Diamond in the Rough (5 page)

Geoff playing the guitar I learned on, 1963

I live on a dream, it came to me when I was young.

When I was fourteen, I designed my first album cover. It was a pencil drawing of two eyes, one open and one closed, with a tear falling from the closed eye. I thought it was very deep.

The guitar had permanent residence at the foot of my bed, and when trouble came in the form of panic or pain, I reached for the guitar. I really turned a corner when I started to play. I didn’t have to be in the church choir or sing along to a record with a hairbrush microphone anymore. I could produce something totally complete with my voice and the guitar. I found my instrument and, along with it, another part of myself. I was becoming a musician.

I learned “This Land Is Your Land” and understood by ear the general relationship of a key and the basic one, four, and five chords that went with it. With the help of a Mel Bay guitar book, I taught myself chords by attempting to play “This Land Is Your Land” in every key. I learned to play on a Harmony guitar with four strings, and then my parents got me a six-string Yamaha one Christmas. The first song I recall figuring out on my own—and this is infinitely embarrassing—was a Great Shakes commercial:

Any place can be your soda fountain now,

With Great Shakes, new Great Shakes.

Mix it up with milk and make a real thick shake,

With Great Shakes, new Great Shakes …

It had sort of a Beach Boys–meets–Peter, Paul and Mary feel to it, and I confess to being somewhat smitten. Thankfully, I soon progressed to tackling some Beatles, Bob Dylan, and Judy Collins. I suppose I could have learned these songs on piano, but the guitar was better. “Blowin’ in the Wind” on piano was so cheesy. The same goes for “I’ve Just Seen a Face.” When I got home from school, I’d eat some ice cream or saltine crackers and peanut butter, talk on the phone, write poetry. Then I’d play the guitar, in my bedroom or sometimes in the living room. I didn’t hide my playing and singing; they were part of the sound track of the house.

I met some other kids who played guitar, too. We learned old folk songs like “All My Trials” off my father’s Kingston Trio records, complete with counterpoint melody. “Sounds of Silence” was huge for us. In fact, Simon & Garfunkel were a real mainstay, but our big hit was “Atlantis” by Donovan. We couldn’t wait for the end and the anthemic refrain of “Way down below the ocean, where I wanna be, she may be …” The beginning of the song was all talking, and it was kind of a chore to get through. And no one wanted to chirp “Hail, Atlantis!” but the ending was worth it.

My friend Janey’s older sister, Robin, introduced me to Laura Nyro. Then, at summer church camp, an older girl (fifteen) told me point-blank to get “Clouds” by Joni Mitchell. It was like an edict, should I ever want to understand
anything.
Not since the Beatles had my world been so shaken by music. Joanne, my closest guitar-playing pal, and I set out to learn Joni Mitchell’s entire catalog, but because Joni never played in standard tuning, we were stymied. Then a miracle occurred. Joanne met a college student named Vicki who gave guitar lessons at the local music shop—
and she knew Joni Mitchell tunings.
We practically moved in with her. The code was cracked, and the gates of heaven flew open.

Joanne and I took turns meeting at each other’s house, all through junior high and high school. We played “Rocky Mountain High,” “I Ain’t Marchin’ Anymore” by Phil Ochs, Joni Mitchell’s “Conversation” and “Chelsea Morning,” “Someday Soon” and “My Father” by Judy Collins, and Leonard Cohen’s “Suzanne,” as sung by Judy Collins. Joanne had an older sister, Tina, and she could sing, so sometimes we’d add a third part.

There are artists who just seem to spring out of the wild with a ready-made vibe, but most of us have to copy people for a long time in hopes of developing our own style. James Taylor was one of those artists who seemed to have emerged fully formed. I remember baby-sitting one night when Janey tore over with the 45 of “Fire and Rain,” insisting that the second coming had arrived—and she was right.

Me and Liz, 1975

Me and Joanne, 1975

Jane, 1975

I went through this phase of writing songs when I was fourteen or so. I’d fallen in love with a guy who didn’t know I was alive, so I channeled my unrequited love into songs. I ended up writing maybe ten. They were based primarily on Joni Mitchell and Laura Nyro songs. Some were about being home, at my parents’, and feeling misunderstood. I can still remember some of the titles: “Hey, J,” “Tell the Clouds to All Come Home,” “I Want War,” and “Thought of You.” They’re not anything I would play now, but back then I played them for Joanne, Liz, Mandy, and Jane. Joanne was writing songs, too.

My repertoire was expanding, and I actually got a gig at a hippie-dippy student church called the Newman Center in Carbondale when I was fifteen. I think I played Joni Mitchell, “He’s a Runner” by Laura Nyro, James Taylor, and Simon & Garfunkel. After my set I was too jazzed to quit, and my meager audience followed me into the ladies’ bathroom, where the acoustics rocked. But, mostly, more and more of us got together just to play, in our rooms, at Saturday-night church youth group get-togethers, and whenever our parents had parties.

