Men Without Women

Randy's Records, November 14, 2020

Nowadays, unless it’s a new album by Bruce Springsteen, most of the vinyl records I buy have some emotional resonance for me, which means I mostly buy old stuff. If I can find an original pressing of a favorite album rather than a reissue, it’s even better.

In 1982, my brother Phil gave me the album Men Without Women by Little Steven and the Disciples of Soul for Christmas. Little Steven is actually Steve Van Zandt, Bruce Springsteen’s best buddy and lead guitarist in the E Street Band. It’s a great album – Steve’s take on 60s soul music. Phil passed away in 2006, and my original copy of the album disappeared years ago. I finally found an original pressing of the album at Randy’s Records around 2017 or 2018, which made me really happy, because it had never – up to that point – been reissued on vinyl. Finding that album was also like having a little bit of Phil back with me, which I think was ultimately the point. Unfortunately, in December 2018, I took my new old copy of Men Without Women with me to a Little Steven concert at The Depot, hoping for an autograph, and due to circumstances beyond my control, I lost the album. I recognize that losing an album is really a #firstworldproblem, but I have missed having it in my collection ever since. Even buying the newly remastered CD version that came out this year did nothing to alleviate the sense of loss I felt over misplacing my vinyl copy.

 

Today, I finally decided that screw it, I was going to see if they had another copy of the album at Randy’s Records. I get nostalgic for deceased family members this time of year, so I didn’t even care if it was an original pressing or the new reissue. Because of social distancing and the exploding Utah COVID numbers, Tristen and I had to stand in line about fifteen minutes to get into Randy’s. Once I finally got in the store, I searched the record bins, but to my dismay, there wasn’t a copy of Men Without Women to be found, new or old. I finally asked a clerk if they had the album, and after debating with him over the title of the album (which I admit is a little weird; Steve Van Zandt named it after an Ernest Hemingway short story collection), he went in the backroom and found a copy from 1982 that even contained the poster that came with the first pressing. Not only that, it was in great shape and reasonably priced. You better believe I snatched up that sucker and paid for it without a second thought.

Right now Little Steven and the Disciples of Soul are singing the song “Forever” on my turntable – one of my all-time favorite love songs, and a song that never fails to bring a tear to my eye – and I’m reminded that life doesn’t always suck. Sometimes it’s pretty good.

 

If I Was The Priest

Right now, this song is everything ...

Bruce Springsteen wrote “If I Was The Priest” nearly fifty years ago. It predates his debut album on Columbia Records. In fact, “If I Was The Priest” is one of the songs Bruce played at his audition with the legendary talent scout John Hammond, who also discovered Count Basie, Benny Goodman, Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin, and Stevie Ray Vaughan, among many others. “If I Was The Priest” is a Bob Dylan-esque old west fantasy about Sheriff Jesus requesting Father Bruce’s presence in Dodge City, where the Holy Ghost also runs a burlesque show ("where they'll let you in for free and they hit you when you go"). Father Bruce ultimately declines Sheriff Jesus’s request to join him, because Bruce is overdue for Cheyenne. Hammond said he immediately knew Bruce was raised Catholic when he played the song for Hammond at his audition back in 1972. I first heard “If I Was The Priest” nearly thirty years ago, on a bootleg recording of Bruce's audition tape. It’s been a favorite of mine ever since.

 

Bruce’s new album, Letter To You, is a rocking meditation on the loss of loved ones, and how their presence still haunts and influences our lives. My description makes the album sound like a bummer, but it isn’t. It’s actually quite joyful. Bruce wrote most of the songs for the album after the last member of his first band, The Castiles, passed away recently, leaving Bruce the last surviving member of his teenage band. Besides the new songs Bruce wrote about death and ghosts, Bruce recorded “If I Was The Priest” – along with two other unreleased songs from back in the day – with the E Street Band, for which I am very happy and grateful, because now we have a full band version of this amazing song. Bruce has what sounds like a gospel choir backing him up, and Steve Van Zandt contributes an outstanding guitar solo at the end of the song. It sounds like they recorded “If I Was The Priest” in 1975 instead of 2019. That’s a high compliment.

