I've been playing guitar for almost 58 years. I took my first guitar lesson on June 16, 1968 and started a band with some neighborhood friends a few months later. (We weren't very good, but everyone has to start somewhere.)
Over the years I got better. Good enough to play in a number of bands, and play gigs everywhere from the Ritz in New York City and the Harry Chapin Rainbow Stage on Long Island to long-gone dive bars and open mikes in front of five people. In the process, I've shared stages with and encountered a number of famous musicians. You can read my previous stories in Issue 230 and Issue 229, and here are some more.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s our band, the Lines, achieved some degree of regional success. We were good, and had a really good manager. As in, booking us a gig at Malibu, the biggest New Wave club on Long Island, on New Year’s Eve, 1980.
It was our biggest gig to date, by far. We were extremely nervous – after all, we would be playing with the Ramones! The most renowned punk band on planet Earth! Intimidating-looking guys from New York City in leather jackets! The end of the Seventies! I told the rest of the Lines, “we’ll be lucky if we get through our set without the audience throwing things at us!”
We got there in the afternoon or early evening to do a sound check – my memory isn’t clear. Over the course of the next few hours club filled to the brim – maybe 1,000 people, maybe more, certainly the biggest audience the Lines had ever played to. The Malibu employees were mobilizing as if for a military campaign – it was New Year’s Eve, after all, and multiple bars were set up, with the crowd indulging in a steady stream. It was a wild party! Our backstage passes enabled us to navigate through the madness. In fact, the backstage area was a sanctuary, especially our dressing room, which was empty compared to the Ramones’s.
Which, at one point, led Joey Ramone to come into our dressing room. Now, Joey was an imposing figure at 6 feet six inches tall, in leather and jeans and long hair. His demeanor was anything but imposing as he quietly asked, “Is it OK if I hang out in your dressing room? Ours is too crowded!” We weren’t going to say no to Joey Ramone? Not while we were pinching ourselves. Joey aka Jeffrey Hyman came off as a regular guy – we didn’t know about his health and OCD and other disorders until later – and seemed totally straight. At one point I asked him – remember, I thought I was seriously on the path to Rock Stardom – “What would you recommend to someone like me, trying to make it?” He replied, “You’re going to encounter a lot of as*holes in this business. Don’t listen to any of them! Follow your heart.”
Then it was time to go on and, encouraged by Joey’s words and the fact that the place was packed, the Lines went on. We played up-tempo energetic New Wave, so no bottles were thrown; in fact, we went over great. The Ramones played a blazing set. Listening to them on record gives just a hint of their juggernaut frenetic energy onslaught. I don’t know how they physically did it. (In fact, Blondie drummer Clem Burke played two gigs with the band and said it was hard to keep up.) Song after song after song delivered with manic energy. What a way to start the 1980s!
Although I almost didn’t get to see them. Before they went on, a woman asked me if I could have my backstage pass. I figured, sure, I’m in the band and I don’t need one. No sooner did I start to hand it to her than a burly security guard ripped it from my hand and yelled, “Are you crazy? Do you want to get thrown out of here?” Um, no, I wanted to get…never mind. I got the backstage pass but I didn’t get the girl.
Postscript – in a flash of cosmic serendipity, I got a press release saying that April 23, 2026 was the 50th anniversary of the Ramones’s first album. A special exhibit premiered at the Punk Rock Museum in Las Vegas on July 4, 2026. A premiere at a museum in Las Vegas? Somehow, I guess that’s as punk rock as it gets. Joey must be shaking his head in rock and roll heaven.
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I was at one of those pre-CES grip-and-grin parties they used to hold at the Rainbow Room in the mid-1990s when I was working for DBA Public Relations. I was emphatically told by my boss to engage with the press people and talk up what our clients, including Marantz, Denon, Toshiba and others, would be showing at CES. But when I walked into the room I heard fantastic guitar playing. I, John Atkinson, Michael Fremer and a few others went near the trio to listen. What incredible musicians. Then someone told us the guitar player was Bucky Pizzarelli!
I completely ignored my boss’s mandate and stood riveted for the rest of their set. Pizzarelli was playing a gorgeous seven-string Benedetto guitar. Aside from a half-dozen admirers, the rest of the crowd was ignoring the band. So I especially wanted to tell Pizzarelli, one of the legends of jazz guitar, how much I enjoyed his playing. He was very happy that someone was acknowledging him.
I then told him, “Wow, that’s a really nice guitar. It’s the first Benedetto I’ve seen in real life.”
Then he paused and looked at me for a couple of seconds.
Then he handed me the guitar.
