Alexander Hamilton

Reflections on history while writing my book, American Hero.

Guns, Girls, Whiskey,                        

                       and Alexander Hamilton

Besides Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton may be one of the most misunderstood men in American History. We all think we know him well. We keep him in our pockets in the form of a ten-dollar bill (if we’re lucky) and everyone knows he was one of the Big Six Founding Fathers. Hopefully, if cornered by Jay Leno we’ll know he was never a president. If we really paid attention, we may know he had something to do with setting up the Treasury and getting the United States out of debt from the Revolutionary War. We might have heard rumors about his personal life; born in the West Indies, a black woman in the woodshed of his ancestry, the many affairs (Bill Clinton didn’t invent political sex), and then there’s the Duel, when he was murdered by the Vice President of the United States, Aaron Burr.

            There’s a lot more to all these stories, but let’s start when young Alex Hamilton, barely into his 20s, led a band of insurgents out of King’s College Law School (soon to be renamed Columbia) on an attack against the British Navy as the Revolutionary War had barely begun.

            As always, there’s a woman involved. In this case, several women. Hamilton had become a much-admired patron among the “nuns” of Black Sam’s Tavern. In those days one would have to make a fine distinction between a saloon and a bordello. Later, it became known as Fraunces Tavern, the temporary capital of the newly minted United States and the place where George Washington gave his Farewell Address. Yes, the first seat of government in the United States was a House if Ill-Repute, which makes perfect sense once you study up on these things.

            When rumor spread in the summer of 1775 that the HMS Asia had moored in New York Harbor with the intent of forcing the rebellious colonists to conform to new tax laws, Hamilton leapt to the top of a wooden table, beer stein flinging foam in the air, and declared to a room full of drunken college students and prostitutes, “What separates the damned British from us is not the power of weapons but will power. What say ye men, do ye have the will?”

            He led a rowdy crowd into the streets of lower Manhattan and overwhelmed a small British force at the Battery. They stole ten cannons that had been positioned there to protect the flotilla assembling in the harbor. Under return musket fire from the Redcoats, the students dragged the heavy iron cannons to a Liberty Tree, set up on the Broad Way as a symbol of solidarity with the Sons of Liberty up in Boston. Several were wounded, including a grazing ball to Hamilton’s shoulder, but no one died.

            The British, not as incompetent as they would soon prove to be, however, knew how to strike back at the culprits where it would hurt the most. They launched their ship’s cannon dead on to Black Sam’s Tavern, bashing in its roof and causing a raging fire in the wooden building.

            Priorities in place, the students quickly abandoned their stolen artillery and picked up buckets of river water to put out the fire and save their “Holy Ground.”

            The British retook their cannons and sent Hamilton’s Rangers scurrying for their lives. The next day the Redcoats occupied Manhattan.

            Hamilton’s efforts did not go to waste, however. He saved the beloved tavern from destruction (Black Sam was a major job creator for the city’s working girls) and caught the attention of the newly appointed Commander of the Colonial Forces, George Washington, who would soon hire Hamilton as his aide and launch his brilliant career.

            Another time we’ll take a closer look at the famous Duel. There’s a lot more to that story, too.

Sometimes I think of the Founding Fathers as six parts of a single entity. Obviously, Thomas Jefferson is the brain. John Adams is the spleen. James Madison is the liver. George Washington is the lungs. Benjamin Franklin is the, well, let’s call it the gonads. And, despite his facility with accountancy, Hamilton is the heart. More later.

            

Neil Young

Never Gets Old

They were dancing across the water—just like Cortez’s ships in that song. But they stood on fiberglass boards and rode rainbow-striped sails through the glistening patches of sunlight on the water’s surface. We sat in a huge, dusty pick-up truck watching them. Neil Young, Elvis, and me.

         I had met Neil at the San Francisco airport, catching him on the rebound from a day of business meetings in L.A. Elvis, Neil’s blue-tint hound dog, waited in the cab of the truck.

         “You left the dog in the truck the whole day?” I asked as I witnessed a sloppy mouthed owner-pet reunion.

