We Are All Together

By Richard Fulco

It's 1967, the Summer of Love. When twenty-one-year-old guitarist Stephen Cane's promising band falls apart, he is forced to move back home to Topeka with his Christian mother. Unwilling to give up on his rock and roll dreams, he moves to New York to patch things up with his former friend and bandmate, Dylan John, a pioneer of psychedelic rock whose band, Red Afternoon, is on the verge of making it big. When Dylan unexpectedly quits the band to be a civil rights activist, Stephen is handed the opportunity of a lifetime to replace his brilliant friend and prove to himself and his alcoholic father that he is a great man.

Against the backdrop of a nation in turmoil, Stephen takes a journey deeper into himself, questioning his dreams, his quest for greatness, his parents' conflicting advice, his inability to choose wisely in love, and his racial bias.

We Are All Together addresses a nation struggling with its mythological past and the effects it has had on the integrity of the individual. Does the artist owe the world anything? Does the ailing world need another rock star?

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Nov 29, 2022
• ISBN: 9798985035339

Book preview

PART ONE

One

Back in 1963, I hung out in a dive bar, the only club in Topeka that didn’t card me. On the night President Kennedy was assassinated, I spotted Dylan John – though back then he was still Arthur Devane – standing with his back against a brick wall in the far end of the room, glaring at the tenor saxophone player. He didn’t have a drink in his hand, so I figured he was probably there for the music, unlike me who enjoyed the cheap drinks and chit-chat with the regulars – drunken middle-aged women straddling their bar stools near the jukebox. Arthur’s hands were plunged into the back pockets of his tight dungarees that were carelessly tucked into a pair of untied high-top black Converse. His collar was turned up on the black leather motorcycle jacket he had worn the previous day at our high school’s annual talent contest. Arthur, who was only fifteen, really tore up the auditorium with an original song about the Birmingham church bombing that had taken place a couple months earlier. The tune sounded like Woody Guthrie meets Chuck Berry, and he would have won if the three judges, who were also teachers, hadn’t been personally offended by the song’s subject matter.

I was making my way across the dance floor to ask Arthur if he wanted to jam with the group that I had put together when he barked at the saxophone player: John Fucking Kennedy didn’t die so you could play like you’re dead up there. The burly musician dropped his horn, jumped off the flimsy stage, and started pummeling lanky Arthur. I stepped between them and took a shot to the head before the drummer and the bass player broke it up. I held out my sweaty hand to Arthur, but he pushed it aside and picked himself up. He had a deep gash in his forehead, just above his left eye. Blood trickled down his cheek, but he made no effort to wipe his face. I bought us a couple rum and cokes, and we slid into an inconspicuous booth that was kind of detached from the rest of the dive. Arthur perched himself on top of the torn red leather seat, a bloody James Dean, while he surveyed the bar like he was casing the joint: I used to really dig dark corners, thinking there was so much freedom in being unseen. But now I want…now I need–. He trailed off mid-sentence. When he turned back, he ran his long fingers through his scruffy black hair and looked right through me: That band was utter shit, man. I mean if you’re gonna play fuckin’ jazz then you better play fuckin’ jazz. You know what I mean? The saxophone player didn’t blow like Charlie Parker, but I thought the rhythm section was pretty tight. I didn’t share my opinions with Arthur though. His mind was made up.

– Who the hell are you anyway, man?

– Stephen Cane. I’m a senior at Topeka High.

– Thanks for sticking your neck out for me back there, Stephen Cane. I’m Arthur Devane. You got a little shiner underneath your eye.

– You’re a sophomore, right?

– I was a sophomore. I dropped out.

– You dropped out? You’re kidding.

– A school that doesn’t appreciate talent doesn’t deserve me.

– You really smoked the talent show, Arthur.

– I should have won.

– That song was killer.

– Too bad the judges didn’t dig it. You interested in civil rights, Stevie?

