Only Golden Fingers Could Play So Heavy

Bryan Adams might have been writing about me, but for the fact that I bought my first guitar from a friend at work for $50. But my true desire was to play bass, and I finally bought one after graduating high school in 1971. I helped form a band called "Ambush" while in college, but we went our separate ways before I started getting serious about writing music.

After composing a half dozen or so unrelated songs, I thought up the phrase "Only Golden Fingers Could Play So Heavy" and thought it would make a great basis for a song about a bass player. From there, I conceived the general form of the rock opera that bears its name, drawing from influences in the story of birth of Christ, "Tommy," "Quadrophenia," the breakup of the Beatles, and my desire to work my favorite artist, Todd Rundgren, into a song. Bearing a very loose correspondence on my own life, from my first three years living next to a chicken ranch, to playing clarinet, to picking up the bass and my imagined life as a "rock star," the story is a tongue-in-cheek exploration into the life of an egomaniac named "I Mall" (I'm all) and his alter egos/compatriots Spike Jones (a bully), Isaac Daly (I'm sick daily, into drugs) and Osgood (I'm goody-goody, possibly gay, certainly sexually confused) Martin. It also features historical personalities from politics (Dwight "Ike" Eisenhower), science (Albert "Bert" Einstein) and music (Charles "Chuck" Ives) chosen because they were more or less prominent in 1953 and their names have an "I" sound. I considered Sergei Eisenstein, the film director, because of the combination of name of Eisenhower and Einstein led to it, but he died in 1948, and I desired at least a partial sense of historical accuracy. Besides, a musical influence was certainly more appropriate, and Ives fit the bill. The appearance of Todd Rundgren in the second act was influenced by fan publicity that Todd would run for president in 1984, the year he was first eligible, and my own personal desire to work with him. The fact that in 1994 I created the "Todd Rundgren Connection" and met him several times over the next few years is a testament to my own prescience.

Most of the songs were composed on guitar, but, in the same time frame, I took some piano lessons and had access to practice pianos at the university, so several of them were composed on piano. Never an accomplished player on either instrument, all were merely chord structures and lyrics that I wrote down (later typed), while carrying the basic melody in my head. Over the next 25 years, I revisited the music occasionally to keep it fresh in my mind, and eventually documented it in MIDI form in 2001 by arranging it for multiple instruments in FINALE. The music subsequently was used as the basis for yet another work, "40 Days: Resurrection to Ascension," which saw a single production in 2001.

True to the rock opera form, the story was conceived strictly in music and lyrics. However, when I took a play-writing class in 1974 to fulfill a college general education requirement, I chose my completed work as the basis to create a three act play as my semester project. The decision to utilize the same actors for dual roles was both psychological and convenient. The decision to use the same actress for the mother and wife roles may seem slightly Oedipal, but was really more for convenience sake and represents a non-sexual nurturing relationship. Bill Graham's implied grandson seemed like an obvious choice as a promoter for the reunion concert in 2015. "Rod Manger" is an attempt to make "Road Manager" into a name. The sophomoric dialogue is probably a result of the fact that I had recently been a sophomore. Some additional songs were composed to fill out the story.

Writing with the thought that my parents would someday read it, I tried to be sensitive to their portrayal, and have always had a twinge of guilt about portraying the father, Henry Mall, as somewhat dim-witted. My own father is the antithesis of that character, and but for the "chicken farmer" and "geetar player" personas, couldn't be farther from the bumbling personality portrayed.

Acts II (from scene six) delves into my vision of the future, most of which (outside of the play's time frame) has already come to pass in 2005. The final group reunion occurs sometime around 2015. I'm not a science fiction writer, nor do I play one on TV, so "radio-telomerated relay" and "wardrobe machine" are just phrases that sounded futuristic enough to qualify as devices of the 21st century. $30-50 concert tickets seemed pretty outrageous in 1974; now they're a bargain!

Motivation and Meaning for "Only Golden Fingers Could Play So Heavy"