By Louie Ferrera

Dear David,

Well, you’ve finally crossed over to “the other side”, wherever that is. Perhaps Guinnevere, she of the green eyes and golden hair, was waiting when you arrived. Hopefully your beloved Christine was there too. 

David, your music has touched me to my very core. As a teenager learning to play the guitar, I dreamed of being up there on the stage with you, Stephen, Graham and Neil,  joining in on those soaring harmonies and ringing acoustic guitars. On the soundtrack album of my life, your music plays a prominent role.  I lost my virginity on a warm summer evening in 1977, Guinnevere was on the turntable and is forever linked to that watershed event. The Central Park shows you and Nash played in 1976 were transcendent. I was wearing that shirt and you called me out from the stage! There were so many other live shows, so many blissful musical moments spent in your company, but also that night at The Keystone; you were barely able to croak out the words to your songs, a broken and drug addled shadow of your former leonine self. You came back strong though, like a compass seeking north you managed to find your way again.

Almost Cut My Hair…glad you never did ‘cause neither did I. Hair of course and the non-cutting thereof, a metaphor for rebellion and staying true to your ideals and dreams. “I feel like letting my freak flag fly.” I love that line so much and the imagery it conjures up. When you wrote those words, long hair on a guy was a political statement. Growing your hair out in the 1960s and early 70s was a big “fuck you” to the establishment, and nobody said it better than you did with Almost Cut My Hair. I’ve always dug your attitude Croz.

The chance meeting with you and Jan on the beach at Hanalei Bay that morning in 2015 was just such a damn cool moment. I was starstruck and you were so gracious and smiling. And your voice, that voice! Many superlatives have been tossed around over the course of your career to describe it. Let me give it a try: I hear you sing and it’s the aural equivalent of a spoonful of golden honey on a warm summer’s afternoon slowly coating everything in its’ sweet, shiny glow. How’s that?

The CSN blend is one for the ages, a pitch perfect amalgam that will ring true for as long as there are devices that can reproduce music, a shimmering sheen of voices that never fails to send a chill down my spine. I feel truly blessed to have had so many opportunities to hear your voice, solo and in all of the various CSNY permutations. So many of your songs have touched me so deeply. I could write a thousand words on each one. The crowning moment on If I Could Only Remember My Name is Laughing. Those shimmering acoustic guitars and Jerry’s soaring pedal steel wizardry blasts this tune right into interstellar space. The climactic moment on that song, when Joni’s voice rises above the multiple layers of harmony singers into a perfect crescendo, is one of my favorite musical moments of all time.

I don’t know if you ever wondered what happened to the set list from your show at Great American Music Hall in 1979. Don’t worry, I’ve got it. I swiped it off the stage at the end of the show. Written in your hand with black marker, it’s one of my most treasured rock and roll relics.

And last but certainly not least is your brown suede fringed jacket, as iconic as Beatle boots and Janis’ feather boas. The word “groovy” was surely invented to describe that jacket. The CSN segment is my favorite scene in the Woodstock film. At the end of Suite: Judy Blue Eyes you have this beatific grin on your face, your right arm is raised triumphantly in the “peace” sign, trailing mini freak flags of fringe.

You were a true artist, uncompromising and driven to create right up to the end of your life. Your musical legacy is huge, your influence far ranging. The songs that you left us with will stand the test of time as long as these is time. Fare thee well Croz, may your spirit forever swirl among the infinite mysteries of the universe.

By Louie Ferrera

So, the other day I’m driving west on rural Hwy 12 towards the Sonoma coast just outside the little town of Bodega.The lush green hillside is dotted with grazing cows, the road slick from last night’s rain. It’s clear, dry and sunny, a rare occurrence these past couple of weeks due to the various “atmospheric rivers” we’ve been inundated by. I crest a hill and notice that a hundred yards or so ahead that a car is just stopped, right in the middle of the road. I see a woman emerge from behind this car running towards me, frantically chasing a large, shaggy white dog that’s trotting just beyond her reach. The closer they get to me the more I can see that this woman is in a panic. I stop my car, roll down my window and begin to gently tap the side of my car, calling the dog over. It comes right up to my window and stops. I grab ahold of its’ collar and speak quietly to it as the woman arrives. She is red in the face, out of breath and crying. She attaches a rope to the dog’s collar (his name is Bear) and tells me that she lives on a nearby farm and had been chasing him “for hours”.  She thanks me effusively. I just look at her and say, “I’m supposed to be here.” I roll up my window and drive on to the coast.

