Dan Kennedy - Loser Goes First: My Thirty-Something Years of Dumb Luck and Minor Humiliation

Contents

1 AllRight, California! Are You Ready to Rock!
(Im Not)

4 Ending the Ten-Year Hiatus and Starting
That Career in Rock and Roll

7 Past the Crab Pot and Just Before
the Merry-Go-Round

9 New, Improved, and Easier to Use:
My Short Ride on Madison Avenue

In Memory of Milton E. Haynes

AllR i ght, Calif o rn i a!
Are Y o u Ready to R o ck!

(Im Not)

C hristmas Eve 1978, and Im ten years old. The August of ones life, really, if youre anything like me. I can remember staring at our white suburban ceiling and being keenly aware that the good days wouldnt last forever now that I was sliding down the slippery dark slope of double-digit numbers. I fell asleep wanting one thing: a black Gibson Les Paul guitar like the one Peter Frampton played. And like the one Pete Townshend from the Who played. And Ace Frehley from Kiss. The guitar would be my passport into the coolest band in our neighborhood. The only band in our neighborhood... Jokerz. It was Tim Caldwells band and they were going to play the next Valentines Day dance at school: the gig that would change everything for me. The gig that would make me no longer a quiet loner who never spoke up or took what he wanted in this life. Every girl in sixth grade would be there, plus the high-school girls who had to volunteer to do things like serve punch or take tickets at the door as part of their detention. They were there usually because they were caught smoking or fighting and made to perform this sort of community service as part of their punishment. And my gorgeous, sort of Dyan Cannonish homeroom teacher, Mrs. Davis, would be there. And they would all be in front of the stage. And I would be on the stage, the new guitarist in Tims band.

When I woke up on Christmas morning, I walked down the hallway and approached the family Christmas tree in what felt like the first truly religious Christmas celebration ever held in our suburban Southern California household. I walked with the epic pace of a bishop... with the timing of a monk and a casual sort of confidence not unlike that of a pope or a church owner/manager or whatever men happened to walk in churches with a deliberate pace. I dont know that much about churches. I knelt before the presents under the tree like I imagine the men I was just mentioning might kneel in ceremony. My parents always went the extra mile. They worked hard, putting in extra hours at their jobs, and theyd given my sister, Trish, and me more than we thought wed ever get. I opened my presents.

Maroon velour pullover shirt with a tan stripe on the chest

Blank journal with photo of autumn leaves and covered bridge on front

Special kind of calculator that easily figured interest and appreciation on real-estate investments (?)

I was confused by the calculator, and I thought I might have even accidentally opened a present meant for my father. I looked over at him and figured the big smile on his face meant one of two things:

That he was also confused and trying to figure out why I got the Loan Arranger calculator he wanted, or...

His smile was some sort of vote of confidence in a bright future that he assumed awaited me in real estate.

There were other presents. But none of them was a black Gibson Les Paul guitar. But then my parents said there was one more present. They loved to do this. God bless them for this, I thought, a little surprised that the whole religious feeling was still with me in our little ceremony. My parents would let us get real happy about the other stuff and say thank you and everything, and then my dad would look over at my mom and in his best relaxed-guy, confident, comic timing say, Honey, I think we just might have forgotten one or two things. And that was our cue to really turn up the excitement. So you would always want to kind of keep your excitement to a certain level so you had a little extra to lay on when the final round came. Sort of play at level seven so you could go up to ten for the final gift encore. Maybe this year my final present would be the black Les Paul guitar.

So my parents came back into the living room. With that we were told to close our eyes, and we did. We could hear them getting our final present in position in front of each of us. I strained my ears to hear the sound of an open E note in case my fathers blue terry-cloth bathrobe had accidentally brushed against the strings of my new black Les Paul guitar.

Nothing.

Perfectly silent.

And in that silence came a moment of panic and this thought raced through my head: Im a really quiet kid. What if I only secretly and quietly pined for my guitar? What if they had no idea I wanted it? I wonder if I ever even said I wanted it out loud. Like right now, for instance. Im only thinking all of this, but I might remember it as something I said out loud.

I closed my eyes even tighter in hopes of somehow hearing better. I saw myself taking my new black Gibson Les Paul to the gig. The gig goes great. The Nieblas Middle School Valentines dance has never been rocked like this before. And in the middle of playing Surrender by Cheap Trick, Karen McCall (hot) throws a note up onstage. I cant stop to read it, because Im in the middle of a big solo that is making everyone in our school hold their hands up in the air and sway them back and forth. So I motion to Bruce, our roadie, to get the note and tell me what it says. He holds it up in front of me while I play. It says Will you be mine? and then it has a check box that says yes and another check box that says no. I yell above my solo to tell Bruce to mark the box that says yes. Im, like, kind of yelling in his ear while I keep playing the solo, Dude... check yes and hand it back to her. He does it in a very uncaring way, as if hes done it a million times before. I dont mind his nonchalant attitude. Hes not paid to worry about my love notes. Hes paid to worry about our gear. When we come offstage into the multipurpose room, shes waiting for me in our dressing room (PE equipment closet), and since she is there it means we are together now. And there are other gigs like this one... and then middle school was over. And then there was high school. And we decided that it was time to grow up, because there were certain things that just didnt make sense now that we were young adults in the real world of high school.

So we dropped the z and become Joker. And we played everywhere, the coolest band at Fountain Valley High. And people loved us even more. And then we made the best move of our career: We dropped out of high school, because touring and making records was all we ever wanted to do and everything else was just getting in our way. Joker was finally on the radio and education would have to take a backseat to touring the States and Europe. We didnt need no education. We didnt need no thought control. No dock sarcasm? No ducks in chasm? I can never hear what theyre saying in half of the Pink Floyd lyrics. The more we toured, the bigger things got. Karen couldnt take the pressure of having me away all of the time, so we broke up. But I dont mind...

Its all so fine /

Cause I traded love to see the world /

See the world /

See the world

Thats a lyric from one of our songs. Tim wrote it. It was called Traded Love and then in parentheses it said See the World. And then the world all started to look the same to me. Because there was never time to actually see anything. When people ask me what its like to see the world, I like to say, Take a trip to your local airport five times in one day. Or sometimes I say, It looks like the stadium in any city youve ever been in. Sometimes Ill combine those two and say, Go to your local airport and hang out there for an hour or so, then drive to the nearest stadium and hang out there for the rest of day.