Sweet Jane

Every musician can trace the origin of their career back to seminal events in their lifetime that formed who they would become as a performer, and as a person.

We may not know at the time, the importance or repercussions of those events, but when looked back upon through the haze of time, their influence is undeniable.

When I was a knock-kneed sixteen year old, my friend, David Lang, and I decided to perform together at an open-mic night. It was Johnny Allen's Blues Jam, on Tuesday nights at the Wonderland Blues Bar in the Kips Bay section of Manhattan.

David had never sung in public before, and I had just started playing guitar the year earlier, so we were an equally unprepared team. But David was indefatigable, and so we began our rehearsals.

We selected three songs - AFTER MIDNIGHT by Eric Clapton (my hero at the time), SOUL MAN by Sam & Dave (we knew there would be a horn section at the jam, and didn't want to leave them out...) and SWEET JANE by Lou Reed (Dave's favorite) - knowing we would likely only get to perform two of them.

After hours of arduous run throughs, the day had come for our rock n roll crucible.

We went crosstown to the east side, and entered the Wonderland, a darkly-lit dive of a bar, sparsely filled with ax-men and horn players awaiting their ten minutes of stardom.

Johnny hosted the evening, a lanky young guitar player who sold musical instruments by day and ruled the NYC blues scene at night. His boyish demeanor, red baseball cap and horn-rimmed glasses gave the appearance of an African-American Jimmy Olson.

After the introductory set by the house band, they began calling performers off the sign-up sheet. After the longest thirty five minutes of my life, Johnny called us out. I nervously taxied over to the side of the stage and checked in, notifying the band of our first song selection. David was pacing like a caged lion, claws bared for the audience. If he was nervous, there was no showing it. They wouldn't know what hit them.

Me, not so much.

I don't remember much of that first song, but I do remember clammy palms, shaking knees, and a nervous tremor that began in my toes and ended at my hair. Before I even knew it, the song had ended. The applause was accepting if not a little tepid.

But then came song two. Sweet Jane.

This was David's element. His wheelhouse. The four-chord anthem that churned like an underground freight train covered in glitter and sweat. Lou Reed's biting lyrics poured out of him. This crowd, jaded from nonstop blues tunes and sated on the familiar turnarounds and riffs of Southern sidemen and Chicago howlers suddenly sprang up in their chairs. What was this punk rock sound puncturing the twelve-bar blanket of the darkness? Who were these crazy teenagers?

The band smiled wide, and at the end of the song, to the welcome cheers of the room, Johnny asked us if we wanted to do one more. The Wonderland equivalent of the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame.

I leaned in the direction of the horn players and whispered, "Do you guys know SOUL MAN?"

They gazed to one another, as if released into the wild after years of captivity. Wiping off their horns, they rose with cheshire grins and the trumpet player replied, "Great tune."

Again our song played, and again much of it escapes memory. But this time, for an entirely different reason. The elation of the band, the pulsing claps of the audience carried us aloft for three and a half minutes of R&B ecstacy.

That feeling imprinted itself almost immediately. I needed to feel that way again, and often. And so I have. A long musical journey that began with three songs, and my friend at my side.

This weekend, David passed away, years of battles with illness having taken their toll. But his love affair with music continued through it all.

When you sing a song, it belongs to the audience you are with. It belongs to the performer who first gave it to the world and showed you its glory. And it belongs to you.

But not SWEET JANE. That song belongs to David. And for the rest of my life, it will be his.

#davidlang #johnnyallen #wonderlandbluesbar #nyc #rip #sweetjane #soulman #aftermidnight #loureed