I couldn’t believe it! So, what else could I do but start playing it? It was a little awkward since it was a seven-string, but I worked around it. It was strung with flatwound strings and the action wasn’t low, but it played like a dream, and even unplugged in a noisy room, it sounded like magic.
How cool that one of the giants of jazz wanted to share with a fellow enthusiast the pleasure of playing a great guitar.
Bucky Pizzarelli playing his signature Benedetto seven-string guitar. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/josep.
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The Lines once did a gig with No Wave band the Bush Tetras (who are still playing!) at a club in Manhattan whose name long has escaped me. It was one of those places where you didn’t go on until very late at night, and there were multiple bands on the bill. So we had a lot of before-gig time to kill. The Bush Tetras, the Lines and who knows who else shared a communal backstage room. The band members were sitting on a couch, silently, not engaging with anyone. We thought they were either being unfriendly, jaded, or strung out on who knows what. I mean, they were sitting there like they were half-dead, which maybe they were. Then it was time to on and they blew the place apart. It was like someone flipped a switch. I’d never seen like it, and haven’t since. Their song “Too Many Creeps” is a New York classic.
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I’ve already told the story of our gig with Pearl Harbor and the Explosions at Stony Brook University where our sound man pulled a gun. You can read about it here.
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About 15 years ago, a long-gone club called the Pyramid in Port Jefferson hosted a Sunday night jam session where rockers like Danny Miranda of Blue Öyster Cult and Bobby Rondinelli, who has played with BÖC, Black Sabbath and other heavyweights, would come by. Danny had invited me to play one night with him and George Cintron, who has been a Long Island legend for a long time and is one of the finest musicians I know. He's toured with people like Enrique Iglesias and the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. So, though more than a little intimidated at the prospect of jamming with such world-class players – I mean, Danny's toured with Queen for crying out loud – naturally I said yes. Joining us on drums was Peter Lazos, who now plays in the very successful tribute band the New York Bee Gees.
I didn't want to walk in cold with such high-caliber musicians, so I asked if we could agree beforehand to do a couple of songs. We picked Led Zeppelin's “The Ocean,” a song I had played countless times with my college band Third Hand (with future Blotto drummer F. Lee Harvey Blotto), and “One Way Out” by the Allman Brothers, which any self-respecting guitar player has in their DNA.
I brought my 1984 Gibson Les Paul Standard gold top, Fender Princeton Reverb amp, and my Mesa V-Twin overdrive pedal so I was ready to rock. I had practiced the songs over and over. It was a very cold winter night in January and on the way to the jam I also felt a little sad as I drove past my favorite diner, the Hidden Pond, on the way to the gig, and it was in the process of being demolished. I spent years there as a single guy whose cooking skills can charitably be described as terrible. (It's now the Hauppauge Palace.)
We got on the stage, launched into “The Ocean,” and wow, let's just say it was a hell of a lot better than when I'd played it in college. Holy crap, these guys were good. I didn't dare slack off for one second. At the end of the song when the dual-guitar harmonies came in, I played the second guitar part, figuring that George would play the main part. I figured right. It sounded killer. I had never played that dual-guitar part with anyone before, and by the pleased and surprised look George gave me, maybe he never had either. He was playing a Squier Telecaster, proof that tone is in the hands, not so much the guitar, and nailed the Robert Plant vocals. Heavy. I wish someone had recorded it. Even though I'm an experienced player, it always feels good when musicians who are better than you give you the Kool Man Nod of Approval. Next we went into “No Way Out” and I had a chance for an extended solo. Yeah baby!
After we finished those two songs, George asked me, “what do you want to play?” I froze. All that was going through my head was “hummana-hummana-hummana.” I hadn't given any thought to playing more than two songs, and he kept shaking off everything I suggested. Well, I probably shouldn't have called “All Along the Watchtower,” one of the lamest bar band songs you never want to hear a bar band play ever again. Then George called some Stevie Wonder song I didn't know, and I mostly laid out, though the band generously (perhaps mercifully) gave me a solo, and then some blues shuffle in G, which any good guitarist can play on cruise control. I couldn't tell you the name of that song either. I mean, it was a shuffle in G! What more do you need to know?
At the end of the set a guy in the audience came up to me and said, “Man, you guys really captured the spirit of the Allman Brothers.” As a musician, what higher complement could you get?
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Playing with British bands was always a blast, as they were stoked to be in America and were always fun to hang out with. The all-women Delta 5 were terrific – their song “You” is as funny as it is rocking – and Jools Holland at the Left Bank, or maybe it was the Northstage Theater, put on an incredible display of keyboard virtuosity and was so warm and friendly. We were honored to play a gig with him. Wish I remembered more details but hey, it was the 1980s. What a rush it was to play with bands like this.
