It‘s New Year’s Day, 1980. The opening fanfare of a new decade finds Danny ill in bed, adrift and rudderless. Here is a a small testament to the resilience of the human spirit…

Rosewood Redemption

An angry Santa Ana was whistling through the overgrown mulberry tree.  I could hear the  branches whip and scrape violently against the house. The dry, stifling air seemed to invade through every crack and crevice, engulfing all in its suffocating presence. My scalp tingled with static electricity as I tossed and turned on the bed. There was just no getting comfortable:  My back was sweaty, my head hurt, and I was semi-delirious with fever. I could hear nothing with my infected  right ear, and my swollen throat was only capable of an occasional moan or sigh. I lay in my jockey shorts with the sheets peeled back, feeling hot and bothered as the sunlight sliced through the blinds and over my sick body.

‘A Happy fucking New Year!’ I mumbled  sarcastically to myself.

The Faragher Brothers at the Starwood – Sept ’79. One of our last gigs.

The small black and white TV which sat on the dresser was broadcasting yet another bowl game. I couldn’t muster enough strength to get up and turn the station. In my prone position I’d watched the myriad helmeted crews bash into one another. It all seemed so pointless, so absurd. The realization that millions of people had an emotional stake in this exercise made me feel all the more isolated. Still … I watched, waiting  perhaps for that breath of fresh air, the long pass. I did love to watch the ball sail down the field and fall safely into the cradling arms of a man running like the wind. The play served to break the brutal monotony and claustrophobia of a game I otherwise hated.

A new decade was dawning. Nineteen-eighty. It felt strange to shape the sound.

It’s just an arbitrary number. Why do we place such importance on these things?  Do you think this goddamned wind, which will still be blowing long after we have disappeared,  knows or gives a shit?

It dawned on me that this would be the first year since 1960 that I wasn’t a member of a band. I let my memory scroll back in time nearly twenty years to when I was a thirteen -year-old. My family had just moved from Long Beach to Redlands, and I was a new kid in town. Kennedy had been elected president, and the hope and optimism of the time was contagious. Bursting with new-found energy, I’d succeeded in putting into action a dream I’d nurtured for three years – I started my own band. It was the beginning of a  musical  thread that was to continue through two decades and six different  groups. The Faragher Brothers, the final ensemble, had officially broken up this last Thanksgiving day,.

Where do I go from here?  I wondered.

Many of my contemporaries had completed their education and were settling in to their careers; my career  was ending. I was thirty-two, married with two children, and had no visible prospects on the horizon.

Suddenly  a strong gust of wind bore down on the house, shaking the windows with impunity, as if to remind me of my humble place in the scheme of things. When the force subsided, I raised my arms to stretch, flexing my fingers – fingers that were half numb from repetitive work . Patches of gooey down still adhered to their tips, the residual of countless hours spent crafting feather jewelry and roach clips. For several years I’d been supplementing the music income by selling my wares to head shops, hair salons, and hip clothing stores.  Production was slow and tedious. Sweatshop work.  I’d spent many a night seated at my garage work bench burning the midnight oil with feathers flying and the pungent scent of glue in my nostrils. In fact, it was the act of pushing myself to fill a huge order for Christmas that had gotten me ill. I thought of Bobby Darin’s song about the little girl who succumbs to the cold in a tenement house.

‘Artificial flowers… artificial flowers….fashioned from Annie’s despair.’

I sighed. The poor will always fall under the radar in this mean, cold world.

The whoosh of the wind and the noise of the stadium crowd on the television seemed to merge into a common stream of white sound. My eyelids grew heavy and  I began to feel  I was body surfing that stream. The ride accelerated and soon I was rushing through a twisting tunnel… down… down…deeper and deeper…

I found  myself sitting in the garage fashioning jewelry. Instead of  feathers, however,  I was attempting to use palm fronds. They were huge and unwieldy, but I just had to get this order made. I kept trying. I gradually became acutely aware of the wind picking up outside. I could feel it was building to a crescendo. Suddenly there was a crashing sound as the roof flew off, and the fronds took flight, disappearing into the blue…

I awoke with a startle. The room was dark.  The silhouette of a tree branch danced on the moonlit wall as the wind continued to blow. On  the TV screen the news was showing a photo of the Ayatollah Khomeini. To me he looked like a bearded Sean Connery, though sans the twinkle in the eye. ‘Oh,  yes,’  I remembered – ‘the Iran Hostage Crisis.’ This stressful  stand-off was bringing out ugliness and intolerance from all quarters.  It felt like we were moving backwards. I clenched my fists.

