OT: Steve Kelly RIP
Donz5
into a state of mind and health few would envy.
But in years past, Steve Kelly's wit, smarts, and talent combined into
one of the most attractive personalities I'd ever known.
We first met in mid-June 1972, when, during a summer break from
college, I traveled to New York City to meet up with Tad Lathrop to
begin what turned out to be one of the most creative musical periods
of our lives. Tad and Steve had been best buddies since high school,
playing in various bands in Manhattan before Tad left for college, and
the two would regroup during other college breaks, when Tad would
return to NYC.
Tad introduced me to Steve, who played bass. All I knew of the guy was
that he was Walt Kelly's son. Walt was the creator and cartoonist of
the daily comic strip "Pogo," which was then perhaps the most
intelligently funny commercial strip of its day. By that summer of
1972, Walt had been confined to a hospital bed in his townhouse,
suffering from deteriorating health. Steve's mom had died a few years
before.
Tad, Steve, and I first got together in Tad's mom (June)'s art loft on
Sullivan Street in SOHO, which was, in 1972, very much a desolate
artist's community; the streets were barren, no commercial life
whatsoever. The loft itself was a good-sized two open rooms, filled
only with the June's finished canvases situated in rows by the walls.
It had once been an active place, but June had since "retired" from
painting. Still, her works populated the rooms.
The three of us spent hours every night, til around 2 am, composing,
arranging, and rehearsing in that loft, Tad and me with our acoustic
guitars, Steve with his electric bass. Ideas would fly like neurons
flashing in an over-stimulated brain. There were moments when the same
musical light bulb lit up in our collective heads, and we'd each
incorporate those "flashes of brilliance" within our own individual
style. It was a heady time.
(Though, listening 35 years later, all of that music is, to little
surprise, dated; the only song to have survived that era and that made
it onto the "Red Horizon" CD was "Army of Ants," which Tad and I had
re-recorded two years later in SF.)
I had been staying in Tad's apartment in the Village, while Tad lived
at his mom's nearby. Steve was living uptown at home with his dad on
E. 89th St. Within a couple of weeks after my NYC arrival, though,
Steve had arranged for Tad and me to house-sit the empty townhouse
next to Steve's. The loft was thus abandoned, and we continued our
rehearsals at the townhouse.
We made two home recordings there, one in early July and one late. The
differences are perceivable: Songs not quite finished in the earlier
recordings are fully-fleshed out in the latter. One huge difference
was the evolution of Steve's bass arrangements. What began as basic
root foundations ended up as distinct and well-executed melodies that
gave to the songs textures they had previously lacked. He was no side
player. His contribution was integral to the whole.
After a short while, we began playing around town, mostly in small
restaurants and coffee houses. We twice got close to the spotlight
that summer: One night an A&R guy from Mercury Records paid us a visit
at the townhouse and listened to us audition our material. He said
that there was promise but wanted to hear us again in six months. In
another near-miss, we were asked to backup two other musicians who had
been scheduled to perform on The Dick Cavett Show, but one of the
national political conventions had pre-empted all regular programming,
so the telecast was cancelled.
(Then there was the overnight at McGuire Air Force base in NJ that's a
chapter in itself.)
After each nightly session, either a rehearsal or local performance,
Tad would retire to his bedroom on the top floor (he had work to go to
the next day) while Steve and I stayed up, usually in the back outside
patio, and talked. About everything. About Steve and Tad's musical
past. About his current life. But mostly about Pogo, and Steve's own
hidden contributions to it, the little, secret, incidental messages
that Walt had snuck into each strip, which character a reference to
any particular member of his family.
One topic we didn't talk about, though, was Steve having become an
alcoholic at age 20. (Steve had almost drowned at the aforementioned
McGuire Air Force base gig; apparently he had had beer for breakfast,
swam to a deserted island, and barely made it back.)