I took my guitar to school often, and I’d play with my friends, sometimes outside on the lawn at lunchtime or in one of the listening-room cubicles in study hall. Joanne and I even managed to sneak our guitars into French class, further goading poor Miss Crow, the most tortured teacher in the whole school. Phil Ochs, Dylan, John Denver, Cat Stevens, Dan Fogelberg, Elton John. Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. Jackson Browne. I learned songs by Linda Ronstadt, Bonnie Raitt, and the Eagles and realized that this guy Jackson was doing the same material. I thought,
Wow, this fellow has good taste.
When I finally put it together that he had
written
this stuff, I fell totally in love with him.

There was no shortage of songs any of us wanted to learn. They were endless. We’d show one another different things. We’d work them out on our own and show one another what we’d learned. I knew that I was fast; I was a quick study. I had a good ear; I could hear when things were in tune and out of tune. And I knew I had a good voice, maybe one of the better ones. As a sophomore I auditioned for the school musical by playing the guitar and singing a song from
Camelot:
“I Loved You Once in Silence.” The Vanessa Redgrave–Richard Harris film was popular at the time, and we were all pretty into it. I knew the musicals really well from my parents’ albums. And I got the lead: Eliza in
My Fair Lady.
The next year I got the lead again: Anna in
The King and I.
Musicals required a lot of rehearsal, late into the evening, and my parents were supportive about it. They were very proud. To this day I have performance-anxiety dreams about acting.

I was like a train. My recollection is that this is just what I was meant to do. I didn’t feel I had to ask permission. My parents bought me a reel-to-reel tape recorder for Christmas when I was around fourteen or fifteen. It was a big present. I didn’t ask for it—they somehow knew I wanted it. The way they gave it to me was that they hid it under a table in the living room and it was running all Christmas morning, and the end of that tape is me finding the tape recorder and screaming. I knew, of course, that it was for me.

I was the only one of my friends who had one. And I could overdub on it. It was kind of intricate; it was difficult to do, but you could do it. I taught myself so I could overdub myself singing harmony. I still have some of those tapes. I had my friends sing with me on it, too. We sang the Beatles’ “If I Fell” in three-part harmony.

It’s not easy to adequately describe my feelings about this period of time and my musical development. Playing and learning and listening were my whole life. When I went to sleep at night, I always played the same Laura Nyro song—“Save the Country.” It was my lullaby. When I heard “Friends” by Elton John and saw the film of the same name, it spoke to all my notions about rebellious youth and feeling misunderstood and the deep, deep connection I had with my friends, who really became my family all through high school. The song made me weep from the deepest place inside me. I played it again and again, a sort of cleansing therapy, a sense of belonging, and all the music I loved did that.

I pored over every album cover, memorizing the lyrics, the players, even the photographers. The whole scene was a fairy tale. I was transfixed, obsessed, and, looking back, I realize I was also lucky. How much more fortunate could I have been, that the first album I ever got was
Meet the Beatles
? That in fourth grade I bought
Rubber Soul
? How lucky was I to grow up in the singer-songwriter heyday? Using the money I saved from baby-sitting, I eventually bought my dream guitar, a Martin D-28, the gold standard. I felt how some guys must feel about a car.

My first concert was Judy Collins in Edwardsville, Illinois. I was probably thirteen or fourteen. My parents took me and Joanne, and I remember my father, as we sat on the lawn pretending to get high from the secondhand pot smoke. Judy was a hero of mine—“Someday Soon” was a staple in my arsenal, thanks to my folks, and I learned lots of songs off her records.

Next I saw Simon & Garfunkel at the arena at Southern Illinois University. I believe I was fifteen and enough of a fan that I recognized Paul’s brother, Eddie, who walked into the audience before the show started. Like an idiot punk, I yelled, “Hey, Eddie!” I got him to look and then hid. I had made contact! If only with a blood relative.

The first time I saw James Taylor was at the SIU arena as well. He played solo. I had pretty good seats and the undeniable feeling that he would sense my presence and ask me to sing with him. It must have slipped his mind. If you had told me then that I would someday
meet
James Taylor, much less sing with him or kiss his cheek, for God’s sake, I would have absolutely died right on the spot, but then I wouldn’t have lived to meet Joni Mitchell and gotten to tell her about the necklace I made for her in 1974 and how I gave it to a roadie after her show in St. Louis with a note and express orders to deliver it to her. It was kind of endearingly naïve of me. I wouldn’t have gotten to ask her the question that had burned in me for years: Did anyone else notice, or was I the only one, that on the cover of
Hejira
her left arm looks like an erect penis? I had no sooner begun to mention it to her when she piped right up and said, “Oh, the cock!” So my mind could finally rest.

I also wouldn’t have gotten to sing with Jackson Browne or David Crosby and Graham Nash and Neil Young or Judy Collins or Bonnie Raitt. I wouldn’t have met Paul Simon or Elton John or Laura Nyro—or Paul McCartney.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. There were a lot of miles to go before those dreams, like many others, stood a chance of coming true.

4

Get the Kids