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My relationship with the guitar began on the evening of February 9, 1964, when the Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan show. I was only five, but I still remember the feeling...at the sight and sound of them. It had only been a few months since the of President Kennedy and it seemed the whole world had changed.

It was a few years before I got my first real guitar and took lessons from my uncle. He taught me to play jazz and his version of popular music which was the popular music of the 1940s. I learned to play rock from listening to records. When a new Beatles LP came out, my friends and I would sit in a circle around the record player, staring raptly at the magical spinning disc. If your phonograph could play at 16 2/3 RPM, you could slow the song down. I played in bands all through high school and college. Much of the repertoire we play today is from those days, It’s “the music of my youth.” I still have the guitar my parents gave me for my twelfth birthday, a Gretsch Anniversary model. Built the year I was born, today it’s considered a “vintage instrument; then it was just used.
In early 2011, I was having a great deal of difficulty playing. All dexterity had left my hands, especially my left hand. Thinking I had a pinched nerve, I went to a neurologist who diagnosed me with Parkinson’s disease. Parkinson’s disease is a movement disorder which among other things deprives you of the ability to move accurately and quickly. At one point, I completely lost the ability to play the guitar. Although Parkinson’s is incurable at present, some symptomatic relief is available through medication and physical therapy. I’ve kept at it and have somewhat retrained myself. On a good night I probably have most of the skills that I had before Parkinson’s. I don’t plan to ever quit. So, if one night you see me struggling to play now you know why.

Before joining Green Apple Asylum, I was a member of the band Not Yet Crazy. One night my mother came to see me play. It was the first time she saw me play since I was 15 years old. She was proud of me, and so the next day told several women from her community about my band. One of the other women whom she did not know said her son was also in a band. The woman asked my mother “what’s the name of your son’s band? “ “Not Yet Crazy“ my mother said. “What’s the name of your sons’ band? “ The woman replied “Pink Floyd”.

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