After that summer, Tad and I returned to school. I lost contact with
Steve. After graduation the following year (1973), Tad and I moved to
SF and tried to "make it" there with our music (hahahahahaha). That
petered out, and we ended up founding a band with a fellow college
grad. We played that fall, then again that Spring (1974), until Tad
left SF and returned to NYC (the band continued on without him).
(Walt passed away that fall of '73. I don't recall what Steve did
after his dad's death.)
Back in NY, Tad and Steve joined up with musician Peter Galway, and
they all moved to Maine, where Peter's band spend much of latter 1975
and first half of '76 performing there. (There's a recording of a song
from one of those gigs; both he and Steve are in typically top form.)
Tad then returned to SF where he and I regrouped, while I think Steve
remained in Maine. Then I left SF for NYC for graduate school in 1978,
and Tad moved back to the city two years later.
Steve had, by then, moved back to the city, and in 1981 the three of
us played together for the first time in 9 years (natch, all captured
on tape). Rusty, to be sure, but there were still those moments of
magic that caught us all off-guard.
But the intensity as it existed in 1972 wasn't there; we all had
separate lives and priorities -- jobs, graduate school. Tad and I
continued to work together, though, in 1983-85, at first sporadically,
then with more focus. And Tad and Steve would get together and work
on songs. But the three of us would reunite only two more times, in
1989 and 1991, before Tad left NYC and returned again to SF.
Steve seemed to drift; he got married and moved to Brooklyn. Worked as
an editor in a law firm, I think. Then he and his wife separated, and
he moved to Florida. Then to Maine. Then back to Florida. He would
call me around every other month at around 12:30 am, wanting to talk
about his life. He was drunk again, the calls becoming increasingly
unbearable. The conversation (mostly a monologue) would usually end up
remembering those days in 1972, Steve wanting desperately to return to
how that all felt, not fully accepting that we had all moved on.
After not hearing from him for a long while, around a month ago the
phone rang at 4:30 am. He didn't sound quite like himself, but I could
still recognize his voice. He wanted to chat, but I cut him off,
reminding him of the time, and hung up.
Later that morning, Tad e-mailed to get me up to speed on Steve.
Unknown to me, Steve had spent the last year dealing with neck and
throat cancer that had come about from his lifelong addiction with
alcohol. He had survived that, but Steve had called Tad the night
before to let him know that the cancer had just recently spread to his
liver, and he wasn't sure he wanted to continue living in increasingly
deteriorating health. He had called me to let me know what was going
on, but I never gave him a chance to explain. Not knowing what had
been going on, I had assumed that he was in his typically drunken
state.
Last week, Steve began hemmorhaging internally, and he had a heart
attack. He was rushed to the hospital, where he had a second heart
attack and was then determined to be essentially brain-nonfunctional.
His brother traveled to Florida to be with him, and, on Thursday,
asked the doctors to remove him from life support.
Steve passed away this morning at 8:45 am.
Tad told me last week that Steve had been staying at his cousin's, and
that the cousin told Tad that "Red Horizon" was on Steve's CD player
before he was rushed to the hospital. The last track on the CD,
"Matter of Time," was originally a multitrack cassette demo Tad and
Steve had recorded in early 1990, and which, in '05, I cleaned up and
dubbed other instruments and vocals. I wanted to include Steve on the
CD in some way, and even though the song itself is probably the
weakest (of many elements) of the collection, it was the best of all
of the recordings with Steve on it. I had e-mailed Steve .mp3s of
earlier mixes of the overdubbed version in '05, and he seemed to like
them a lot. After the finished CD was manufactured, I sent a copy to
him last year in late March.
So it's perhaps gratifying, and fitting, that the last music Steve
heard was of the three of us. One couldn't ask for better cloture.
(I'll soon update our MySpace site to include "Army of Ants" and
"Matter of Time.")
There'll be a memorial, probably in NY, details to be determined.
Lookingglass
"Donz5" <do...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:1176073567.1...@w1g2000hsg.googlegroups.com...
I am sorry for your loss. You are a good friend.
