"Billy Powell...On the Piano"

Billy Powell, the keyboardist for Lynyrd Skynyrd, died this week at the age of 56. That’s him, with the bird in hand.

Skynyrd has seen more tragedy than the Kennedy family. Ronnie Van Zandt and Steve Gaines died in rock and roll’s second most famous plane crash in 1977. Guitarist Allen Collins was paralyzed in a car accident in 1986 and was dead from complications four years later, at 38. Bassist Leon Wilkeson was found dead in his hotel room in 2001, age 49, from “natural causes”. Powell becomes the 5th member of the band* that won’t qualify for a senior discount at the movies. That’s a high mortality rate, even for a band that had 7 members in its standard lineup.

Lynyrd Skynyrd is the anti-Spinal Tap. Whereas Spinal Tap’s drummers die in large numbers, in Skynyrd everyone but the drummers die. Bob Burns and Artimus Pyle continue to march to their own beat.

* My definition of “the band” includes any one in the lineup for the 5 studio albums and 1 live album released between 1973 and 1977. The army of players that have joined the group since its reformation in 1987 do not qualify. In fact, with Powell’s death, only one original member is in the band that calls itself “Lynyrd Skynyrd”. Can we please stop this charade now?

I met Billy Powell once. It was the fall of 1981 and my friends and I went to see the Rossington Collins Band at the now-defunct North Stage Theater on Long Island. I grew up on the Island, and for some cultural reason I can’t explain, Long Island was a big fan base for Southern Rock* bands. The Allman Brothers famously did an annual New Year’s Eve concert at the Nassau Coliseum. Marshall Tucker’s last performance together was on the island. Even minor southern rock bands like .38 Special would sell out the Coliseum.

* Southern Rock as a term was always a bit of a misnomer. The three aforementioned bands, for example, are all quite different in their influences. The Allmans were very much a blues rock band, Marshall Tucker almost a straight country group, and .38 Special more an 80’s pop band. The Allmans had more in common with Eric Clapton than they did with Marshall Tucker and .38 Special was closer to Bon Jovi than Skynyrd. Bands like Creedence and the Eagles shared a lot of musical territory with so-called Southern Rock bands but came from California and avoided the tag. Another example of why musical labels are ultimately useless.

Where was I? Right, the North Stage theater, November 1981. My friends and I got there early and found ourselves in an alley next to the theater, ogling the tour bus. Suddenly, the stage doors opened and out walked…The Lynyrd Skynyrd Band! Sure, technically, it was the Rossington Collins Band but RCB was formed by the surviving members of Skynyrd and they were all there. Gary Rossington, Allen Collins, Billy Powell, Leon Wilkeson.

Remember, this is 1981. MTV had aired its first music video in August of that year but hadn’t made their cultural mark yet. It was 15 years before internet ubiquity, 20 before Wikipedia, and 25 before YouTube and concert sites like Wolfgang’s Vault. Even VCRs were rare, so concert movies like The Last Waltz and The Song Remains the Same could only be seen in rare midnight shows at select theaters.

So if you loved a rock band – and I loved Skynyrd – the only source of information was the albums. We would study the liner notes and stare at the pictures, filling in gaps with bits of information we picked up in Rolling Stone or the radio. Except for monster acts like the Beatles, the average music fan had seen very little video footage of their favorite acts.

And suddenly these people – these people whose pictures I had stared at for hours on end – were walking right by me! Right by me and into the diner next door!

What to do? We didn’t want to interrupt our heroes, but we also couldn’t let this moment pass. Luckily one of my friends, Brian Buchauer, had courage for the rest of us. He walked into the diner, up to the table, and introduced himself to the band. The four of us shook the hands of whichever band members were in reach. And the one who stood out the most was Billy Powell – for the simple reason that the same fingers that played the legendary piano piece on Freebird live – not to mention my all-time favorite piano solo on Skynyrd’s cover of J.J. Cale’s Call Me the Breeze – were covered with rings.

I’ve seen some famous people in my life. I was in a store with Julia Roberts. I rode an elevator with Pete Townsend. I had a 5-minute conversation with Joe DiMaggio. I even spent the weekend with Miss America (true story, but for another day). But that moment will remain my favorite brush with fame.