Was I really supposed to be there right at that very moment to rescue this poor woman’s dog? Is the concept of destiny real? Are certain chance encounters with other people preordained? Do some thing happen “for a reason”? Sometimes I believe that all of the above are true. My experience today with this woman and her dog did have the feel of destiny. How many other people would have even bothered to stop? To call the dog over? To even attempt to help? Maybe if I don’t appear at that exact moment, Bear or her owner gets hit by a car? I’ll never know what could have happened, only what actually did happen. These two were reunited safely because I was there to make it happen.

My experience today was an overt example of an event that seemed destined to occur. But sometimes strange and unexplainable things happen to us and we’re just not aware of their importance, or at least not aware at the time. In 1985 I was at a Grateful Dead concert outside Denver, Colorado and took a random photograph of a beautiful, smiling woman in the crowd. After snapping the photo I didn’t give it another thought until I ran into that same woman a couple of months later at another Dead show, this time in California. She and I would go on to have an eight year relationship. We remain dear friends to this day. That chance encounter turned out to be one of the most important events of my life, opening doors to people and experiences that most likely never would have happened, all because of the random click of my Minolta’s shutter. Frankly, I can’t imagine where I’d be and what my life would be like had I never taken that photo. Destiny? No question! So I say to you; keep your eyes open to the mystery, be aware and take part in life. Your destiny could be waiting.

By Louie Ferrera

This essay was written back in November during the first rainstorm of the year. Little did I know what was in store for us here in Northern California! It’s written in a stream of consciousness style. Take a breath and dive in!

Cypress trees spiral into a grey sky hummingbirds buzz and hum as they zip by impossibly backwards, forwards, sideways keeping warm on this deliciously cold and rainy late afternoon where everything has that just-washed glow…citrus leaves are particularly shinny their front and back sides show contrasting shades of green, the oranges and pinks of the zinnias and roses pop out in brilliant contrast against the muted greens of the apple tree leaves…the brown towhee hops, hops, hops across the lawn the rain brings worms to the surface which brings birds…rain sweet rain falling with a pit-pat-blip onto the deck roof which being plastic amplifies the sounds of the rain that’s why the rain always resonates so beautifully under here and this rain is so welcomed and appreciated after so many months of sun-hot-dry, sun-hot-dry I can actually feel the earth soaking in and giving thanks for this rain… and now the rooftop symphony picks up in intensity faster beats, louder, like thousands of seastones picked up from the beach and dropped here…the rain is really driving right now, the air out before me hazy with raindrops, skeletal plum tree branches drip crystal ball droplets, daylight savings time darkness slowly descending, it’s getting colder and rainier by the minute, it’s actually feeling like winter…winter-rain-cold, repeat and the smells, oh my the sweet aromas of wet earth, subtle perfume of mud I love this smell so much simply because I’ve rarely gotten to experience it in this sad and desperate age of climate change, but I’m here now, so present and IN this wet and wonderful barrage of winter…it’s getting darker, colors fading, solar lights begin to blink on, the lanterns cast circular glows onto the ground, Carol’s globe light, like the crystal ball of a shaman, sparkles in yellow points of starlight, a string of lights snakes through the plum tree, bluish LED glow, a helter-skelter scatter of jewel-like points of light. I look to the northwest and can see a lighter sky as this storm is beginning to move on…the rooftop symphony of raindrops is slowing down and becoming quieter now like small handfuls of sand being dropped one pinch at a time…someone is running out of sand because the rainsound has nearly ceased, only the blip-blop of our deck fountains can be heard…the earth and myself share a collective sigh…but wait! I’ve spoken to soon, this symphony has movements that still require our ears as this blessed rainstorm still has life in it…the darkness is nearly complete only the solar lights stand out like silent sentries, oh man I could listen to this rainsound all night, I imagine flowing rivers and creeks, waters tumbling over cobblestones, happy river otters and ducks spinning together in celebration and I’m celebrating in tandem with them, all of the creatures of the wild, my fellow residents of this glorious planet, the blue planet, third rock from the sun, the only home that any of us have or ever will call home. Amen!

