Member-only story
Far Above the Moon
My Bowie story
It’s the fashion to claim that you know someone in the rock/soul hierarchy. How far can you climb to claim the fame of rubbing shoulders with legends, future legends, heroes, and just plain space oddities?
In 1984, a guy was born from the loins of another guy I once knew. Five years later, his father bought him his first guitar, soul love at first sight, or so they tell me. He learned to play it frontwards and up the hill backwards. He called his prize Sweet Thing, after something he heard his grandmother utter.
When she died, and as the priest intoned all his ashes to ashes benedictions, this wild-eyed boy from freecloud played along.
When he hit his teens years, he lashed out, became a rebel. Rebel against anything, anytime. He thought he wanted to be Andy Warhol, whom his father labeled just some other cracked actor, but the boy remained calm and steadfast in his desires. When his father asked him not to leave, to stay, he laughed.
“God knows I’m good,” the boy cried, and wild like the wind, he was out of there, moving from station to station through his golden years.
When I finally met Lee Bains, he had a band: the Glory Fires. They played loud and hard and took the idea of southern rock as far as they could.
“It ain’t easy,”…