         “He doesn’t mind. He’s a hound dog. He likes to hang out and watch the world go by.”

         “Smart,” I said, meaning the dog.

         “We’ve been going to dog school, me and Elvis,” said Neil, slamming the truck’s door shut. “I’ve gone three or four days. He’s gone three weeks. That’s how much smarter I am than him.”

         The truck spurted out of the parking lot while Neil got the L.A. out of his system. His long time friend and current owner of his contract, David Geffen, had, in effect, just fired Neil from the label for not being commercial enough. Lately, Neil had been experimenting with electronica (re-act-or and Trans), country (Old Ways), rockabilly (Everybody’s Rockin’), R&B (This Note’s For You), everything but disco. Why would this surprise his record company? Hasn’t Neil’s unpredictability always been part of his appeal? The same guitar that could weep through a ballad like “Cinnamon Girl,” also blazed on “Hey Hey My My (Into The Black).” But no one is immune from the Entertainment-Industrial Complex, even if you’re Neil Frigging Young who has given, under his own name, with Crazy Horse, or with Buffalo Springfield, classic albums such as Déjà Vu, After The Gold Rush, Harvest, Comes A Time, and Rust Never Sleeps.

         “It really doesn’t matter,” said Neil, relieved to get out of city traffic and open up the engine on the highway, heading north. “I’m concerned about what’s going on today and tomorrow, more than yesterday. I’ve been trying to unlock old habits and just accept change into my life—with varying degrees of success.”

         Elvis, in the back seat, leaned his ample snout between Neil and me. Neil stroked the dog’s nose as he drove, calming both of them. “You find yourself getting bored with yourself, it’s time to change. Not just music. It can be anything. Gotta keep life fresh, gotta embrace the change, embrace the strange.”

         He took a few swigs of a fruit-protein juice, part of a seven-day fast, a periodic cleanup. “It alters my whole state when I go on the juice diet. It cleans me when I don’t feel quite right inside. Not just my body, but my mind, too. I hear the music different. I’m not saying it makes you young again, but when you get older, you start to numb out a bit, and it’s easy to kind of accept that and get into really liking that numb feeling. And it’s not always just about getting old. Plenty of young people want to be numb, too. I used to smoke so much grass that I didn’t know what was happening and I liked that. I liked being numb because it hurt too much when I felt things. I don’t want to do that any more. Ever. I’d rather be hurting and feeling.”

         We drove into a man-made lake area surrounded by highways and massive electric towers. The wind surfers sailed quietly on the water as we talked softly, almost whispering, watching them.

         “What if electricity causes cancer?” said Neil. We silently watched a man tacking across the almost still lake. “Back in Atlantis, they used to wind surf. Right Elvis?” The dog woofed in confirmation. “Sport of kings back there.”

         “Maybe they could fly and didn’t need boards to wind surf,” I added.

         Contemplating that made Neil thirsty enough to take a long pull on the fruit juice. “They had something going for them. I think of them using bamboo boards and sharkskin sails. I bet you could really haul ass with a sharkskin sail.”

         “I would do it listening to ‘Like A Hurricane.’”

         “Yeah,” said Neil. “It’s like rock ‘n’ roll out on the water when you go real fast and get real clear in your head.”

         The truck roared to life and we sped back onto the highway, pivoting around acute curves and churning up steep inclines with the abandon of Junior Johnson on a moonshine run. White knuckling the dashboard, I was too scared to be properly nauseous. Elvis licked my face reassuringly.

         To get my mind off the road, I asked Neil my interviewer questions.

