Well since I’ve been Steve Miller’s partner in harmony on and off for over 39 years, figure I’d weigh in on this one on the shirt tails of your comments here.

Leslie and Steve were tight. They dug each other. The double cut Les Paul Special with the psychedelic mint green paint job Leslie had commissioned was given to Steve as a gift. Glad you got to see them share a Bill. I saw Steve around that same time but it was just the trio with Lonnie Turner and Tim Davis. Steve played harmonica almost the whole show.

I will agree with you. After Your Saving Grace, there was a creative lull in Steve’s catalog. And the Joker actually pissed me off more than it rocked my plimsoul, but like you inferred, you couldn’t kill it with a stick. He gave up the Revolution for a wolf whistle! I get it.

Even Rockin Me appearing in 1977 didn’t get my attention while we were all diggin the funk and r&b.
But then there was Fly Like an Eagle. It crossed over and the renaissance of Miller began and he ruled the airwaves for a decade. I was fortunate enough to ride that wave when we did Abracadabra the album.

The title track was actually going to be thrown off the album but we kept working on it and Steve had another hit that Europe championed and the US played catch up and you couldn’t kill it with a stick.
Then came the compact disc in 87, Classic rock radio programming and he ruled once again.

Regardless of what our individual tastes in music may be, one fact remains. Long after we are gone and many golden era artists and their songs are forgotten, Steve Miller’s catalog will still be playing in space stations throughout the quadrant of this galaxy.

Kenny Lee Lewis

__________________________________

Leslie West loved Valentines guitar work and we played House of the Rising Son every night in the Leslie West Band circa 1976… with ( future) Foreigner’s
Mick Jones holding down rhythm as Leslie shredded lead with his own blues…. great music in the hands of great talent…… some of us survive!

Marty Simon
( drummer)..

Toronto

__________________________________

Producer, writer Jerry Goldstein gave me my first job in the music business, first selling posters on the road with artists he’d sign for rights that no one was paying them for. I then went on to sign and work with Zeppelin, Doors, Rolling Stones and fifty other monster acts, but it was Eric Burdon that I became very close friends with. No Animals or touring, Hilton lived in the downstairs basement apartment of Eric’s Laurel Canyon home.

After Eric hooked up with WAR (then the back-up band, The Night Shift for Deacon Jones off season revue show.

Eric immediately enlisted Hilton to become the guitar roadie and later production manager for Eric Burdon and WAR… then Eric after he split (a mistake) from WAR. I used to watch Hilton tuning and playing the guitars at pre-sound check set-up. I could feel his desire to be back out in front of a crowd and it bothered me to share his pain in silence.

He was a gentle, thoughtful soul who was dedicated to his craft and Eric. A good hang along with Eric’s longtime tour manager Terry McVey who passed quite a few years ago.

I’m glad that you thoughtfully honored Hilton. Boy oh boy, the fourth quarter can really stink at times.

Bruce Garfield

__________________________________

Throughout this draftee’s tour in Vietnam (1969-71), “We Gotta Get Out Of This Place” was THE nationwide theme song, the “automatic” encore of every performance by Vietnamese musicians playing to allied troops — or else!  Failure to oblige would incite a shower of beer, sometimes still in the can or bottle.  Although many of these players neither spoke nor understood English, they all seemed to grasp the sentiments behind every band’s most-requested song.

Second-most-requested?  By the time this unwilling soldier arrived , Scott McKenzie’s 1967 cover of John Phillips’s “San Francisco (Be Sure To Wear Flowers In Your Hair)” was popular because of that city’s proximity to Travis Air Force Base, where departing US personnel landed in “The World” — dead or alive, alas.

Dave Wallace, Jr.

