Nick Ashford and Jerry Leiber Die

Today was a bad day for great songwriting teams.

Nick Ashford died. With his wife, Valerie Simpson, he wrote such hits as “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” and “You’re All I Need to Get By.”

As if that wasn’t sad enough, Jerry Leiber died also. With his writing partner Mike Stoller, he wrote such enduring classics as “On Broadway,” and “Hound Dog.”

I got to work with both of  these extraordinary talents when I worked at A and R Studios, in New York in the 1970′s.

Now, I’m a psychotherapist. I work with a certain group of people who for one reason or another have a hard time believing in love. If there is anything I do believe in, it is love. Last night, my wife and I were having a discussion about how we came to have this fundamental trust in relationship, while so many of our clients do not.

When my clients say that they do not believe that it is possible to have a good, healthy, enduring relationship, I ask them if they can think of anyone they knew, or heard about, who had a great relationship. All too often, they say no.

One thing I have learned through my work is that we often find what we are looking for. Something may be right in front of our nose, but if it doesn’t fit into our world-view we simply don’t see it. So maybe for these folks love is all around and they just don’t recognize it.

But how did they come to the place where they can’t see love, even if it does exist? In most cases, these folks didn’t see good relationships in their own home. That is where we learn much about what the world is like.

But we can also can learn about love through the other relationships we get to witness.

And that winds us back to Ashford and Simpson, and Leiber and Stoller. Both of these couples, at least from what I got to observe, had great relationships. I got to see that at a tender and important age. They taught me, both in their partnerships, and through their songs, that love can be true.

When I met Nick and Valerie, they had had tremendous success as songwriters, having written some of the best hits of all time for top artists like Ray Charles, Marvin Gaye, and Diana Ross, but they were just starting out as a performing act. As a result, they did not have the inflated egos that turned so many of the stars I worked with into jerks. Nick and Val were, if anything, real. They were genuinely nice, funny, smart people, which was rare in the music biz. Oh. And mind-boggingly brilliant.

The name of their production company was Hopsack and Silk, and that told you a great deal about who they were in their relationship. The funny thing is, when I think about it now, I’m not sure which was which.

Valerie was all professional. She was the taskmaster of the duo. Nick was a bit more of a rapscallion. Nick would sneak cigarettes and beg us not to tell Valerie. This is an especially sad memory, since Nick died at 70 from throat cancer.

I forgot to mention they were both exceedingly attractive looking people, as well. And as anyone who saw them perform would tell you, Valerie was beautiful but Nick had that sexy thing. Valerie had the silkier, more polished voice, while in the vocal department, Nick was rougher.

But as different as they were, they were most definitely a couple, and deeply in love. They had a great relationship that worked and endured for decades. Though there was the playful friction that made for heat between them, they always had the best vibe between them when I worked with them in the studio.

When you saw them singing their classic love duets looking in each other’s eyes, you knew that it was “the real thing.” Ain’t nothing like it!

Because Nick and Valerie had so much love between them, they had extra to give to others. They gave their hearts to the audiences they played for, and to all that came in their sphere. As a young, up and coming engineer, they gave me opportunities to record the acts they were working with. They taught me the motown style of production and exposed me to some of the heaviest cats in the biz. They always made themselves accessible.

They were a joy to be around, and my heartfelt condolences go out to Valerie, their family, and all their wonderful friends and associates.

Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller weren’t lovers, but they also had a great, enduring partnership that lasted a lifetime.

There were few thrills to match having the opportunity to work with, and hang out with, Leiber and Stoller, who wrote some of the greatest songs of the 1950′s and ’60′s.

They too, were a study in contrasts. They fit together in a synergistic whole, where the sum was exponential from the parts.

Mike Stoller was the trained musician of the outfit. He was elegant, cultured, studied, and a worthy craftsman.

Jerry Leiber, the lyric guy, was all street. He was fast, kooky, and wild. Leiber was all about the feel. It didn’t matter if the recording was technically perfect. What mattered was if it had that groove, that spark that made you move and say, “yeah.”

This combo of culture and street resulted in some of the most memorable, resounding, enduring hits from the rock era’s golden peak. They made history with Elvis’s “Hound Dog,” could move you deep with a song like Ben E. King‘s “Stand by Me” and do one of the hardest things to do in music, make you laugh, with a tune like The Coasters, “Yakety Yak.”

It was one of the greatest realizations of my rock and roll fantasies to hang out with this duo in the studio. Watching them work, they had a perfectly smooth balance. They appreciated each other, and gave space to their partner to be who they were and bring themselves to the collaboration. That’s a lot of what a good relationship is all about.

(One of my favorite moments was going out to dinner with these fascinating raconteurs, and having the graceful Mike Stoller teach this 18-year-old boy from Brooklyn how to bone a fish. I’m still requested by all I know to perform this surgery.)

I’ m not a religious man. If I have any religion at all, it was the one I learned in the great church of Rock and Roll from folks like Jerry and Mike when they said,

“No I won’t be afraid, no I won’t be afraid/ just as long as you stand, stand by me.”

And when Nick and Valerie told us,

“Cause baby, there ain’t no mountain high enough/ ain’t no valley low enough/ ain’t no river wide enough/ to keep me from gettin’ to you, baby.”

I was lucky. I had parents who loved one another. I learned that love was real from them. But it didn’t hurt to see that some of my heroes not only wrote the music and lyrics, but sang the tune in their own lives. I learned that love could be trusted from the great songwriting teams of Leiber and Stoller, and Ashford and Simpson.

Thanks Jerry. Thanks Nick.

I see these two departed music men in that great control room in the sky. Nick, with his leonine head and big smile has his feet up on the producer’s desk. Jerry is running around the control room, hitting the talk back, and screaming, “That’s it! That’s the take! Playback!” They’re making hit records for the heavenly choir, with Marvin and Elvis singing lead. And everyone up there is just moving a little funkier, and feelin’ the love a little more, for these two guys having shown up.

Dr. Glenn Berger is a psychotherapist, relationship counselor, business and artist’s coach, and young person’s mentor. He sees patients in New York City, in Mt. Kisco, NY, and around the world by Skype.

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Shrinky’s Guide to Money

Do you think about money? Are you worried about money? Do you wish you were making more money? Do you wish you had more money?

Dr. Glenn Berger is a psychotherapist, relationship counselor, business and artist’s coach, and young person’s mentor. He sees patients in New York City, in Mt. Kisco, NY, and around the world by Skype.

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at Jones Beach

In a world where we are on the verge of a self-inflicted economic apocalypse and Amy Winehouse has just died, there was a bright spot on the night of July 27, 2011.

Aretha Franklin is most definitely alive. Last night, the Goddess of Soul (she has ascended way beyond queen, and even past empress) gave a life-affirming, body-stirring, spirit-moving, rave-up performance at Jones Beach, on Long Island, in New York.

Aretha has had her troubles over the years, and we all feared for her life when she disappeared in 2010 for some mysterious medical procedure. But reports of her demise are greatly exaggerated. She was looking big in her mu-mu and she sported one high heel and one “blue boot.” But she told us she was there to have a good time and that she did with glowing vibrancy for close to two hours.

Any Aretha fan goes to her concerts with some trepidation about the more than 50% likelihood that she will just “phone it in.” But last night it was as if Aretha had something to prove and she proved it.

