In Part One (Issue 229), I mentioned that when I was growing up, I wanted to be a rock star. I mean, a real guitar-playing rock star who would be signed to a major label and would appear on the cover of Guitar Player. I had only been playing for a few years, but if you don’t dream your dream, you’ll never have any hope of achieving it. In the late 1970s and early 1980s I played in a band called the Lines, and we were the warm up act for many national and international bands. Like Icarus, I brushed the sun and even came a little too close – the rock and roll lifestyle is not for the faint of heart. Unlike Icarus, I survived, though not without some burn marks. I’ve been involved with music and audio ever since. I’ve had some adventures.
The Lines were the opening band for Duran Duran (photo above) on their first-ever US gig.
I am not kidding. It was on September 16, 1981 at a club called Spit in Levittown, New York that hosted New Wave bands one night a week when it wasn’t known as Uncle Sam’s, a single’s bar that was eventually set on fire in 1994 by the owners, who were convicted of arson.
Duran Duran had a couple of smash club hits with the fantastic “Planet Earth” and the equally wonderful “Careless Memories,” so my crowd of WLIR-listening, up-to-the-minute import-record-buying friends were thrilled to hear they’d be playing practically in our back yard. Well, if the Lines were thrilled about seeing them, you can imagine our reaction when our very astute manager (who later founded a New York talent and booking agency) told us we’d be playing a gig with them!
We were floating on air. People around us looked at us in a different light…like we were…rock stars. Women offered to perform sexual acts on me to get a backstage pass. (I couldn’t get any. Backstage passes or fantasy fulfillment.) We spent weeks rehearsing our short set, and probably even more time picking out our wardrobes. Besides, playing Spit was a big deal. People like Madonna, Kansas, and A Flock of Seagulls had played there. I had never been more excited.
When the fateful day came, we first saw Duran Duran as they were about to do their sound check. They were very nice British guys, about our age, and totally approachable and down to earth. This was before they became magazine cover megastar MTV darlings. And they were as good looking in person as they were in photos. I was jealous and intimidated of how handsome they were. We got to see them do their sound check and it was clear that they could really play and were not just a bunch of pretty boys who were going to rely on backing tracks or off-stage shadow musicians. At one point the sequencer in one of the keyboards failed. For those who don’t know, a sequencer is programmed to play a sequence of rhythmically repetitive notes that would be difficult or impossible for a human to play. As such, it’s a key element in dance and electronic music. Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love” is a well-known example.
The Lines played an energetic and extremely stoked set. I wasn’t nervous – I wanted to show off!
Duran Duran went on to roaring excitement and kicked butt. They overcame the obstacle of the dead sequencer by playing their handsome butts off. The rhythm section of John Taylor on bass and Roger Taylor on drums (no relation, and neither was guitarist Andy Taylor) drove the band with relentless youthful energy. Keyboardist Nick Rhodes adeptly filled in for the missing sequencer to the point where it was not missed, a terrific display of under-pressure musicianship. And lead singer Simon Le Bon…well, there was a reason all my female acquaintances were starry-eyed over him. Some of my male friends too. Aside from being devastatingly handsome (I mean seriously…life isn’t fair sometimes), he looked great in the New Romantic puffy-sleeve fashion that was trendy at the time, had a magnificent voice, and, like Madonna, had that indefinable it x-factor stage presence. Wow! The band and the show were everything we and the audience had hoped for, a commanding, unforgettable performance.
I remember pretty much nothing about the backstage hang except that it was a lot of fun, the guys in Duran Duran were super-excited and friendly, and there were lots of women around. I didn’t get lucky. None of them were paying attention to me.
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I first heard Larry Coryell in high school, when I bought his Spaces album unheard after reading a review. I had only been playing guitar for a few years, so his virtuoso playing was astonishing to me. Spaces features John McLaughlin on guitar along with Chick Corea on keyboards, Miroslav Vitous on bass and Billy Cobham on drums. This is music making on the highest level. Coryell is in my top ten of favorite guitar players.
About 40 years later a friend had comp tickets to see Jeff Beck at the Paramount in Huntington, NY, which included admission to the VIP Founder’s Club. We were told Jeff Beck would be hanging out in the club after the show. He wasn’t there before the show, but another friend asked me if I’d like to meet Larry Coryell. Are you kidding? A man I’ve listened to most of my life, a huge influence? I was escorted to Larry’s table and introduced. Is it possible for an old guy like me to be a fanboy? Hell yes. Larry was welcoming, but…had clearly had one drink too many. I had known of his issues so I wasn’t taken aback, and he wasn’t too impaired, but…I knew the signs. Still, it was an honor to meet one of the greatest, and under-acknowledged, guitar players of all time.
After Beck’s performance, which was incendiary (and at one point I was standing 10 feet in front of him in the general admission area), my friend and I hung out in the Founder’s Room waiting for a chance to meet him. 10:30…11:00…11:30…11:45. Finally, we decided to give up, went to leave…and ran into Larry Coryell in the lobby, gig bag on his back, ignored. (Later, we heard that Jeff Beck showed up about 10 minutes after we left.) We went to talk to Coryell again while he was waiting for a car to pick him up and take him to…a late-night rehearsal in Manhattan! He was talkative…and somewhat more under the influence. At one point my friend asked, “Hey, what do we have to do to sit in with you?,” laughing at the possibility of such a thing ever happening. He gave us a serious look and said, “You come to the gig. You ask to sit in. You sit in.”
