Stepping Up....

About a year after Larry joined the Air Force, while walking over to Broadway for a bite at Dave’s Delicatessen, I ran into Danny Cohen. If he hadn’t called out to me, I never would have recognized him. He had grown a full beard, and was wearing old army boots below what looked like clothing bought from a Bowery bum. (In those days, we called them ‘bums’ whereas today they are politely referred to as ‘the homeless’.) “Hey man, how’s it goin’?” Now Danny had never been the ‘Hey man, how’s it goin?’ type. He was more of the ‘Hi guy. How ARE you?’ type. He was also one of the best dressed friends my brother ever had. Larry and the whole crew used to defer to him on what was proper attire wherever they were off to. Anyhow, Danny, who never had much to say to me when my brother was around, invited me up to his apartment, saying he had some music he wanted me to hear. I had no problem with that and went along. It turned out that the music was folk music and the singer was some guy named Bob Dylan. It was, after all, 1963, and Bob Dylan wasn’t exactly a household word at the time. Manny had bought a guitar and had become pretty proficient with it. He could really play nicely but he couldn’t sing at all. I guess Bob Dylan was his hero. But unlike Danny, Bob Dylan had a message for all that cared to listen. The words were important, not whether he could sing them or not. In fact, his style of singing almost forced the listener to hear his message. His songs seemed to raise issues that were important. I hadn’t thought very much about whom the “masters of war” were or that the U.S. government was supporting dictatorships around the world. Dylan spoke to the conscience of my generation and the rest is history. Danny, being four years my senior, had been one of my role models when he and Larry used to pal around. I was both shocked and impressed to see him transformed in such a radical fashion. He had long hair down to his shoulders in addition to his beard, and no longer wanted to be an English teacher. Danny asked me if I’d like to see some folk music in the village and we made a plan for the weekend. I also noticed that Danny had started smoking cigarettes. But they didn’t smell like the ones my father smoked and he explained that he liked to ‘roll his own’.

The raw nature of the folk sound, not just that of Dylan, affected me in a radical fashion. It wasn’t long before I discovered Phil Ochs, Patrick Sky, Joan Baez, Judy Collins, and a myriad of other artists whose music held more than a beat and a message of love. These people were writing and singing songs which cried out for listening. Whether they were singing about war and peace, riches and poverty, segregation and integration, love and hate, or just about children and the things they do, these artists captured both my imagination and my intellect. But the message in the music was only a catalyst for the reaction I experienced.

When I went down to Greenwich Village with Danny, I discovered a different side of myself. Instead of being the child of my family, I discovered that I was a member of a generation. I’m talking about the Baby Boomers. Everywhere I looked, there were people my own age, and they weren’t even close to the mold that the parents of that generation had hoped to shape. Somewhere along the line, the rules that I was brought up to obey ceased to relate to the substance of my life. I guess that the music elevated my consciousness and made me question who I was living my life for. The answer was obvious. And, oh yeah, the music led to some other hobbies too.