There were some execs from her favorite record label, Ahmet Ertegun’s Atlantic Records, at the gig. Maybe she wanted to show them that this 69-year-old was as good as she was when she first cut “Natural Woman,” and “Chain of Fools.” She drove the crowd insane with her performance of those timeless classics last night.

Aretha went for every note and got there. She put all of her heart and soul into her singing and she was nothing short of astonishing, a complete blessed freak of nature.

It was clear that she was doing this for the pure joy of singing when she performed “Moody’s Mood for Love,” where she got to show off her jazz scatting chops.

Aretha took to the piano to perform Paul Simon’s “Bridge Over Troubled Waters.” Her call and response riffing led her to abandon her set-list, get up from the piano and take it to the podium with Jeannie Tenney’s “One Night With the King.” This was her opportunity to add full out gospel to her night that included R and B, funk, disco, and jazz.

Standing in her white and gold floor length dress with one arm behind her back, her eyes closed and looking at the lord, she went into an inspired improvisation that went on for endless minutes and left me feeling I was in the temple of Isis in the presence of the Oracle. I was transported, giggling, crying, and on the verge of speaking in tongues.

After the serious spirituality, she and her huge, excellent band, directed by the adroit Mr. Thomas (I didn’t get his first name, someone please let me know!) brought it home to the funk with “Freeway of Love (Pink Cadillac)” and “R-E-S-P-E-C-T.”

Everyone in the audience was moving, showing respect for the goddess. It looked like she didn’t want to leave the stage, returning to wave and blow kisses to the crowd. But we knew the show was over when her man took her handbag out from under the piano, where it remained throughout the show. Whatever she keeps in that bag, she wants it always close at hand. If that’s what makes her sound that way, I don’t blame her.

I feel sad for all that missed this historic night. But you have another chance to see her. She’ll be playing Coney Island on August 4^th. Get on that D train, and go to the temple. You will find yourself in the presence of the divine.

Dr. Glenn Berger is a psychotherapist, relationship counselor, business and artist’s coach, and young person’s mentor. He sees patients in New York City, in Mt. Kisco, NY, and around the world by Skype.

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One of the great thrills of existence  is that there is an endless amount to learn. A while ago I wrote a blog post predicting that as baby boomers entered the last third of their life there would be a resurgence of the 60′s values that many held in their youth. I was excited to discover that I was not alone in this hope. Dr. Theodore Roszak, famous for his culture-defining 1968 work, The Making of a Counterculture, and a leading proponent of ecopsychology, has written a book on this very topic called The Making of an Elder Culture, published by New Society Publishers.

Sad to say, the New York Times reported on July 13th that Dr. Roszak has died.

The sadness of this event is eased by the joy of having read this book and having become familiar with the work of Dr. Roszak (who I am embarrassed to admit I was not familiar with — there’s that joy of new discovery!).

This book was written by Dr. Roszak at 76 years of age. Despite illness, he maintained and embodied the spirit that he writes about. He wrote with a vigor and an idealism of a person one-third his age.

In his latest book, Roszak made a compelling case that as the baby boomers live for decades past 65, they will reengage with their original, countercultural values. The 60′s were a time when we believed that if we raised individual consciousness we could change the world. Boomers will reengage this vision, and take a leadership role in making the world a better, fairer place.

Roszak saw the baby boom generation as the leading edge of a profound change in demographics that will dominate world culture for the foreseeable future. The combination of lowering birth rates and longevity will make the world an older, and hopefully, wiser place.

Dr. Roszak agreed with the Confucian concept that we cannot “pull the shoots.” That is, we must respect nature’s rate of growth and change. There is nothing, he asserted, that has the potential to raise consciousness like aging.  When vast numbers of people live into their 90′s and beyond, their values will shape our world. We will become a world that prioritizes wellness, sustainable living, and learning. The values of consumption and growth for growth’s sake will give way to a world where mutual care will be of utmost concern.

Roszak laid down a challenge for this aging generation. He said that, “Theirs must be a noble, far-sighted cause. They must be the spearhead of a compassionate economy that spreads its benefits to everyone.” He had the audacity to propose an optimistic world vision that results in a healthy relationship with the places we live and our broader environment, and leads to a spiritual realization.

Discovering the works of Roszak has particular meaning for me because I am a proud member of the Radical Passe. The values of the counterculture have stuck with me through the decades of narcissism, greed, and fear. It isn’t just the ’60′s that have had a sustained appeal for me. I’m a fan of a whole world of thought that flowered with romanticism in 19th century Europe and passed on into a coma in 1980 with the election of Ronald Reagan.

This was the tradition of humanism. It included the belief that the unexamined life was not worth living. It questioned the alienating values of industrial capitalism. Its religion was love. This tradition included Carl Jung, John Lennon and Ralph Waldo Emerson. It brought us the art films from Jean Renoir to Bernardo Bertolucci. We believed in the experiential educational principles of John Dewey and the therapy of Fritz Perls. It was based on the belief that there was something better to life than the world we inherited. We believed that money, stuff, and fitting in were not life’s ultimate goals and something “more” was worth fighting for.

Unfortunately, since this scene is mostly passed and not comprehended by most, my heroes are mostly dead. Ashley Montagu, Erich Fromm, Confucius, and Tolstoy are all gone. (There are a few exceptions, including Harville Hendrix and some of my personal teachers who are not so well known). So I sometimes feel a little lonely at this end of the philosophical spectrum.

This increased my joy at discovering Roszak. Here was a guy whose thought and life I could admire. This makes his passing all the sadder.

On the other hand, we can take his death as a challenge. Let’s live Roszak’s dream, and take up his mantle. It is time for us to take the leadership role in making the world more to our liking, a better place for all.

Buy Dr. Roszak’s [amazon_link id="0865716617" target="_blank" ]The Making of an Elder Culture: Reflections on the Future of America’s Most Audacious Generation[/amazon_link] here.

Buy [amazon_link id="0520201221" target="_blank" ]The Making of a Counter Culture: Reflections on the Technocratic Society and Its Youthful Opposition, With a new introduction.[/amazon_link] here.

“Why haven’t I heard of you?” is Kenny White’s least favorite question.

When Kenny, a lanky guy with a craggy face, winsome eyes, and a wry smile, relates this to me, he nods knowingly, like a guy who still believes in a just universe, but is having his faith tested.

Kenny White is a terrific piano-playing singer-songwriter.

I met Kenny 30 years ago, when I moved up to small-town Massachusettes in 1980. I had been a successful recording engineer in New York City for close to a decade, and I gave up the big time for a more balanced, bucolic life. I quickly entered the music scene around Boston, engineering and producing folk albums and the scores for John Sayles’s films, composed by a local guy named Mason Daring. Mason was a fixture on the scene and knew all the best local players. Kenny was his keyboardist of choice.

We worked on some wonderful projects together. Coming from New York, and used to working with the heaviest cats in the biz, I was a wee bit snobby. But Kenny impressed me. He was right up there with the top players.

Kenny was doing everything a musician could do in the Boston area, but got tired of making small bucks in a small pond. He asked me for some connections in the studio and jingle scene in New York, which was very hot in the 80’s. I turned him on to a few names, and he made the big move. He started out by providing tracks for his buddy, Robin Batteau, who was writing for a jingle house owned by one of the biggest names in the industry, Joey Levine.