__________________________________

Thank you for the great piece on Leslie West. I met Leslie in July of 1969 when I walked into a rehearsal room in Manhattan on my 1st day of being hired as road crew for a 3 week US tour to promote the album “Leslie West Mountain”

All I can remember is the physical image of the huge Jewish kid from Forest Hills with the tiny Les Paul smiling and asking me to go out for a food run and telling me he wanted a meat ball hero and a chocolate egg cream… an unknown language to my English brain but soon my daily ritual. The tour started at the Fillmore West where the band opened for Steve Miller and Albert King and Leslie told me the story of Bill Graham calling Leslie a f***ing psychedelic canary describing Leslie’s outfit when Leslie’s earlier band The Vagrants played the Fillmore East. After we played San Francisco, LA and Chicago we made our way to Bethel New York and the Woodstock Music and Art Fair. Our showtime was scheduled for a morning slot but our agent, Ron Terry pulled his trump card ( Jimi Hendrix) and we went on as the sun went down when a very loud rock band could score bigger and better with the audience. Leslie lived up to the moment and delivered a performance that the 500,000 who saw the band remembered and overnight the band became a headliner up and down I 95 including Leslie’s hometown at the Fillmore East. Mountain went on to headline the Fillmore East for the next 2 years playing more times than any act except Dead. Not bad for the psychedelic canary from Queens !! One more trip down memory lane that will stay with me forever…April or May 1070 around 1 a.m. and I am hanging out in the rehearsal room where I have been staying in between tour dates…on the West Side in the warehouse district and when someone knocks you don’t open the door… I look out of the 2nd floor window and see a Cadillac Fleetwood limousine and Leslie so I go down to the heavily locked door and Leslie says..”Mickey say hi to Jimi…” and out of the car comes Jimi Hendrix and they go upstairs to get guitars for a late night jam at Unganos club uptown…but first they sit at the end of my “bed” and noodle while I roll a few joints…thank you Leslie for that night and so many others…you had a great touch on that Junior and you were a truly funny man…( and my 3 week tour with Leslie lasted 3 years and kick started my 50 years plus career )

Mick Brigden

__________________________________

Bob, thank you so very much for taking time to remember Hilton. I was hoping you would.

I’ve produced Beatles & British Invasion themed concerts in Syracuse & Liverpool NY since 2004. Gerry Marsden RIP was here in 2007, and Hilton in 2016.  By popular demand, I brought him back in April 2017….and again, an hour west to the Geneva NY Opera House in October 2017 for a Lennon birthday concert.

Each time, myself and 2 pro level musicians backed HV on “It’s My Life”, “We Gotta”, and of course, “House”.  It was the honor of a lifetime to sing “House” along with Hilton’s perfectly-toned riff on his Gretsch Tennessean.

It’s quite possibly the last time he played his riff with a band in public, before his health issues kicked in (which I’ll keep private, in respect).

In Geneva, he was in very bad pain…but didn’t say a word about it at all. Just like the two previous shows, he happily signed items and took photos with fans afterwards, smiling and thumbs ups.

But, the most poignant “Hilton moment” each time, was his solo acoustic version of Lennon’s “Working Class Hero”. Before playing, he explained his connection to the song, as his teenage life was similar to John’s.  Losing his mother early…an emotionally absent father…the cruel British school teachers.

As he played this gem (ironically, in a waltz fashion in A minor, like “House”), Hilton allowed himself to be vulnerable. You could hear his voice shaking with emotion. And with that, the audience connected so that you could both hear a pin drop, and then seconds later loud roars at the “til you’re so fuckin’ crazy” line. Standing O’s.

And he used my acoustic guitar for it. I’ll never sell it. After “House”, he said in the northern Brit dialect, “aye lad, ya gave Eric ah roon foor his mooney!”  A greater gift, I could not ask for.

Paul Davie

BeatleCuse – Executive Producer

__________________________________

With my band, Colorway, I was lucky enough to get to open for 

The Yardbirds on three separate occasions at the Iron Horse Music Hall in Northampton, MA (my adopted hometown for almost 30 years). And at every soundcheck, sitting in the same chair near the stage, would be a silver-haired gent. Yep, it was Hilton Valentine. Him and Jim McCarty (original drummer for the Yardbirds) were buddies, of course, and Hilton lived somewhere in Connecticut, so he’d make the trip up for their shows. 

I was lucky enough to get to tell him how much his opening riff on “House Of The Rising Sun” meant to me as a kid learning guitar way back in the early 80s. I’m sure I was one of many but it still made him smile and thank me for saying so. We exchanged pleasantries at the next two shows we did with The Yardbirds. 

At the third show together the incredible Johnny A had been replaced with a “new” guitarist named Godfrey Townsend (John Entwistle/Jack Bruce/Denny Laine) and I sort of joked around after our sound check was done and said, “Hey there, so . . . you’re the *new* guy, eh?” and they all laughed. I mean, the band does have a bit of a track record.

