We’ll Meet Again

My friend Spencer Lieb died early this morning in Tallahassee.  We met 51 years ago drawing blood in a couple of City clinics in Harlem. He liked helping people and went on to become a widely recognized expert in AIDS incidence/demographics for the State of Florida, where he married and raised two wonderful children. His first love was composing and performing songs, obsessively rearranging and re-re-recording them once he mastered the new tools of the digital age. Spencer was also bipolar and the lithium he was prescribed for many years damaged his kidneys. There then followed a bout with lung cancer and COPD but he fought bravely for the past two years, aided by his angelic wife, Kathy.

Spencer contacted me and his frequent collaborator, Jim Papp, last night to tell us he was about to enter hospice and wanted us to know he was bequeathing his music to us.  Kathy read my reply to him, a bit too long perhaps, but I wanted to reassure him his music would live in our memories:

“Spence, your music will always continue to be a part of me. I hesitate to say it rambles down the canyons of my mind like so many 60s song-writers scribbled with ersatz profundity. Nor does it pour out of the drain-pipes of my existence as Neil Innes and Monty Python expertly satirized the aforementioned scribes. Rather, it has become sort of a life-long soundtrack which allows me to recall two eras: my wild uptown youth of the 70s and much later, the wizened old mutt years of the past two decades. It has given me great pleasure in the moment and has been a great treasure to recall, constantly. 

“We’ll meet again, I am sure. They say heaven is filled with incredible music. Not only do all mediums report this, but the Righteous Brothers too, who told us Rock n Roll Heaven has a hell of a band. It’s a commonly reported phenomenon that music is a memory that never dies. Dementia patients can play intricate chords to the last. Music is truly a gift from the gods and for me is all the proof I need of an afterlife. 

“So if you pass before me, I expect you to greet me playing some open tuning chords since in the end I think we both thought of ourselves as beautiful losers, despite all the professional success we enjoyed. Perhaps it was striving to overcome that feeling which made us a success after all. You created two beautiful children and gave all of those who knew you special moments. I will never forget the laughter we shared in Harlem, the Upper West Side, Park Slope, and our “inside music” back-and-forth’s. I’m not a religious person but I do believe that we each possess a spirit that survives us – but only if we desire to “get back, Jack, and do it again.”  So please do not reject the offer of a return trip! The next go-around will be a lot easier for you. No more synapses gone awry. Your music will soar even higher. And when, in my next go-round, I hear a Spencerian hook via whatever modality the future has developed (direct brain-streaming?), I’ll know you have survived too.

It’s hard to pick one song to remember Spencer by, but I chose this: A Child in the Hills

“Now breaks a noble heart. Goodnight sweet prince. May flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.”

November 6, 2023

Liner Notes

Near The End of The Road: A Portrait of The Artist As An Older Man (June, 2015)

Spencer Lieb’s songs tackle themes that will resonate with the growing number of Americans on the far side of 60 or those of us just feeling that way: more of one’s life can be seen in the rear view mirror than up ahead, where the view seems…well, somewhat shrouded, sure, but there are a few bars and some pretty looking gals beckoning so what the hell, maybe the future ain’t so bleak after all. These tunes are what we used to call “heavy” but now they are said to have “gravitas.” Yet they are tunes – gorgeous melodies around which spin tales of tight finances, friends with failing health, longing for renewal, and as Mike Nesmith once pointed out, our comical race to escape the clutches of the Grand Ennui. Spencer infuses these songs with humor, compassion, longing and appreciation for life’s small victories, like the miracle of having a good woman by one’s side.

Lieb, whose recent bout with lung cancer and increasing arthritis have reduced his tennis playing and performance time, continues to toil in a very successful day job as an HIV/AIDS research coordinator for a nonprofit advocacy group. His career in public service originated after brief stints as a Tin Pan Alley tune smith and a cab driver left him far from satisfied. Then he found himself working with drug addicts and infectious disease patients in rough and tumble New York City neighborhoods and knew that he had found his calling. And yet…and yet…that song writing bug never went away.

Spencer’s creative impulse has led him to write dozens of songs he has performed at small venues over the decades. And now, like one of his protagonists, Spencer sees the end of his road and in addition to two successful children, he wants his song kids to live long and prosper. And so you now hold his most recent creative output in your sweaty hands. But unlike most other song writers with demo disks, Lieb is not a child molester or a registered Republican. This prompted me to sit down with him recently and an imaginary conversation for these liner notes emerged. Spencer, of course, fought against this concept until we knocked him out and inserted them anyway:

Me: Most of your songs tackle weighty themes with bouncy, pretty melodies. So are you schizophrenic?

