Larry McMurtry

Larry McMurtry used to drop by the Blockbuster where I worked because it was near the Dallas branch of his beloved Booked Up empire. Apparently he liked to collect obscure B-movie videos almost as much as he loved old books, because he never rented, only placed special orders with us.

One day, as he walked up to the checkout desk, my co-worker said, "Who's that guy? Why do people always get excited when he comes into the store?" He hit the desk in time to hear me say with a wink in his direction, "Oh, he has a great bookstore around the corner." Never seen a smile as wide and proud as his that some video store clerk "got" him. Whenever he came to the store after that, he always greeted me with a little wink. (And I did reveal the bestselling-author part of the story to the co-worker later.)

(Thanks to my Love, Lust and Other Facts of Life buddy Frank Crim for inspiring me with his memory of "Mr. Jazz," the actor George Segal who was a musician at heart. RIP to you both, Msrs. McMurtry and Segal, and here's to everyone with passion projects beyond their best-known occupation.)
27 March 2021

 

A Tale of The Sage (a like letter to Greg Lake)

When I was 14 I wanted to graduate to a real guitar from the $20 model I had bought two years before in a market in Juarez. My parents weren't keen on this potential investment since I had recently quit taking piano lessons so they thought I wasn't suitably serious about music. (Really, what was left to learn after Bach's two-part inventions?) Besides, in their minds 14-year-old girls only played the guitar at campfire singalongs and my $20 special was good enough for that. 

To convince them that I was serious I put my new "Pictures at an Exhibition" LP on the turntable to play them the song "The Sage" and promised to learn it, because in my teenage mind Emerson, Lake and Palmer passed for serious music. They relented and I signed up for classical lessons to do this thing right, but unfortunately my teacher convinced me that Classical Gas was a better choice if I had to go pop. (He obviously wasn't an ELP fan. Fool.) 

I haven't played much since my carpal tunnels started screaming* at me around the turn of the century. But when one of my jam buddies posted to her Facebook wall a video of The Sage played by a young and quite adorable Greg Lake, that riled up my old Emerson, Lake and Palmer obsession all over again. 

Carpal tunnels be damned, I think it's finally time to keep my promise to my parents and learn The Sage. And I'm going to learn it on that very guitar. 

So thank you, Greg Lake, for sharing your great talent with us over the years...and thanks, too, for helping me get my first real guitar. (Please send tabs.)

* update: After he told me that "The Sage" wasn't that hard to learn, Greg Lake and I discussed our various hand surgeries and post-operative attempts at using voice-recognition software. This isn't a remarkable soundbite for the normally eloquent Lake, but I do love his description at the end.

And if you've read this far ...

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