By Louie Ferrera

How amazing is Spotify? Just think, for a small monthly fee I can listen to practically any song I want whenever I want. On demand baby…what a concept. The person or persons who first conceived of online music streaming should be knighted or elevated to sainthood, or something like that. However, there’s usually a flip side to a good thing and that’s what this story is about.

Before the advent of music streaming, if you wanted to hear songs by your favorite artists you had basically two options. The first option was to go to a record store and buy an album or single. The late, great Tower Records (where I worked from 1979-1982) was the greatest record store of all time. Tower was open 9am to midnight, 365 days a year. They were a “deep catalogue” store, meaning that if an artist had a record that was commercially released, Tower carried it. There was no record too obscure for Tower. I remember one night back in the 80’s, a few friends of mine and I were sitting around our apartment listening to  music when for reasons lost to the fog of time, we just had to hear Stop Your Sobbing by The Pretenders. Into the car we went and down to Tower where we bought that first Pretenders album. Putting the needle down on to the vinyl when we got home and hearing Chrissie Hynde’s acappella opening to that classic Kinks song was a moment straight out of High Fidelity or Almost Famous. What made this experience so memorable to me was the process we had to go through in order to hear that particular song at that particular moment. We earned that listen!

The second option was simply to tune into your favorite radio station and wait to hear a song or artist. At one time, there were actual live DJs on the radio, imagine that? (Ok, there are still live DJs on a few Sirius XM stations, but they’re the exception rather than the rule). On the stations I listened to, the DJs had a lot of latitude in choosing the music for their shows. Knowledge of an individual DJs musical tastes increased the odds of hearing the music that you liked best. You may have waited all day, or days to hear a song so when it came on, you busted out your air guitar and sang along at the top of your lungs.

One night deep into the late 70’s my friend Kenny and I were driving back to New Jersey from Manhattan when Meatloaf’s classic Paradise By The Dashboard Lights came roaring through the speakers. Todd Rundgren’s screaming guitar intro, members of the E Street Band, Mr. Loaf at the top of his game…what a song! We weren’t going to miss a note. However, our car was approaching the Lincoln Tunnel, a dead zone for radio reception. What to do? Well, we pulled over just short of the tunnel’s entrance, shut off the engine and had ourselves an authentic rock and roll moment. 

Vignettes like I’ve just recounted basically couldn’t happen anymore. Even if you wanted to go to a record store to buy music, you’d be hard pressed to even find one and why would you do it anyway when just about any song that you’d ever want to hear is available at your fingertips on any of the online streaming services? Just ask Siri or Alexa and she’ll have it on in a jiffy.

The variety of music now available instantaneously is mind boggling. Now don’t get me wrong, I love online streaming and am a happy subscriber, but we’ve lost something here. I loved when a favorite song of mine would come on the radio, it was always a delightful surprise, a mini epiphany, like finding a $20 in my jeans pocket that I didn’t know I had. Now that I can hear that song anytime, anywhere, as many times as I want, that tune has lost a little bit of its luster. I loved the human touch of a DJ, spinning their favorite tunes and talking so effusively about them. I had some great conversations with late night DJs while calling in to make a request. I was a DJ at one time myself. It was really cool knowing that the music I played was the soundtrack of someone else’s life. I loved the treasure hunt at a record store, the music playing over the speakers, the people I’d meet there, the employees as fanatical about music as I was.

Like it or not we’re living in the age of instant gratification, so the idea of actually having to be patient and wait for something like music must seem foreign to many people. Putting in the hours listening to the radio or browsing the racks at a record store usually paid off, you got what you wanted and maybe even discovered some new music in the process. It was joy earned. If Spotify or Apple Music had existed in 1977, my moment at the Lincoln Tunnel would never had happened. Stop Your Sobbing? It’s now just a tap away.

Have you seen That Thing You Do? It’s a film about a fictitious Beatle-esque band in the early 1960’s called The Wonders. This quartet of kids go from obscurity to headliners overnight with the eponymously titled hit single. The moment that their song debuts on the local radio station is a key scene in the film. One by one, the band members hear the song; first the songwriter’s girlfriend, then the drummer, who run into the bass player’s dad’s appliance store where he’s working. Next the two guitar players pull up out front and rush in, having heard the song on the car radio. The band members crank up a radio while they whoop, holler and hug, dancing around the store in a display of unbridled celebration. It’s one of the most joyous moments in any rock and roll film. There was no Spotify, there was no Pandora. Their song just came on the radio. It was random, it was unexpected, it was magical