– I haven’t really thought about it.

– Well, start thinking, man.

Blood was still trickling down his cheek, and I figured he might even need a stitch or two. I offered him a napkin, but he pushed my hand away: Don’t sweat it, man! I chugged my rum and coke and noticed the ice in Arthur’s glass had all but melted. I didn’t have enough money for another drink, so I was hoping he would offer me his since he hadn’t touched it. I stared at his sweaty glass as he went on about how difficult it was gonna be for Congress to pass the Civil Rights Bill now that Kennedy had been murdered. I was so eager to play with Arthur that I cut him off, Hey, I was thinking Arthur. What do you say about jamming with my band tomorrow night? Arthur didn’t say a word, just locked eyes with mine, while he chugged his rum and coke. Then he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and slammed the empty glass down on the table: I do my own thing. I don’t join nobody else’s. Ya dig, compadre? At that moment, I quit the group I had formed and for the next two years, me and Arthur were inseparable. My mother didn’t like it one bit.

Some mothers inspire their children to aspire to greatness, to reach for the stars, like Arthur’s mother. But my mother, who was kind of musical in her own way, singing in the church choir and all, encouraged me to play it safe. My mother was a junior high school Math teacher, who also taught Sunday school, and the word dream just wasn’t in her vocabulary.

I dropped out of high school a couple weeks after Arthur did so I could fully devote myself to playing what my mother called the devil’s music. Rock and roll is a bunch of malarkey, she scoffed, it will never last. She urged me to have a back-up plan for when I’d eventually wipe out, called me a naïve little boy and said, You’re making a grave mistake, Stephen. The devil’s music will only lead to a life of alcohol, drugs, promiscuity, and dead ends. You’ll end up a failure, my boy.

On the same day I dropped out, my old man lost his battle with the bottle. Washburn University had canned him, a tenured history professor, for canceling too many undergraduate classes in favor of tossing back pints at the campus pub with his students. From that day forward, my old man – miserable drunk that he was – could never get back on his feet.

Stephen Cane, Senior, who wasn’t in any position to lecture me on how to live a healthy, productive life, was nevertheless more than willing to impart his worldly wisdom, or rather drill it into my impressionable brain, especially after he had just tied one on. Whereas Stephen, Senior’s wife of twenty years, Joyce Cane, was interested in my education and my moral fiber, he was only interested in me earning a buck.

My old man had been instructing me ever since I was a little boy that whenever money was involved, I should seize the opportunity, no matter who gets shredded in the process, even if that person ultimately turns out to be me, a skinny blond-headed boy with a fierce love of rock and roll: Don’t listen to a single goddamn word your foolish mother is spewing, Stephen. You hitch your wagon to any star you can find in that big, black hurricane of a sky. Never deny yourself a shot at making a dollar, even if it means playing jungle bunny music with that flaky Devane twerp.

We were used to my father tossing around racial slurs, but this time I thought my mother was gonna have a heart attack right then and there. Her red face crumpled. She broke into a sweat, pulled a yellow handkerchief from her back pocket, and patted her forehead with it, while she called my father a tedious old blowhard, instructed him to take a cold shower, and then demanded that he confess his sins to Father Charles.

My father took off his black belt with the wide silver buckle and sent me off to my bedroom. My mother was fearless and didn’t back down, unlike me who was petrified of my father, especially when he was crocked, and his eyes got really small. I locked the door and turned the volume up on my Victrola to drown out my mother’s shrieks and cries, but I still heard her begging my father to stop, so I crawled into my closet underneath a pile of pillows and blankets, but nothing I did could silence the unspeakable horror that went on downstairs.

When it was finally over, I packed my guitar and tiptoed past my mother who was on her knees praying at the bottom of the stairs, while my father sat in his recliner with his head hung low. I closed the door and headed over to Arthur’s house to rehearse.

