Michael Leon

We were the generation that thought we were going to live forever.

Everything they say is true, it goes by in the blink of an eye. However I can't say that either my high school or college days were the best of my life. I never want to go back to school. I like not being anxious on Sunday nights. I like not worrying about grades. And I especially like the lack of competition over meaningless data. Like grade-grubbing in college. I mean what difference does it make? Oh, high grades might get you into a better graduate school. Meanwhile, everybody who seems to change the world dropped out of college. Or certainly didn't go to graduate school. Of course there are exceptions, but being good at school is like being a professional athlete. Your career is time-stamped, and when it's over, you've still got a lot of living to do.

Forever if you're a baby boomer, like I said above.

Come on, we all know we're going to die, but we don't feel it. It's something abstract, off in the future. While we're growing up someone we know falls through the ice, or dies in a car crash, but we see those as anomalies. And maybe someone else dies of cancer, maybe even in their twenties. But not us, we're bulletproof, we're made to last.

Only we're not.

We are the generation that refused to get old. Wearing our kids' jeans as well as getting plastic surgery. Because image is everything. If you look young, you are. Fifty is the new forty. What a bunch of hogwash that is. You may feel young, but tell that to your body, it knows no different, fifty is really fifty. Never mind that we were brought up on a diet of fast food and most of us don't exercise.

I didn't think I was going to die until I got cancer, back in 2009. I was the first in my group to get it, woe is me. But since then...I know many more people who've gotten it much worse. Some have passed. Others survive, but they're members of the club too, the ones who've been hipped to the fact that we're all gonna pass.

But hopefully later rather than sooner.

We keep hearing about our progeny, the Millennials. How they're not going to do as well financially as we did. Sorry, but most of us didn't do so well. There used to be a middle class. Now that's gone. Either you're upper middle class or richer, or you struggle. Or will when your money runs out in old age. Everybody expects to live to a hundred, but it never occurred to them how to pay for it. Just like with politics, writers are out of touch. They think since they're doing well financially, the rest of their generation is, just like they missed the Trump voter, primarily working class, abandoned by the Democrats.

That's another change from our parents' generation. Today it's everybody for themselves. The richer you are, the less you give to charity, it's the poor who are laying down their dough. Of course I'm speaking percentage-wise, but so many who made it did so based on ripping off the public, overcharging people, using sleight-of-hand, they're not about to change now. Money is status.

But as you get older you realize this is untrue. We revert to our high school identities. We're all retired, we're all in it together. We focus on gossip, the petty. Of course there are those who continue to work. But most interestingly, the financially-challenged don't realize that it's nearly impossible to get a job as you get older. No one is hiring ninety-year-olds. So when you run out of money...

That's gonna happen a lot with boomers.

Who complain about physical ailments, but somehow their hearts and arteries are immune. They're good, they're standing here, aren't they?

Especially men, going to doctors is anathema. If you don't think about it, don't acknowledge it, it doesn't exist. But rust never sleeps, neither does the attrition of old age. Go for a full battery of tests, you'd be surprised how you're compromised. As for that belief that you should take no drugs... Take them, as many as the doctor prescribes. I know a fiftysomething who was externally fit who was told she had high blood pressure and should take medication, she refused, chose the homeopathic path and had a stroke. Yup, ignore the doctor's advice at your peril.

Now I'm detecting a bit of anger in this screed. I guess because I'm doing everything right and it may not even matter. So much is DNA. My father went to the doctor, took the advice, got multiple myeloma and died at 70. Meanwhile, our close family friend went to the doctor sporadically, delayed surgery, and lived to 92. Just like you hear about people who smoked like a chimney and lived to be a hundred. But they're the exception. And I look around and see all the people who are cavalier regarding their health. I want to wake them, shake them, before it's over. But the joke could be on me. I could drop dead tomorrow. It happens.

