Great Interview with A Great Guitarist

"Great" doesn't even come close to describing Larry's talent.


One of the amazing moments in my life was getting to talk, briefly, with Larry after a performance at the Costa Mesa WAVE smooth jazz concert sometime between '89 and '91.

I was doing some testing, backstage, on new QSC products and subb'ing for the Sound Image monitor tech (Dave Shadoan, the owner of the company at the time).  During David Benoit's set, there was an FOH problem and Dave asked me to watch the monitor board while he went to the FOH desk. There wasn't much to do, since Benoit's set was about over, so I just re-familiarized myself with the board and flipped through the stage mixes to see what Dave had setup for each player. Benoit's set ended and Dave still wasn't back and one of his guys and I started setting up for the next set, with me on the board, mostly, and the other guy positioning equipment and telling me what each aux needed for the next band. I was pretty overwhelmed with the complexity of it all, since I was used to a 36-channel, 8-aux version of the board and this was a lot more of everything than I'd ever used. We got it done barely before the band hit the stage and I didn't even look up to see who it was. I had my hand poised over the aux bus solo buttons, waiting to ratchet though the stage mixes correcting whatever the musicians wanted fixed during the first song. I heard someone say something like, "This is my first time on a stage since I got shot . . . "and I looked up to see Larry Carlton talking into a mic I had a little control over. The song, "Smiles and Smiles to Go" was the opening tune and I was back to work getting nods and directions from the band until Dave came back and took over about 3/4 of the way through the first song. I went back to work monitoring our amplifiers' performance.

When Larry's set finished, we all went into another frenzy of setup berserk-ness and about the time the next band started its set, I saw Larry exiting the dressing room trailer and head down the backstage area toward the parking lot. I sort of hate most things about being a fan and all things fanatical, but it struck me that I would only get one chance in this life to tell Mr. Carlton how much his music had meant to me. I usually become totally tongue-tied and lose about 100 IQ points in those situations, but I managed to run up behind him and say something like, "Mr. Carlton, I have loved your playing on the Crusaders records since #1 and especially Southern Comfort and Those Southern Nights." He turned around, looking slightly fearful, saw a dumbass yokel wearing a QSC jacket with tools, test equipment, and cables dangling from his belt, a tool bag, and wrapped around his (my) neck and relaxed. We had a really nice 5-10 minute conversation about that music and his love for jazz and I managed not to be a bigger Kansas hick than usual through most of it.

I have been lucky to meet and talk to a few of the people who kept me coming back to music for almost 60 years and meeting Larry Carlton is close to the top of those experiences.

Why Don’t You Leave?

I've had a few people ask me how I ended up in Minnesota—the frozen north, Rocky and Bullwinkle country, Fargoland—after living in California for a decade and owning a home in Colorado. It is pretty simple and I think this song is a fairly straight-forward reminder, at least of California.

Oh there ain't no rest for the wicked
Money don't grow on trees
I got bills to pay, I got mouths to feed
There ain't nothing in this world for free
I can't slow down, I can't hold back
Though you know, I wish I could
There ain't no rest for the wicked
Until we close our eyes for good

Living in Southern California without a big inheritance safety net was like living on the edge of destruction for most of those years. “I got bills to pay, I got mouths to feed” and every time I got a little safety margin built up it came crashing down on me with some piddly medical issue (we never had any major medical issues in California). California is a great place for skilled single people and an ever greater place for people who come from money. I moved there as the provider for a single-income family I was running-in-place for all but the very last year of my life in California. That last year, I was working full time managing QSC’s Tech Services department, going to Cal State Long Beach full time at night, and doing as much of the husband/father thing as I could manage while working and going to school 60 hours a week.