What a fucked up world!

With my clear left ear, I detected a faint sound of music coming from our daughter’s room down the hall. She had her radio tuned to KROQ.  I recognized the song. It was a cover of the Johnny Rivers tune, Secret Agent Man, sung in a robotic monotone.  I identified the sound as Devo. The band was a part of the new movement – labeled Punk, New Wave, or whatever  moniker some self-proclaimed prophet of pop wanted to call it – which was considered to be the epitome of post modern chic. Personally, I found the choked throat singing of Devo or David Byrne of Talking Heads to be the equivalent of fingernails on a blackboard. Oh,  I’d tried to dig it, as my younger brothers had, but to me it was a case of the Emperor’s Clothes. This trend seemed more defined by what it wasn’t than what it was. Yes, I was aware that it was purposely meant to be ironic and detached.  I just didn’t give a shit. I was too warm blooded, and this music just left me cold. For me there had to be a visceral connection, an emotional spark. Wit and irony on top of that I could buy.

I gave out a sigh as the mechanical thumping droned on. Eventually the beat seemed to lead me on a pathway down into the rabbit hole and back to a dream world…

My Brothers and I were getting ready to play at the Hollywood Bowl. We were on in five minutes. Where was my Hammond organ? Oh  God, it was up in the seats! I realized I would have to play from up there. How would I plug in? I started running up the aisle. Though I was sprinting in leaps and bounds and huffing and puffing, I didn’t seem to be  gaining any ground. I could hear my brother counting off – ‘One… a-two…a-one , two, three…’

I woke up in a cold sweat with my heart racing.  Upon realizing it was only a dream, I uttered a laugh of relief, and began singing the old Jimmy Clanton tune in a gravelly timbre. – ‘Just a dream, just a dream’. My panic subsided. The perspiration served to cool me down.  I began to reflect on the past year…

1979 had started off with such promise (My God, Israel and Egypt were even  talking about peace!). We Faragher Brothers had a great album in the can and were contracted by Polydor to record another.  We appeared on American Bandstand and shot a video. Then the bottom seemed to fall out of the music business; the album got lost in the shuffle. Sadly, the ties that had held the band together began to unravel. No longer did we trust one another. Although we did record one last LP, it was  done with record company bottom liners breathing down our necks and with palpable tension in the studio. In November we’d  gotten word that our contract would not be renewed. It was the end. All those years of work and sacrifice… all for naught.  It was over. A line from James Taylor’s Fire and Rain rolled through my mind…

‘Sweet dreams and flying machines in pieces on the ground.’

It was over.

I realized that for the past month I had been in denial about my reality. Now the stark truth hit me hard. It just broke my heart! Without warning I found myself crying. At first, a lone drop here and there, but soon the tears began to pour. There in my dark, sick isolation I wept unabashedly, grieving both the loss of my musical career, and the tear in the familial fabric. Gradually the sobs began to taper off. I could hear the washing machine agitating on the service porch. The steady rocking lulled me and I drifted into sleep once again.

I dreamed I was in my folk’s Victorian era house in Redlands.