Two

May 1967

I was busking for my next meal in front of a diner on the busy corner of Sixth Avenue and Waverly Place in New York City when a girl with hair so outrageously blonde it was practically white tossed a dime onto the heap of change in my guitar case. I cut Summertime Blues short and launched into a half-written tune of my own, one I had abandoned years before when I hooked up with Arthur. It’s about a guitar player who steals his best friend’s girl: This next number is for the foxy babe with the really fab hair that falls just above her really fab bippy. She removed her lemon-yellow shades that were far too big for her narrow, porcelain face and knocked me dead with the most mesmerizing green eyes I had ever seen. She searched for loose change at the bottom of her purple handbag, tossed a handful, but entirely missed the guitar case. Despite having a receptive audience shouting out requests for songs like Groovin’, Respect, and Somebody to Love, I helped her pick up the coins that were scattered on the sidewalk and in the gutter. I stuffed a dollar bill into the front pocket of my dungarees, shoved the rest of my earnings into my duffle bag, and packed up my guitar. We grabbed a window booth in the Waverly Diner where we split a black and white milkshake and watched as a steady stream of pedestrians dashed by, eager to get cooking on Memorial Day weekend.

– How old are you, Stephen?

– Twenty-one. And how old are you…um–

– Emily. Nice to meet you. I’m old enough to know that like me you’ve escaped the confines of Midwestern life.

– How do you know that?

– I’m from Iowa. I bet you’re from someplace like Kansas.

– Right again, Emily. What tipped you off?

– You’re wearing a plaid, button down shirt and a sweater vest.

Emily was excited to show me some sketches she had been working on, so I paid the bill, but skipped out on the tip ’cause I was kind of broke. I took hold of her gentle hand, and we strolled across town, down East 9th Street to her basement apartment between First Avenue and Avenue A in the East Village. Emily set fire to countless candles throughout the dingy room and lit incense to quell the stench of turpentine. Then she lit a nifty handmade Navajo pipe with a red candle in the shape of a penis, passed the pipe to me, and showed me her collection of charcoal drawings entitled Urban Decay. Broken down tenements, empty lots, drug pushers, prostitutes, and junkies. Art has never really been my thing. I just can’t wrap my brain around it. But I was blown away by the detail in the veiny hands and feet of a homeless negro sprawled out on a sidewalk on the Bowery. Although Emily had never formally studied art, she was an expert at her craft. At least from what I could tell. I know greatness when I see it, and this girl in purple hip huggers was the real McCoy.

The young artist, who couldn’t have been a day older than sixteen, cracked open a shiny, new black book and began sketching me, but she didn’t get too far before making a wisecrack about my clothes: Have you looked at yourself? You look more like a New York Jew than a musician. Her remark rubbed me the wrong way: What does that even mean? Emily ignored my question, threw down her pencil and book, tore off my sweater and shirt, and tossed a strand of love beads over my head: Far out. Then she started nodding, digging my vibe – long blond hair, beard, and bare chest – while she attempted to capture the streetlight’s reflection off my Wayfarers. She was in her own world, working. I was hanging loose in a red beanbag chair, toking on the Navajo pipe, and checking out the paintings of gray faces inside black triangles that were scattered across the floor and propped up against the walls of her pad. After a while, Emily threw her pencil and book down again, pulled a sewing needle from a coffee can filled with spools of thread and colorful buttons, and licked it a few times.

– What are you gonna do with that?

– I’m going to reinvent you, Stephen. Isn’t that why you’re in New York? To be something you’re not?

– And what am I trying to be, Emily?

– A rock star.

Emily poked the needle through my right ear, removed her copper and leather hoop earring, and stuck it through my bloody earlobe: I made these earrings myself. She was so delighted with herself that she squealed with joy. I didn’t want to ruin her good mood or come across like a dork, so I bit my tongue and didn’t make a big stink. But it hurt like hell. You know what? You’d look really fab if both ears were pierced. She went at it again, licking then poking then sticking her other copper and leather hoop earring through my bloody left earlobe. She put both hands on her hips and rejoiced: Now you’re my rock and roll Jesus.

