We'll Be Here For the Rest of Our Lives (42 page)

I miss my parents every day of my life. I think of them every day. I feel great gratitude in my heart for the love they gave me. I forgive them for urging me to get a wig when my hairline started to recede. Rugsville? I don’t think so.

Despite differences in our outlook on hair, I am the product of my parents’ culture. When my culture began to move in a new direction, when rock and roll invaded my soul, Mom and Dad supported and encouraged me. They saw that my passion was genuine; they realized the music was worthwhile. Without their backing, I may well have wound up an unhappy barrister or a barista at Starbucks.

Instead, I’m a happy pianist. I’m happy to be the guy who backs up the singers, the strippers, the rockers, and the rollers.

I’m happy when I’m pumping the organ and Bruce Springsteen jumps on top of it while whipping up a frenzied “Glory Days.” I still hear myself telling my mother, just as I told her when I was a kid falling in love with music,
“Ma, it’s rock and roll.”

It’s a party.

It’s a life.

It’s a dream.

It’s a different dream than the one I imagined when I first came to New York through the kind auspices of composer Stephen Schwartz. When I first stayed with Stephen in his home in Connecticut, I knew that the vanilla suburbs were not for me. I had to have the city. I had to have the funk. I had to move to big-city beats. And yet here I am, decades later, one foot on Broadway and another in Westchester County with the wife and kids.

Yes, my people, I have a divided soul. I live a double life. And I like it.

My suburban life finds me fathering America’s two greatest kids, Victoria and Will. I put on my
Father Knows Best
baby-blue Orlon cardigan sweater and attend parent conferences with their teachers. Cathy and I are absolutely aglow when we’re told our children are achieving on a high level, as invariably they are. I have been known to barbecue in the backyard. I consult gardeners about crabgrass. I drive to the supermarket.

But two nights a week, after the Letterman show has wrapped, I’m back in the funk. I troll the city nightlife. I might fall by my favorite bar and restaurant, Caffe Cielo. And even though I do not drink—my migraines won’t tolerate it—and even though I am a happily married man, I stand at the bar, like Jackie Gleason at Toots Shor’s, and listen to the proprietor, my pal Joe, go on and on about the wonders of Brazilian women.
After that, I might hook up with Tom Leopold, the wittiest of writers, and go catch a Ben Vereen, a Tony Martin, or a Lynda Carter at an East Side cabaret. Or maybe catch Lew Soloff at a club in the Village where he’s brewing up a hot pot of New York post-bop.

Yes, kids, it’s a gas to be living in a city where I walk the streets to the harmony of a Henry Mancini jazz score. It’s a gas to rock the Ed Sullivan Theater every weekday night with the baddest band in the land. A gas to walk through Manhattan at midnight when the skyscrapers are glowing neon and the streets shimmering like jewels.

If you stop by my apartment overlooking the moody Hudson River, you won’t find me in front of a bank of high-tech synthesizers with the latest digital this and digital that. No, sir, you will find me at the tried-and-true Hammond B3, the one that belonged to Soul Brother Number One, Godfather James Brown. Hey, I just might favor you with a few of my best Jimmy McGriff or Dr. Lonnie Smith licks. I’ll play the blues for you. I’ll get you to thinking that you’re in some semi-sleazy lounge where the waitresses wear cat suits and the patrons want their funk unfiltered.

This is where I began. This is where I am. This is where I’ll be. And if I stop, it’s only because we gotta take a short pause for the cause. We’ll be back in a flash. We got one more set to go. And then, somewhere east of midnight, in those wee small ones, it’ll be time to wrap it up. In the words of Sam Butera, “It’s a pleasure to kill ourselves for you, ladies and gentlemen.” We hate to go, but we got to go. So we leave you with the love and the sincerity and all good stuff. Please come back and see us.

We’ll be here for the rest of our lives.