I couldn't put it down. And I wasn't planning to read it at all. I figured I'd skim it, tell Harold about some positive points and move on. But I was hooked, I was gobsmacked, because this was my life.
I tell my shrink all the time... I might have been the oddball at Middlebury, a pre-judged outcast amongst a group of strivers studying for the test so they could get good grades and get into a good graduate school, live their professional life in the suburbs, have two kids and retire, but there were people just like me living in L.A. all the while.
Like Harold.
I know Harold pretty well, for decades, yet this isn't about the man but the experiences. There were those of hooked by rock and roll, who spent all of our money on records, who needed to get closer, who never gave up the dream. There's still a record business, but it's not the same. And still a touring business, but it's much more professional these days, and to a great degree still dominated by the old acts, but going to a club to hear a band you'd read about, one that had a deal, but no airplay...those days are through. As a matter of fact, all the days are through. Today's world doesn't resemble the sixties and seventies, never mind the eighties, whatsoever. It's disconcerting, and lonely. There's no center and nothing matters. Wait, did I say that? Does that evidence depression or my age or... If you used to work in the music business...everybody involved started to talk about how it was no longer fun. This was about 2003. Most of these people are no longer working in the business, some are not working at all, some think they are missing something, but I always tell them they are missing nothing.
The labels? There are only three, peopled by overpaid aged lords and underpaid young worker bees. The companies have been hollowed out, in the name of efficiency, in the name of the bottom line. But back in the day... Labels blew money constantly. Every album came with a tchotchke, a t-shirt or god knows what, there were billboards on Sunset Strip and endless parties, every night there was somewhere to go, where you wanted to go, it was a roving band of insiders, everybody knew everybody else, everybody was hustling and then it fell apart, credit the money generated by CDs, the universal promotion value of MTV and overpaid executives and then the internet came along to be the cherry on top. Used to be a national head of promotion made a million dollars, now you don't even know their name, and records are broken on social media, not the terrestrial airwaves. Yes, the live business has inherited the torch, and that is exciting, but there's already been consolidation. There's been a bifurcation, between recordings and live, and all the money is in live, when it used to be the reverse. So there's something to cheer about, yet it is different.
But for about two decades it was the same in tech. Remember when you hoovered up information, dreamed of upgrading your computer, tried new platforms and apps the day they were released? Same deal in music. But that's gone now in tech too.
There's a lot left, a whole hell of a lot left, but it's all niches, we're so deep in our own worlds that almost no one else knows what we're talking about.
I was surprised that Harold wrote about the first time he met me, said my "musical taste is somewhat standard: Eagles, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Led Zeppelin, 'Who's Next,' etc." but isn't it funny that all those acts have survived. I knew all the acts Harold talked about in this book, but I saw no need to demonstrate my bona fides by talking about the obscure, a feature of the cohesive music scene of yore. Today if you're wearing tight jeans, a motorcycle jacket and engineer boots, standing around cutting down everybody else's taste, the joke is on you, because no one cares.
That's what I realized after I winced reading Harold's description of my taste. No one is gonna read this book anyway. No one even reads the mainstream newspaper anymore and "Rolling Stone" is a joke. But my point is there's so much out there that almost nothing surfaces, almost nothing.
But it didn't used to be this way.
Which is why I was somewhat depressed reading this book. Because I remembered the passion, the excitement, the thrill...music was everything! But you're not gonna read Harold's book, even if you got it for free, I'd have to lock you up in a room and force you, because it's very hard to get anybody interested in anything, to spend any time with anything, unless they've got a burning desire to do so. I ain't gonna listen to more than fifteen seconds of your new song if I don't like it so far, and the real wakeup call is that no one else is gonna bother either. Our time is just too precious. But from the very beginning of Harold's book I was hooked, because this was my life too.
Harold was in Westchester (California, not New York) listening to the radio, buying singles... Hell, he even mentions "The Martian Hop," which was the very first single I bought, my mother purchased Four Seasons records previously, but this one I wanted, I needed, to be able to listen to it at home whenever I wanted.
And then there were the bands...
Yes, reading "Time Has Come Today" you'll hear stories of all the classics, from Badfinger to Ozzy, all the acts that had any traction back in the day. But the weird thing is most of them are broke. Working a day gig. I was having dinner with a friend who worked at the Enclave, he pulled up a picture of Tom Zutaut online, he's selling Kias now. Honorable work, but a far cry from signing Motley Crüe and Guns N' Roses. Everybody thought it would never end, they didn't save, they woke up one day and they'd been ripped-off, no one cared about them and they had to get a day job. Really, it will blow your mind. Dick Dodd of "Dirty Water" fame, you know, the Standells, is an assistant manager at a restaurant, he asks Harold for a job in the Rhino mailroom.