We were flabbergasted. We didn’t know if it was the alcohol talking or what. But the possibility of actually doing it…
Less than a year later, Coryell passed away.
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“People Who Died”… the Jim Carroll Band’s big hit in 1980. We did a gig with him, writer of The Basketball Diaries, at the Northstage Theater in Glen Cove, New York, now a parking lot. Oh yeah…we did a second gig with Duran Duran there, which I had completely forgotten about until one of the Lines reminded me about a year ago. You can’t get more rock and roll than that. I don’t remember anything about the pre- or post-show hang, but I do remember that when the Jim Carroll Band went on, I and think a good portion of the audience was bored at his droning set until they closed with “People Who Died.” Mostly, I admired the ultra-cool full length leather coat he wore, which he must have been baking in under the stage lights.
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When I was in my young and desperate twenties, a bunch of friends and I would go to a singles bar on Route 112 in Medford – the Mystic Lounge maybe, or some other meat market kind of name. One Saturday night we saw Tiny Tim at the bar – by himself. This was about a decade after he had a smash hit with “Tiptoe Through the Tulips.” Well, we always thought Tiny Tim was the epitome of cool, not someone to be laughed at, and he appreciated that, as we started talking to him and as he realized we were genuine admirers, not drunken suburban schmucks. We had fun talking music and records. But still, what the heck was he doing at a singles bar on Long Island, alone on a Saturday night?
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I’ve become great friends with John “Jay Jay” French of Twisted Sister. Before they made it big, they were absolutely huge on Long Island and the Tri-State area. One night I went to see them at the Mad Hatter in Stony Brook. While I enjoyed their glam-rock repertoire, I didn’t think they were anything special.
Decades later I got to meet Jay Jay at a pre-show CES dinner hosted by Copper contributor Ken Kessler. After trading stories about the various clubs we played, I finally worked up the courage to ask him something I’d wanted to ask all night: “Twisted Sister was no better and in fact not as good as a bunch of other Long Island bands – so how come you guys were the most successful?” I didn’t know whether he’d get mad, but he simply looked at me and matter-of-factly said, “You’re right! We weren’t any better than them. We just worked harder!”
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And the beat goes on…
Last March I attended the annual ceremony at the Long Island Music and Entertainment Hall of Fame (LIMEHoF), where a number of key Long Island musicians, music industry people and others were inducted into the Hall for 2026. (Copper contributor Wayne Robins is an inductee, and very much deservedly so. His reviews and writing in Newsday, The Village Voice and other outlets and books helped define an era of tri-state area rock.) For 2026, the inductees included LIMEHoF board members Ernie Canadeo, founder of the EGC Group marketing agency; Jim Faith, concert promoter; Kevin O’Callaghan, award-winning artist, designer and educator who designed the famous MTV “moon man” logo; and Norm Prusslin, long-time faculty member and administrator at Stony Brook University and a champion of radio station WUSB and local music.
A good time was had by all. Chapman Stick player Steve Adelson, an absolute master of the very hard-to-play instrument, provided music, as did local blues legend Kerry Kearney and his band, which had Foghat drummer Roger Earl sitting in for a song. These guys can play. (And every weekend LIMEHoF hosts concerts by local Long Island artists, from veteran bands on the scene to promising newcomers.)
Norm Prusslin has become a friend, initially as a result of seeing him show up at every single local Blue Öyster Cult concert I’d attended in recent years, and later from seeing him on the scene at various concerts and events. He is as big a BÖC fan as I am.
Norm recently made the historically significant discovery of a cache of Sandy Pearlman lyrics, poems and writings. Pearlman was a major influence on BÖC’s early career, and his lyrics and ideas permeate the BÖC mythology. Sandy’s relatives were selling his house, and, knowing that Norm was a friend and colleague of his since the 1960s, they contacted him to see if he wanted any of Sandy’s material before they sold the house. Otherwise, it would have been lost forever!
So, it was only appropriate that Norm Prusslin was inducted into LIMEHoF by none other than Blue Öyster Cult founding member Albert Bouchard. In his introduction, Albert spoke of his close relationship with Norm over the decades, and the history of BÖC and their early days at Stony Brook, where they would play regularly as the Stalk Forrest Group, Oaxaca, and Soft White Underbelly before they became known as Blue Öyster Cult.
Norm Prusslin receives his induction statuette from Albert Bouchard at the Long Island Music and Entertainment Hall of Fame. Courtesy of LIMEHoF/Steve Leung.
At one point, Albert told attendees about the newly-discovered trove of Sandy Pearlman material – and that he was going to use it to create a new album based on the Imaginos saga, which extends over the BÖC album of the same name and Albert Bouchard’s three solo albums that expand upon the mythology.
Yeah, mind-blowing.
The new Imaginos album will be out, relatively soon, I would think – Albert told me he’s working on it, and I know his work ethic.
Header image: Duran Duran publicity photo. Left to right: Roger Taylor, Nick Rhodes, Simon LeBon, Andy Taylor, and John Taylor. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/public domain.
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