THE BAND WAS rehearsing at some sound stage, probably SIR,
after the soundtrack was done trying to infuse Michael with all the Spoonisms
we could. It sounded great to me, and I thought we finally had a band that was
cohesive with everybody covering their parts. This was the most proficient I
had ever seen Stephen play, even his bass playing was great. Two by two the
entourage made their appearances at the studio. Blair’s girlfriend
Cynthia, dressed in those Palm Springs high heels and tight black pants with
that Farrah Faucett blonde hair flying all over the place, would be there a
lot. She seemed to have taken an interest in Michael, but I thought nothing of
it. Blair and Cynthia were having troubles at the time, and I think
she was trying to make him jealous.
There was one time when Blair had
gotten into another fight with her, and she left her apartment with some other
guy to Laguna more than two hours from LA. It was less than 50 miles but with
LA traffic it always took more than 2 hours unless you left in the middle of
the night. Blair was so livid that he hitched a ride to her apartment in the
valley from West Hollywood and then after noticing the sliding glass door of
her balcony was left open, he let himself in waiting for her return, hopefully
with this other guy. It would be poetic, he thought. He climbed into the upper
shelf closet above her tv in the bedroom, where one usually would store
blankets, sheets and so-forth. He was there for the duration. He thought for
sure she was bluffing and would be back after closing time, but it was way
after that now. His eyes began to close, and he was soon fast asleep. In the
morning Cynthia had come home alone and heard breathing sounds coming from the
shelf closet. He was discovered, busted, and then she kicked him in the shins
with those lethal high heels that he said, “hurt like shit,” and he was shown
the door, a door he had been all too familiar with.
Soon after that we had another rehearsal,
but Michael hadn’t arrived yet. It was unusual for him to be over an hour late
and we were all starting to get a bit worried.
Then the phone rang, and Blair answered it. It
was Michael saying, “I can't come to the rehearsal today, I married Cynthia.” Blair said,
“Alright cool, but come to the rehearsal,” and Michael goes, “I can't, I have
to leave the band.” Blair was a ghost when he hung up the receiver
but tried his best to look unaffected. We looked at him and asked what was
wrong. “He quit the band.” Stephen and I looked at each other in disbelief. “What!
Why?” we shouted simultaneously. Blair continued, “Oh yeah, he
married Cynthia.”
Now Michael and Cynthia were living in
a one-bedroom apartment together on Barrington south of Wilshire. I was
determined to find out why he did what he did, not only did he marry Blair’s girlfriend,
but he also broke up the band and left me high and dry with the two-bedroom
apartment on Hollywood Blvd. I convinced Blair that we should go
there unannounced and see what was going on for both of our sakes. So, one
morning I borrowed my mom's Mercedes and we drove out to West LA to have a
little sit down. Michael came to the door and stepped outside. We all went out
to the Mercedes, and I climbed into the driver’s seat, Blair was next
to me, and Michael was in the back. Blair turned around to face him
and Michael said, “Your head just disappeared.” Blair said, “Do I have
anything to do with this or what?” He only repeated, “No, man, your head just
completely disappeared.” Larry looked at me and I at him. After a few
minutes of this we knew nothing was going to get resolved. That would be the
last time I ever saw Michael James Kennedy in the flesh. He eventually went
back to New York to square things with his old girlfriend, coincidentally
enough, was named Robin and then he was off to Philadelphia to look for a condo
to buy with Cynthia from money she had gotten from selling her yellow split
window Corvette Sting Ray. I don't think Cynthia ever made it to Philly, in
fact she never left the west coast. The marriage was annulled after only three
weeks.
A few months later Blair ran
into Cynthia at a party. He walked up to her and said, “Hey” and she said, “hey”
back. He asked inquisitively without any bravado or malice, “Why did you marry
Michael?” She smiled that toothy smile, shook her big blonde hair and said
nonchalantly, “To hurt you.” Blair asked if it was worth it, and she
didn't react. She had lost everything, and he knew what her answer would be.
Michael would get back
together with his Robin (it's nice to know that she was the stand-by-your-man
kind of girl) and stay in Philadelphia where he formed the heavy metal,
Zeppelin influenced band, Horsepower, who would later appear in the Rock
Encyclopedia. He would remind me of that fact after he blamed Silverspoon for
his shot at being the guitar player for the Rolling Stones. We communicated by
telephone over the years and by the early part of the millennium we were
sending tapes and later CDs through the mail. I would take an idea of his and
work it into a song structure and over-dub my vocals and various other
instruments that I play. Michael's guitar part was screaming on the track we
later named Jalalabad. a song written about the second Iraqi conflict.
The song was sold to a local Philadelphia record company called D Music and can
be heard on their website.
We wrote three songs
together, I Had A Dream, Standing and the afore mentioned Jalalabad
and that was it. I am still saddened by his untimely death on Nov. 18, 2006,
from esophageal cancer. That was the same day my father died from a sarcoma of
the lungs in 1989. It really was an abrupt departure, for both.
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