I miss my hair.
It’s not like it was impressive hair. It did not flow in lovely tresses, like Fabio, nor did it stick out in interesting directions. It was just…hair. It covered my head, like hair is supposed to do. But nowadays, when I stand under the spotlight (or the bald spot illuminator, as Tom Bianchi likes to call it), my head shines like a beacon (and I’d write a song about that, but my old pal John Schindler beat me to it). And I get a little sentimental.
The reason I’m thinking of this today is that last week, the sax player from my old band, Agent 13, sent out a few videos that he had unearthed of our exploits in the late 80s and early 90s. And in these videos, I have lovely, full hair, but I did not value it then because I was young and stupid and did not appreciate the limited lifespan of follicles. And we watched these videos, we band alums, and we commented on them, and we reminisced a little bit, and whenever the reminiscing starts, somebody says that we shouldn’t have broken up.
Here’s what happened, all those years ago. We’d been together for about six years, and there were a lot of us (full rhythm section, singer, three horns), and a couple of the horns were, well, flakes, and entropy was starting to sink us, and then the sax player (the only non-flake) quit, and then the drummer (now my esteemed percussionist) decided he wasn’t having fun anymore and quit, and then the bass player called me up and reminded me that I’d always said that if one of the rhythm section quit, I’d quit too, and so I did, because our drummer was basically irreplaceable and the sax player was, seriously, one of our two most talented musicians, and replacing two irreplaceable people was going to suck. And that was the end of Agent 13.
It was, in many ways, the most fun I’ve had in my entire life, but Jesus, it was a lot of work. Imagine getting eight people together to rehearse two or three times a week. And it was expensive: after rehearsal space rental and recording, we ran a deficit of several hundred dollars every year the band was together. I really miss being in a band, but I am never, ever doing that again.
And I took something else away from that experience: if somebody was gonna hear my music, I was gonna have to play it myself. And so in those intervening years, I’ve become a better songwriter and guitarist. I learned to sing. I learned how to own a stage. I’ve recorded several albums that I’m pretty proud of. And I also learned that if the band had stayed together, and achieved any degree of success, I would have hated it, because I hate sleeping on other people’s couches and being away from home. and I would have had to quit my very lucrative and rewarding job, and I probably wouldn’t have met my wife, She Who Must Be Taunted, and embarked on our epic romantic journey. So as turning points go, it was a pretty good one.
A few years ago, I wrote a song called “Memory Lane”. Here’s the chorus:
The times are rotten
But the view’s much clearer
In the path behind us
In the rear view mirror
Where we can watch the future circling the drain
Driving backwards
Down Memory Lane
Things end. Hair falls out. Doors close, and other doors open. You can look back at the things that you used to have, but you’ll be better off if you look forward, and do your best to pick the right door. The past is past; the band was the band; my hair was my hair. I have more doors to open. I might be bald as I pass through them, but worse things have happened.