         “Old Ways is country, but it’s pure Neil Young, you’ve been doing this for—”

         “It’s the same fucking music I do,” said Neil, the adrenalin of the drive fueling his anger, or maybe his aggression at his record label fueled the fast driving. Either way, I just wanted to get out of the damn truck intact. “It’s a fucking great album. I thought I was doing a fucking incredible job. I don’t have hit songs. ‘Heart of Gold’ was my biggest hit. But the record company, they tell me,” and here his voice takes on a nasal accountant’s twang, ‘Well, gee, Neil, that’s not a single. We’re not sure if this record works with a pop audience.’ Thanks a lot, guys. Geffen jacked me around. Man, they served papers at my house. At my house. They sued me. They thought I lost my mind. They went fucking nuts. They stopped me from recording. Cancelled sessions. They wanted me to do Harvest again, followed up by After The Gold Rush again, then On the Beach again. I can’t do that. I have to do what I have to do and hope it serves me well. But they fucked me. Sorry, man. I have feelings about this, strong feelings I can’t just sit on. We kinda straightened things out eventually, but I went through a lot of shit because of that. It’s nothing compared to what other people go through, but still you gotta say what you gotta say.”

         “You know I’m probably going to get fired if I publish this interview as a cover story.” Facing certain death, I was in a confessional mood. In those days, I was the Editor-in-Chief of RockBill and controlled every part of the monthly production, but I didn’t own it. The publishers, friends of Mr. Geffen, told me in no uncertain terms that I could not print a cover story on that washed up hippie grunge punk Neil Young. I knew if I hijacked the production schedule and published it anyway they would fire me. (I did and they did—but I was 24 and didn’t give a damn. Idiot!)

         “Yeah?” asked Neil, taking his eyes off the road to look at me.

No! I wanted to scream. Watch the damn road!

“Well, you wouldn’t be the first person to get fired because of me. Welcome to the club. I even got fired for working with me.”

         “It’s funny because people like me think people like you, rock stars, don’t get messed with.”

         Hysterical laughter on Neil’s part, wiping a gurgling of fruit juice from his nose with the back of his hand. When he recovers, “Yeah, I’ve got a little fame, I’ve acquired things, I’ve made money, but if I stop making money, the things I have would start collapsing. It’s not so much the things I care about, but I have a family, a home. I need to keep my family together.” Neil has two sons with cerebral palsy and a daughter with epilepsy. His yearly Bridge Concerts, organized with his wife, Pegi, raise money for a school for special needs children. “I’m in a position where I have to relate to an economic reality.”

         The road skirted around a sheer rock face towering above a ravine. I pressed my face against the window certain I would soon be impaled on the tops of the redwood trees below us, sharp as bristles. “That’s some cliff,” I gulped. “What’s the speed limit?”

         “No problem,” said Neil, that boyish grin crinkling his face. “Long as you don’t look down.”

         Back to the questions. “Do the different characters you write about clash?”

        “Yeah,” said Neil, spinning the wheel away from gaping maw of oblivion. “There are different personalities in me, and they’re always at battle with each other, wrestling with each other for a place on the album, even though the characters in the songs range from some love-struck, heartbroken dude to a guy who got blown away on a cocaine deal. You know how people say about my stuff, ‘I can’t listen to that, Fuck! I liked the last one, but this one sucks?’ that’s what the characters in my head say about each other.”

         Okay. I’m driving eighty miles an hour in an old truck with an angry rock star who has multiple personality disorder. At least, I think I’ll be forever known as that guy who crashed off the cliff with Neil Young.

         “I think you like messing with people,” I say. I swear he speeds up, messing with me.

         “But not too much. I like to make friends with people, you know.”

         Yeah, by scaring them in this death trap of a truck. To add insult to injury, Elvis is sleeping peacefully in the back seat.

         “Well, okay,” Neil reconsiders. “I do like to rile people up a bit. I like to bend them up. It’s a lot of fun that way, keeps things interesting. They expect one thing and get another. Listen, I’ve been making records for fucking decades. That’s a long fucking time to care. I do care. I really fucking care what goes on out there and what goes on in here. I would do even more shit if not for the fucking record company.”

         “You sound like a guy in a bar after his shift complaining about the job.”

         “I love what I do and couldn’t do anything else, but when you get right down to it, and forget all that other stuff, that rock star bullshit, I’m just another guy working for a living, taking care of his family, living day to day. That’s the core of our whole civilization. Working, living, trying to be as sincere as you can, helping each other out. It’s what we’re supposed to do. There’s a lot of other things, a lot of problems, but it doesn’t seem too bad to get up in the morning, go to work, come back, eat dinner, watch TV, play with the kids, maybe make love, and go to sleep. That’s not newsworthy, but that’s life. And maybe you dream of other things. Maybe you write or create things. And maybe your dream is to teach your kid how to play football.”

