Lean on Me
April 13, 2005
I've been looking at pictures of Rich very much lately and one common thread I find is Rich always is leaning in toward the person he is being photographed with. This to me is a sure sign of the type of guy Rich was in life and as a friend. He always wanted to be close to the ones he loved. This brings me to one of my favorite pictures of me and Rich; it was the one from his voice recital. The year was 1988 or 1989 and it was his second or third recital with this voice coach. Characteristically the students stood alone on stage and sang a Christian song to a recorded track. In typical Rich-fashion, he broke that mold and decided to not only sing one of the songs Rich and I wrote together, but he invited me to accompany him on stage with my guitar. The voice teacher hesitantly said yes and the evening was settled on for us to play.
We chose to play a simple, but catchy, song (like most of our songs at the time) called "Never be the Same". We practiced pretty regularly, but I was still nervous about the performance with no other band members to blame if a wrong note was accidentally hit. Rich seemed to be confident as usual; he was more apprehensive about the song selection with the crowd expecting another "One Day at a Time, Sweet Jesus". Our parents were there to calm the crowd if a riot broke out. On the contrary, the crowd responded very nicely to our little song. I played it without much of a hitch and Rich's voice sounded as good as ever. I was a little stiff on stage because of the tension, but once I looked over to see Rich's complete charisma, I started to relax and move with some flavor. The video of the show is some where out there and if I ever find it, I'm sure it shows us having the same old fun of being on stage together. After the performance, we were greeted backstage and photographed for the cover of Rolling Stone Magazine.
Well that last part is not exactly true�we did get our photo taken (and yes, Rich was leaning in toward me), but it was credited to Uncle Whitey not Annie Leibovitz. Never the less, we did end up on the cover of Rolling Stone. Rich was always gifted at creating those trick photos that you would find at some booth at the beach or in an amusement park. The ones where you get your picture taken then you end up in the tundra of Alaska or on the Titanic or in the old west. This was one of those pictures�the headline read, "Ise, Breaking the Ise". I saw the original picture created by Rich at the funeral home during the viewings and it brought back all the memories of that evening. Now when I look at pictures of Rich and me or him with other loved ones and I see him leaning in toward the person, I always think how nice it would be to have him to lean on now. |