Jeff
Don, I am so sorry to hear about your loss.
foxysc...@yahoo.com
> Donz5 wrote:
> > Not very many here knew who he was. The last few years he had drifted
> > into a state of mind and health few would envy.
>
> > But in years past, Steve Kelly's wit, smarts, and talent combined into
> > one of the most attractive personalities I'd ever known.
>
Comforting to know that you and Tad gave him the fondest memories of
his life.
Bob/Nekk
Donz, sorry to hear about the loss of your friend. Tonight, after our
show, I'll play a little tribute from the CD in memory of Steve. I'm
glad I went on line to check for something else, then found this
thread.
DTSmith
Wow. So sorry to hear about your friend, his life and his death. Each
paragraph is sadder than the preceding one.
TheTubbyHubby
So sorry to hear of your loss. I've been feeling somewhat nostalgic
lately, thinking of college friends and time seems to speed up when
you get older, so this hit home.
My condolances.
Anthony
Donz5
up there; there should be four, the last being "Army of Ants." "Matter
of Time" is there at #3.
http:www.myspace.com/lathropgiller1
Rugby Dan
I'm from near Bridgeport, CT where Walt Kelly and Pogo got
started in the Bridgeport Post decades ago. I'm a big Pogo
fan..........condolences on your loss........
R.A.G. Seely
@w1g2000hsg.googlegroups.com:
> Steve passed away this morning at 8:45 am.
"Sooner or later the song plays out ... "
My condolences, to you, all his friends and family.
(I just put "Matter of time" on the player - what a lovely tribute, even if
it wasn't intended as such.)
--
-= rags =-
<www.math.mcgill.ca/rags>
rags _at_ math _dot_ mcgill _dot_ ca
Pat Fleet
> > Steve passed away this morning at 8:45 am.
>
> "Sooner or later the song plays out ... "
> My condolences, to you, all his friends and family.
> (I just put "Matter of time" on the player - what a lovely tribute, even if
> it wasn't intended as such.)
Exactly my thoughts, Don. No more suffering for Steve. He's playing in
a hellova band now. :)
Hugs to you & Tad.
"Perhaps they are not the stars, but rather openings in Heaven where
the love of our lost ones pours through and shines down upon us to let
us know they are happy." ~Author Unknown
Westerner99
-Greg
ronnie
> heard was of the three of us. One couldn't ask for better cloture.
>
> (I'll soon update our MySpace site to include "Army of Ants" and
> "Matter of Time.")
>
> There'll be a memorial, probably in NY, details to be determined.
>
> http:www.myspace.com/lathropgiller1
My sincere condolences on your loss, Donz. Steve obviously touched
your life, and you touched his as well. Thank you for sharing this
story - it was a nice tribute to your friend.
-ronnie
johnny bobby bee
(major snippage)
Please follow netiquette practice. Quote only what's needed to follow
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Familiarize yourself with netiquette principles:
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(remove _eh to email)
Maybe
So sorry to hear about your loss. My thoughts are with you this week.
Maybe...deepest condolances
bostonbill41
Bill
Rod
>Ideas would fly like neurons flashing in an over-stimulated brain.
I love this line. I have no scientific proof, but I believe artistic
creativity is especially prolific during one's youth, from teens to
20s. The Beatles, for example, seem to support this. I can just
imagine the enjoyment you had during this time in your life, Don.
Sorry to hear about your bad news.
Donz5
Thanks, Rod -- and everyone else who added their thoughts here -- it's
all greatly appreciated.
I can't adequately describe some of those nights at the art loft.
There'd be these moments when both Tad and my eyes would literally bug
out when we both had the identical idea in mind but hadn't yet told
the other. There was an instrumental (we called it "Husted Story,"
named after one of our friends who was hanging out with us -- Jim
Husted), where we were trying to figure out how a particular interlude
should go. The song was in 4/4; suddenly there was this lightning
strike between the two of us -- what if one of us maintained the 4/4
beat, while the other played a theme in 3/4, so that by the 12th
measure, we'd be in sync again.
