Marc Spitz - Too Much, Too Late

Contents

F or E.D.G.

acknowledgments

Thank you, friends and family. Special thanks to Carrie Thornton and James Fitzgerald. Thanks to Brandi Bowles, Jim Walsh, Hal Horowitz, Jay Sones, Bill Adams, and Anne Garrett for all their hard work. Thanks to Gideon for the DVD. Parts of this book were written in the attic at James and Camille Habackers house in Swan Lake, New York, and in the Davis Alumni House at Bennington College, Bennington, Vermont (the latter on the recommendation of Jared Paul Stern). Thank you for making me feel at home.

prologue

Some of you already know my name, or can remember it after a bit of jostling.

Oh, yeah... him.

Then youll probably hum the melody to Lets Go Steady Debbie. Most do. Although its only been in release for two years, that song has become a classic. These days, everything moves so quickly that a really good song tends to cross over into that canon inside of a month. Fourteen-year-old kids are writing pop standards, and greatest-hits packages tend to get released after an artists second album. But that doesnt take away from Debbie, or shouldnt. And happily, it hasnt. Not yet anyway. Two summers on, its still a prom song. And a yearbook quote. It shows up on lists. Top Fives. Top Tens. Top Fifties. One Hundred and One Most... (or Least...). In magazines. On television countdown shows. Web sites. Debbie makes them all.

Top 200 Most Hummable Oldies Ever Written That Somehow Never Annoy

106. Spooky

107. Lets Go Steady Debbie

108. Windy

109. Stormy

I cant remember where I saw that one, but it made me laugh. Im proud that Debbie walks that fine line. Even though I didnt write the song. I played percussion on it. With my band. The Jane Ashers.

Do you remember the Jane Ashers? Oh, yeah... them.

After the humming, maybe youll worry for half a second about getting old yourself, losing your time. Then youll laugh with just a trace of nerves and ask, Whatever happened to them?

I dont consider myself a has-been, I consider myself a was. Its a miracle, really, that I ever made it onto your lists or your radio at all. But from a purely existential standpoint, nobody wants to be asked, What ever happened to you? It hurts. The inquiry causes genuine physical pain: an uncomfortable tingle around your solar plexus. When I first started fielding the question, I used to wait till whoever had posed it walked away, then Id secretly dig the nail of my pointer finger into the flesh of my opposite forearm just to confirm that I was not, in fact, a ghost. I suppose Im writing this memoir partly because I dont want to keep doing that. It leaves marks.

Although I made a lot of money in the last couple of years, I didnt move to New York or Los Angeles. I still live in Dean, Ohio, my hometown and the birthplace of the Jane Ashers (Where?). Here, in Dean, I never have to remind people who I was. What Ive done. Here, its harder to be forgotten.

I was born in 1967 to one of Deans two Jewish families. Im the only child of Albert and Minna Klein. In a town of 14,000 Roman Catholics, Baptists, Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians, and Greek Orthodox, being one of seven Hebrews who believed that Jesus died for somebodys sins but not theirs doesnt really make a kid feel like one of the Chosen. It does, happily, make him a vaguely proud outcast... and perfectly primes him for a life in rocknroll.

The only other Jewish boy in Dean was Rudy Tunick, whom you now know as the Jane Ashers guitarist. Rudy and I had been friends since we were in diapers. My parents were the pioneers, settling in Dean a year before the Tunicks. When they arrived, Rudys parents and my mom and dad immediately became close. They were obliged to bond. Nobody was burning crosses on our lawn, but we didnt exactly put the lit menorah in the window every December, either. Happily, we all genuinely liked each other. We shared meals and even carpooled into Cincinnati to spend the high holy days in an actual temple.

As we entered our teens, a time when kids may start to pull away from their old friends and familial trappings, Rudy and I grew even closer than wed been as children. It was no longer circumcisions and an acquired taste for sour cream that made us soul brothers. It was a massive, sleepless, uncontainable passion for Rubber Soul and Revolver and Quadrophenia and The Wall and the Kinks live album One for the Road. Rudy had grown his black hair long and greasy. His left eye was slightly lazy, and it seemed to wander as his attention span evaporated. When he was playing or listening to rocknroll, it wandered back. Around the time I got my first kit for Chanukah, hed acquired a candy-apple-red Flying V2. Used. It was only eight years old but looked twice that. Rudy didnt bother to restore it. He liked the fact that it was beat up, or rather he liked the fact that it wasnt new and antiseptic kind of irked his parents. Rudy didnt even carry it in a case but dragged it down the pavement by the neck like a strangled goose.

I think Rudy Tunick was a punk before wed even heard of punk. He was certainly young, loud, and snotty.

Rudy never had a job. He never even washed a car or shoveled snow for a few singles. He was passionately lazy. His sister, Nell, was the exact opposite. She had a before-school job at Joans, the bakery, and she volunteered at the hospital, playing cards with the elderly. Rudys mother and father had a serious work ethic. Mr. Tunick ran a plumbing supply outlet, and Rudys mother, Barbara, worked at the Dean Beacon in the ad sales department. They both knew the riches a ten-hour day brings to ones character and bank book, but for some reason they indulged and spoiled their son. Probably because, unlike Nell, who was sweet but a bit blunt, Rudy was whip-smart. His rim-shot-worthy sense of humor was pitch black and delivered with perfect timing. The Tunick family thrived on his wit. When sober, Rudy brightened up every dinner conversation, adding a pungent spirit to what would otherwise be a somewhat dreary domestic scene. But once he found that guitar, and his records, and beer, and pot, Rudy stopped caring whether his verbal cutlery was sharp or dull. Hed made those daffy old Jews laugh enough, he figured. It wasnt exciting. Not like the Rolling Stones were exciting. Hed started relying on oldies, which were met with polite titters as the small TV flickered on the kitchen counter and the sour cream was ladled out on the latkes.

Ronald Regan... he... he used to... he was in a movie with a chimp. Chimps. Har. Harf.

It wasnt worth it anymore. Rudy preferred to smoke pot and slow down that fierce mechanism in his head. I should also mention that in addition to being too smart to work, hed become too smart to bathe. Anyone in Dean could scrub up with white soap. Not us. We were... evolving.

Im attempting to explain that I did not change my name from Sandy Klein to Sandy James because I was ashamed or anything. I know some people strain to point out that Bob Dylans real last name is Zimmerman and Winona Ryders birth certificate reads Winona Horowitz like theyve uncovered some deeply buried secret about them (these people usually take pains to point out that Bruce Springsteen is not a Jew). I wont speak for Dylan, because Dylan clearly hates people who speak for him, but Im fairly certain that transitioning from Horowitz to Ryder doesnt mean Winonas a self-hating Jewess. It means that she, like me (and Moses Horwitz, who found fame as Moe Howard, the most irascible Stooge), is in show business. Horowitz is a fine Jewish name but a bad show-biz name (apologies to Vladimir Horowitz). Nobody in the biz is named Klein besides Robert Klein, and hes not funny. Theres Patsy Cline, whom I love, but that doesnt count either. Nobody in rock should answer to Klein. I have a lot of rules about rocknroll, as youll come to understand if you keep reading.