I’m gettin’ old
anything can happen now to anyone
-Bob Dylan
I haven’t had anything to say for a while now and some would argue it’s been longer than that. But I did have this photo, taken from my roof last weekend, and thought it a good excuse to post something. Actually, I did several starts and stops on the topic of death but figured why indulge that tired instinct? In my barrel it’s like shooting fish. What does it say about me, that this is where my thoughts turn entering the season of re-birth? Then I read an article on Buddhism that made me feel less alone. It asserted that many new mothers experience an intense connection with both their own mortality and that of their newborn child shortly after delivery. Of course some others don’t, which got me thinking about Ronnie Montrose.
Montrose, who died last month at the age of 64, played guitar and fronted the band “Montrose” whose first album (“Montrose” of all things) was seminal in guitar driven hard rock. He introduced a young singer named “Sam” Hagar to the world. Ronnie’s death was linked first to cancer but revealed yesterday as suicide. According to his wife he had struggled with life-long clinical depression stemming from feelings of self-doubt. This got me thinking about what a chemical coin-toss life is. Here you’ve got two guys, Hagar and Montrose, fronting the same band in 1973. One adds an extra “m” and a “y” to his name and goes on to rock stardom and platinum tequila sales while the other beats himself up unnecessarily and eventually takes his own life.
While I’ve argued before for Hagar’s odd genius, it was Montrose’s guitar work on that first LP that changed the face of rock music. His open riffs on tunes like Rock Candy, Make It Last, and Bad Motor Scooter influenced guitar players from Eddie Van Halen to Angus Young. It wasn’t like the man toiled in obscurity: he worked with Van Morrison, Boz Scaggs, Herbie Hancock, and Edgar Winter on the classic cut “Frankenstein.” He never assumed a permanent post in the spotlight as Hagar did but you have to question how a man of his apparent sensitivity would have handled the scrutiny and occasionally misplaced “hack” label that rolls off Sammy like water off a duck with good hair.
It would be easy to apply the old “glass half-full” adage here but that would be horseshit of the first order. Whatever caused Montrose to put a .38 caliber gun to his head, it was a bit more than simple pessimism or myopic glass-level estimations. Still, you have to envy the Sammy Hagars out there who either manage to keep it simple or find something worthwhile in themselves to cut through all the crap. As Sam wrote and sang on that first album:
Make it last, long as you can
It’s so much easier when you understand
Pretty cheesy in the big lyrical picture but well put for the subject at hand. And set to Ronnie’s elegantly fat, power chord driven guitar progression, it’s pure poetry. Hagar always had a great voice (which he’s kept to this day) but without that guitar on the first album it may have never been heard. Something for the Red Rocker to consider when he’s whistling a happy tune.
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