Hilton piped up from his chair and pointed to me and said, “be careful, lad, you might be next . . . ”

That was a funny, awkward, and unforgettable moment. 

My mom taught me at a very young age that if you get the chance, thank the people who inspired you, however big or small. Let them know they made a difference in your life. 

I’m glad I took her advice.

Thanks, Hilton. Rest in peace. 

F Alex Johnson

Kyoto, Japan

__________________________________

Hilton was a really nice chap and was always underestimated
But thank you for telling everyone
I will miss him and his skiffle
Nice stuff bob until you talk about our age.  Or mine
Peter Noone

__________________________________

Well put, Bob – I always loved the Animals; but “we’re next”? Nope. My guitar-player died a year ago tomorrow. Our own mortality usually starts truly getting into our faces with the death of a parent (eldest son/father? I’m still not over it after 14 years); but your own original band mate? Whatever the rifts and complications over the years…we’re here. Right here, right now. Not “next”.

Best,
Hugo Burnham

It only took Sony two decades to wake up.

Kobalt was built to be sold. Haven’t we seen this same paradigm over the last two decades in the internet sphere? Independents gain headway, needle the big ‘uns, and then sell out at a high price. And eventually, the big ‘uns get so big, they can’t be challenged…can you say FACEBOOK and GOOGLE?

The music business has changed dramatically in the past half decade, despite no acknowledgement of this whatsoever. For ten plus years the conversation centered around distribution, i.e. the journey from Napster to Spotify. And since Spotify and its streaming cohorts turned revenue around, in other words so it started going back up, all the conversation has been about payments. Ironically, almost all of this jawing is from oldsters who were disrupted by technological change, you don’t hear the youngsters bitching, unless they’re complete wannabes. Why is it those with the smallest purchase make the biggest noise? Why is it these wankers get paid attention?

Anyway, the story of the last five years in music has been its complete Balkanization. There may be three major labels, but they control less of the landscape than ever before. You see the barrier to entry is nonexistent, and so many are playing and…

Let me give you an analogy. TV. There were nearly five hundred shows made in the past year, a giant multiple of those produced in the pre-streaming era. However, shows are expensive to make, and distribution is key, there are a limited number of outlets. In music, creation has exploded, but distribution is easy, therefore there are oodles of new acts, some with traction, some with less.

Going back to the oldsters versus the young ‘uns… The young ‘uns harnessed the new internet tools. They uploaded to Soundcloud, gave it away for free. Promoted for free online via social media, never mind having made the music on the cheap, employing computers. The young ‘uns bought fully into the new world. You either do so or die. Remember that.

But now there are so many acts and so many labels that the landscape is incomprehensible. As is the chart. Sure, there are a number of very successful songs, but they mean less than ever before, they reach a smaller percentage of the population than ever before. And their share of the aggregate is going down, yes, that’s what the latest reports have said, income is being distributed to more acts.

So…

If you’re a modern label, your best way to survive is to hoover up all the small players, get that revenue for yourself, control that revenue.

Consolidation is the way of business. And this Sony/Kobalt deal is evidence of this. Sony just entered the present. Its competitors have shrinking release schedules looking for hits, that’s a different game.

Meanwhile, the customer is completely confused. What should they listen to?

So Kobalt came up with a better mousetrap. AWAL. Giving partners just what they needed at a rock bottom price. Genius. As was Kobalt itself. Kobalt revolutionized publishing, from the ground up it was based on the internet, and transparency. You could see where your music was being played and what you should get paid, whenever you wanted. This was anathema to the old players, whose business model is based on obfuscation and theft. And sure, the old players eventually modernized, adding client computer dashboards, but the truth is they’re part of major labels operating under old rules, they’ve got no vision. So, Round Hill, Primary Wave and Hipgnosis swooped in and bought key assets, revolutionizing the business as well as driving catalog prices up.

Now the dirty little secret is the majors and their associated publishing companies like the way things are, they want no change. You see it’s one big tent, and therefore the labels don’t really care about the publishing share of streaming. Yes, the split is inequitable, songwriters get screwed. But this is going to change. BECAUSE MERCK OWNS TOO MANY HITS! Yes, Hipgnosis and its independent compatriots are going to lobby for changes, to right the wrong, to raise songwriter royalties, and they’ve got an excellent case, and now they’ve also got leverage.