I remember standing in the middle of QSC’s chassis assembly area one afternoon. I was in that spot because I’d been in an engineering/marketing meeting earlier and I needed to install some upgraded product verification software in the assembly Audio Precision test fixtures. While I tried to upload the software, I was being bombarded by questions from people on the assembly floor, the final product test techs, and people who heard I was out there and had questions they’d been saving up for the next time they saw me. Tech Services was in another building and I didn’t venture into the assembly area any where as often as I had when I’d been the Manufacturing Engineering Manager; the job I’d had for the previous five years. The new manufacturing management regime didn’t spend a lot of time explaining itself or answering questions from assembly personnel, so there was some pent-up energy out there looking for an outlet. One of the techs, Tom Northway, watched a while and, when there was a small break in the action, said, “You have the answers for all of us, don’t you?”

I don’t think I ever felt like I had anywhere near enough answers, but I always thought I owed anyone who cared enough to ask for my help, or advice, some kind of attempt at providing that help. The end result, for me, was that I totally burned out trying to be everything to everyone, often at the same time. One of the things that originally attracted me to electronics engineering was the fact that I could focus all of my attention on a problem, a project, or even just a small aspect of a product design and no one would expect me to do anything else. By the time I left QSC Audio’s manufacturing management, I’d practically forgotten everything I knew about focusing on one thing. Moving to Technical Services was the right thing for me to do, for myself, but it was too little, too late. By then, I was so mentally tired that getting out of the California rat race seemed absolutely necessary.

That moment on the manufacturing floor where all of those minutes, hours, and years of constant head-spinning management frustration was eye-opening. For at least a year, I had been telling my family that I was leaving when I finished my degree at Cal Long Beach, but that frantic, frustrating, multitasking moment and Tom’s question sealed the deal. At that moment, I knew I was on the road again; a phrase that has followed me since 1965. Bob Dylan’s line, from “On the Road Again,” has been a song always near and dear to my heart, “Then you ask why I don't live here. Honey, how come you don't move?”

That’s a pretty good description of life in southern California. All my life, I’d heard about “La La Land” and how that “good old Midwestern work ethic” would blow away California (and New York). Don’t believe that shit for a second. Everyone who doesn’t have a permanent silver spoon stuck to their lips is running in place. The pace is frantic, the pressure is intense, the competition is fierce, and the cost of failure can be catastrophic and there are 100 people waiting in line to take your place, if your place sucks. If your place is a really good life, home, job, or opportunity, there are 100,000 people waiting to take it away from you. They probably won’t steal it from you. They’re just waiting for you to drop the ball for a few seconds and they’ll pick it up before you even know you dropped it. And when you lose in California, you might lose everything. The distance from superstar to living under a bridge is far shorter than you can imagine. The path back up is filled with traps, obstacles, opponents, and expenses.

I “made it” in California. I succeed in an occupation that has more failures and escapees than most (engineering). I supported my family in a middle class manner without a college degree or a nickel of inheritance or outside support. I even managed to collect a respectable college degree before I left; after almost 25 years of night classes. When I left, I was more than ready to move and I have never once been tempted to move back to the Golden State's constant stress and motion, high rent, and the precarious lifestyle of the middle class in California. And that is why I’m here in Rocky and Bullwinkle Land.

Good Times, Bad Times

“You know I’ve had my share.”

I was writing about business and music (either two co-dependent or oxymoronic terms, either way they are an unhealthy mix) in another venue this morning and flashed on my best days in southern California. In fact, I remembered the address where some of those best days happened. 1926 Placentia Avenue.

For twenty some years, QSC audio was at this address and I was more than pleased to see that “progress” hadn’t run these crazy 1940’s buildings into yuppie condos or strip malls. In fact, they are the same buildings they were when I worked for QSC in the 80’s and early 90’s.

ONLY THEATRE, NOT REAL LIFE

[A bit if weirdness I imagined while watching the yuppie crowds at Monterey Beach.]

All Rights Reserved © 1999 Thomas W. Day

On a hot Saturday afternoon, a man sat on Cannery Row's sidewalk, near the Monterey Aquarium. The lone unconventional in a conventional place.

