NO
MATTER WHAT
By Howard Whitman
Hbgroovetone@juno.com
When I was nine, I saw my first live band.
I couldn’t tell you their name, but I recall the
place--a family resort in Pennsylvania’s Poconos. Try this for a time frame:
the “new movie” showing at the resort’s on-premises theater was The
Poseidon Adventure. I don’t know which was scarier--the sight of Ernest
Borgnine on the big screen or the bats that plagued the theatre.
It was the Summer of 1972. Woodstock was gone, Nixon
was in charge and AM radio was king. The trip was uneventful with the notable
exception of a dance featuring a LIVE BAND. Up to that point, my sole exposure
to live music was a few late-night viewings of Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert TV show. Wild horses couldn’t have
kept me away from that event.
The “stars” of the evening were the straggly
hippies that comprised a local cover band. As I recall, they were pretty good,
playing the hits of the day, until the “guitar hippie” stepped up and hit an
amazing riff based around an unbarred A-major chord.
I knew this riff. What song was starting here?
The rhythm was tough, surging. The singing was urgent
on the verse:
“No matter what you--do…”
“I will al-ways be a-round…”
The melody, rising, lifting, transporting me to a
bridge the Beatles wished they wrote. The harmonies perfectly driving home a
killer hook:
“Knock down the old gray wall…be a part of it
all…”
Although my 38-year-old self is reluctant to admit
it, the nine-year-old lost all control. Dancing like a possessed voodoo
priestess, I responded to the energy and power of this song the only way I
could, by making a complete and udder dancing fool of myself. The cute girl
(hey, I was 9 but curious…) I was hoping to impress probably was laughing at
the boy in the Wonder Years duds with
the budding “fro” gyrating like Jerry Lewis. But who cared? I was in
the song. It became a part of me, encoded in my DNA. It was everything rock
should be; all of the romance, sex, wanting, love, power, and passion that I
could hope for from adult life was imprinted in that amazing three minutes.
When the “talking hippy” announced after it was
done that “uh…that was one by Badfinger…” I knew that I would find that
record, memorize that record, and someday I was going to be the hippy
playing that song.
I did find a copy of No Dice, the Badfinger album containing “No Matter What,” at a
dingy farmer’s market a few years later. I played it to death. And when I got
my first electric guitar as a Bar Mitzvah present and learned how to play the
REAL CHORDS, one of the first songs I learned to play was “No Matter What.”
Fast-forward to 1988. I’m leading a power trio, and
as we take the “stage” (actually, section of floor) at the sleazy bar we
somehow conned into hiring us, there is no question as to what the opening song
will be. As I hit those opening chords, the smile on my face, the joy in my
heart, is uncontained. This is what I got into music for. Not the money (because
there’s certainly not much of that to be had), not the girls, not for any
other reason than to be able to play that blazing A-major intro and sing that
bridge.
That night, I dedicated it and sang it to my
wife-to-be, in the audience, a good sport even though the place was a scary
dump. I put my heart and soul into the singing and guitaring, all for her. It
was my statement of love from the heart. It was, to me, a purer expression of my
feelings than an engagement ring. It was the song of my soul.
With marriage and parenthood in the 1990s came
retirement from my musical side-career. No
Dice and the other classic Badfinger albums were released on CD. They got
their own “Behind the Music” telling their tragic story. But besides an
occasional strum in the basement as I washed the kids’ laundry, I was not
playing music.
It’s 2002 now. The “fro” of yesteryear is a
conservative business cut, graying a bit at the temples. The kids are older, my
time is freer, and I’ve just joined a band. We’re too old to be ROCK STARS,
but we get to play at the local Moose Lodge and the gigs pay for gas money and
beer. And the band’s leader looks like one of those crazy hippies who
inadvertently changed the life of a nine-year-old boy in 1972.
One night, we were throwing out names of cool cover
songs to possibly add to our set. I got out my No Dice CD, advanced to track 5, and as that familiar riff rang out
in digital clarity, suggested that “Maybe we should try this one…”
That song will always be a part of me, no matter what.