The major labels could have had this leverage, but they were asleep. These new publishers had vision. Why do we not have new labels with this vision?

Catalog. The music business runs on catalog. New hits are sexy, they get all the ink, but the catalog drives profits. It costs nothing to make and market and the revenue keeps pouring in, especially in these days of streaming, where there’s no manufacturing and distribution.

Will someone ever build a new label powerhouse?

It turns out no one is willing to play the long game. Which is necessary here. Although unlike in the past, the opportunity has never been larger. You’ve got to build a catalog. But with so much content available, so much to bet on, the opportunities are rife. But music is seen as a secondary business that got trounced by the internet, never to recover. WRONG! The internet has been the best thing that has ever happened to the music business. There are umpteen new revenue streams, marketing is cheap and if you don’t understand this you’re an oldster who believes direct consumption of recordings is the only thing that matters in music. It is not. Widen your horizons or get out of the way, the future continues to be built.

But now Sony has done what I told Roger Ames and the rest of the CEOs to do almost twenty years ago, they’ve cast a wide net, knowing that the aggregate is key, nothing is as big as before so you’ve got to be the pipeline for more.

This is a bad sign for artists. The more power major labels get, the worse it is for them.

But the race is not over, it is still being run.

But now the people who left major label distribution to go to AWAL…are back where they started, and there’s no viable alternative.

Never ever forget that distribution is king. And Sony has just amped up its distribution power. Think about that.

Playlist: https://spoti.fi/39zSPtp

This is bringing me right down.

Now it’s getting out of control, every week seems to bring the passing of a rock star of yore, some that you recognize, some that you’ve hardly even heard of.

Leslie West. I bought the first Mountain album, which was really a Leslie West solo LP. Yes, I knew he was in the Vagrants, but I never heard any of their music. This was when you read about records and had to buy them to hear them, but you couldn’t buy all of them. Not that I’m exactly sure what made me buy the first Mountain album, maybe I heard it at a friend’s house, because I certainly never heard it on the radio. 

It was on Windfall Records. Distributed by Bell Records. Let’s see, Bell was a powerhouse of rock and roll, famous for releasing Edison Lighthouse’s “Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes)” and Climax’s “Precious and Few.” No, not the Climax Blues Band, and if you wanted the really heavy stuff on Bell you listened to Tony Orlando and Dawn. Bell was a singles label. And either it got on the airwaves or it disappeared. What room was there for Leslie West? Essentially none. Especially in an era where all the good stuff came out on Warner Brothers and Columbia.

Upon Leslie’s death I was stunned to find out about the reputation of “Long Red,” how many times it was sampled. Actually, my favorite song on the LP was “Baby, I’m Down,” and “Storyteller Man” was great, as was the finale, “Because You Are My Friend.” This was before anybody knew who Leslie was, so he could be both noisy and soft, bombastic and sensitive, all on the same album. And I played that album over and over, it was fun to be into something only you knew about. 

So I had to go see Mountain at the Fillmore East. The headliner was the Steve Miller Band, supporting their new album “Your Saving Grace,” which I did not purchase. I love the title track, but at that point, I was off the Steve Miller bandwagon, ultimately “Number 5” was worse. Then people stopped buying Steve’s albums, I saw “Rock Love” in the bins, just like the ridiculously titled follow-up, “Recall the Beginning…A Journey from Eden,” but no one I knew owned them. And then, out of the blue, Miller had a monster hit with “The Joker” and he was everywhere. My favorite album was always the third, “Brave New World.” Sure, it’s got “Space Cowboy,” but it also had “Kow Kow” and “Seasons” and Paul McCartney on “My Dark Hour.” I still play “Brave New World” today, even though diehards believe it was already over by then. You see Boz Scaggs was already gone, to purists it was about “Sailor,” with the indelible “Quicksilver Girl,” which too many people still don’t know, and preferably the debut, when the band was supposedly still pure.