 

I was listening to “If I Was The Priest” full blast this afternoon while driving northbound on I-15 after picking up Tristen’s boys from their dad. Seven-year-old Maxwell complained about the volume, but ten-year-old Harrison told me how much he liked the song. Smart kid. Anyway, when the chorus of the song kicked in, I got a little misty eyed, because I realized how much my brother Phil, who is never far from my thoughts, would have enjoyed “If I Was The Priest”. It’s classic E Street Band rock and roll — which is the highest compliment I can give — and Phil would have loved Bruce’s rocking, slightly blasphemous take on the old west as much as Harrison and I were enjoying it. And ultimately, that’s the message of Bruce’s new album: music can help us feel the presence of people we love who are no longer with us. So Phil rode shotgun on the Fargo line — that’s a line from the song — with me as we headed home together, listening to a Springsteen masterpiece. The end.

 

“. . . when they built you brother, they broke the mold.”

Phil meets Susan for the first time, April 2000.

The line in the title is from “Terry’s Song” by Bruce Springsteen. I can never listen to that song without thinking of my brother Phil.

Three years ago today (March 15, 2006), my dad called me to tell me that Phil had died. Lisa and I drove from Eagle Mountain to Salt Lake in a snowstorm to handle the arrangements. I try not to dwell too much on sad anniversaries, but with Dad’s death two months ago, Dad, Mom, and Phil have been on my mind. It’s hard to lose a parent, but neither of my parents’ deaths affected me the way Phil’s death did. Before Mom died, she had been sick for a couple of years and was confined to a wheelchair. Mom was ready to go. Dad missed Mom for the next eleven years. When he died in January, I knew I would miss him, but I also believed Dad was where he wanted to be: with Mom. I don’t have any regrets about either of my parents; I was there for them when they needed me.

I wish I could say the same about Phil. Phil and I were only fourteen months apart in age; we spent most of the time between the years 1965 and 1983 together. Phil and I were best friends when we weren’t trying to beat the hell out of each other, but anyone else who tried to mess with us had better look out. We were brothers.

The last twenty years of Phil’s life were miserable, with intermittent bright spots. Phil was forty years old when he died. He was working as a police officer with West Valley P.D. He wasn’t a perfect officer, but Phil loved his job. He loved dealing with people, even when they were skells. Phil liked the people he met in the course of his job: the good, decent fellow cops whom he respected, the lady who owned the hamburger joint where he worked security, the little kids he was able to help. Phil didn’t like the cops he worked with who he considered phonies or posers, and he didn’t like people who abused their spouses or their children.

Most important to me, Phil loved my daughters, and they loved him. Phil is holding my oldest in the picture I posted above. I wish he could have spent more time with them. I said in Phil’s eulogy that my kids were lucky to have a guardian angel who was a cop, and I meant it.

March 18, 2006

Phil’s death wasn’t suicide, but I wouldn’t exactly call it an accident either (actually - to be charitable - I would call it involuntary manslaughter.) After three years I am used to him being gone, but I haven’t made peace with it, although I am trying. I still think about Phil nearly every day, and I wonder if I could have made a bigger difference in his life, especially near the end. I really don’t know what I would have done differently; you can’t live a person’s life for him. For better or worse, people have their free agency. I did make sure that Phil had a decent funeral, and that he was respectfully laid to rest.

I wish Phil could have seen himself the way other people saw him. The greatest tragedy of Phil’s life is that he didn’t really understand how much people loved him. He based his opinion of himself on someone who didn’t deserve that trust.

Another song, “Before They Make Me Run,” by the Rolling Stones, also reminds me of Phil. In that song Keith Richards - Phil's favorite Stone - sings, “Gonna find my way to heaven, `cause I did my time in hell.” That line could have been Phil’s epitaph. I hope Phil did find his way to heaven, because he deserved it. Phil was a good guy. He had his faults, but the good in him far outweighed the bad, and I don’t think he ever quit trying.

In the end, what else matters?