         I think of Neil’s sons, one in a wheelchair, and I remain quiet.

         “There’s a lot of people on automatic, or feeling trapped in their jobs or in their lives, who don’t have anything fulfilling, and maybe they’re dying inside, but you still have to go to work and support your family, there’s always that, and that’s what keeps you from being dead. That and the other things they write good country songs about.”

         The truck comes to an abrupt, dust-blowing rest on the edge of the thin road. The sudden stop almost wakes up Elvis. His ears go flippity-flop. We’re facing west and the sun looks like a yellow pink rose blooming through the misty mountains. Evergreen and redwood trees line up like a standing army over the slopes and valleys. A lonesome train horn howls somewhere making Neil smile because he loves trains and has one of the most elaborate miniature train collections in the world. The whistle inspires the birds to write songs to each other. We’re parked on Neil’s mountain. He owns this, as much as anything can be said to be owned.

         “You want to roll down that window so Elvis can get his nose out there.”

         I barely crack the top before the bloodhound wiggles his twitching snout out to take the whole magnificent scene in with a hearty breath.

         “You know what the Chinese say,” I say, “one sniff is worth a thousand words.”

         Neil and Elvis remain justifiably silent at my joke. We sit there then for longer than feels comfortable in a city, but seems natural and right out here. The twilight wind whispers in the trees and there is nothing worthwhile for any man to add. We watch the day push against the night until it finally surrenders and sinks off the world. To celebrate its victory, night releases the fireworks of infinite stars.

         Yet, all I’m thinking is great, now I have to drive with this maniac in the dark.

         “You have to think there’s a reason for living,” says Neil as we take off again, bold headlights sluicing back the deep country dark. “Without that, it’s kind of empty, isn’t it? We can’t know what’s going to happen to us, but change comes, sometimes fast, sometimes slow, like in nature. The one thing we can’t change is that we have to change. That’s how we know we’re alive.”

         I leave Neil at his ranch on the top of the dark mountain. There’s a light on in the house. Inside are his wife and his kids, his trains, his guitars, his heart. I shake his hand and give my fellow traveler, Elvis the hound dog, a farewell scratch behind the ears.

         Wait a second, I think as he closes the door. How the hell am I going to get down from here?

        

         

Dalbello

Under The Skin

“The mask was about hiding my old pop image, people’s conception of who I was. But, making up isn’t covering up. The mask reflects my soul. It identifies who I am. The question we ask continuously because the answer changes is Who am I?”

You may not have heard of Lisa Dal Bello, unless you’re Canadian. There, she was one of the huge, radio-centric pop stars of the late 70s and 80s. But to me, she is the third part of the troika of guiding muses to my mind (Laurie Anderson), my heart (Kate Bush), and, let’s call it my guts (Dalbello—using the name she had when I met her after the release of her violently primal, rhythmically visceral, and lyrically penetrating album, whomanforces). At first, I was drawn to the Papuan mask she wore on the cover. But soon, listening to the music, I saw that Dalbello’s sound and vision was exploring humanity beyond the borders of race, sex, age, etc.

“To be fully human requires an understanding between men and women of women and men. We are victims of conditioning, accepting identities without questioning them. We get forced into very rigid roles, without even being aware of it, and yet we find it impossible to live up to those archetypes. Then, why should we?”

At a time when there’s a lot of debate about marriage equality, about the roles of men and women, Dalbello’s music strips away the skin and reveals the masks underneath.

“A man went out to dinner with his wife and a gay guy and a lesbian couple. Sounds like the beginning of a joke. The married man stood by while everyone else got into intense conversations, a lot of emotional exchange. It’s not that he felt excluded, but he was in awe of the range of emotion. He was unable to communicate. It’s not that he didn’t want to. But, he didn’t have the means or experience or the language. His inner identity was in conflict with the outer identity imposed upon him.”