Brian Buchauer, rest his soul, was killed a few years later in a motorcycle accident. Fitting, perhaps, that I’ll always associate him with this band that has seen so much tragedy.


[hat tip to Brian's science fair partner Windex, who was with me in that diner 28 years ago (damn we're getting old!) and had some input on this piece.]

More blogs on Powell:

- this one, on Paste Magazine, contains links to some of BP's best solos
- from Ginger, who worked with BP

Most of the other blog posts are useless. Quick re-hash of the news accounts and an embedded YouTube video...

Greater Expectations

[This is a sort-of follow up to a piece I wrote last April called Great Expectations. I started it right after the inauguration but then got distracted by important stuff like Skynyrd pianists and the Super Bowl. I think it's still relevant, though not as relevant as it might have been Inauguration Week. ]


When Barack Obama took the oath of office he did so with the highest incoming approval ratings of any President, at 72%. In a distant second place, at 58%, was Dwight D. Eisenhower.

This is a remarkable thing. Eisenhower possessed, to put it mildly, a stronger resume. He had, you know, led the armies that defeated the greatest evil in the history of mankind (that's a defensible statement, ain't it?). Obama's greatest accomplishment, on the other hand, was the winning of a U.S. Presidential election. Which can't be that hard; after all, George W. Bush did it twice.

The psychology behind this is fascinating but not the subject of this post. I'm more interested in what he does with it. After all, the confidence the American people have placed in President Obama is both a blessing and a curse.

It's a blessing because it gives him enormous political capital, and plenty of room to make mistakes.

The media are so enthralled with him, he could personally chop the fingers off a suspected Al Qaeda operative in the Oval Office on live television, and the New York Times would merely express "slight misgivings". Hollywood is so star-struck he could direct a remake of Howard the Duck with Paris Hilton and Jean Claude Van Damme and he'd be applauded for his artistic integrity. Europe is so smitten he could - hmmm, what would be a terrible thing to a European? Europe is so smitten he could threaten to protect them from Russia with American missiles and they'd actually thank him for it.

But it's not just Hollywood, the media, and Europe. Those high approval ratings show that so much of the country is looking to President Obama to be our next Lincoln, our next FDR. The halo that would have been over Obama's head in normal circumstances has been amplified by the economic collapse. Americans believe we are in one of the great crises in our history and need a Great Man to see us through.

But these expectations are also a curse. As I wrote back in the earlier Great Expectations piece, supporters of Hillary Clinton and John McCain had fairly reasonable expectations for their candidates. But supporters of Barack Obama have wildly unreasonable expectations for their President.

I won't go into all the major problems we're all hoping he can solve - we've been down that road a lot. I'm just very interested to see how he uses these expectations as a political tool to accomplish his goals, while simultaneously trying to avoid the pitfalls of adulation.

It's my read on Obama that he is far more practical and pragmatic than his most idealistic followers. And it's also my read that a lot of Americans are going to cut him a lot of slack.


Policy issues aside, it'll be fascinating to watch him manage these expectations.

Inaugural Thoughts for Republicans

Back on Election Day I promised to write a piece called "10 (or so) Reasons that Conservatives Should Lie Back and Enjoy the Age of Obama - or at Least not Move to Australia." Well, it’s Inauguration Day, so it’s time to start this piece…

Why Australia? Well, obviously a conservative isn’t going to move to France, that promised land of Streisands and Baldwins, who are forever promising to leave America in the wake of a Republican victory. But Australia? They speak English, have excellent beer, raised the man who gave us Braveheart and Lethal Weapon, and supported the war in Iraq. It’s the anti-France!

But as wonderful as Australia may be, it's awfully far, and the whole winter in July/summer in December thing would be a big adjustment for us Americans. So I suggest Republicans stay here in America. And I'd like to offer, free of charge, some reasons why distressed Republicans should feel okay about the 2008 election.

1. The Republican Party needed a kick in the teeth. The control of the House, the Senate, and the White House led party leaders to a level of hubris and arrogance that was unacceptable. If, for example, Bush and Company had worked with Democrats on issues that even now Obama supports (like wiretapping), they would have had a far easier time of things. But they had come to believe they could do what they wanted when they wanted how they wanted. This election – not just the Presidential election but the overall ass-kicking the GOP received all over the country – was necessary for the long-term health of the party.

