Graduate School

Things changed radically during my year and summer of graduate school. Sal and I met infrequently, perhaps once a month. He was always far more preoccupied with his own work than with students or classes. After the events of the preceding summer, during which he appeared one evening at my house to angrily curse out first my housemate, then me too, as long as I was nearby, because I happened to be friends with his soon-to-be ex-wife (who had invited me to dinner a week before), we were not as close as we had been. After he settled down a few weeks later, the skirmish blew over, and Sal continued to be highly complimentary and encouraging regarding my work.

Sal told me at one time that I didn't really need him any more. When I replied that I highly valued his input and opinion, he dubbed me a hopeless romantic. He has proven to be right repeatedly, but at the time I was not quite ready to be weaned.[12]

[12] An obituary of Salvatore Martirano, written by my friend and former bandmate David Rosenboom, who also studied composition with Sal, may be found at on the Web.

I've written extensively elsewhere about the events that happened during 1966--1967 that influenced my thinking, music, and conduct. The article The Beatles and Me on my Web site, written in 1995, is a memoir concerning my activities of this year, including the Black Bag concert I put on with David Rosenboom and Bill Mullen, where I presented my atonal rock piece The Aluminum Foil Fantasy, and at long last, my Nonet, in what was a poor and desperate performance. It was at this time that I turned my interest to starting a rock band, and writing songs.

Meanwhile, my zeal for academics, which was never great, and even for avant garde music, had waned drastically. When I abandoned school to move to Buffalo, New York, I left with three deferred papers, and therefore incomplete courses, and needing to produce a masters composition. The music would not have been a problem, but I was no longer interested at all in doing library research on arcane subjects, in writing about Beethoven, or in Schenker analysis, which I never believed in to begin with, and still don't.

My interest in playing the trombone likewise plummeted for the next three years or more. While still in school I slacked off my practicing and started missing lessons, something I had never done, to Dr. Gray's dismay. I didn't care because I was on a new mission, and nothing could deter me from it.

As a composer I have always been interested in all musical instruments, not just the few I played myself. Whenever I can get my hands on a new instrument, whether for a few minutes, a few days, or a few months, I immediately set about trying to tame it.

In addition to trombone, piano, and euphonium, in 1962 I had learned to play baroque recorder fairly well. In 1963 I studied a semester of harpsichord with George Hunter. Playing harpsichord is not just like playing piano.

Now, in late 1966, with rock and roll stealing my full attention, I rekindled my long-dormant interest in learning to play the guitar. When I was home in Wilmette I started practicing on my father's instrument with the aid of the Carcassi classical guitar method book. I was unable to bring my father's guitar back to school with me. I don't remember why. Maybe he just said no, though that would have been unusual for him. It's also possible my two youngest brothers, who were both still living at home then, and who also learned to play guitar about then, didn't want me to take it.

So I borrowed a guitar from my friend Tom McFaul. To call it a guitar was a stretch. You would have had to see this instrument to believe it. At best, when it was new, it may have been a fifty-dollar special from Woolworth's. I'm sure it never had a new set of strings, and the windings on the lower strings were all loose. I had to slide them up the strings periodically to avoid cutting my fingers on them, where they rattled freely. This monstrosity had spent at least one night floating in a lake, and several sitting in a driveway. The neck was so warped that the strings were a half inch from the fingerboard at the octave fret, and more than a half step out of tune. The strings were steel, and when I started working with it in earnest, it didn't take long for the skin to begin falling off my fingertips. Remarkably, I managed to get a long way on that instrument before I finally acquired something more serviceable. For at least three months it was all I had.

In May 1967, I bought a Danelectro electric bass for $25 from a starving student friend anxious to get rid of it. I had no amplifier, so ran it through my stereo, which I'm sure overdrove the amplifier and speakers to the point of destruction.