Yes, this book is a compendium of who's who, what was and where they're at today and in most cases it's not pretty. Life is short, but it's also long. These acts were on top of the hill, but in retrospect it was only a few years, and after that?
These people are icons to us. But the younger generation in most cases does not care. Like Arthur Lee and Love. The album "Forever Changes"... I'd had an interpretation in my head for decades, but in truth the title is what Arthur Lee said to the girl that he said he'd stay with forever when he broke up with her. Yes, forever changes...
There are an untold number of nuggets like this in the book. And unlike in Harold's preface, you should not read it randomly, but from the very beginning, it's linear, as is your life.
You will be reading the book and pausing constantly to look up old people online, to see what they're up to. I was at this girl's house in Westchester (New York), and we watched Iggy on TV, there was a concert broadcast and it was a big deal. Now let me look up Lisa today...
And the people I went to gigs with. High school. What ever happened to them? To tell you the truth, I've looked up everybody I know already, mostly decades ago, but I'm always hungry for new information. But now it's even harder to find the obscure, there's just so much information.
Yes, so much of "Time Has Come Today" is obscure, but not to us.
So the first half of the book is about Harold coming of age. Going to UCLA. Graduating. Trying to find his future and purpose. I knew he lived next to George Carlin, I did not know he bought a red Firebird convertible, which promptly lost its water pump. This was back when cars were not reliable, when what you drove in L.A. was important, when the young were too inexperienced to know that you stay away from certain automobiles. Like if you're young and not rich today absolutely do not buy a BMW, great car, but the repairs will bleed you dry. But you've got to know, it wasn't until the mid-seventies that the public realized that Japanese cars were so much more reliable... I read about a Lexus LS400 with just shy of a million miles on it, with no engine work, no nothing. A Lexus doesn't drive like a BMW, but it lasts a whole hell of a lot longer for a lot less money.
Then Harold finds his footing with the Rhino Records label and some of the stories are inside, but you read and you learn so much anyway. About the Monkees, about Gene Simmons. Invited to Gene's birthday party, Shannon Tweed tells Harold "Gene has no friends. It's all business contacts."
Every week, if not more frequently, people e-mail me about their book, they insist on sending it to me. Like I've got time to spend on their crappy tome. And they're almost all crappy, because in spite of the stories, books are about writing, and most people can't, write that is. Writing is a skill, you have to develop and stay at it. But since people wrote in school, they think they can write a riveting book. No. There are exceptions, but very, very few. Like the Harvey Lisberg book.
But Harold's book is on another level. Because it's diary entries. So the superfluous is edited out. He talks about going here and there, what happened and his judgment thereof in most cases in just a paragraph. All wheat, no chaff. So you don't have to see someone try their hand at flowery language, it's just the essence.
So...
If you're a youngster, you're not interested.
If you're a Gen-X'er, you're probably not interested either.
But if you are a baby boomer and you were bitten by the music bug, if you still live to play your records and go to the show, Harold's book will pull you down a rabbit hole and you won't come up until you're done. You'll be thinking about getting back to it while you're at work, doing other things, because "Time Has Come Today" is your life, you were at these shows. I saw George Harrison at the Forum with his hoarse voice just like Harold. I saw the Dolls at the Whisky. And unlike Harold, I was at the Troubadour Christmas eve when James Taylor, Carly Simon, Joni Mitchell, Peter Asher, Linda Ronstadt and Albert Brooks came on stage to sing Christmas carols with Flo & Eddie. There were maybe a couple of dozen people in the room. It was shocking. You had to be there, which is the point, we were there, it was the most important thing, to know all the records, see all the shows, and if you missed it, many times you missed it forever, like Harold, who went to see Flo & Eddie at the Troubadour two nights later and... You always wanted to show up, you needed to show up, it was part of your identity.
So if Harold thinks my writing about his book is gonna cause a landslide of sales he's wrong. No hype does that anymore, none. You've got to hear about it from a number of people, frequently one trusted source is not enough. And you've got to have the money and the time, and those are big hurdles.
But if you are a baby boomer rocker, "Time Has Come Today" is manna from heaven.
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