I’ll tell you, Miller delivered, but he was just a bonus, I wanted to see Mountain. And by this time, there was a band. With Felix Pappalardi and Corky Laing and Leslie sang like he meant it, there was incredible power, this was an offshoot of Hendrix and what had come before, today’s heavy music is sans melody, but not Leslie West, not Mountain. Mind you, this was months before the second album, “Climbing!,” came out in March. “Mississippi Queen” was an immediate success. In bedrooms and basements. You never heard it on AM radio. But by this point, if you lived in Fairfield, Connecticut, you were listening to FM, New York was only fifty miles away.

I remember being stoned listening to “Climbing!” in the basement of someone I did not really know and feeling that the album was passé, it was already June, there was new stuff. And I’d heard enough of “Mississippi Queen” within weeks of release. Actually, my favorite cut on the album was “Silver Paper.” And I knew “Theme for an Imaginary Western” from Jack Bruce’s solo and “For Yasgur’s Farm” was one of the Woodstock songs, but ultimately Mountain was not in the Woodstock movie, a decision made by management, when you used to say no instead of yes, and West carried this chip on his shoulder for the rest of his life. If only…

And then Mountain got heavier and heavier, more bombastic, and when that avenue ran out of steam there was a supergroup with drummer Laing and Jack Bruce and that was the height of bombasticity and corporate rock came in and then disco and Leslie West was a gunslinger with no saloon within which to show his chops. MTV was about synths. A few hotshots survived, but only a few, like Eric Clapton…even Jeff Beck was struggling for attention. Music is funny. Have enough hits and you can trade on them forever, playing them to smaller and smaller audiences. But people come to hear the hits, you’re a prisoner of your past.

But now that past is receding further and further, to the point where unless you’re the Beatles or the Stones, your work from the sixties may be fading away, and the seventies and eighties too. At least in the sixties there were all these big AM hits. But the seventies were about FM staples, so there were a lot of acts that got airplay but were not known by absolutely everybody so their paint has faded so much as to almost be unknowable.

Then there’s Gerry Marsden. His band had gigantic hits. But it seems no young ‘un knows them, they’ll never get chills when they finally see the Mersey and have the words of his song play in their heads. And you’d think in this era where pop rules, someone could have a huge hit with a cover of “Don’t Let the Sun Catch You Cryin'”…then again, that can’t happen until the chart migrates from beats back to melody.

As for Sylvan Sylvain… He had the privilege of being in a cult band. With cult fans. The Ramones never had a hit, and now you see their t-shirts on babies. The Dolls have lived on because they pushed the envelope, so you saw a lot of ink about Sylvain’s death, but most people had no idea who he was, never mind his music.

Tim Bogert? A monster supporting player in no bands that were iconic hitmakers. Sure, Vanilla Fudge’s version of “You Keep Me Hanging On” was the precursor to “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida,” an extended number for stoners, but there was never a hit single version, unlike the Iron Butterfly number. I saw Cactus multiple times, I can’t say they deserved to break through, and they didn’t. As for Bogert’s work with Jeff Beck… Finally his moniker was in the headline, in the name of the group, but Stevie Wonder had the hit version of “Superstition.” So, if you knew Bogert, you felt his loss. But he was never the member of a sexy band so he got a hell of a lot less ink than Sylvain Sylvain.

And now Hilton Valentine.

Quick! Name the guitarist in the Animals!

Very few can do so. Their hits were 55 years ago, over half a century. To give you some perspective… That would be like kids in the sixties, the Animals’ heyday, knowing the hits of 1910, which they most certainly didn’t.

Now the Animals were hobbled by being on MGM Records, which was never cool. We knew that back then, we saw the labels on the 45s, we knew the orange and yellow of Capitol, the red of Columbia…MGM was a lame label, without the infrastructure of its big time competitors.

But the Animals were giants.

It was the summer of ’64. The summer of “A Hard Day’s Night.” The British Invasion was in full swing, our minds had expanded to encompass the work of seemingly everything from the U.K., assuming it was good. And the Animals were.

At that point most people had no idea “House of the Rising Sun” was a Dave Van Ronk staple, never mind being on Bob Dylan’s first LP, it was the rock sound that put the Animals’ version over the top. Of course you had Eric Burdon’s vocal, but there is not a boomer alive, that’s how ubiquitous hit songs were back then, who doesn’t know the opening guitar lick to “House of the Rising Sun.” That lick was played by Hilton Valentine.

