in the spotlight armed with nothing but a guitar and a song. In a way, we want them to be objectively different from the rest of us, in order to strengthen the cautionary tales that we repeatedly tell when we decide to brand an artist as a deviant from "normal" society. But Rick wasn't that different from anybody else in the Carson Junior High marching band. What happened to him could have happened to anybody. And it could have happened just as easily to an accountant.

But I never would have imagined that the very thing that unified Rick and I would be the source of his undoing. And I never would have guessed that every time that I encouraged him to try to improve his skills and abilities that I was unknowingly pushing him closer to the edge of the cliff. I never would have guessed that I would have a rock and roll casualty within my circle of friends, and even if I had known, I certainly never would have guessed that it would have been Rick.

I miss the companionship of staying up all night and talking about music without feeling like a complete weenie. I miss having somebody to bounce ideas off of, and to complain about how awful current music is, and to discuss the nature of what exactly can be accomplished on an album. I miss being a kid and thinking out loud about what type of album I'd make, and what the songs would be like and how people would respond to them. And I miss the time when music was so vital that it felt like a necessary food group. I'm at the age where, for some, it is considered undignified or perhaps even embarassing to still be in a band, or still be recording an album, or still performing in some local gig unless you have already established yourself as capable of making a living in a very public way by doing so. I suppose that brands me as a deviant in many circles.

And as I sit in my basement tuning my guitar in silence after the wife and kids are asleep, I am aware of the void that remains in my life in the absense of my friend Rick. He will never write another song. And he'll never hear any of my work.

How costly it seems to lose good people along the path, to pursue a goal that most people don't really understand for a reward that seems unclear and intangible. Sadly, this is all-too-often the path of the artist, to be mocked and rejected by those who fail to understand. Unless the artist can find a community of like-minded individuals, he is destined to be alone.

I am haunted by the fact that, in the end, Rick considered me one who didn't understand. I regret that he felt betrayed and alone. And I will always wonder if there might have been some magical combination of words that I could have mustered (but somehow didn't) that could have changed the events of those many years ago and saved my friend from the abyss. I honestly thought I could save him. And I failed. And I live with the knowledge of my failure.

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"Oh, I've seen fire and I've seen rain
I've seen sunny days that I thought would never end
I've seen lonely times when I could not find a friend
But I always thought that I'd see you again."

- James Taylor, "Fire and Rain" from the album Sweet Baby James