The Sound of Soul

Listen to Joni Mitchell 

by clicking her image.

When I was sixteen, I wanted to sing and play guitar like Joni Mitchell.

There was only one small problem: I couldn't begin to match the talent she had in her little finger. But that didn't matter. Joni was my idol.

One night, I was at a Jackson Browne concert with two friends when suddenly there was a commotion somewhere down in the front section.

“Joni's here.”

That was all I needed to hear.

I shot out of my seat, my friends running behind me, and headed straight toward the commotion—until, of course, I was stopped by a bodyguard.

I looked up at him. I can only imagine the wistful, desperate expression on my sixteen-year-old face. My eyes were already filling with tears.

“Please,” I whispered.

He looked at me, lifted his arm just enough and quietly said, “Hurry up.”

And under his arm I went.

I rushed down to Joni's aisle and dropped to my knees beside her.

The memory is blurry now. I remember a grey chapeau over her blond hair. Those beautiful, regal features. And I remember staring up at her completely overwhelmed that Joni Mitchell was right there.

Then, with all the glorious audacity of a sixteen-year-old, I put my hand on her thigh.

I couldn't think of anything intelligent to say. Nothing about her music or what it meant to me. 

Nothing about wanting to be like her.

All I managed was a breathless:

“You are so beautiful.”

Joni and the people sitting with her were all looking at me.

She smiled.

And then she laid her hand over mine.

That was it.

I swear I swooned.

I somehow got back onto my feet and scampered away in a state of absolute giddy disbelief. Behind me, some of the other fans who were still being held back had realized what had just happened.

“Oh my God, you bitch! She touched you!”

Nearly fifty years later, I can still see those little fragments of that night.

And perhaps that's part of why this later recording of Both Sides, Now moves me so deeply. I'm no longer sixteen, and Joni is no longer the young woman whose music that girl wanted so desperately to emulate.

We've both lived a lot of life since then.

When I listen to her sing it now, I hear something the sixteen-year-old me couldn't possibly have understood yet.

And sometimes, the tears simply come.

Jack Reidling at the piano

Listen to him now ~ click his image.

My late father-in-law, Jack, was a remarkable classical jazz pianist—a musician's musician.

I once watched his improvisational rendition of Rhapsody in Blue bring an audience roaring to its feet at the end of a summer concert at the Hollywood Bowl. He was phenomenal.

But some of my favorite memories of Jack aren't from concerts at all.

They're simply of walking into my in-laws' house and hearing him playing in his music room.

At the time, we lived in Huntington Beach. Tristan was about five or six, and our backyard bordered a large drainage ditch that the city had decided to update for flood control.

One morning, the machinery was unbearable. 

The earth was shaking. Engines were roaring. I was trying to edit the manuscript of one of my books—I was publishing with Llewellyn at the time—and I couldn't even think.

Tristan was at school, so I grabbed my manuscript and pens and escaped to my in-laws' house.

My mother-in-law, Bev, was at work. I'd called Jack, and he told me he was in the music room practicing with a friend who played saxophone (Leo Potts!).

“Just come in,” he said. “I won't hear you.”

So I did.

I curled up on their couch with my manuscript, fully intending to spend the morning editing.

But how was I supposed to edit?

Down the hall, an incredible private concert was happening.

Piano and saxophone filled the house, and I sat there listening to these two professional musicians play together simply because that was what they did.

It was exquisite.

Eventually they took a break, wandered out of the music room, and the three of us sat around the dining-room table having a snack.

And I remember looking at the scene around me and suddenly thinking:

Wow. Look at my life.

Here I was, a published author sitting mid-morning with a manuscript in my lap while two professional musicians rehearsed down the hall—and then we all stopped to have something to eat together.

There was nothing staged or romanticized about it.

It was simply Tuesday morning—or whatever morning it happened to be.

And yet, sitting at that dining-room table, I realized:

I really was living a bohemian life.

All these years later, when I hear Jack play, I can still find my way back to that house.

And somewhere down the hall, the music room is still playing.

Yes Yes Please

Click image to hear "Katharsis" now.

My son, Tristan, has always been musically inclined. First came piano, then guitar, and eventually he settled on drums. In his early twenties, he and a group of friends decided to form a band.

My response was pretty much, “Of course.” 

It wasn't Tristan's first garage band, although this one had graduated from the garage. They rehearsed in a studio space. They went to Catalina to shoot photographs for a record cover. They were serious about what they were doing. And I anxiously waited to hear what they were creating.

When their first release finally came, I remember listening to it and being completely stunned. I didn't hear a bunch of amateur twenty-something guys in a wannabe band.

I heard a hit.

I heard the top of the charts.

I heard a new sound. 

Song after song blew me away.

Then things began moving. They started playing clubs. Momentum was building. A manager approached them. There was even the possibility of a record label.

And then came one of their club performances that I have never forgotten. The boys were setting up inside the dark club when I was hit with one of those powerful intuitive warnings I sometimes get. Something felt wrong.

I went looking for their front man, Jalil, found him in the darkness and leaned close enough to whisper into his ear:

“Whatever you do, make sure you keep Tristan in Yes Yes Please. Because if he leaves for any reason—or gets kicked out because of you guys' stupidity—this band ends that moment.”

I still remember Jalil's wide eyes staring at me. I had no way of knowing then just how quickly things were about to change.

Not long afterward, the band hit one of those difficult moments that can happen when a group of young people are trying to find their way together. There were disagreements, emotions ran high, and Tristan ultimately made the decision to walk away.

And then, almost immediately, something happened that none of us could have imagined.

COVID arrived.

The clubs closed. Everyone went into lockdown. Everything stopped.

Whatever momentum the band had been building suddenly had nowhere to go. They had every intention of continuing in some form, but a year is a long time in your twenties. Lives moved forward, circumstances changed, and eventually the band became part of their shared history.

Thankfully, time has a way of changing other things too. Friendships survived or found their way back, and the music they made together remains.

Sometimes I wonder what might have happened if things had unfolded differently. But when I listen to their music now, that's not really what I hear.

I hear the boys.

I hear my son on drums.

I hear something they made together during one particular, irretrievable moment in their lives.

And with this one especially, I mostly think: God, I still love this song.

Oh—and if you're listening to the live performance and hear some woman enthusiastically hooting from the audience...

Yeah.

That's me.