It wasn't the "sophistication" of the idea (that's always open to
opinion; it seems pretty lame today) but rather just that spark, where
neither one of us had to say a word; we just _knew_ what we were going
to try to do. It all fell in effortlessly.
And Steve was there, eating it all up. It was a supreme blast.
Ken McM.
> On Apr 9, 8:45 pm, "Rod" <zzzdoc...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Donz wrote:
> > >Ideas would fly like neurons flashing in an over-stimulated brain.
>
> > I love this line. I have no scientific proof, but I believe artistic
> > creativity is especially prolific during one's youth, from teens to
> > 20s. The Beatles, for example, seem to support this. I can just
> > imagine the enjoyment you had during this time in your life, Don.
> > Sorry to hear about your bad news.
>
> Thanks, Rod -- and everyone else who added their thoughts here -- it's
> all greatly appreciated.
>
Hope it gets a little less painful for you day by day.
DTSmith
>
> Hope it gets a little less painful for you day by day.
I've found, from personal experience, that when an old friend that you
haven't seen in a long time dies, at first you're filled with regret
for having missed all that time with them, for things you never got
around to saying to them, for assuming they'd "always be there," for
things you may have wished you'd done differently and just plain
missing them. Then you start remembering all the good times you had
together and the pain lessens. Hang on to the good memories. It's all
we have left when everything else is gone.
Donz5
memories about Steve in here, before they fade, to give an old friend
some flesh and bone and soul, rather than allow history to pass him by
as just another faceless casualty of alcohol.
So here are Tad's words:
Steve Kelly had been going downhill for a while -- years, in fact.
The drinking, the letting go of youthful hopes and expectations, the
pulling back from the world. Yet his death, while not unexpected,
slammed me like a boulder. Here's why:
When I think of Steve, I think of my entire life, because he was an
essential part of most of it -- the most fun parts of it, actually.
I
think of Steve, and an endless array of vignettes and people and
music, spanning 40 years, pop back into consciousness.
He and I met when we were 15. I was a newbie at an uptown Manhattan
school that Steve had been attending since kindergarten. In high
school he was one of the cool guys, playing bass in a rock band --
the Bird in Hand -- that seemed to be at the center of a cool social
scene. I was the uncool new guy in school, the alien from downtown
in
a school of uptownies. (As a classmate once said: If a kid at the
school had the last name Hamburger, you could be pretty sure his
father invented it.) I and my friend Skip Brooker got tapped to join
the Bird in Hand, gaining us "status at the high school," as Frank
Zappa might have put it. But Steve Kelly and I quickly became
buddies. We were the young insecure guys in a band led by
upperclassman Jeff Budge -- a Mr. Charisma at the time -- and Roger
Kahn, whose drum chops were way advanced for his age.
For two years, in that group, Steve and I played all over New York:
At high school dances. At St. Mark's Church, in a drunken
bacchannal
that Steve claimed was witnessed by Amiri Baraka (writer LeRoi
Jones), prompting Jones to tell Steve--in what became a bit of Steve
Kelly lore, recounted frequently over the years -- "You guys ain't
bad." (Steve's signature was turning harmless passing comments into
meaning-laden permanent myth. Very entertaining.)
With Bird in Hand we played at a concert -- something called the
Goddard Gullabaloo, held at Hunter College -- for which the
headliner
was Otis Redding with Booker T and The MG's. Steve's encounter with
Otis on a backstage stairway, with Otis asking Steve for a match --
instantly secured top-level status in Steve's repertoire of legends.
I'd also spend time at Steve's parents' townhouse on East 89th
Street. His father was Pogo creator Walt Kelly. Mr. Kelly would
rarely appear. When he did he'd more or less bark an acknowledgment
of recognition and then disappear back in to cartoon land.
Steve and I would hang out in his room listening to the odd single
that he's purchased: "Lightning Strikes" by Lou Christy was one of
his favorites. We loved "Talk Talk" by the Music Machine. "Ruby
Tuesday" by the Stones. "Groovin'" by the Young Rascals.