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I have long been an admirer of the Kinks, and have said many times, and not to be a contrarian, that I think Ray Davies is the greatest rock songwriter ever. If I had to pick the greatest rock song ever written, it would be “Waterloo Sunset.” My college friends and I had met Ray very briefly in the 1970s when the Kinks did a show at the Palace Theater in Albany, as the band was walking to their tour bus. “God save the Kinks!” my friend yelled out, which got us a smile and a nod from Ray, which for us was akin to the “We’re not worthy!” scene in Wayne’s World.
About 10 years later that friend and I had tickets to see the Kinks at Nassau Coliseum, with Ian Hunter opening. This was after their resurgence in the US with songs like “Come Dancing” and “(Wish I Could Fly Like) Superman.” I was working at Sam Ash Music in Hempstead at the time.
The Kinks: Ray Davies, Mick Avory, John Dalton, John Gosling and Dave Davies. Courtesy of BMG.
We got a call from the Kinks road crew. They needed to rent a guitar amp, as Dave Davies’ Peavey amp head had crapped out and they didn’t have a spare. The store had the amp Dave needed.
The manager put down the phone and said, “the Kinks need someone to deliver an amp to them. Hey Frank, you like the Kinks; why don’t you deliver the amp?” I was to meet the road manager at the load-in entrance and be taken backstage. Backstage with…Ray and Dave Davies?!
I drove to the nearby Nassau Coliseum and met the road manager, who took me right to the stage. We put the amp in place. I noted that Dave’s amp had blue tape on it with Dave’s knob settings, a curious kludge for a professional amp to be seen on stage.
I called my friend, who by the way is one of the biggest Kinks fans on Earth, and after he recovered from a serious state of disbelief, I told him that I had two backstage passes and second-row tickets and that he needed to get in his car immediately and meet me. Needless to say, he did. We gave our tickets away and moved to our incredible comp ticket seats. The show was incredible. Afterwards, we went to meet the road manager to retrieve the amp. We were in no hurry to leave.
We went backstage and almost immediately ran into Ian Hunter. He was impossible to miss with those shades and that hair. Since we were huge Mott the Hoople fans, this was a thrill. He was very kind and gracious, no rock star attitude at all. When we told him we had practically worn out our Mott records in college, and that our favorites were songs like “Honaloochie Boogie” and “Violence” and “One of the Boys” and other deep cuts, and not the inevitable “All the Young Dudes,” he smiled and was very appreciative, seeing that we were not casual fans.
But we were looking for Ray and Dave. We retrieved the amp, poked around the backstage with impunity as we were golden for having saved the show, and then…saw Ray, sitting in a chair off to himself. We were torn between not disturbing him and dying to meet him. Guess which won out. We had an air of legitimacy, carrying the amp around, so he was fine with talking to us. My friend the Kinks fanatic did most of the talking. When we told him our favorite songs were deep cuts like “Do You Remember Walter?” and “God’s Children,” he warmed up to us and smiled that gap-toothed smile. That, and the fact that the Kinks had been the soundtrack to our lives ever since I tried to cop the riff to “You Really Got Me,” and that we had been moved to tears one night listening to “Sitting in My Hotel.”
Ray looked positively regal and relaxed in repose, with his great hair and his casual yet elegant offstage attire. I think we met some of the other band members but can’t swear to it, as once we spotted Ray, time stopped. He spent about five or 10 minutes with us, British in his gracefulness, and not at all seeming like he was in a hurry to brush us off. We didn’t want to take up too much of his time, so we bid our goodbyes and left. I can picture shaking his hand like it was yesterday. God save the Kinks indeed. I'm pretty sure we met Dave at some point, but the details are blurred in my mind. After all, we idolized the Kinks and to this day getting to shake hands with Ray Davies is one of the high points of my life.
A Deep Cuts Kinks Playlist:
“Shangri-La”
“Do You Remember Walter?”
“God’s Children”
“I’m Not Like Everybody Else”
“This Time Tomorrow”
“Celluloid Heroes”
“Big Sky”
“Arthur”
“Days”
“Get Back in Line”
“A Long Way From Home”
“Mindless Child of Motherhood”
“No More Looking Back”
“Some Mother’s Son”
“Strangers”
“Top of the Pops”
“The Village Green Preservation Society”
“Victoria”
“Waterloo Sunset”
“Young and Innocent Days”
Header image: the Ramones: Joey, Johnny, Dee Dee and Tommy. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/publicity photo/public domain.
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