After I finished smoking all of Emily’s choice hash, I put down the pipe, crawled onto a frayed Oriental rug, and squatted in front of a lava lamp. I got off on the swirling rainbow clouds that floated to the top of the oval glass, split apart, and drifted back down.

– Hey, I wasn’t finished yet, Stephen. Come back here.

– Let’s take a look at what you’ve done so far.

– Do ya like?

– Is that the way you see me?

– Yep.

– Far out. Look at me. I kinda look like Jim Morrison.

– You’re a rock and roll Jesus.

I plopped back down in front of the lava lamp, while Emily pulled a book from the middle of a heaping pile sitting next to the twin mattress on the floor and read aloud: From the small, crossed window of his room above the stable in the brickyard, Yakov Bok saw people in their long overcoats running somewhere early that morning, everybody in the same direction. Emily paused for my response, but the swirling rainbow clouds were such a blast that not even a Pulitzer Prize winning novel could hold a candle to them. She tossed The Fixer back onto the pile and crawled into my lap like a little girl looking for her father’s attention. It kind of freaked me out, and if I hadn’t been trying to get over my band’s recent breakup, I would have taken off and been spared a whole lot of trouble. I jumped to my feet and asked, Okay, what do you say we play some music and get this party started?

I went searching through a stack of records that were organized alphabetically inside an old-fashioned bathtub in the middle of the room. I spun the new, trippy single by my old compadre Dylan John and his band, Red Afternoon. Even though I had grooved to the pulsating organ in Alice Loon about a million times back in Topeka, it was as if I were listening to it for the very first time. Goose bumps on both forearms. Alone in my world. Playing air guitar and just doing my thing.

I was trying to groove to the song, but Emily just wouldn’t stop yapping: "Like the characters in The Fixer, we’re all running toward something, whether it’s God or love or peace or nirvana. We think we have a personal calling and feel obligated to fulfill our destiny. But there is no such thing as destiny or a calling. When you think about it, we’re all just grasping at illusions, hoping that they’ll provide us with direction. But we’re too afraid to veer off course, too afraid to abandon the herd. Ya dig? We all crave the same things, and yet we find it impossible to obtain them. That’s ’cause we’re blind or we choose to ignore the things that are really holding us back. We must detach ourselves from our earthly possessions and attach ourselves to a life of what I like to call ‘nomadic wondering.’ It’s an endless wandering of the mind without having any purpose or goal, just an overwhelming curiosity and an intense desire to be present, to be in the moment. We need to stop running in circles, sit still and listen to our breath. In and out. Out and in. In and out. Don’t you agree? Stephen? Stephen?"

I was as high as a kite and totally hypnotized by Dylan’s psychedelic tune about the first female President of the United States who erased poverty, struck down abortion laws, and threw wild parties on the White House lawn before she was assassinated at the Capitol Building. I would have hacked off my right arm to have written something so funky and thought-provoking.

– Have you ever seen Red Afternoon live, Stephen?

– I haven’t been so lucky.

– They’re about to make a really big splash. The band’s lead singer and guitarist, Dylan John, is a flippin’ genius. I was at The Scene when he layered his hair with Brylcreem. Under the stage lights, he was transformed into a hallucinogenic candle.

– Dylan is a good friend of mine from the old neighborhood. I knew him when he was Arthur Devane. In fact, I’m friends with Seth and Billy too.

– Really? What’s Dylan like? I’ve been trying to rap with him, but he doesn’t hang out after the shows like the rest of the band.

– Dylan is Dylan. There’s nobody else like him.