When one of Kenny’s first tracks, made on a little home-style 8 track, was bought by an ad agency, Joey wanted to meet the guy. He gave Kenny a gig. Soon after, Robin wrote the theme for “Heartbeat of America” for Chevrolet.

Within a year, Kenny, Robin, and a guitarist, also from the Boston area, named Jeff Southworth, were the hottest guys in the business. One day Kenny would be conducting the London Symphony Orchestra. The next, his band, called the Supreme Court, and featuring the singer, Marc Cohn, were playing at Caroline Kennedy’s wedding in Hyannis. (He also worked on Marc’s hit “Walkin’ to Memphis.”) Some of his tracks, played on the Super Bowl, reached billions of people.

This was a big change for Kenny. At 19, he had dropped out of college to move with his band to Boston. He struggled for a few years, took just the right amount drugs, got food anyway he could, and eventually worked at a manual labor job. He played crappy gigs in the worst parts of town, making $12 for six sets worth of music. Eventually he was “discovered” by local legends Livingston Taylor and Jonathan Edwards, but it was always a scuffle to make ends meet in the rather small Boston music scene. So the New York jingle scene was a wonderful thing, but it meant that he put his goal of doing his own music away.

Kenny always liked making the music in the jingle world, but he grew tired of the advertising clients and their senseless demands. After 15 or so years of non-stop work he found himself getting “ornery,” and knew this was a signal that it was time to do something else.

Besides, the very digital technology that Kenny used to become successful had grown into a monster that ate the industry. Anyone could make music on their Mac, and everyone did. Though there are still a few guys earning big bucks in music for advertising, the business has suffered a similar fate to that of the music business in general. Now you can buy tons of great music cheap at the push of a button on the internet, so there is little reason to pay a premium for a guy like Kenny.

This shift in the industry, and Kenny’s orneriness, coincided with the break-up of his marriage. Kenny got into therapy and realized he needed a new direction. He was avoiding something important. His talents led Peter Wolf of the J.Geils band to ask him to produce his records, which was terrific. He got to work with greats like Keith Richards. But he knew there was still more he had to do.

Kenny was flush, and he had the time to figure out what was lacking. Through his self-exploration, songs started coming out of him. For years, he had been saying that he was going to do his own thing, but when the next jingle client called, he would put his music back on the shelf and it never got done. Now there was no excuse. He made an album. What was he going to do with it? He decided it was time to go on the road.

That was about ten years ago, now. In that time Kenny has made three full albums and does about 100 shows a year.

Along the way, Judy Collins heard his first album. Judy signed him to her record label, Wildflower Records, after one listen. Judy’s imprimatur carries some meaning. Judy has unerring taste. She could always pick a great song and songwriter, having virtually discovered Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen, among others. Kenny’s second and third album are on her label.

Having left the business myself to become a psychotherapist (and a blogger) I lost touch with Kenny since our days of working together. In June, I was at the library in my town of Ossining, in Westchester, New York. I was excited to see that Kenny was going to be playing in the beautiful theatre in that building. It was a chance to catch up with an old friend, and to hear what he’d been up to.

Kenny played to a full house on a pleasant Sunday afternoon. I expected a good show, but I was thrilled when it turned out to be a great one. First, I was surprised at what a relaxed and easy performer Kenny is. I always thought of him as a studio guy; I didn’t know about his history on the road. He says that though he had played out a lot in the past, this time it’s been different. He was always nervous before, but now he feels at ease. You can tell: he’s funny, confident, and inviting. He makes it easy to listen to him.

A humble guy, Kenny puts down his piano playing, calling it “eyewash” — pleasant to look at but lacking in substance. No musician I’ve ever met likes his own playing, and I think Kenny is no exception to this rule. His playing is tasteful and deft. He has chops, but he’s not a noodler. He plays his notes for a reason. He’s got enough energy and harmonic weight that he can use the instrument to fill up the space of an entire band, and make it fun, too.

But Kenny says the important things to him now are the songs and the lyrics, and that’s where Kenny truly shines. His songs are for grown-ups. They are intelligent, meaningful, rich, ironic, soulful, and filled with a broad range of feeling.

His vocals fit somewhere in the singer-songwriter mold of a Randy Newman; he doesn’t have the pipes of a Beyonce, but he uses his instrument in a way that conveys the depth of meaning and feeling of his songs. He has a way of reaching out to the listener. When you listen to Kenny you pay attention to the words, and they are a delight.

During the show, when Kenny asked how many in the audience had never heard of him, about 90% of the people raised their hands. For a crowd that had no clue who he was, they loved him. They gave him a standing ovation, demanded an encore, and bought lots of his CD’s.

So we return to the question Kenny hates: why haven’t you heard of him? I can’t really say for sure, but I’m going to make some educated guesses.

First of all, the music business is in critical condition these days. Part of the reason for that is technology. Why pay for music when you can get it for free? Another part of the reason is that music no longer holds the place in our culture that it did in the ‘60’s. Theory has it that people get most attached to music in their teenage years, and the great buying bubble, the baby boomers, are now buying hearing aids instead of Led Zeppelin. With the advent of services like Rhapsody, if grownups are listening to anything, it’s the stuff they listened to in their youth. Teens like music, but they prefer app games and XTube videos. Then there might be the fact that a lot of the music promoted by the industry in the last 20 years has sucked. In this argument, the American music business is like the American car industry. People don’t buy American cars because they just don’t make ‘em like they usedta. All of these things are true, and they make it hard for anyone to cut through the noise enough to get noticed by a larger audience.

But I think it is more than that.

The audience in Ossining was no different than the audiences Kenny encounters most places. When people hear him, they love him.  But as a 57-year-old guy who makes smart, funny music for adults, it is hard for him to find promoters in the music world to think outside the box enough to see his financial potential. If you are not the next Adele, they’re not interested. After ten years of promoting himself, he has just gotten an agent.

If there is anyone who still pays for music, it is the very demographic that would love a guy like Kenny. But in this age of Lady Gaga and a 9.2 unemployment rate, most people in the music business are operating out of fear. As one industry insider said to me, when he gets a music business guy on the phone, he’s got about 10% of his attention, because the other 90% is worrying when the pink slip is going to appear on his desk.

There’s something wrong with a culture where there’s a huge audience for a guy like Kenny, but because the business experts who control the purse strings can’t fit him into the tween box, his exposure is limited. The experts will pay for his music if he’s selling cars, but not if he’s giving expression to the deepest strains of human feeling and experience.

That’s the reason why you don’t know who he is.

But that doesn’t stop Kenny. He’s a model for us boomers. Rather than resting on his laurels, and getting nostalgic about the past, he is looking forward, and continues to take new risks every day. This has put him at the top of his game.

And you shouldn’t let it stop you. Check out his music at his website, kennywhite.net, or his facebook fan page, http://www.facebook.com/kennywhitemusic. Or buy his latest here: [amazon_link id="B0031Y4A80" target="_blank" ]Comfort in the Static[/amazon_link]

Dr. Glenn Berger is a psychotherapist, relationship counselor, business and artist’s coach, and young person’s mentor. He sees patients in New York City, in Mt. Kisco, NY, and around the world by Skype.

Are you looking for instant relief from anxiety or anger?

 

Purchase Shrinky’s Remedies, apps for the iPhone, iPod Touch, and the iPad.