In most California cities on summer weekends, prime sidewalk space is covered by street vendors, musicians, jugglers, comedians, beggars, and counter- culture types. Monterey has exiled these misfits to be seen only in comedy shops and bars and mostly-hidden alleys. Serious outcasts live in halfway houses and derelict buildings, their belongings stored in grocery carts. Monterey is a very neat city. Some people clean their homes the same way: little crud under the rug, big crud under the bed.

The man on the sidewalk was an aberration. He was clean, well dressed, and out of the way. The Monterey's Finest would ask him to move, or move him, if he didn't get up and buy something soon.

The man on the sidewalk sat lotus-crossed-legged with an expensive looking, triangular, cloth bag in his lap. His back was against the doorway of an abandoned fish processing plant. He was out of the flow of traffic and bothering no one. He stared straight ahead. He sat quietly. He said nothing and did nothing to attract attention.

He drew a crowd anyway. As when one person stares at the sky, others look up, when one person stopped and looked down at the man on the sidewalk, others stopped and looked down. The longer he sat, the larger his crowd grew. People were drawn to his aura; and to looking down on him.

After a crowd of twenty tourists had gathered around his dingy alcove, he seemed to become aware of their existence. He smiled up at their expectant faces and said, "Welcome to my first performance."

His hands had been resting, open palms up, on his knees. He drew them to the bag resting on his lap. He ran the zipper around the bag and laid it open. The bag was sheepskin-lined and it contained a blue-black, small-caliber, automatic pistol. Using the soft, sheep-fuzz surface of the bag as a work table, he turned the gun so that it pointed away from the crowd. The end of the barrel rested against his navel. He picked up a small cardboard box that was also in the bag and slid it open. It contained dozens of small bullets, nested alternately slug up and slug down. He took three bullets from the box. He removed the clip from the gun and pulled on a button on the side so the bullets could be dropped into a slot on the end. He slid the clip back into the gun. The gun had remained in his lap while he loaded it. His hands had touched the gun only enough to slide the clip into the gun.

The crowd realized that they were standing in front of a man with a loaded gun and they came to life. "What are you going to do?" "Let's get out of here, he's crazy!" "You can't have a loaded gun on the streets of Monterey!" "Somebody should call a cop!" A dozen foreigners said similar things in foreign languages. Or maybe they said completely original things that nobody, besides their companions, understood. The crowd backed away from him and a few of the hoard started to walk quickly down the street.

The man looked into the crowd and said, "Get with it people, I'm an actor. This is theatre. Art. Haven't you ever been to San Francisco? Don't you go to plays, see movies, or watch TV? Don't be so reactionary." His reassurance quieted the crowd and they moved closer again. The people who had started for higher ground stopped and returned to the audience, except a few who didn't understand the actor's English.

The actor was confident. He had presence. He was good looking. He was the only entertainment on the street without a cover charge.

The actor picked up the gun with both hands, carefully keeping the barrel from pointing at the crowd; which meant the gun was always pointing at him.

Someone said, "Be careful with that thing."

The actor spoke without looking at his audience, "This is theatre. Do you know you can still see Walter Brennan, Lee Marvin, Steve McQueen, Ronald Reagan and Rock Hudson in movies? They died in real life, but they are still alive in the theatre. They use real guns and real bullets in movies, but nobody really gets killed. Likewise, I am not a real person, I'm an actor. I can not really die. No one can really die in theatre."

A man in the crowd said, "Looks like a real gun to me. Says Ruger on the barrel and the bullets are Remingtons. Those people make real guns and real bullets. You damn nutso, keep this up and I'm going to call a real cop."

The actor looked into the crowd toward the analytical voice. His expression was tired and pained, his voice was hard and bitter. "This is Art. Use your imagination. Stretch yourself. Nothing can happen without your imagination. You think you see a gun. You imagine you feel tension. Illusion. I have no props, no stage, no supporting actors, no script. I can't see for you. I can't make you nervous. You are doing it all for yourself. This is the purest theatre. I have only you. I only need you, my audience, to make it work. Actors need an audience like bacon needs a butcher. Like hoboes need railroads. Like politicians need graft. Like young-upwardly-mobiles need success. Like love needs hate."