I told Emily all about the night I met Dylan, our group Ghost Spider, and when I broke things off with him to join The Good for Nothings who had a manager and a record deal. The Good for Nothings’s UK tour ended in March of ’67 when Frankie Gates, our lead singer, committed suicide in a London hotel room. I was the lucky one who found Frankie on the bathroom floor with a needle jabbed into his arm and spent over an hour trying to resuscitate him. Without Frankie Gates, The Good for Nothings were, well, good for nothing. With nothing else to do and nowhere else to go, I was forced to move back home with my mother, who had left my father right after the night he beat the hell out of her with his belt.

I figured I was gonna stick around Topeka for good, so I registered for a GED prep course and pored over the want ads looking for a real job. But when I read an article in the Topeka Capital-Journal about all the commotion that hometown hero Dylan John and Red Afternoon had been stirring up in New York’s music scene, I tossed some socks, underwear, and a few shirts into a duffle bag, slung my guitar over my shoulder, and announced to my mother that I wasn’t ready to give up on my rock and roll dream just yet.

Emily tilted her head and looked at me funny, Stephen, tell me you didn’t come all the way to New York to hook up with Dylan.

– Right again, Emily. Hey, you’re pretty good at this guessing game.

– But he already has a gig, Stephen. A really good gig too.

– Yeah, but maybe he’d be interested in doing something with me. On the side.

– You left him a few years back, and you think he’s going to take you back?

– I know. I know. I know. It’s a pipe dream.

– Hell, who am I to judge? I say chase your dream even if it’s an impossible dream.

– That’s exactly what my father said right before I hopped on the Greyhound to come here.

On the car ride to the Quincy bus station, my old man had told me he was checking into St. Francis Health Center for a simple procedure. He didn’t give me any details but assured me that everything was gonna be all right. He had been struggling to make ends meet after he lost his teaching gig and had been shedding weight ever since he and my mom split up.

After he guided his jalopy, a brown, four-door ’56 Buick Century, into a parking spot and took a long drink from the flask he kept under his seat, he put a couple bucks in my hand and said some things I’ll never forget: "Missing out on any opportunity whatsoever, no matter its size and stature, is denying yourself an experience that could possibly alter the course of your life. You must not intervene with fate, Stephen, and never deprive yourself of knowledge and insight even at the risk of failure. Chase your dream even if it’s an impossible dream. Because most dreams are anyway. Like this one. Traveling halfway across America to reunite with that Devane twerp or whatever his name is. You dropped that kid like a bad habit years ago. Do you really think he’s going to welcome you with open arms? It’s a pipe dream, Stephen, but you must see it through to its end anyway. I wish I had pursued my pipe dream – living in Paris, writing novels, and drinking myself into oblivion like Hemingway and Fitzgerald.

I’m not a great man. And neither are you, Stephen. At least I don’t think you possess an ounce of greatness. But if you do the money will surely follow. Life is a marathon, not a hundred-yard dash. In your lifetime, you will die many times, so put your seatbelt on and enjoy the ride. I died a long time ago, and I can’t resurrect myself. It’s too late for me. That’s my story, and I hope it won’t be yours.

I promised to call him when I got to New York. Emily was shaking her head in disbelief: Wow! Your father is a real downer. Just like mine, pathetic alcoholic that he is. She changed the subject before I could ask about her old man, announcing that Red Afternoon were headlining a show Tuesday night at the Electric Circus over on St. Marks Place.

– What’s the matter, Stephen? I thought you’d be psyched to see Red Afternoon.

– I’ve hit a dead end. I just want to make music with Dylan again.

– Sounds to me like you want more than that.

– I feel like a failure. I might have lost my only shot at greatness.

– What makes you think you’re great, Stephen? Your father doesn’t seem to think so.

– Maybe I’m not great. But I need to figure that out for myself. I know Dylan is great, and I want to be close to his greatness. Maybe some of it will rub off on me.

– Your life is just beginning, but you talk as if it were ending.

– I miss my best friend.

Three

Me and Emily spent Memorial Day weekend in her studio apartment,