10 Musical Memories

Here are a few of the many that I carry with me.

Music has played a big role in my life since the time I was a kid. My mother was musical. My father was not. I tried to be – I didn’t always succeed, but I’ve always been moved by people who can play a musical instrument or sing. It’s simple: music brings people together and connects us to a deeper part of ourselves. It tells powerful stories about what it means to be a human being in ways that words alone never can.

My film, Rolling Along, is kind of my song. I hope you like it. But first, here are a few of the many musical memories that I carry with me.

1. Piano. My mother had a childhood friend who became a piano teacher. They both decided that I should learn to play, so at nine years old, I was forced to take lessons. I hated to practice and resisted. More than a few times, my mother sat at the piano bench overseeing my “progress.” The piano was a constant source of friction in our relationship. Then one Christmas morning, after all the presents had been opened, my mother called my attention to an envelope still under the tree. It had my name on it. I opened it and inside was one sentence, “You no longer have to take piano lessons.”

2. Trumpet. When I was 12, I started playing the trumpet. I liked it better than piano, but I wasn’t very good. I played until my freshman year of high school. One day, the study hall teacher, who was also the band director, asked me to stop by his desk. He said, “Bill, if you were the coach of a baseball team that had three guys who could play shortstop but you needed a second baseman, what would you do?” The answer seemed pretty clear. Move one of the shortstops to second base, I said. He didn’t miss a beat. “Bill, I’d like you to switch from trumpet to french horn.” So I did.

3. Band One. I was the only athlete in my high school who played basketball but not football. Both teams had the same coach, and he frowned on boys who didn’t play football. But basketball meant everything to me, and I wanted to focus on getting ready for the season. So I found something else to do on Friday nights. At half time, I wasn’t in the locker room sucking on lemons and listening to the coach’s strategy or critiques of players, I was out there on the field – the tallest french horn player in the high school marching band.

4. Band Two. Ten years later, I was at Air Force Officer Training School in San Antonio, Texas. Every cadet had to clean latrines at 7 a.m. The only exception was if you were in the military group band, because it practiced then. I hadn’t played in six years, but I’ll admit that to get out of latrine duty, I volunteered my meager french horn talents again.

5. Bandstand. In the seventh grade, I discovered American Bandstand with Dick Clark. It was a hit TV show, where popular singers like Buddy Holly and Connie Francis performed live for high school kids who lined up to dance in a Philadelphia studio. I used to watch it every day with my big Webcor tape recorder next to the TV, recording music by such greats as Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, and The Everly Brothers. Then, in the ninth grade, my parents wanted me to look at a prep school, Mercersburg Academy in Pennsylvania. I never considered it, but said I’d visit if it meant I could stop in Philadelphia to try to get on American Bandstand. So one hot summer afternoon, I waited outside the studio on Market Street and got in for a taping. Suddenly, there I was, on the show I’d watched for years. I’d developed crushes on a few of the girls who were regulars on the show – one in particular, named Patty Molittieri. When I got on the set that day, I saw her sitting on one of the portable bleachers. I finally summoned enough 14-year-old courage to walk across the floor toward her. My heart was skipping. “Would you like to dance, Patty,” I said. “No,” she replied in a distinctive Philadelphia accent. “You’re too tall.”

6. Bruce. When I was a Knick in the 1970s, our team training camp was often held in September at Monmouth College in New Jersey. We spent two weeks two-to-a-room in the Empress Hotel in Asbury Park, steps from the boardwalk and from The Stone Pony, the club where a young Bruce Springsteen used to drop in for surprise performances with his oldest friends, as he still does. But it was only a few summers later that I really heard him. We’d rented a house down the shore, and in the middle of the night one night, we were bolted wide awake by a raspy, soaring anthem blaring from the house next door. All I could think was, “Who is that?” Then I made out the words, hearing those stories of broken heroes and runaway American dreams for the first time. Since then, I've seen Bruce on every tour, wherever I can. Not as often as many of his other true fans – like the guy who stopped me in the popcorn line during one show at the Meadowlands to ask, “What are you doing here?” ‘I’m a Bruce fan,” I said. “I try to go to a concert every tour.” “One concert?” he said, incredulous. “This is my 23rd this year.”

7. Bach. In college, I almost flunked out my freshman year, due to French and biology. So I started spending a lot of time in the library. A warning bell would ring each night at 11:30 p.m. before the library closed, and I’d head home to the suite I shared with five roommates. But one night, something drew me to the Princeton Chapel instead. It’s really more of a cathedral. It was empty and quiet, except for someone, somewhere, who was playing the big pipe organ. I sat down alone and let myself be transported. From that night on, I always left the library a little early and went to sit in the chapel on my own, listening to whomever it was practicing the pipe organ. That’s how I developed my lifelong love of Bach fugues…and I never told my roommates.

8. Tower of Song. I’ve always liked the Canadian poet and folk singer Leonard Cohen. One night after I’d left politics, he was performing at Madison Square Garden. In the last minute, I got two tickets, and ran to pick them up at the will-call window. A woman was standing there alone, looking lost. She said she was Ukrainian, visiting New York for the first time. She loved Leonard Cohen and had hoped to get a ticket, but the show was sold out. I offered her one of mine. As we went in, the security guards and ticket takers greeted me by name, as they have since my Knick years. We got to our seats and some concert-goers shouted, “Hi, Bill!” “Why are they calling your name?” she asked. “I used to work here,” I said. I never saw her again.

9. Opera. While studying at Oxford, I played two games a month for an Italian basketball team that was sponsored by the Simmenthal Meatpacking Company in Milan, commuting twice a month from England to join them in European Cup competitions. The team’s business manager introduced me to opera, taking me to see Verdi’s Rigoletto at the famous La Scala opera house. Most of my time in Milan was focused less on opera, though, and more on Charlie Max’s, an underground dance club where I went with two teammates after games.

Fast forward 40 years, when, after leaving politics, I’d joined the Starbucks board of directors. The story of Starbucks is really the story of its founder, Howard Schultz, who got the idea for the company from an espresso bar in Milan, not long after I’d played there. To mark the anniversary, the board held one of its meetings in Milan. One of the events took place right across from La Scala. It was a beautiful May night, and as the board sat tasting coffee, eating pasta, and celebrating the company’s start, I noticed a group of singers assembling in the plaza. They burst into Puccini’s Nessun Dorma. It was magical.

10. Healing. Originally, Rolling Along opened with a Van Morrison song, “And the Healing Has Begun.” But two weeks before the film was set to premiere at the Tribeca Festival, I learned that Van Morrison wouldn’t let me use it. The clock was ticking, and I was stuck. I called my friend Steve Van Zandt of the E Street Band – one of New Jersey’s, and America’s, greatests – for advice. I’d sent him a version of the film a few months before. “Bruce wrote a song for Clarence and me in the early 80’s called ‘Summer at Signal Hill’. It might work,” he suggested. “Great! Can I use it?” “Oh,” he said, “Bruce sold his catalog to Sony two years ago.” But with the help of Jon Landau, Bruce’s longtime agent, we somehow got quick approval. I realized that the point of the Van Morrison song had been the title – “And the Healing Has Begun” – something I hope my film can help speed along, too. It meant a lot to have Steve ride to the rescue, and point us to the perfect Jersey ending to this part of my story.

Thanks for reading,

Bill

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