The staircase at the Faragher House. Photo by Jerusha Faragher

I walked into the long rectangular living room with the high ceiling. In front of me, my parents sat facing the other way; my father in his easy chair, reading the paper; my mother in the family rocker, darning socks and watching television. I smiled. My heart warmed at the sight of these two beloved people. I made an about face and tip toed to the family piano which sat in the room’s near end.  I reached my fingers down to the keys and struck a beautiful chord. ‘ It all began here.’ I said to myself. I turned to the right  and walked through the large entry way and into the foyer. The staircase angled directly in front of me. To the right of that was a small paneled area in back of the floor furnace grate. I noticed a rosette in the corner of the panel. In its center was a rosewood button. Curious, I just had to touch it. I rubbed my finger over its smooth surface. It felt springy, so I pushed it. Suddenly the wall opened inwardly, exposing a secret room . I marveled. ‘Hey, I didn’t know this was here?’ The room was lit by candle light. I gave a spin to a huge globe of the earth and watched as the continents rotated. In the warm glow I could see shelves filled with wonderful objects – leather bound volumes from the Nineteenth Century, musical manuscripts, ancient maps of vellum, bronze sculptures…. Beneath the bookcase were six dark walnut drawers. I opened one and removed an oblong case. Inside was a  rosewood recorder nestled in velvet lining. I fit the two segments of the instrument together , and set the flats of my fingers against the holes. It felt magical  in my hands. I raised it to my mouth and  blew a gentle stream of air. Out came  a melody that was both sorrowful and sweet. My head swayed as the music filled the room….

When I awoke, the lamp was on and the TV was broadcasting an episode of Happy Days. On the sitcom, Richie was setting up a joke for the Fonz, who swiftly delivered the punch line to audience laughter. Both the wind and my fever had subsided. The lilting melody from the dream was still wafting through my brain and I was filled with an overwhelming sense of well being.  I became aware of three beautiful pair of brown eyes looking in from the doorway.

‘How are you feeling?’ my wife, Jeanne, asked. “You look like you’ve been through the wringer.”

‘Better.’ I responded.

“That’s good.”

Deena, our fourteen -year-old, was holding her baby brother, Bryan, in her arms. He laughed as she bounced him playfully. “Hey, Bry-Bry…”  she coaxed. – “say ‘Get well, Papa!’ ”  He giggled some more.

“Do you need anything?” Jeanne asked

“Just some water.”

“Okay.”

Deena grabbed Bryan’s hand and moved it in waving motion. “Bye, bye! We love you!” she said in sing song tone.

“I know.  I love you ,too.”

The words replayed in my mind – I love you, too. 

Love…. I pondered the  ‘L’ word.

‘Faith, hope, and love abide; these three, but the greatest of these is love.’

The words of Paul that I had been required to memorize at nine years of age to receive my allowance now breathed with life on my lips.

Perhaps my faith, and hope were running a little dry at the moment, but like an underground stream , my love was still flowing freely. Indeed, I loved and was loved in return. This was just as true as the reality of my strained circumstances. Within my core I knew that this realization would be enough to get me through  the rough days ahead.

Love, and Family… I pondered the word, this other ‘F’ word. I realized that for me it was and always had been about family. I was fortunate to have been raised in a loving one, and as a result, I viewed my relationship with the world as being a member of the largest of all families – the Family of Humankind.

I sensed that I was at a crossroads. The direction my future would take was entirely up to me. It would be so easy to choose the path of bitterness and cynicism, and to become someone who pisses and moans about the world having passed them by. I knew that wasn’t me. I recognized that life, by nature, is about change, and to resist change is to stop growing. In essence, it is to die a slow death. I vowed I would travel the other path. There would no doubt be surprises and challenges behind every bend, but…  hey, I’d always had a resilient streak in me. I felt eager to get back on my feet and work my way down the road.

As for music. Though I would have to put my artistic career on the back burner for a while, not for a moment would I ever stop singing, or stop dreaming. Are you crazy? It was an integral part of who I was.

I would eventually rebound. I would reinvent myself. I would reach out and explore different genres. I didn’t need to be a star. I just wanted to become the best I could be.

As I lay there, the melody that filled the secret room continued to play within my mind, filling my heart with love and a generosity of spirit.  My siblings and I were destined to veer off in different directions, but we would always share the familial bond and I knew that one day we would once again be close. Every fiber of my being still vibrated with the sound of the rosewood recorder.  Energized and optimistic, I could feel  the healing process commencing.

Happy New Year!  I cried.

‘Hey, maybe I’ll even give Devo another listen.’