2. More than ever before – wait, that’s not true – more than in recent history, we need the support of our allies. For various reasons, Barack Obama is beloved in much of the world, and this is potentially good for the future success of American diplomacy. The popularity of Obama will provide cover to world leaders, particularly in Europe, who already want to provide more overt aid to America in the fight against radical Islam.

3. Barack Obama does not seem to suffer from the taint of ideology. Many Republicans feared during the election season that he was a radical in moderate’s clothing. And to be sure, his associations with the Reverend Wright and Bill Ayers suggested this was possible. But everything he’s done since his election suggests he’s the person that readers of Dreams of My Father thought he was – an extremely pragmatic man who is supremely capable of thinking objectively and with logic and reason about any individual subject.

4. The only people who seem genuinely unhappy with Obama’s appointments are the far left. This is an encouraging sign.

5. All economies – but the American economy in particular – run on confidence. I’m not quite sure why so many Americans have invested so much confidence in an unproven leader, but we have. That confidence is not enough – by a long shot – for an economic recovery. But it is a prerequisite for it.

6. I have always believed that any responsible person who receives daily intelligence briefings (and thus, knows how dangerous the world is) and is responsible for the safety of the American people, would recognize that there is some gray area between civil liberties and safety. There is not, as he stated in his inaugural address yesterday, "a false choice between our ideals and our safety". Rhetoric aside, Obama has proven me correct. His support of wiretapping, his flexibility on Iraq timetables, and his almost leisurely pace on the “closing” of Guantanamo Bay, suggests that the apocalyptic rants of people like Frank Rich are fine for the New York Times but is not a luxury the occupant of the Oval Office can afford.

7. A while back, Peggy Noonan wrote a column for the Wall Street Journal arguing that Hillary Clinton’s candidacy could be derailed by the quality of her voice. That sounds like a superficial argument, but it is not. Americans live with our President, and it’s important that we like them. Barack Obama, with his transcendent speaking voice and his preternatural calm, is an extraordinarily soothing and likable presence. It’ll be nice to have him around for four years or so.

8. While I'm nervous that most of the governing and banking classes suddenly think state control of business is a swell idea, Obama's economic appointments have definitely leaned more towards the free market thinking of Clintonism than the quasi-socialist claptrap of John Edwards and the editors of The Nation. So my guard is still up on his economic team, but I'm happy so far.

What's that, 8 reasons? That's good enough.

Sure, there’s plenty of reason to be skeptical (click here for 7 in particular). Especially with Reid and Pelosi riding in positions of power. Think about those two long enough and any confidence that Obama inspires ebbs away faster than your 401k.

But this is a week for hope. God knows we need it.

Nobodies & Hot Streaks

A Couple of NFL Thoughts

Last year, as the Giants made their historic Super Bowl run (yes, I said historic; want to make something of it?), this site was pretty much taken over by my NFL ramblings. This year, not so much. But with the Super Bowl set, I wanted to share a few thoughts with you.

Nobodies Rule

In February of 07 I wrote a piece called Losers & Nobodies in which I argued…well, here’s what I said:

If you were the GM of an NFL team with a head coaching vacancy, which of the following should you hire:

a) A proven winner, like Super Bowl Champ Bill Cowher
b) A proven loser, like Cam Cameron
c) A complete nobody, like Jim Harbaugh’s brother.

If history is any guide, hire the nobody. If he’s not available, hire the loser.


As it turns out, FreeTime must be required reading in NFL front offices, because Nobodies were hired in huge numbers in the weeks after this was posted. John Harbaugh in Baltimore, Tony Sparano in Miami, Mike Smith in Atlanta, and Jim Zorn in Washington.

And it turned out splendidly for those teams. Harbaugh’s Ravens played in the AFC championship game, Sparano’s Dolphins had the greatest regular-season turnaround in the history of the sport, and they both lost out on Coach of the Year to Smith. (Zorn got off to a hot start then faded, but had his team in playoff contention in the extremely difficult NFC East).

And in two weeks, two Nobodies from the Hiring Class of 2007 will meet in the Super Bowl. Mike Tomlin and Ken Whisenhunt were both unknown entities to most NFL fans when hired two years ago.

More proof, as if we needed it, that history and facts are more valuable than conventional wisdom.

