years old, Terry let Tommy come on the road with the NRBQ. When their real drummer left before the encore one night, Tommy was there. He had never played drums with live musicians before. His first loose, swinging, snare explosion in front of anyone was in back of NRBQ. It was a couple years later that he was a full-time member of the Q. With Joey Spampinato on bass, Ardolino/Spampinato became NRBQ’s “Ravioli Rhythm Section.” Tommy bagged groceries for one day, but other than that, Tommy never had a real job. Never did a second real day’s work in his too short life. Tommy was two months older than me.
Tommy and NRBQ went along together for over thirty years. Tommy held his left drumstick between his index and fuck-you fingers. It was neither a jazz grip nor a rock grip. It was Tommy’s grip. It gave a fierce snap to the snare. Play me beat 2 and 4 from any one measure of an NRBQ record, and I’ll recognize Tommy’s snare pop right away. Tommy played so hard and so often (NRBQ did over two hundred live dates every year), that he developed calluses on the inside of his fingers just a bit smaller than half Ping-Pong balls. It looked really creepy. Tommy couldn’t put those two fingers together. He was forced by his altered biology to always be flashing a peace sign. Mohawk punks do body modifications in piercing parlors. Tommy did his body mod banging rhythm and blues.
Tommy played drums and he played records for people. He had long, unfashionable curly hair (look who’s talking) and he was too fat for rock and roll (look who’s talking). He had a smile that kept people guessing. I talked to Tommy a lot, and we loved each other, but we didn’t really connect on a verbal level. I never knew what he was talking about. When I talked, he smiled and loved me, but never gave a really appropriate response. I’d compliment his performance and Tommy would meow like a cat and rub against me. Or he’d puff up his cheeks and make weird sounds like he was a little man trapped in a box. The last time I saw him he said, “Penn, what’s going to happen to us?” over and over. When he sent me some song poem records, he had written on the box, “What’s going to happen to us?” I think it was one of those simple questions and Tommy was waiting for an answer.
The answer was we’re all going to die. We’re all going to be gone and leave behind nothing but memories and love, and Tommy left a lot of that. Tommy didn’t fight like Hitch against death. He begged death to come to him.
First, throat cancer came to Terry, the Thelonious Monk/Jerry Lee Lewis/Chico Marx keyboard player of NRBQ. It looked like Terry might not survive, and the dying of their leader was enough to break up NRBQ. They all stopped working while Terry fought cancer. Big Al (I’m bigger than Big Al. I know Big Dave and I’m bigger than he; I met Big Mike, and I’m bigger than he; if I didn’t have a stupid name, I would have “Big” in front of it) had been replaced in NRBQ when he started getting songs recorded by Nashville cats. I think Joey, the bass player, started working as a house painter. Tommy got right to work on dying. He’d lost his band. His parents were dead. His wife divorced him. He lived in his parents’ house in Springfield, Massachusetts (right down Route 91 from my hometown), until the house went into foreclosure. A loving friend of the band bought the house at auction and allowed Tommy to stay there. He stayed there. He did nothing but stay there. He bought food for his cats and alcohol for himself. He was offered gigs with lots of bands, real bands, good bands, but he didn’t take them. He stopped taking care of himself. Maybe he’d never taken care of himself; maybe others always had. He ate only what friendly neighbors brought to him. They’d bring a big plate of pasta to last him awhile, he’d eat it all at once, and then eat nothing. When there was a big power outage in western Mass he sat in the cold dark until Terry, having beaten cancer and started another NRBQ, thought of Tommy and sent someone to check on him. Tommy went from the couch to the hospital. He was treated for all his neglect, liver problems and diabetes for a couple months, but it was all palliative. Tommy died.
Hitch fought for life and Tommy seduced death. Hitch owned every room he walked into. Tommy wasn’t much noticed without a trap set and a band around him. I loved them both and they’re both dead.
I have friends, older than I, who are concerned about their legacies. They are thinking about how they will be remembered. They are making sure their notebooks are in order for posterity. These are friends who have brought a lot of influence and joy to a lot of people. Now they want to make sure they keep doing that after they’re dead. It seems nutty to me.
I’m slowly reading
There is no way to cheat. Everyone and everything will be completely forgotten. That’s true, but I’m a nutty optimist and I can’t just leave it there. I have to add that maybe the singularity will happen and there will be a forever for at least some intents and purposes. I just got to laughing. I’m worried that something I’ve written here could be proven wrong and shortsighted in a hundred years. As I write about there being no legacy and Hitch and Tommy being forgotten, I’m worried about how these words will look in the future, long after I’m dead. I’m such an asshole. That’s my point.
During a debate with some rabbi, Hitch was asked, “Do you believe in free will?” Hitch responded, “I believe we have no choice.” I don’t know how much Hitch was referencing Isaac Bashevis Singer in that quotation, and that answer is also written by Vonnegut, sung in a very high pitch by Rush, and it all builds on Sartre, though Jean-Paul wasn’t the first. A while ago, I could have fired an e-mail off to Hitch and got that quotation’s provenance, but now Hitch is dead. Hitch and Tommy will be forgotten, but it doesn’t feel that way. Their lives feel like they mattered. Nothing but the feeling of mattering matters. That feeling is life. I can no longer get wisdom directly from Hitch. Tommy can no longer play records. The future where they are forgotten doesn’t exist, and yet in our hearts’ imagined futures they are remembered forever.
MY FIRST FATHER’S DAY CARD
I WILL NEVER EXPERIENCE SENDING AND RECEIVING a Father’s Day card on the same day. I don’t get to feel the chain of life that allows me to look up and look down at the same time. I’ll never have a day where I talk to both my father and my son. That makes me cry every time I think about it, and I think about it all the time. I cry a lot. The difference between joyous crying and sad crying is only for the young. With my parents dead and my children alive, I can never tell why I’m crying. The sadness of my parents’ death is the joy of my children’s lives. Those feelings are the same. That’s life, motherfucker. I’m old enough to know that I’ll never again really know why I’m crying.
My mom and dad never met our children. They never met my wife. Mom and Dad were dead before my children were born and before I met my wife. Worse, my parents knew exactly what they were missing, even though I didn’t. They watched me piss away the shared joy of my future family. My parents knew they would never meet my children. We all knew I’d have children. They knew I’d meet someone to love and share my life with. My parents knew exactly what they were missing and they missed it. It was a hole in their hearts that’s now a hole in my heart. Mom and Dad knew that I wanted to be successful professionally first and that was going to take more time then we would have together. They saw plenty of the fame. My mom and dad were at both of Penn & Teller’s Broadway openings. They made the paperboy watch me on