 

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Shrinky’s Remedies for Anxiety and

Anger Management Featured in Mac|Life

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Shrinky: The App for Anxiety and Anger

Shrinky in Mac|Life

As a gift to all the dads out there – since you are so important, here is the best thing you can do to insure that your kids will turn out ok.

In the first years of life, kids learn about themselves and the world from their parents. The things we say to our kids, and the way we treat them, form the blueprints of how they feel about themselves for life. Here’s a story from my own life to show you what I mean.

One day a couple of years ago, when my son was about three years old, I came home from work to find him standing on a windowsill. Now don’t worry. It wasn’t a very high windowsill.  He wasn’t really in any kind of danger.

He turned to me and said, “Look at me, daddy!”

Now I could’ve responded to this in one of many ways.

If I thought he was trying to defy me, I would have yelled at him saying, “Get down from there this instant, young man!”

If I would’ve been afraid, out of my own anxiety I would have said, “Oh my gosh, get down, you’re going to hurt yourself!”

If I was distracted, tired at the end of a long day at work, I might have just ignored him.

But on that strange and mysterious day, (I’m only telling you about the time I think I got it right. I’m too embarrassed to tell you about all the times I know I got wrong.) I looked at him and said, “Look at you!”

A few seconds later, he climbed down.

What would my son have learned about himself if I had reacted in those other ways?

If I had yelled at him, he would have come to believe that he was bad.

If I had reacted with fear, he would learn that he couldn’t trust himself and that he was incapable.

If I ignored him, he would feel that he was unimportant.

But what did my son really need from his dad, the most important guy in his world, at that moment?

What he needed was to be recognized, to have his mastery praised. You see, my boy had mastered so little at that point in his life. He couldn’t draw a circle. But this was something he could do well – and he wanted me to see it – to acknowledge it – and celebrate it.

By looking at him, acknowledging him, appreciating him, and praising him, he learned that he is good, he is lovable, he is capable, and he is important.

He learned about the world through his dad, too. He learned that the world is a safe place that he can trust and is filled with love.

These are the building blocks of confidence and happiness in life.

Each of our children is like a tiny acorn. If we give this seed the proper emotional sunlight, soil, and water, our children will grow into mighty oaks. We cultivate our children by letting them know that we love them just as they are. That’s what dads do, and I think that’s pretty important.

And worth celebrating. Happy Father’s Day.

Dr. Glenn Berger is a psychotherapist, relationship counselor, business and artist’s coach, and young person’s mentor. He sees patients in New York City, in Mt. Kisco, NY, and around the world by Skype.

Are you looking for instant relief from anxiety or anger?

 

Purchase Shrinky’s Remedies, apps for the iPhone, iPod Touch, and the iPad.

 

Carry proven therapeutic techniques in your pocket, to use whenever you need them, all for $2.99.

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FATHER FORGETS

W. Livingston Larned

Listen, son: I am saying this as you lie asleep, one little
paw crumpled under your cheek and the blond curls stickily
wet on your damp forehead. I have stolen into your room alone.
Just a few minutes ago, as I sat reading my paper in the
library, a stifling wave of remorse swept over me. Guiltily
I came to your bedside.

There are the things I was thinking, son: I had been cross
to you. I scolded you as you were dressing for school because
you gave your face merely a dab with a towel. I took you to
task for not cleaning your shoes. I called out angrily when
you threw some of your things on the floor.

At breakfast I found fault, too. You spilled things. You
gulped down your food. You put your elbows on the table. You
spread butter too thick on your bread. And as you started off
to play and I made for my train, you turned and waved a hand
and called, “Goodbye, Daddy!” and I frowned, and said in
reply, “Hold your shoulders back!”

Then it began all over again in the late afternoon. As I came
up the road I spied you, down on your knees, playing marbles.
There were holes in your stockings. I humiliated you before
your boyfriends by marching you ahead of me to the house.
Stockings were expensive-and if you had to buy them you would
be more careful! Imagine that, son, from a father!

Do you remember, later, when I was reading in the library, how
you came in timidly, with a sort of hurt look in your eyes?
When I glanced up over my paper, impatient at the interruption,
you hesitated at the door. “What is it you want?” I snapped.

You said nothing, but ran across in one tempestuous plunge,
and threw your arms around my neck and kissed me, and your
small arms tightened with an affection that God had set
blooming in your heart and which even neglect could not wither.
And then you were gone, pattering up the stairs.

Well, son, it was shortly afterwards that my paper slipped
from my hands and a terrible sickening fear came over me. What
has habit been doing to me? The habit of finding fault, of
reprimanding-this was my reward to you for being a boy. It
was not that I did not love you; it was that I expected too
much of youth. I was measuring you by the yardstick of my own
years.

And there was so much that was good and fine and true in your
character. The little heart of you was as big as the dawn
itself over the wide hills. This was shown by your spontaneous
impulse to rush in and kiss me good night. Nothing else matters
tonight, son. I have come to your bedside in the darkness, and
I have knelt there, ashamed!

It is feeble atonement; I know you would not understand these
things if I told them to you during your waking hours. But
tomorrow I will be a real daddy! I will chum with you, and suffer
when you suffer, and laugh when you laugh. I will bite my
tongue when impatient words come. I will keep saying as if it
were a ritual: “He is nothing but a boy-a little boy!”

I am afraid I have visualized you as a man. Yet as I see you
now, son, crumpled and weary in your cot, I see that you are
still a baby. Yesterday you were in your mother’s arms, your
head on her shoulder. I have asked too much, too much.

Dr. Glenn Berger is a psychotherapist, relationship counselor, business and artist’s coach, and young person’s mentor. He sees patients in New York City, in Mt. Kisco, NY, and around the world by Skype.

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The legendary soul singer,  Solomon Burke, died on October 10, 2010. The King was on his way to a gig in Amsterdam.

I had the blessed fortune of working with King Solomon in 1983, remixing a live album of his for Rounder Records, called “Soul Alive.” Of all the unique characters I got to work with in my years in the music biz, Mr. Burke was one of my favorite. Solomon told me that he had a Cadillac, a girl friend, a child, and a church in every city of America. He would land at the airport in, let’s say, Chattanooga, Tennessee, and his car and woman would be waiting for him.

Solomon’s gigs were made up of endless medleys interspersed with his personal brand of sermon. The King’s philosophy, at its heart, could be summed up in one word. He told us that the word love was overused these days, as he purred in his rich baritone, “I love you. I love you. I LOVE you.” You could feel the women in the audience sweat. But though the King truly walked his talk by siring at least 21 children, he was something of a feminist.

“And if he doesn’t love the child you had with another man, don’t give him none!” he would shout to the hot squeals of the women in the audience. “You don’t need a man to sign your welfare check for you!”

The big guy and I had lots of fun together in the studio. He had a great sense of humor. But I learned later on that it was not a good idea to mess with the King.

In the late 1980’s I worked with Paul Shaffer of David Letterman fame on a song called, “What is Soul.” The song was co-written and produced by Shaffer, the god-like Steve Cropper, original guitar-playing member of the Memphis Stax rhythm section sometimes known as Booker-T and the MG’s, and writer of such timeless classics as Sittin’ On the Dock of the Bay,

and Don Covay, another immortal soul-cat who wrote Aretha Franklin’s super-funky hit, “Chain of Fools.”