NFL GMs: there is no reason to throw money, power and private jets at the Bill Cowhers, Mike Shanahans, and Jon Grudens of the world. Get yourself a Nobody.

The Hot Team

A cherished myth of the NFL is that the hot team coming into the playoffs is the one to look out for. Peter King, in this morning's MMQB writes:

It's never been truer that the hottest teams, and the healthiest teams, are the ones with the best chance in January.

Oh my God, really, Peter? I love Peter King. I read MMQB religiously. He works hard, he talks to everyone in the NFL seemingly every waking moment, and he just seems like an amiable likable guy. But he does like that conventional wisdom nonsense.

How could anyone argue that the Arizona Cardinals were the hot team coming in? It was clearly Carolina, maybe the Eagles. The Cardinals were about the coldest team to ever enter the playoffs, and it had no impact on their knocking off 3 straight wins.

But conventional wisdom dies hard. It's more stubborn than facts.

The 2008 Johnny Bingo Awards

Yes, it’s time for the least-anticipated literary awards of the year – the Johnny Bingo Awards!

The nice thing about being judge and jury for an award nobody cares about is I can change the rules every year without protest. And I’m changing the rules again. Last year I gave out a bunch of different awards in different categories. And in the years before that I simply gave out one award. But this year I’m going to name five finalists and then pick a winner. (That’s my plan now anyway; it could change in a few paragraphs)

Luckily, no matter how ridiculous I make it, I can't make it sillier than the Nobel Prize in Literature, bestowed annually on obscurities and mediocrities, the only qualification being that the winner not be American.

This award too has only one criterion – for a book to be eligible, I had to have finished reading it in 2008. It could’ve been written by a blind Greek poet in the 8th century BC or be an unpublished galley hacked from an MFA candidate’s MacBook in a Brooklyn cafe. As long as I read the final paragraph before Dick Clark’s puppeteer walks him through the New Year’s Eve Countdown, it can be a winner.

But before we hand out this year’s awards, I’d like to say a few words about books I don’t read.

A Few Words About Books I Don’t Read
I don’t read books written by people who got famous doing something different. So you’ll see no sensitive novels by Ethan Hawke or counterfactual histories by Newt Gingrich. Kirstie Alley’s How to Lose Your Ass and Regain Your Confidence: Reluctant Confessions of a Big-Butted Star might be a literary masterpiece, but I’ll never know it.

I don’t read current events books. Perhaps I’ll expand this thesis in a larger post, but I don’t think current events lend themselves well to book form. First, not enough time has passed for perspective. And second, events have a way of overtaking the book. I tried to read George Packer’s Assassin’s Gate last year, and while parts of it were excellent, as I got to the last few hundred pages it was clear that the Iraq he was writing about was different than the one that existed by the time of my reading. So I stick to magazines and newspapers for the events of the day.

I don’t read memoirs, particularly memoirs by people who’ve led massively self-(and others) destructive lives, but who’ve now put all the pieces together and found wisdom. Somehow I’ll muddle through life without their wisdom.

I don’t read books by Mitch Albom.

Apparently I don’t read books by women. This isn’t a policy but it appears to be the truth. I didn’t read a single book written by a woman in 2008. I did better in 2007, thanks to Barbara Tuchman and J.K. Rowling. Considering how much I enjoy the works of those two women in particular, as well as the histories of Catherine Drinker Bowen and Doris Kearns Goodwin, I may have to correct that.

Which reminds me – I don’t read books that everybody else is reading. I’ve been a fan of Doris Kearns Goodwin since before she became a television star and I’ve read more Lincoln books than most, but I’ve kind of avoided Team of Rivals because everybody else is reading it. I will read it eventually, but long after the rest of the world has lost interest.

There are all kinds of exceptions to these “rules”. I’ll read Mark Bavaro’s new novel because one of the best presents I got this Christmas was an inscribed copy of it. I read Bill Bryson’s Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir because it was written by Bill Bryson.

I also read Barack Obama’s Dreams from my Father*, which breaks most of my rules: it’s a memoir, it’s a current events book (sort of), it’s written by someone who doesn’t write books for a living, and it’s a book everybody was reading. But I was very interested to read a book written by a Presidential candidate long before he was one.

* a mini review: it started out fascinating and impressive, but became dreadfully boring and self-absorbed. Hopefully not a harbinger for his Presidency…

There is no exception to the Mitch Albom rule.