I left New York for college in Ohio. But I'd frequently return, and
Steve and I would meet at my mother's loft in SoHo -- well before it
was called SoHo, and when "artist lofts" were actually broken-down
industrial spaces shot through with the smell of oil paint. We would
play into the late hours, listened-to by friends like Shelly
Ungerer,
and Teri I-Can't-Remember-Her-Last-Name.
One night we playing at the loft and were interrupted by a stranger
opening the back window, at the fire escape, and climbing into the
room. Scary. The guy introduced himself as Jean Auger, painter, who
lived upstairs. He heard our music and wanted to come down. He
loved it. So he'd sit and drink beers and listen, then we'd all go
to
Jean's Patio on Greenwich Street, and he would spin ideas about
combining talents: On stage, we would play music, while he would be
behind us, painting a giant canvas.
Another story for Steve's collection of lore. He'd spin it for years
after. We named one of our songs "The Ballad of Jean Auger."
Then Don Giller came onto the scene. At college he and I had been
working on acoustic-guitar duets. Don came to New York, and the
three of us gelled. More nights at my mom's loft. An extended
period of living in a house next to Steve's parents' home on East
89th, feverishly writing and recording music that now sounds rough
and flawed but has the unmistakable mark of rampant creative
excitement and total immersion of three musicians completely plugged
into each other.
Steve always lamented that this unit never kept going. I know what
he
meant. I listen now and hear inspiration and hunger and fun, but
also
immaturity. Steve wondered what would have happened once the
immaturity had molted off.
Four years later, Steve Kelly and I were together working onstage
with singer-songwriter Peter Gallway and a drummer named Tommy
Blackwell. We played almost every night for 10 months in the bars
and
showcases of Maine and New Hampshire and Vermont and Massachusetts.
For one stretch, we played something like 46 straight one-nighters.
In this small-group setting, playing in front of audiences three
sets
a night, music ranging from swing-jazz to country to blues to Motown
to rock originals, Steve and I achieved a musical communication that
to this day astounds me. There were moments onstage where magic
would
happen, we'd both separately realize it, and we'd catch each other's
eye and laugh.
On nights off, what few there were, he and I would head down to a
local bar, in Brunswick, Maine, and revel in and/or complain about
our odd circumstances -- musical itinerants on the back roads of New
England. Snowed in. But having the times of our lives.
And we'd drink.
Steve needed to drink. As good as he was a bass player, and as
solid
as he was onstage, he couldn't overcome stage fright without downing
any number of Cape Codders -- vodkas with cranberry juice. It got to
the point where what for anyone else would have been total
inebriation was, for Steve, equilibrium.
By the end of the ten months -- each night an onstage bacchanal
followed by locking up the nighclub's doors and continuing the
bacchanal with staff for hours beyond -- we were both wrecks. Steve
had the presence of mind to realize that too much more of this would
spell doom. He announced that he was leaving the group. Because
Steve was the primary reason I wanted to be there, I left the group,
too. This was in 1976. Thirty-one years ago.
In years after, Steve and I frequently got together. Sometimes we'd
play music. Sometimes we'd just meet up for drinks at one of his
favorite bars. By that time our experiences had been so intertwined
that we were like two sides of a single coin. We could just bring
up
just a name, and we'd both collapse in laughter. We could mention a
nightclub, and we'd both experience the same onslaught of memories.
The sad part: Steve kept drinking. And while he was doing that, he
was not finding a niche that he felt fit him. And it ended last week
after an extended period of his living far from friends, and
succumbing to the abyss.
So ... Steve Kelly departs. It's hard to imagine a world without
him.
He was always in the back of my mind whenever I picked up a guitar.
We'll have to see what happens now.
Maybe
> So ... Steve Kelly departs. It's hard to imagine a world without
> him.
> He was always in the back of my mind whenever I picked up a guitar.
> We'll have to see what happens now.
Oh, he'll still be in the back of your mind when you pick up that
guitar. You will keep his memory alive.
Maybe...who liked Tad's story as well