Covay would come into the studio each and every time and grab me by the shoulders, look me in th eyes and say, “Glenn? Are we goin to make history today?”

I would say yes, and then he’d say, “Then I’m ready. Let’s make a hit record.”

Shaffer’s idea for the record, which would be a part of his album, “Coast to Coast,” was to reassemble the “Soul Clan.” In the early 1960’s, Atlantic Records, headed by the R and B loving Turk, Ahmet Ertegun, were making the hottest soul records in the nation. A group of the extraordinary singing and writing talents from that label came together in 1968 and cut one single. Circumstances led to the almost immediate dissolution of this holy grail of supergroups and aficionados of soul tried for decades to reunite these players. Shaffer, Cropper, and Covay had almost managed to do it. On this one record appeared the original surviving members Covay and Ben E. King of “Stand By Me” fame (check out the beautiful and departed River Phoenix in this clip),

along with Wilson Pickett who performed such hits as the seminal “In the Midnight Hour,”co-wrote with Cropper.

All that was missing was the King himself. (Otis Redding, who sang “Dock of the Bay,” and Joe Tex, of “Skinny Legs and All,” fame, were dead.)

Shaffer got Burke on the phone. We were psyched. But the reunion second only to the Beatles was not to be. Burke told Paul that not only would he not sing on the song, “What is Soul,” but that he had written it, (He hadn’t. Shaffer, Cropper, and Covay had.) and if Shaffer insisted on putting it out, he would sue! Alas. You gotta love it.

The moral of the story is, you can’t go back. In Cropper’s day, you’d write a song in a few hours at night, cut the A side from 10 in the morning till lunch, take a break, do a little blues jam for a B side, that might turn into “Green Onions,” press the record, stick a $20 dollar bill in the sleeve, bring it over to the local radio station, and in 24 hours you’d know if you had a hit. (Notice on this clip that this hit-machine of a combo was all the more extraordinary in the Memphis of the mid-60′s for having white and black guys in the same band.)

Shaffer’s record was ruined by the taste-deaf record company execs who kept demanding changes to make it marketable. Over-produced, we worked on it for months. At one point, in rageful frustration, Wilson Pickett screamed, “You pluckin’! You chicken pluckin’ now!”

You can’t go back. Isn’t that what the sweet pain in art is all about? The King is dead and the soul clan will never be reunited. This moment in American musical history is no more. But I get to hold onto these memories. And Solomon Burke, with songs like, “Everybody Needs Somebody to Love,” (and in Solomon’s case, it should have had the sub-title, “And I’m Available”) and his 21 children, 90 grandchildren and 19 great-grandchildren, truly leaves behind a legacy that will long endure.

Dr. Glenn Berger is a psychotherapist, relationship counselor, business and artist’s coach, and young person’s mentor. He sees patients in New York City, in Mt. Kisco, NY, and around the world by Skype.

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Purchase Shrinky’s Remedies, apps for the iPhone, iPod Touch, and the iPad.

 

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On September 15, 2005 David and I went to see the Rolling Stones at Madison Square Garden in New York City. It was our way of celebrating our 50th birthdays, which came three weeks apart.

David had been my best friend in high school. We only see each other once a year now. He is on the road 300 days a year traveling to places like Tajikistan to help people with the treatment and prevention of AIDS. We get together each year to celebrate the ridiculousness of how old we’re getting and how long we’ve known each other. Soon we will have been friends for 40 years.

Though it’s always wonderful getting together, this time was unique. It wasn’t only the milestone birthday. The Stones meant something special to us. I was indifferent to the band until David dragged me to see them at the same venue of Madison Square Garden in 1972, when we were sixteen.

Going to concerts was our reason for living at that time in our lives. We had gotten tickets for that classic ‘72 show from Binky Phillips, a most admired older brother of a friend. Later, Binky fronted a punk band called “The Planets” and ran a record store called “Sounds” in the East Village, the coolest neighborhood in New York City. I still have the ticket stubs from that concert, and the envelope with Binky’s writing on it.

Apotheosis came by getting as close to the stage as we could. The $4.50 seats placed us about half-way up the Garden’s bowl. We knew how to get past the guards. We ended up in the 4th row, center, for the entire show, standing on the back of seats, held up by the moshing crowd.

No dervish ever had an ecstatic experience to match mine. The image of young, beautiful Mick in his white studded jumpsuit, on his knees, whipping the stage with his belt to the crash of Charlie and Keith during Midnight Rambler, will be forever cherished as a singular golden memory.

Little was I to know then that within a few years I would be working at one of the premier recording studios in the world, A and R Recording. Before my 19th birthday I would be eating fish off the bone with Mr. Jagger.

In September of 1974, the King Biscuit Flower Hour, a syndicated radio program that broadcast live recordings of the greatest bands of the time, booked studio time to remix tapes of the Rolling Stones recorded live in Europe during their ’73 tour. Mick would be coming in to supervise the remix.

Though I assumed our mixes would only be heard once on the radio, they have since become legendary. It is the only top-quality live recording of the Stones from the time period many consider to be their best. This was guitarist Mick Taylor’s last tour with the band and many believe the Stones were never as good after he left. This recording also happened before the band was presumably dragged down for a number of years by the worst of Keith’s heroin addiction. (On the other hand, I’ve seen the Stones many times since 1972 and they have always been transcendent as far as I’m concerned.)

The mix has found its way onto multiple bootleg releases, and is known, generally, as “Bedspring Symphony.” The bulk of the recordings were taken from a concert at Forest National, in Brussels, Belgium, that took place on October 17, 1973. Some of the recordings from that concert did not meet Jagger’s standards, and so we spliced in some songs from another concert that took place at Empire Pool, Wembley, London on September 9, 1973.

Waiting for Mick Jagger to arrive at the studio was a bit agonizing. Like a true star, he stood in the wings till we were all assembled in the control room so he could make his grand entrance.

The young Jagger blew into the room, and in his most delicious crusty London baritone, asked, “Am I in the right place?”

The question was ironic. How could Mick Jagger ever be in the wrong place?

I must admit I was all a-flutter. Mick could shine his charm on a room of 4 or 5 as brilliantly as he could light up a stadium of 50,000. And at 30-years-old, with his moppy hair, crinkly eyes, and toothy smile, he was gorgeous.

We were all deferential to the future Sir. Even my mentor, Phil Ramone, whose first record was the grammy-winning Girl From Ipanema, who later recorded Procol Harum’s Whiter Shade of Pale, and had worked with the scariest artists from Streisand to McCartney, seemed a little humbled by the presence of Mr. D. He yielded the mixing seat to Mick, who sat with his fingers on the red faders. These were the sliding volume controls for the various instruments: Bill’s steady bass, Charlie’s propulsive kick, snare, toms, and cymbals, Mick Taylor’s crying lead guitar, Keith’s indomitable, archetypal guitar riffs, assorted horns, keys, and background vocals, and Mick’s own manically-inspired lead vocals.

We listened to the first song, Brown Sugar. Mick adjusted the balance between the instruments, trying to get a blend that would bring you into the middle of the concert.

Usually, when a mix was in process, the mixer would become quite precious about the placement of these faders. Balancing the instruments could be a delicate affair, and when you got something you liked, you were very careful to keep the slider in a very precise spot. Before the advent of digital recording, it was my job to notate exactly where every knob in the studio was placed, so we could always get back the magic.