Lieb: No, of course not.

Me: I’ll take that as a yes, then. Does this explain why some songs have a duality, like “Next Song/Last Song”?

Lieb: Your premise is wrong. I’ve never been treated for schizophrenia.

Me: So you’ve suffered through it all these years, absent any help by our so-called health system?

Lieb: This is ridiculous. Me: So which is it? Lieb: Which is what? Me: Is it the “Next Song” or is it the “Last Song”?

Lieb: It’s both.

Me: I rest my case – diagnosis confirmed. Now let’s move on. You have made important contributions in the field of public health over the past few decades. How do you juggle that important day job with being a hedonistic, coke and alcohol swilling singer-songwriter at night?

Lieb: I don’t do drugs or alcohol!

Me: HaHaHa! There’s that famous Lieb humor coming through. So when not writing about death and impending death and the death of finances and the death of time, what other heavy topics do you like to make up songs about?

Lieb: Most of my songs are not about death! Take a listen to “Don’t Let Go” and… Me: “Don’t Let Go of Life” is what you really wanted to say there, am I right? Lieb: No! And “So Satisfied” and “Days So Sweet” are upbeat!!

Me: You mean “So Satisfied Now That I Finished that Living Will” and “Days So Sweet When I’m Not on a Chemo Drip”?

Lieb: I’m so out of here.

An Interview with Spencer Lieb About His Tribute to Buddy Holly (May, 2016)

Joe Enright (hereafter JE): Nice tune. Is that you on guitar?

Spencer (hereafter Spencer): I play the acoustic guitars and piano.  Fred Chester plays the electric.

JE: Well done. What made you write this one?

Spencer: Buddy Holly was one of my heroes when I was a teenager.

JE: He must have been long dead by the time you were a teen.

Spencer: Not so. When “That’ll Be The Day” happened – his first hit – I was already 12.

JE: You were born in Brooklyn on VJ Day, weren’t you? 

Spencer (sighing): Yes.

JE: Did you know VJ Day is still observed in Rhode Island?  

Spencer: Yes, I do, because you always mention it on my birthday.  And every other chance you get.

Non-stop. 

JE: Maybe, baby, but I just think it’s so interesting.  They don’t call it Victory over Japan Day anymore, of course. It’s more like “Generic We Competed Well Day” or some other neutral phrase. Did I ever tell you I had a cousin who enlisted in the Marines at 18 and was killed on Okinawa?  He was awarded the Navy Cross in 1947, a month before I was born…

Spencer: Yes, I know.  Look, no offense, but can we get back to Buddy Holly?

JE: Well, I was going to say I was born on the same day as Buddy – September 7th.  Which is why he was one of my heroes too.

Spencer: If all it takes to be a hero of yours is to be  born on September 7th, then you must have a LOT of heroes.

JE:  True.  Sonny Rollins and Chrissie Hynde are other musical heroes born that day. They’re probably jamming with Buddy in heaven right now.

Spencer: Chrissie Hynde and Sonny Rollins are still alive.

JE: Moving on, growing up in Flatbush, do you remember when you first heard “Peggy Sue”?

Spencer:  Actually, it was in Florida. My folks had just driven down from New York to Miami, when “Peggy Sue” wafted over the airwaves as I was playing pinball at the Eden Roc Hotel.   I think I got an erection while listening to it.

JE: Is that because his description of Peggy Sue was so sexy?  “I love you Peggy Sue with a love so rare and true”?

Spencer: Are you serious?!  It was the insistent tom-tom beat of the drums and that guitar solo in the middle!  Just incredible. I wore out the grooves on my “Best of Buddy Holly” LP.

JE: When you got back to Brooklyn, were you still a Holly fan or did you associate him just with pinball?

Spencer:  I never stopped being a Holly fan!  In fact, I flunked an eyesight test deliberately so that my mother would buy me a pair of black horn rimmed glasses.

JE: Yes, I tried to indicate that in the video but I suck at Photo Shop.  By the way, are those the same glasses you’re wearing now?  They’ve held up very well over the decades.

Spencer (exasperated): No, these are new.  But you know, wearing those glasses caused me to really need glasses a year later.  It was worth it, though, to look like him I mean.

JE: I noticed you mentioned 10 of his songs in your recording.