The actor's hands never left his lap while he talked. He delivered his speech without any major shift in emotion. He had the presence of an actor turned politician. He could have sold icicles to Eskimos.

He raised the gun to his face. His hands pressed together with the gun between them, his right thumb on the trigger. The crowd became nervous again. He quieted them by humming a melody. It might have been "I can do anything better than you can." He punctuated the song by asking for group participation. He told them to, "Imagine the ways I could off myself. Think of the possibilities. I could shoot myself in the chest; messy and slow death." He pointed the gun's barrel toward his chest. "Nobody who really wants to die does a body shot. That kind of drama is only for the types who hope to get saved. Bleed a lot. Rush to the hospital. Get enough sympathy to feel loved."

"Close your eyes and imagine with me." He hums some more. Anything you can do, I can do better, I can do anything better than you.

"I could 'eat the gun' like cops do. It's true, cops do it a lot. I guess they get sick of what they know and punch out. Probably the most popular way for cops to use a gun. Still messy, but very effective. Almost everybody who 'sucks the tube' only does it once." He moves the gun to his lips and kisses the barrel full on the mouth.

He hums softer, now. "I could blow out an eye. Almost nobody has the guts to shoot their own eye out. A real man dies that way, I guess." He looks down the barrel like a telescope, scanning the horizon.

His humming becomes hypnotic. "I could be traditional and make new pair of ear drums. You know, poke a hole from side to side. I could even enlarge the old ear holes." With only his right hand holding the gun he pretends to clean his ears with the gun.

He stops the music. "Keep your eyes closed." They did. "Imagine the ultimate live performance. Imagine that I really kill myself. Imagine how I would do it. You may think of new ways to use this weapon. Ways I have never thought of."

They did. They imagined holes appearing in nearly all of the vital parts of his body. Some do it with their eyes closed. Some can imagine with their eyes wide open. He bounces off of the wall with the back of his head blown off. He slowly bleeds to death from a small wound in the belly. He shoots himself in the ear and brains spray from the opposite ear. He puts the gun on top of his head and blows the end out of his big toe. He shoves it up his ass and his dick inflates until it pops like a balloon. The variety is as wide as the crowd is large. Their imaginations are stretched and they are entertained.

The man who identified the gun and the bullets did not need help imagining ways a gun can kill a man. He did not need to imagine what he had lived through. He knew. He had been to war and he had seen bullets enter bodies. He could see the flesh part as the bullet dug an insignificant entry hole. He could see the cavernous exit hole and the strings of innards following the bullet like confetti flowing from a gory office window. He imagined the actor's expression as his life left with the bullet. And he could hear the screams of the men he had seen die. They all screamed from the actor's mouth. He wanted to close his eyes to the death all around him, but his eyes were already closed. He turned away and opened his eyes. He had enough of Theatre. It was too much like real life.

After the performance, the remaining audience put money into the open sheepskin-lined gun bag on the actor's lap and tell him what a great artist he is. The actor smiles up at them and thanks them for their participation. He tells them what a great audience they were and how he loves them all. "Thank you. Thank you. You were wonderful. You were. I love you all! You've made this a great moment in my career."

The crowd broke up and the tourists look for the next attraction. Many of them are hungry and the seafood restaurants draw their attention. Some of the tourists are from Silicon Valley or San Francisco and are on diets: they look for something to buy.

Fresh traffic passes the doorway and these tourists are horrified. The walls and sidewalk of the doorway are covered with blood. Pasty gray chunks of veined-Jello are splattered against the left side of the door. The actor is slumped against the wall. His eyes are open and blood drains out of his mouth. His gun is back in his lap. His legs are still crossed. The money in his bag is drenched in blood.

"Call the police, someone has been shot," they scream. One of the tourists at the tailend of the actor's audience looks back with disgust and says, "Get with it, people. Don't you know Theatre when you see it?"

The End