But Jagger would set up a mix, play with it for a while, get frustrated, and just knock down all the faders to zero, ruining all that he had just built up. He’d get out of his seat, growl, “Ahh!” and signal Ramone to take over.

Ramone would leap behind the board to ride the faders like he was running a thoroughbred, swooning and tapping his foot, bringing his mystic vibe into the proceedings. Jagger went along for the ride, but wasn’t happy with the sound Ramone was getting on Keith’s guitar. He wanted something rougher than the jazzy Ramone was getting. Mick signaled me to crank it. He wanted me to sharpen the tone, using what we called an “outboard equalizer.” This piece of gear sat behind Ramone, out of his view. While Ramone was otherwise occupied, I twisted the knob all the way at around 5k, the part of the sonic range that made Keith’s guitar rub in your face. Jagger smiled his approval. I never told Ramone that little secret. It was just between me and Mick.

I fancied that Mick took a liking to me. Or maybe he was just a sweet guy who was nice to all the assistant engineers. He’d walk into the studio and walk straight over to me, the invisible assistant in the back corner. He’d gently punch me a few times, rub my long, curly red hair and say, “How ya doin’ Gingah?”

With that I ascended to a realm somewhere between heaven and nirvana.

It was a crazy couple of weeks at the studio. When Mick had come in, we were in the middle of finishing up Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks. (For the rest of that adventure, read “Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks: The Untold Story.”) When Mick heard that Dylan was in the other studio, he asked to visit. I was happy to bring these two gods in the rock pantheon, like Neptune and Zeus, together. They’d met, but didn’t know each other well. They couldn’t have been more different. If Jagger was the most charming man on the planet, Dylan was the freakiest Asperger’s-like gnome. I don’t think it was love at first sight. But I can add to my creds that I witnessed the coming together of Mr Z and Sir Mick.

During the day on Friday, Mick had planned to do an interview that would be part of the radio show. He thought it would be fun if Peter Cook asked the questions.

Peter Cook was a brilliant English comedian. He was an extremely influential figure in modern British comedy and is regarded as the leading light of the British satire boom of the 1960s.

Dixon Van Winkle — a strange and brilliant engineer with a walrus moustache and round wire glasses — Mick, and I went in a cab with our remote recording gear to record the interview at the Pierre Hotel, the poshest in New York. We hung out in a suite with Mick and Peter, but nothing really came of the recording. Peter drank some. We left after some chuckles, with nothing usable on tape.

There are some fragments of an interview from that time floating around the web with Peter Cook, Mick, and Charlie Watts. It must have happened at another time and place. I can’t remember Charlie being there.

Friday night, Mick had nothing better to do, so we all decided to go out to dinner. We went to the French restaurant, Pierre Au Tunnel, which was on 48^th Street between 8^th and 9^th Avenue, next door to the studio. Mick was quite cultured and sophisticated, especially to this provincial boy from Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. As he swallowed his garlicky escargot, sipping on a nice little Bordeaux, he spoke about his time in France, during which Exile had been recorded.

I simply wanted to get through the dinner without anyone figuring out that I was so far out of my depth that I felt in a constant state of drowning. I might have pulled it off better if I’d kept the adoring, goofy grin off my face. My plan went especially awry when I made the mistake of ordering the French dessert called a Napoleon. For those of you who don’t know, a Napoleon is made of endless layers of very thin puff-pastry, alternating with vanilla custard. There is no way to eat a Napoleon gracefully. When you try to cut through the layers, the cream squirts out the sides. As I tried to negotiate this sweet lasagna, I watched in horror as my hands morphed into awkward clam claws. I suddenly couldn’t remember how to hold a fork and knife, as I spastically tried to cut the oozing morsel. Cream shot across the table. Mick glanced at the Grande Guignol performance, but had the grace to ignore it, barely raising an eyebrow, and chatted on.

The next morning I got to be alone with Mick in the studio. As the assistant engineer, I always came in first and, having cleaned up after the party, left last. It was my job to get everything ready so the big boys could play. This quiet Saturday morning I walked through the midtown New York streets filled with litter but clear of hookers. I was thrilled to open up the studio, the only one there.

It was a sacred ritual to unbox the thick, warm, multi-track tapes with their iron-oxide filings dancing so pretty. I slid the big 2-inch reel over the large shaft on the bulky tape machine. I threaded the tape through the metal guides and over the tape heads, and swiftly twirled the end of the tape to catch hold on the take-up reel. I hit the rewind button, and the tape swooshed across the heads till the tape emptied one reel and filled the other. I hit the fast-forward button to put a brake on the speeding tape, and the machine slowed to a near halt when I hit stop.

I walked over to the console and hit play. I started to set some basic levels. The song started with Keith’s guitar: Baaah-dep. Bah-bah dee-dep, then Charlie’s drums Boom, Pow. Boom Pow, then the signature lick that told us Mick’s vocal was about to enter.

“I met a gin soaked bar room queen in Memphis,”

I was just getting into the track when Mick walked in. I hit the stop button. I stood up.

Me and Mick alone, Saturday morning, 1974, New York City. Yes. Here was my chance to have a real conversation with the Midnight Rambler. I figured, rightly, this would be the only moment in my life that this would happen. What to say? As I puttered around the control room, patching in limiters, we talked.

I was a big movie freak at the time. In New York in the early 70’s, if you weren’t going to hear live music, you were going to the old repertory movie houses. We were all discovering life through the classic European art films made over the previous few decades. We’d go to all night shows at theatres called the Elgin, Bleecker Street, Thalia, or Theatre 80 and watch films by Bernardo Bertolucci, Ingmar Bergman, Werner Herzog, Jean-Luc Goddard, Stanley Kubrick, Ken Russell, and Carol Reed, to name a handful.

One of our favorite films, which would usually come on at 4 AM when we were in a drug-induced psychedelic swirl, was a film directed by Donald Cammell and Nicholas Roeg called Performance. It starred my new friend, Mick Jagger, as a washed up pop star; a guy named James Fox, who played a sadistic gangster, and Anita Pallenberg, who was Keith’s lover in real life, but played Mick’s girlfriend in the movie.

Watching that movie a dozen times when I was 16-years-old taught me how to get deep into film. Nicholas Roeg, the cinematographer and the guy who supervised the editing, had a radical style of cutting, playing with time, place, and point-of-view in non-linear ways. Unless you knew how to really focus, you couldn’t follow what was going on. It was the first time I was motivated to really concentrate, which was to help me later on in making art and making love.

My friends and I loved this wild film for every reason, and in every way. It was hot, with great nude sex scenes with the voluptuous Anita, androgynous Mick, a child-like French actress named Michèle Breton, and kinky-masculine James Fox. It had a super-tasty soundtrack by Jack Nietzsche, that peaked with a Jagger composition called “Memo from Turner,” performed by Mick in slicked-back hair and a suit. The story was full of drug-laced allusions to obscure cultural references and hip literature. Its plot and dialogue, centered around the tension and love in the relationship of the gangster and the rocker, was stoned-cool.

In an era when movies were just starting to break out of the orchestral, straight mold, it was a groundbreaking, pioneer rock-and-roll movie. I had studied the movie frame by frame, knew all the great lines, and its subtlest nuance.

