Buzz Died

Buzz died. Buzz died and I didn't get the message until this morning, which was a good thing. The long dark nights have their merits but I'd rather hear bad news at sunrise when the desert is fresh and bright and everything makes sense. I'd written this all down this morning but in the slow motion fog of the day lost it between computers. I'll try again.

I don't know why I connected with that skinny, leathery, faded tattooed ex-con. Maybe it was my brother's incarceration, maybe just outlaw history..cops sweeping the house in the middle of the night on my birthday decades ago, looking for my dad who'd been fencing stolen motorcycle parts. After hearing me sing, Buzz was finally convinced I wasn't just another trendy overpaid L.A. hairdo. Singing sealed the deal.

Buzz was the first person I met that embodied the desert I'd always known as a kid: the character that fit in everywhere but nowhere. The crusty crazy cowboy outlaw who kept himself stashed between the boulders of the canyons, like the Indians. The Hills Had Eyes, and those eyes were Buzz's. BB King said, famously, 'I can play a solo with one note'. Buzz sang the blues the same way; you could hear every ache and pain in the universe in one word. Bitchy and obnoxious one minute and openly weeping the next, but always honest. Not everybody appreciated Buzz, he outpunked punk.

So that day when Buzz got up early, bathed and shaved and waited at the bar for Anthony Hopkins to show up to put him in his movie like he'd promised a week or so before when he'd visited Pioneertown, we all knew it wouldn't happen and Sir Knight wasn't going to show up and we all knew it meant the world to Buzz, who was counting the hours and a nervous wreck. Something had to happen for him that day, so I got myself up to the bar and started pouring and we started bullshitting and decided to book the Rancho for a session..we'd record 'Cheap Tequila', a favorite of mine since high school, and a song I'd wanted to record all my life. I could just hear Buzz singing it...it would be amazing. Buzz glowed, he took my napkin of notes and sucked hard on his cigarette. 'I'll learn it.

I'll know it."His eyes were like slits in a lizard's face. He had his mission, dammit, so many drinks later, many joints later, many bad jokes later , many more notes scribbled on napkins later, singing lines from songs ("who wrote that?") at the bar and reveling in our

fabulous luxury of being able to get completely blasted at lunchtime, just like the Royal Family or the Freemasons or Airline Pilots, we got along like the proverbial House on Fire. Buzz was only 10 years older than me, and that's a lot in music years, but I've always been around music people that were older than me, and can talk vintage trakkin' forever.

Some weeks later , Buzz was waiting on the porch of the Rancho when I arrived early. He may have been there all night, who knows. Smiling like a snake, he pounded some damn cheap hardcore booze all day and had ears like a bat: he knew how things should sound, how things should feel.

Buzz: 'The bass ain't right'

He was indeed correct, there was way too much attack and not enough warmth. Dialed it in in a minute, and The Man was pleased. Billy B., at the board at the Rancho, was hip to the moment: we may be in the 'studio' but it had better sound like a bar to Buzz.

We shared the mic on the choruses:

Me: (singing) 'wake up and be happy'

Buzz: (annoyed) 'it's DRINK UP and be happy'.

Takes 2, 3, 4.

Me: (singing, still screwing up the lyric) 'wake up and be happy'

Buzz: (by now, REALLY annoyed) 'it's DRINK UP and be HAPPY.'

It came together so mightily, and Buzz was indeed finally pretty damn happy. Singing brought his whole (what was left of his) DNA in line, and by the last chorus we were truly rollin', so Buzz had us double it. He'd never been in the Rancho before, and I'd like to say his focus in the studio was astounding except   that I knew it would be and I always saw that in him, the seriousness about music. A reverence, really. The one thing there for Buzz throughout his life, in and out of prison and people's good graces, was music. In the studio he had no qualms about speaking up when he heard something not right, and no self consciousness at all. Nothing intimidated him, and I regret we didn't do a whole album, which I'd actually been contemplating not 2 weeks ago. To have an artist like that in the studio is a very rare thing. People just don't step up to the plate when it counts. Buzz not only stepped up, he brought the fuckin' plate with him and ran all the way with it. His guys were great, world class musicians, but of course we were all there because our axis was Buzz.

Sorry I couldn't find you any teenage prostitutes, Buzz! It's a small town and I didn't know where to look without offending their parents!

When I think about him now, the word 'freedom' keeps forcing its way up through my gray matter. He was one of the free-est people I've ever known, probably because he'd been behind bars so much. But he knew how to be truly free in the space of 3 square feet

and an hour in front of a microphone. I'm not sure how easy that is to convey..inmates know what I'm talking about. You gotta be free in your head.

When Buzz sang, he was totally and completely free and always will be from now on.

So since today is Thanksgiving and Buzz's birthday and I don't eat turkey, instead I'll

offer my thanks and gratitude at having had the chance to have 'cut a side' with Buzz Gamble, a great singer. The snow has finally melted into the desert, the dogs want to play, the sun is up.

But hey! Buzzy Gambolino! I'm still gonna get you some pompoms for those white cowboy boots, ya f****** majorette!