Now the original incarnation of the Animals only lasted until 1966. Sure, their hit-making era was only three years, from ’64-’66, but they’d paid dues before that, beginning in ’62, in Newcastle upon Tyne, an industrial area without the hipness of Liverpool, never mind London. The Animals had a dark name and they were perceived as dark. But they had a slew of hits.

Sure, “House of the Rising Sun” was a breakthrough, and went to #1, but “We Gotta Get Out of This Place,” which only went to #13 in the U.S., was a bigger song, probably better remembered. Barry Mann and Cynthia Well wrote it, but the Animals made it their own, and it did not have the legacy of a standard, it was fresh, brand new.

As for “It’s My Life”…

Eric Burdon was gonna ride that serpent, he was gonna break loose, because..

“It’s my life and I’ll do what I want

It’s my mind and I’ll think what I want”

This was the ethos of the sixties, it’s not the ethos of today. Our parents were not fighting us for attention, there was no question of them being our best friends, we were throwing off the chains of society, of expectations, we were gonna forge our own path.

It’s a great song, Burdon delivers it, but never underestimate the importance of Hilton Valentine’s twelve string guitar.

And the Animals had other hits, but “Don’t Bring Me Down” is my favorite. 

“When you complain and criticize

I feel I’m nothing in your eyes

It makes me feel like giving up

Because my best just ain’t good enough”

The hormones had awoken. Puberty was in full swing. What you wanted was too often unattainable. You had crushes. But to them you barely existed, if at all. But to you, they were everything. The only thing you had to soothe yourself was this music.

“Oh, oh no

Don’t bring me down”

Give me a chance. I’ll show you, you’ll see, I’ll have this music playing in the back of my mind, I’ll be emboldened, I’ll be undeniable.

Now in the case of “Don’t Bring Me Down” one cannot underestimate the importance of Dave Rowberry’s organ, and Eric Burdon sings with nuance, something absent from too much of today’s music, and it’s a great Gerry Goffin/Carole King song, but what truly makes “Don’t Bring Me Down” a hit is Hilton Valentine’s fuzz guitar. It’s a bedrock element of rock history. And you probably had no idea who Hilton Valentine was. He’s that guy!

They no longer die before their time, they don’t O.D., their bodies give out and they’re gone, and there are so many of them these days that their deaths are less shocking and get less attention, after all, nobody lives forever.

But if you lived through the era… These people were everything. They took over from sports stars. They broke new ground. And we followed them. The Beatles were not the only pied pipers.

Now the truth is we’re next. These musicians are a decade older than so many of us. But the Grim Reaper is coming for us, we’re next on the chopping block. Everything that was so important, everything that we lived for, is fading away, probably never to return. HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?

I’m in the middle of this.

Been a strange day. First and foremost it was raining, which means snow in the mountains, Mammoth got over a hundred inches, not something you can fathom if you live on the east coast, if you live anywhere but California, where it doesn’t snow often, but when it does it dumps, unlike in Colorado, where you get constant dustings, 2″ here, 3 or 4″ there.

And when it rains in L.A., the whole city shuts down. Well, it’s kinda shut down anyway, traffic is lighter than it normally is. Normally rush hour is a drag that must be factored into potential trips. But there are no traffic jams these days. And this was important because I had to go to Ralphs to get my Covid vaccine.

I got three opinions. My hematologist said to get it as soon as possible, that even though my B cells would be nonexistent, the vaccine might work on my T or NK cells. My psychiatrist said to get it immediately because the future was unclear. And that we all might need a booster anyway. My internist said to wait a month, wait for my body to generate some B cells after the Rituxan infusion, so I could get a proper immune response, form some antibodies, however low in number.

I went with the majority, somewhat reluctantly, but then Ralphs canceled my appointment and it was moot.

Scrambling for an appointment is a thing. You hear from a friend or a relative, in this case my sister Jill, you go to the site and the time slots are gone and then it’s a matter of how fast you can type, how fast you can fill in the boxes, to see if now you can get an appointment. And I was a pro, they were evaporating fast, but I got ’em for me and Felice.

But before that I also got them at a different Ralphs for a much later date, for January 29th instead of the 17th. Thank god I did, because I didn’t heed Jill’s warning the next time around, to ignore what the site said, that it was health care workers only, and not over 65, but she was right, the reservations were valid, but I only realized this after the fact, when nothing was available. Thank god I had the prior reservations, because nothing continued to be available.