I also knew the film had been a flop. I figured this was my way in. I told Mick how much I admired his movie. He seemed genuinely pleased. We exchanged ideas about what the movie was really about. I referred to specific shots in such a precise way that I could see M’s narcissistic feathers puff. He told me he was disappointed by the critical response, because he was now considered box-office poison and probably wouldn’t be able to make a film again.

We also found common ground in gossiping about how weird Dylan was.

It was time to get to work. He asked me what song I had up, and I told him Honky Tonk Women, the next on our list to mix. He asked me to play it for him. He sat next to me while I rode the levels and put myself into making it sound as hot as I could. He listened seriously.

He decided he didn’t like his vocal performance and wanted to replace it. He told me to plug in an SM-57 Shure dynamic microphone. This was the kind of mic he’d sing into on stage. We walked out into the studio together. He said he wanted to hold the mic, so I took it out of its stand, and handed it to him. I walked back into the control room. We stood about 8-feet apart, separated by a thick piece of glass. I pressed “play” and “record” on the big, old multi-track.

Sir Mick Jagger performed Honky Tonk Woman just for me.

With his vocal done, he came back into the control room for a playback. He was satisfied. So was I.

This would be our last day of mixing, and Mick must have wanted some inspiration. He called his dealer to deliver some stuff. An hour or two later, in walked Mick’s candyman, who turned out to be John Phillips.

John had found fame in The Mamas and the Papas. They recorded hits like, “California Dreamin.’” Phillips wrote this, and some other timeless songs, including “San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair),” and the song played more times than any other by the Grateful Dead, “Me and My Uncle.”

Unfortunately, by this time Phillips had become a severe drug addict. Though Jagger was ready to promote a Phillips solo album on the Rolling Stones Records label, he wasn’t above using Phillips in his gig of dealer.

Phillips spiraled down from that time in the ‘70’s. The solo project never manifested, and he was eventually convicted of trafficking in 1981. Most ignominiously, his daughter, Mackenzie, herself famous from having starred in the TV show, “One Day at a Time,” claimed on Oprah that, after injecting her with heroin and coke, John initiated her into a ten-year incestuous relationship.

That day, Phillips delivered, in a large brown envelope, two large film canisters, one filled with pot, the other with coke.

Jagger wasn’t much of a druggie, from what I observed. He had me roll a joint for him (now here was something I felt adequate doing!). He’d take a hit or two, and put it out. He’d stick his pinky fingernail in the coke and put it up his nose once or twice, and that was about it.

Phillips had also brought along some tabloids with some scurrilous reportage on the Glimmer Twin. Mick laughed, loving it. He said, “I remember what Elizabeth Taylor told me: I don’t care what they write about me as long as it isn’t true!”

We finished up the mixes. Mick complained about the recorded performances, saying the band rushed, they played too fast. It was ok for a radio broadcast, he figured, but they were too embarrassing for anything else. Listening now, it just sounds like blistering enthusiasm. The show, available all across the underground internet, documents what may have been the greatest live moment for the greatest rock band in history.

With Jagger just having pecked at the hooch, the two canisters were virtually full. Mick gave me a hug and a tousle goodbye, and, pointing at the canisters, said, “That’s for you, Ginger!”

As those world-famous hips shook out of the studio, my voice caught. In my head were the words, “Hey, if you ever need someone to help out on the road . . .” but the words never came out. It had been one of my non-stop regrets until I read in Keith’s autobiography how fucked up the Stones became starting in the mid-70’s.

It was certainly a peak week for me – working with Dylan and Jagger. But my friends felt intolerable envy that I was spending the week with ol’ rubber lips. No one would speak to me. Then I put out the word that I had Mick’s drugs. Within hours we were in my friend David’s basement, all blasted to smithereens. Everyone loved me again.

My Son is Born the Night I See the Rolling Stones

Perhaps these were some of the reasons I felt so emotional seeing the Stones again with David 34 years later, both of us 50. But I was surprised by the strength of my feelings. Waiting for the band to come on I began to weep, rather uncontrollably. David appeared alarmed. Having become a shrink, I’ve probably become a bit more touchy-feely than him over the last few years. I told him it was fine. It actually felt quite good, but I was sure I didn’t know what it was all about. Was it mere sentimentality and nostalgia? That didn’t seem to capture it.

What I was unaware of was that just about when Keith played the opening chords to Brown Sugar, the baby boy who my wife and I were planning to adopt was being born in Wichita, Kansas.

The next day we got the call. My wife and I had had a relationship with the birth mother over the previous several months, so we knew enough to be surprised. The boy was born three weeks early. Having adopted before, we moved into action. There are odd differences between adoption and biological birth. You don’t hop in the car and go to the hospital. Instead, you go to the airport. We arranged to drop off our two-and-a-half year old daughter at her cousin’s in St. Louis and we were in Kansas before the ringing from the previous night’s concert went out of my ears.

Everything seemed to be ok. The boy wasn’t in the NICU, the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, but they wanted to keep him in the hospital for a day or two to make sure he was eating sufficiently to gain weight.

We were understandably anxious. One of the great lessons one gains from adoption is learning about the things you can and cannot control. We were able to decide if we wanted to “work with” our birth mother, but we had no way to determine her behavior during her pregnancy. This was a great lesson for me. As control freaks, my wife and I would’ve done the optimum 21st century yuppie prenatal program, and made sure that nothing other than organic passed that fetus’s blood barrier. Now we had to surrender to a plan other than our own.

But letting go was hard. Perhaps the oddest thing about adoption is that we could opt out till the very last minute. If we saw something we didn’t like, we could walk away.

Having sufficiently killed all possible bacteria, we stood at a small hospital bed and looked at this little vantz, no bigger than a hedgehog. He had all of his parts, and like all newborns, he did have that glow of someone who has just shed his wings. You could still hear the heavenly choir in the background. But we squinted our eyes, moved in close, and scrutinized him like you would a used car. What couldn’t we see? What were they covering up with a cosmetic fix that covered some profound, structural flaw?

The clock was ticking. Of course there was the oxytocin factor, the natural love hormone that all mothers secrete in the presence of their baby. I could see that though my wife attempted to keep a critical eye, she was falling into that narcotic goo of infant motherhood. And soon enough all the powers that be would want us to sign the papers that would make this newborn forever and irretrievably our son. Within a few days, by the time he would be ready to leave the hospital, it would all be done. There would be no going back. If we decided to go for it.

The second time adopting was tougher than the first. Our daughter came so fast and easy and she’d been a dream. But with the second, we also had to consider the impact of this child on our first. What if our happy toddler would be saddled for life with a special needs sibling? It’s one thing to respect someone for taking on such a noble task. It’s another to do it yourself, recognizing the forever life-altering consequences on everyone involved.

In those first days we discovered something surprising. We liked Wichita. Its people were nice. My New York, blue-state, prejudice had led me to expect a congregation of corn-syrup-stuffed, Bush, gun, and NASCAR loving, abortion and gay hating, fundamentalists. I was surprised to see copies of The Nation and The New Yorker in the hospital waiting room. The nurses were all kind, open-minded, and seriously dedicated to doing good work and getting food on their family’s table.

