I just found this rant of words I wrote when Gary passed. I was on tour and pretty messed up and Brook was kind enough to read it at the celebration of his life. It's quite long and not well-edited.
Words For Gary (2006)
I'd met Gary maybe a half dozen times and seen him perform around the island, and he kinda scared me with his talent, his aura, and frankly, the first few times we talked I thought he was just plain rude! The most fascinating thing about his poor behaviour at time, and this was something I would later learn to not only appreciate but look forward to, was that he seemed to get away with and that it could even make your day in the strangest way! How crazy is that? Right? Then he had his accident and the music stopped around here for a while.
Three months after the collision, Melinda had grown tired of me asking about him and she convinced me to go up and see him at his and Hedi’s place and to try to get him playing again, so one sweltering summer afternoon I did just that. I was nervous as hell. What right did I have to assume he'd be ready for it and what would I do if he told me to piss off? I took a chance and went for it. He greeted me at the door wearing bermuda shorts, a skull and crossbones t-shirt cut off at the shoulders and a black patch over one of his eyes. He was drinking a super-can of beer through a long straw and looked like a crazed toothless pirate crossed with a greaser. We talked for a little while about music and the accident and not a half hour later I too found myself stripped down in the heat, sitting on a sweaty towel in my underwear next to him on the couch watching a Bob Dylan concert, weeping uncontrollably at the marvel of it all while Gary jumped around the room with a beer can in each hand screaming and yelling and laughing and singing along-a hilarious sight were anyone to walk in on us for sure, with me crying and sweating and Gary yelling 'weep man, yeah that's good Indio! Bob's talking to you man! He’s talking to us all!’ Gary hated to waste time. We were the same that way. Needless to say, after everything he had been through I guess I could tell that the music in him was far from gone.
After a couple more visits and jams he was back in the saddle again, a singer-songwriter extraordinaire with music and music plans coming out of him day and night. Ideas and dreams. Jams and gigs. He let me play in his band when I was home from tours and it was fun and invigorating and exasperating and amazing. A beautiful thing. His songs were great to play along to and I found singing harmonies with him really fun. His songs were so great. Fuck yes. He sang with conviction and had the goods to back it up. Whether people listened or not or even showed up it was 100 percent rock and roll and even though it hurt him sometimes he continued.
Gary was a poet and a player. A high trapeze artist of dangerous soul. The orphan, gypsy, fool, and sage were just some of his working archetypes. To me, he was one of the Yes People Kerouac sang about in On The Road. A burning bush in a vast desert, or like Yeats' or Keats' Lion in the desert (I can't remember which), just generally pissed off at all the endless boredom and waste around him. Ennui was his great enemy. His veins were full of flame and his skin full of the promise of some inner heat or light the kind all the mad ones know about and live for. 'Crying like a fire in the sun'. That's the kind of guy I definitely saw. You couldn't put that fire out with water that's for sure. Add gasoline and a thousand years of contemplation, I just don't know.
In his last days, his eyes were always full of understandable pain along with the usual glimmer of mischief you’d come to know and love and he was so glad to see you. There was more water and light in them. The love within was deeper than before. There was a shiver and frailty in his steps and body- his elegant bones seemed to be trying to leap out of the tender prison of his mortal frame as if to take flight well before he was ready and his long beautiful fingers began losing strength around simple tasks like holding a beer or beating the shit out of a guitar somewhere and yet there was this strength behind everything he did. A pride and charisma in all things. I had this sense that maybe he was so great because he was never really comfortable here and maybe that's why he was burning all the time, pushing everything around him to the greatest possible limits of exhaustion and exasperation, whether mind, body, time, art, or love itself. Whether it was noise or silence, love or cold indifference, patience or non, Gary was a pusher alright and knew how to get his way. Like the great Kristoffersson song said, 'taking every wrong direction on his lonely way back home'. He was not a large man but boy could he push you around! To laugh, to feel, to focus on something totally and utterly (even if it meant focusing on him-he was always on stage as far as I could tell) he was most definitely a killer of zombies and the status quo didn't stand a chance around him.
His teachers were also pains in the asses in their own time and there'll hopefully be more to come cause we need them. To me Gary really was Lenny Bruce. He really was Bob Dylan, Jesus, Buddha, Bukowski, Reed, Young, Corso, Ginsberg and everyone we both admired and learned so much from. These people I seemed to have followed down a road that hasn't often been comfortable, were all there inside of him. You know the song 'Maggie's Farm'? The voice in that song to me is pure Gary. A beautiful voice of blessing and complaint, The song of a lone scarecrow out in a desolate field saying 'look at me! Top this you bastards! Can you dig this beautiful sky? I'm gonna get free!' He was Spirit overflowing. That's really the thing I feel the most about him and can see like a clear picture in my mind, and as rare and precious as a jewel. Not right or wrong, rich or poor, just shining its beautiful SELF for the sake of it. Alive. Living. Gary was so alive.
As far as his music goes, to me he wasn't only playing to a different drummer he was one of the rare individuals who was actually playing on the correct drum, which is a timeless ageless drum. Most people in the music business today don't have a clue about that drum cause they're too busy banging on their own chests and trying to sell you a pretty piece of crap and is it an accident that he never really felt like he was a part of The Big Time and had never really Made It? To me he had not only made it, he was living it and giving it away for free and had even managed to write some eternal songs while he was at it and those who loved him really loved him.
I learned a lot from Gary and saw myself in him and I think he helped me a lot without either of us knowing it. I think he showed me that it was ok to get as much pleasure out of washing dishes or driving a truck or cooking a meal or digging the sky as it was to rock out in front of a thousand people with flames flying out of your nostrils and that maybe the things that matter to us the most are the things that mean the least to us in the end. Like sitting on a couch in your underwear next to a drunken pirate while watching Bob Dylan play for 20 thousand people was maybe just as good as being Bob Dylan. Just maybe.
We found out he wasn't going to be around much longer just weeks after my mother passed away. I'd also lost another close musical friend to cancer just months before and told him 'forget it pal! Enough of this already!' He laughingly apologized. When he told us about it on the ferry it was like he was going on a trip to Mexico or something.....there was little to say...just some hugs. A few tears. Our relationship changed for the third and final time,...he became almost fatherly to me as if he had more love and energy to give than ever. He started packing his bags almost immediately, going somewhere with a look in his eyes that to me said the same thing my mother's eyes said to me in her last days....they said 'I made it man!....it's alright now. I made it and you're gonna be ok' but my heart was full of sorrow. Still is.
He called me a few times recently when I was on tour to see how I was doing and to tell me how great he thought my songs and record were and that he listened to it every night before he fell asleep and that was so encouraging, just when I needed it the most. He was there for me and I'll never forget that. I'll always sing for Gary. Always. Even if I'm driving truck for a living or washing dishes. He was our friend and always will be. He knew love and was love and I thank him from the bottom of my heart and the tops of my uppermost mind. We'll understand it all by and by. That's the best we can do. Carry on.