So, without further ado the five finalists are:

What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1845
Daniel Walker Howe

We tend to think of the years between the War of 1812 and the Mexican War as boring. Not as boring, perhaps, as the Era of Obscure Bearded Presidents (1872-1896), but still pretty boring.

Yeah, Andrew Jackson was a colorful guy, but everyone else seemed small by comparison – dwarfed by the shadow of the Founders (Adams and Jefferson died in 1824) and the specter of the Civil War (Lincoln, Lee and Grant walked the earth, but few knew who they were.).

Even the 2nd most famous guy of the period, John Quincy Adams, was the less famous son of a Founder who can’t even get a monument on the Mall.

But Howe – who has the great gift of weaving diplomatic, political, and economic history into a compelling whole – shows that the period was, as the sub-title says, transformational.

(For an excellent review on WHGW, go here.)

Duma Key
Stephen King
As I said earlier, I tend not to read things everybody else is reading. Thus, I’ve read very little John Grisham and Stephen King through the years.

But this year, in separate acts of airport desperation, I bought Grisham and King paperbacks. The Grisham book – The Brethren – was entertaining but nothing special; it was like one of Elmore Leonard’s lesser works, peopled with quirky Florida lowlifes. But Duma Key grabbed me by the collar and wouldn’t let go.

It’s odd that King is still considered a horror novelist. The Shawshank Redemption, based on a King novella, is by one measure the most popular movie ever made – and there is not a supernatural moment in it. The same is true of Stand By Me, based on a King short story. But I guess it’s hard to shake the image left by books/movies like Carrie, Cujo, and Pet Semetary.

Duma Key is about a middle-aged guy who – like King – was severely injured in an accident. While recovering he discovers he has untapped powers as a painter – well, for a description of the book go here. All I’ll say is that King’s genius stems in part from his storytelling, in part from his ability to tap into our fear – but mostly from his understanding of human emotion.

I realize I might be banned from the unofficial book snobs’ club, but what King is up to in his later years just might be called literature.

The Spies of Warsaw
Alan Furst
Speaking of popular fiction that borders on literature…

There are some authors who sell only a fraction of the books John Grisham sells, but whose fans are even more devoted. Furst’s novels, all set before or in the early years of World War II, has a devoted following and I number myself among them.

The books are formulaic – one or more Europeans, recognizing the impending calamity of war with Germany and presented an opportunity to do something about it, do something about it. Gauloises are smoked, cafes are visited, and Polish countesses slip into bed with French naval attachés.

But Furst’s novels prove that formulas executed with literary style and thorough historical research are as impressive as any higher-brow work.

Blue Latitudes: Sailing Boldly Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before
Tony Horowitz
I think of myself as a knowledgeable guy, historically speaking. But reading Blue Latitudes, I was shocked at how ignorant I was of the accomplishments of James Cook.

Most discoverers happen upon their discovery – the Hudson River, America – and, if they survive, tend to stay in that part of the world looking for more stuff or head home to enjoy their fame. But Cook travelled all over the world, to places untouched by Europeans, multiple times. New Zealand, Australia, Hawaii, parts of Alaska. He circumnavigated the globe multiple times and covered 140 of the 180 degrees of the earth’s longitude.

But most people don’t know Captain Cook from Captain Hook. Tony Horowitz, former foreign correspondent for the Wall Street Journal and author of Confederates in the Attic, sets off to find out why. Part travelogue, part history, Horowitz re-traces Cook’s voyage, and interviews just about anybody he meets along the way in search of Cook’s story and his legacy.

Cook’s is a great story – and Horowitz is wonderful company for the telling of it.


Corelli’s Mandolin
Louis de Bernières
You know the old phrase, “the book was better”. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin was a terrible Nicolas Cage movie, but this is an excellent novel, set on a small Greek island during the Second World War.

It’s kind of hard to describe, but check it out here.


And the winner is…hmmm….well I liked all of them, obviously. But none are books I’ll be talking about five years from now. I’ve already forgotten what The Spies of Warsaw is about (that’s the problem with formulaic fiction – no matter how good it’s executed, the details slip away).

Oh, I’ll give it to What Hath God Wrought. Congratulations, Mr. Howe. You must be proud.