The city was a small grid. It was clean and easy to navigate. We were able to find healthy food and the best children’s museum I’d ever been to. One day, with little to do, I took a drive by myself to the edge of town, ten minutes from anywhere in the city. The town ended abruptly. Suddenly I found myself facing a flat prairie that went on for about 1000 miles till you hit the Rocky Mountains. I drove a few miles into Wizard of Oz country with only the occasional silo on the horizon and found myself gripped with an existential terror. I was sure that in another few feet I risked falling into the endless void. I turned the car around and whizzed back to civilization. Somehow, this felt like a portent of things to come.

Seeking any guidance, our local adoption attorney came in to visit. He looked for signs of anything wrong, pulling the infant’s ears, but claimed this boy was as precious and love-worthy as he appeared. Though he always liked to say that he operated from an “abundance of caution,” this did not convince. He had a job to do and wanted this adoption completed. Never had I so felt like Jonah. God was trying to tell me something, but I didn’t want to listen. All I said to myself was, “you can always say no.”

The final night before we would be forced to make a decision, my wife and I sat frozen in the hospital. Our minds raced through the “what ifs.” As a therapist I often ask, “What is the worst that could happen?” as a way of helping the client gain perspective on what is most often an unreasonable fear. In this case, the answer was, all of our lives could be ruined forever and we had no way of knowing how likely that possibility could be. The worst in this case was really bad.

As we bit our fingernails, a very large woman with a Janet Reno haircut and glasses slowly ambled toward us with a warm smile on her face and an outstretched hand. She introduced herself as our birth-mother’s doctor. She had delivered the child. She plopped herself down into a chair. It seemed like she was planning on staying for a while. I was used to doctors coming in late and leaving early. Glove on, cough, glove off, watch your pressure, see you next year. But this doctor had a different vibe. She told us about her family. She told us about her journey of becoming a doctor, leaving the profession and coming back to it again. She told us of the discovery that her daughter had a hole in her heart and how she survived this life threatening condition and an operation and how this changed her husband’s perspective on life forever.

One of the nurses came by to attend to the twin bananas in the hamster-cage-sized incubator that was next to the little boy who might one day be our son. These 3 pounders were safe enough to have been moved out of the intensive care unit but they were still pretty tiny. I was astonished at how she handled them with delicacy and ease. She joined our conversation, and told us about her own troubles, and what she went through taking care of her husband’s kids.

I mentioned how astounding it was to see these premature babies alive and how much I admired the work that these doctors and nurses were doing. The doctor told us that given the big empty spaces around us, this was the central hospital for many miles and so had the biggest and best neonatal intensive care unit in this part of the country. The nurse asked if we would like to see it.

We disinfected again and doc and the nurse took my wife and I into a vast room lined with rows and rows of incubators. Each one held a tiny and fragile human life. Some had just been born, right on the edge of viability, maybe little more than a pound. They were hooked to tubes and machines and looked like thumbs. Their actual thumbs were smaller than pencil erasers. Others were getting closer to moving on into the great, big world. They had gained weight and grown outside of the mother’s body where they should have been. The technology was extraordinary but it was through the ministrations of these devoted women that these preemies lived and took in life and turned that love into brains and bones, muscle, flesh, and heart.

They had little hands that one day would hold someone else’s hand; mouths that would one day smile. They had eyes that would one day look into a mother’s eyes. Through seeing themselves reflected in that love they would come to know that they existed, that they deserved to be loved, and would love others themselves.

We left the unit and went back to our station. We all looked at the little boy that could be ours in his bed. He was sleeping quietly on his own, suddenly looking huge. Not wanting to wake him, we silently smiled.

Our doctor eased herself back into the chair and looked at us as if we had known each other since she had delivered us at our birth. She had been hanging out with us now for four hours. Not your typical New York doctor’s appointment. We never asked, and she never told us, what to do. But by her presence we had gotten the message. I started feeling weak, as we had not had much to eat that day and it was now approaching 10 PM. I asked her if there was a place to eat nearby. She told us the best burger joint in town was right across the street. She said that she needed to see a few other patients but she’d probably still be at the hospital when we got back.

We stumbled out into the warm Kansan air, crossed the road and sat outdoors at Billy’s Burgers, something right out of American Graffiti.

We had been through so much on this adoption journey. The pain and disappointment of infertility, the miracle of our daughter, the anxiety we were experiencing right now. We ordered our burgers, fries, and shakes. While we waited, old rock and soul songs played through the restaurant speakers. I knew I was in an altered state, as each title seemed to be sending us a personal message. First, Too Late to Turn Back Now by Cornelius Brothers and Sister Rose. Then, Do You Believe in Magic by The Lovin’ Spoonful. Finally, It’s Alright by Curtis Mayfield and The Impressions:

“When you wake up early in the morning

Feeling sad like so many of us do

Hold a little soul

And make life your goal

And surely something’s gotta come to you. . .”

Sitting at this plastic table on the patio, resonating to this American burger moment, I could hear the command of the universe blaring in my head. I remembered my favorite adoption story, What Men Live By, by Leo Tolstoy. In this story he tells us that it is not given to us to know what is good for ourselves. What is given to us is to know what is good for each other. In this way, the universe insures that we are bound by care. We do not live by bread alone, we live by love.

My wife and I had been thinking about our own comfort. We had wanted to avoid suffering and pain. Anybody would. But this is not the way the universe operates. Whether we follow the dictum of “living according to God’s will” as Christians would put it, or we find the “central harmony” by aligning to the Tao, as the Confucians would say, all wisdom traditions tell us that we fulfill our purpose and find our greatest fulfillment from surrendering to something bigger than ourselves. It comes from using our will to become willing. It comes from learning how to say yes to life and what it demands of us at each moment, whatever the personal consequences. It comes from asking the question: what does the universe want from me right now, rather than what do I want from the universe. To live by avoiding pain may be more comfortable temporarily, but we avoid the commands of the universe at our peril. Jonah ends up in the belly of the whale until he follows God’s dictate.

As the great high-wire walker, Philippe Petit says, “To be on the wire is life; the rest is waiting.” There are a few lucky moments in life when we are truly put to the test, when the universe selects us out of everyone for a unique and important task. Parenthood is one of those times. For my wife and I, this was such a moment. Everything, including the music on the jukebox, was telling us: this was not our choice. We had been chosen.

*

Now, four years later, driving in my mini-van, my son and daughter clipped in their booster seats in the back, I press the button on my I-pod. Brown Sugar blasts through our JBL “Surround-Sound” system and our son grooves to the beat. Whenever I can, I play-wrestle with him and give his hair a rub. He is perfect, in his imperfect human way. He loves dogs, trains, his mom and even, well, when I woke him up the other day, the first thing he said was, “I love you, Dad.”

I wonder if my revelation was true. But whether there is a grand master plan in the universe as I believe, or the only meaning in a meaningless universe is the meaning we give to it, the answer is still the same. You can hear it in Keith Richards’s guitar. He plays it, holding nothing back, just so he can ring that cosmic bell again and again. Because this is his only chance in a very long eternity to do so. Because that’s the way the universe sings. Because he’s been given orders. Riding down the highway, when the end of the song comes, we all sing, “yeah, yeah, yeah, WOOOOOOOOOOOO!”

My job is to get these kids as close to ecstasy as I, or anyone, can bear.

Dr. Glenn Berger is a psychotherapist, relationship counselor, business and artist’s coach, and young person’s mentor. He sees patients in New York City, in Mt. Kisco, NY, and around the world by Skype.

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