The mask doesn’t disguise, it reveals. Our skin is the disguise. In the Greek myth of Marsayas, a simple goatherd challenges the god of music, Apollo, to a battle of the bands. Marsayas toots his flute and Apollo strums his lyre. The gods sit tapping their feet and decide who is best. Surprisingly, they choose Marsayas. Less surprisingly, they reward him for his hubris by stringing him up by his heels and flaying him alive. If you want to walk with the gods (higher self), you got to lose your skin (ego).

“It’s all about breaking out, breaking free. We wear the mask to remind us that we’re human. Flesh and blood. And that is so much more than what it seems on the surface. We don’t need to be defined or generalized. It’s not what are you, it’s who are you.”

If we don’t know ourselves, how can we know anyone else?

“Love, for instance. You fall in love with someone because of some obvious charm, and then you find out what’s underneath, and it’s not there. There’s been an identity theft. Where is that person you thought you loved? How could you not have not seen that person? Can you even see yourself? You stand in front of a mirror and you reach to your reflection as your reflection reaches to you. You’re attached to yourself and yet you yearn to be free.”

George Washington's Lie

Reflections on history while writing my book, American Hero.

The Liar

Young George Washington, 22, still recovering from the death of his beloved brother Lawrence, no formal education beyond grade school, and only appointed a major in the Virginia Militia because of family connections, led his British Rangers through the Ohio Valley, along the Allegheny River. They were beyond the formal boundaries of British North America and marching through a dense wilderness filled with hostile Indian tribes and under a relentless deluge of bad weather. Perspiring not from the humid dankness of this late spring afternoon of 1754, but with anxiety, Washington trembled with fear as he marched his raw recruits into French Territory. He feared not death, but cowardice.

His mission was to determine the intentions of the French in the area.

The Seneca chief, Tannaghrisson, encouraged Washington to venture even further towards the French, promising the support of his braves.

That night a horrific thunderstorm shook the forest. Lightning dissected trees. Flash floods ripped the undergrowth. Washington, hungry for heroism, pressed on. At first light, he came upon a few Frenchmen hunting rabbits.

Surprised, confused, frightened, Washington fired his gun, blindly. By chance, his bullet found the heart of a Frenchmen. Both sides opened fire. The wet field thickened with sulfuric smoke and the cries of the wounded. Within minutes, a dozen French lay dead in the mud, another score wounded.

The volley brought the entire French regiment, a hundred men, upon the much smaller British band. Washington and his Rangers were captured and tied, forced to march back to Fort Duquesne. The French Commander, Joseph de Jumonville slogged through the mud to slap Washington in the face. “You idiot,” he screeched. “We are not at war.”

France and England hadn’t been officially at war, but now, thanks to Washington, they almost certainly would be.

“Your men attacked,” stuttered Washington.

“Menteur!” charged de Jumonville. Liar!

As Washington’s face reddened with shame, the Seneca attacked. Tannaghrisson, had used Washington to draw out the French so he could massacre them. His braves fell upon the startled Frenchmen with no mercy. Some of the British prisoners begged to be unbound to help in the fighting, but the Indians left them unscathed. It was French blood they desired and French blood gushed from torn limbs.

Tannaghrisson had de Jumonville by the throat, ignoring his pleas for mercy. “You have lied to us for a hundred years,” he shouted. “Pas plus! Enough.”

Washington tried to stop him, but the chief swept him away as if he were a cobweb and proceeded to tomahawk de Jumonville’s skull in an explosion of bone, blood, and brains.

While Washington’s British fled into the forest, the Seneca scalped the wounded French as they died.

De Jumonville was more right than he could have known. As a result of Washington’s blunder, France and England went to war. It was known as the French Indian War in colonial America and the Seven Years War in Europe, but the two superpowers fought furiously across the globe, including the Caribbean, Africa, and India in what was truly the first World War. In the end, England won, but both countries had taken on so much debt that their efforts to raise taxes to pay for their armies resulted in the American and French Revolutions.

Washington never forgot or forgave himself for that night in the Ohio Valley.