Spencer: I could have mentioned 10 more that everybody knows.

JE: Oh yeah, name them, Mr. Smarty Singing Guy.

Spencer: Off hand, there’s True Love Ways,  Rock Around With Ollie Vee, Think It Over, Early In The Morning, It’s So Easy, Heartbeat, Peggy Sue Got Married…

JE: Wait a minute. Did you say Peggy Sue got married?  Who did she marry?

Spencer: Buddy doesn’t say.  Maybe it was Ollie Vee.

JE: Was Ollie Vee related to Bobby Vee?

Spencer: No, Bobby Vee was really Bobby Velline but he took his stage name from Buddy’s song.

JE: Did you know that Bobby Vee got his big break when he filled in for Buddy Holly at that Iowa  concert the day the music died?  He had a real Buddy Holly sound when he first started out.

Spencer: Yes. And did you know that Bob Dylan started out playing piano for Bobby Vee at a couple of gigs right after that?  He called himself Elston Gunn!

JE: Very interesting because the Beatles and Stones also played a lot of Buddy Holly stuff when they were starting out.  For instance when the Quarrymen, the skiffle group that became the Beatles, decided to record a demo, they did “That’ll Be The Day”. 

Spencer: And the Stones’ first single was “Not Fade Away”.

JE: And the Beatles did “Words of Love”.

Spencer: We could go on.  I notice you show a lot of that in the video.  I also saw you had pictures of Buddy with Jerry Lee Lewis and The Everly Brothers.

JE: Yeah. Holly toured a lot with the Everlys, which is how he came to record “Raining in My Heart” – that song was written by the team that wrote a lot of the Everlys hits. By the way, getting back to the fatal plane crash on February 3, 1959. Buddy’s other band member, Tommy Allsup, survived because he lost a coin flip for his seat to Ritchie Valens. Later Allsup opened a bar in Dallas and he called it

“Tommy’s Heads Up Saloon” because Valens called tails.

Spencer: That’s just bizarre.

JE: Hey, did you notice the pictures of Waylon Jennings with Buddy in the video?  Waylon was backing Buddy on bass guitar during that fateful tour and he gave up his seat to The Big Bopper. 

Spencer: It’s amazing how somebody who was popular for only two years before he died influenced so many others.

JE: So how come you didn’t mention his death in your song?

Spencer: Everybody knows about that. This song is pointing out his lasting legacy – he wrote most of his songs, recorded them with a small band, The Crickets, and performed them, playing live guitar.  All that was emulated by the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and everybody since.

JE: All the more reason why you should have written a line like “I was dejected the day the music faded way” or something.

Spencer: Believe me, I was very upset for months but that’s not what the song…

JE: Did you know only six months before he died he married a Puerto Rican woman he met in Manhattan during a visit to his publisher?  Maria Elena Santiago. 

Spencer: Yes, I knew that. I didn’t know her name though.

JE: They had an apartment in the Village. That’s where the line “I don’t remember if I cried when I read about his widowed bride” came from.

Spencer: Yes, of course.

JE: I wonder if Trump would have been in favor of him marrying an immigrant.

Spencer: I have to correct you there. People born in Puerto Rico aren’t immigrants – they’re citizens by birth.

JE: Sure, if they can buy an American birth certificate on the black market like baby Obama did.

Spencer: You’re an idiot.

JE: I know. And the proud President of Idiots & Morons for Trump or I’M 4 TRUMP.

Spencer: That must be a REALLY BIG organization then.

JE: You have no idea. 

Spencer: Are we done here?

JE: You wish.  I want to know why you didn’t mention “Brown Eyed Handsome Man” in the song because I think Buddy’s version is the definitive cover of that Chuck Berry classic.

Spencer: I like that one too but it’s such a long title and it really didn’t fit. 

JE: What if you add this: “Rave on, brown-eyed handsome man, with Ollie Vee so music does not fade away everyday it’s so easy with true love ways the day the music died”.

Spencer: Buh-bye. 

NOTE: The 10 song titles that appear in the lyrics (Charles Hardin “Buddy” Holly composed or co-composed all of them in 1957 and 1958 except where noted) are as follows: Peggy Sue; Not Fade Away; Raining in My Heart (Boudleaux & Felice Bryant); That’ll Be the Day; Rave On; Words of Love; Oh Boy!; Maybe Baby; It Doesn’t Matter Anymore (Paul Anka); and Everyday.