I met Michael Leon in 1990. He invited me to a show at the A&M soundstage. Which is not A&M anymore. That company was gobbled up by a conglomerate, who's heard of Alain Levy recently? Even Edgar Bronfman, Jr. is lost to the sands of music business history. As for Edgar...bad financial choices. But somehow, my generation believes its money is forever, that someone else loses out, that everybody wins, kind of Lake Wobegon, where every student is above-average.

And Michael was warm and intelligent. Which not everybody in the music business is. There are a lot of uneducated hustlers, who can sell, but can't have a deep conversation about anything other than music.

This was not Michael.

Who sent me some money when I needed it, out of his payout from the sale of A&M. By today's standards it wouldn't even buy a business lunch, but it meant everything to me back then.

And we went skiing together in the year 2000. He invited me to sleep in his giant room at the Goldener Hirsch in Deer Valley.

He worked for SBK. He worked for Hybrid. He worked with the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

I remember him telling me after he fell off the board that he never cared if he flew on a private jet again. Which is the goal of the hoi polloi. Forget the rich who fly private on a regular basis, might even have their own plane, there are those a level below who get to fly on the small planes where you never have to wait and get hooked by the convenience. But Michael realized it was ultimately all b.s. He knew.

I'm learning.

And then he started to winter in Palm Springs. Michael is a dyed-in-the-wool New Yorker. At least he was, I'm still speaking in the present tense. And he spoke about getting together. But it was Covid and the vaccine didn't work for me...

Which no one could understand. Of course it worked for them. But I was taking a medication for my pemphigus that wiped out all my B cells.

That's another thing, boomers don't want to hear about your problems, they just want to soldier on, until it happens to them.

And I've been wondering recently why Michael hasn't contacted me. Now I'm vaccinated, now I'm going out.

And then today I read he died, at 76.

At least Seymour Stein made it to 80.

76. Tell a baby boomer they only have a few years left. They're never going to believe it, not them. Even though they took Social Security early because they believed it was their money, and they were worried about the program crapping out. What are you going to do when you're old? The government is not going to take pity on you, it's not going to give you any more. Maybe you can stay with your kids. Assuming you've got kids.

Or you can commit suicide, a death of despair. Honestly, I've contemplated that. If I run out of money. I've got no children. What else am I going to do?

And we keep putting things off, trips, seeing old friends.

And then we're infirm and can't travel, and our old friends die.

I'm not going to tell you how to live your life, what to do, other than to go to the doctor and listen to what they have to say. And while I'm at it, get a supplemental Medicare policy and be sure to sign up for a drug plan, if you don't, you're going to pay a penalty. Because if you can find an old person who doesn't take medication...I can't.

That's something you learn as you get older. You're in charge, you make the choices. And you bear the consequences. And there are no do-overs. Employ all the excuses you want. But at some point you have to stop blaming your parents, your upbringing, and bear the burden yourself.

But responsibility did not fit in with the hippie ethos. Which transformed into the ethos of greed, once it was legitimized by Reagan. Mine for me, that's what it's all about. So why should you expect others to take care of you when you need it?

I guess I'm pissed. That I won't see Michael Leon again. That so many in my generation are unprepared for what's coming down. And the fact that I'm going to die.

I'm going to let you in on a little secret. Assuming you're sick, you ultimately make peace with the fact you're going to pass. Like all this b.s. about fighting cancer mentally, that's just what it is, b.s. My cancer lowered my hemoglobin to the point where climbing a flight of stairs was challenging, not only physically, but mentally. Walking cross town in NYC the roads have a hump in the middle, that strained me. Ultimately I found tolerable iron pills which alleviated the problem to a great degree, but it's still there, just less, my hemoglobin never returned to normal.

All this is to say your friend with terminal cancer usually accepts their death when it comes near. It's those that are left who can't accept it.

I'm having a hard time accepting all the people who are passing. The rock stars. Classic rock records may still be around, but the people who made the music...

And the people I know. Or knew.

No one here gets out alive. Remember that.


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