But last night there was a big story in the L.A. “Times’ that Ralphs was canceling appointments…and I got nervous. But I called Ralphs and they said I was still on the schedule, not that I wholly believed it, especially after all the stories of unavailability in this morning’s news.

Oh, if you’re playing outside L.A., let me make this clear. California said anybody over 65, which I am, could get the shot, but it didn’t apply in L.A. County, and then it did.

So I went to Ralphs today…where nothing was happening. I expected a line, some commotion, but it turns out they only vaccinate 15-20 people a day. So the process proceeded leisurely, and I had time to talk to the injector, a pharmacy student, who told me Ralphs was only canceling appointments after February 7th, you see the store had to kick back 10,000 shots to the city, and that I would get a second shot, they would call me…he convinced me, but now that I think about it I’m not so sure.

And when Felice returned from getting her shot ninety minutes later, we fired up Bill Maher. Normally I’d go hiking, but tonight it would be way too muddy. And the show was disappointing. They didn’t touch on GameStop, and Bill wasn’t familiar with the Jewish Space Lasers Van Jones was talking about, a story which broke Thursday, but I guess it’s hard for everybody to keep up these days, to know everything.

And when Bill was done, we fired up “Deutschland ’89” on Hulu. It’s the version with subtitles.

Now the problem with these shows is you can’t remember what happened in the previous seasons, in this case “Deutschland ’83” and “’86.” So it’s confusing. Just as bad is “Spiral,” they’re dripping out two episodes a week. And it’s hard to remember from one week to the next. I hate these companies, let me binge. The same way I hate the “Billboard” album chart. Huh? Just add up the streams, please, instead of coming up with complex formulas to service the record labels who rarely advertise in the magazine anyway. 80% of revenue comes from streams, which are all individual tracks, but the chart? The chart references albums, ridiculous.

And after watching two “Deutschlands,” Felice was taking a break so I started surfing the services. I do this on a regular basis, to see what is new, which is how I found “Deutschland ’89.” And after coursing through Hulu and Netflix, Felice still hadn’t returned, so I decided to check out HBO Max, it’s now on the Roku.

And that’s when I saw the Tiger doc. I walked in on Felice watching it earlier in the week and Tiger’s caddie was talking and it was fascinating, I decided to start from the beginning.

Tiger’s father is waxing rhapsodic, how his son is going to change the world, not only in golf, he’s going to be a great humanitarian.

And after Earl drones on…they show Tiger in a jail cell. Quite a juxtaposition.

And when Felice returned to the living room, we decided to stay with the phenom as opposed to going back to Germany.

Come on, when you were a kid didn’t you want to be famous? Didn’t you look up to the stars? Didn’t you think if you were on TV your life would work?

Well, this is how boomers felt before all the child actors got arrested, before today, when everybody is trying to gain a following online.

You grow up in the suburbs and…you dream of something more. I’m envious of those who grew up in L.A., it was all at their fingertips, they could gain knowledge of the game, which took me years to figure out in my twenties.

Then again, there are people who grow up in the suburbs and stay in the suburbs. But that was never me, I wanted to get out, I needed to get out, California was always my dream and I was going. Staying in town sounded like death, get a job and…repeat what your parents did, their lives? No way.

But it wasn’t until I was almost thirty that I realized for most people the dream died, they were happy going along and getting along. Not me, I wanted more, much more.

And it turned out there was so much I couldn’t do. Practicing law? I’m too much of a perfectionist for that. If I made a mistake, I’d affect someone’s life and be horrified. And the truth is the only people who can get thorough legal service are those who can pay, for the work of the large firms or the specialty firms. In L.A. there are scores of firms for every specialty. Law was not for me. Nor was regular business. I’m not cut out for that either. It’s all about getting along, being jive, playing the mental game, the work is secondary. I learned this the hard way. To me, the record had to be its very best. But to my superiors? Everybody had to be happy, you didn’t want to ruffle feathers, I didn’t understand that whatsoever.

So I’ve got to work for myself, I’ve got to be a lone wolf. Because if you work for anybody else inherently there are limits. Unless you’re top dog. But how many people did you have to kill to get there? Most people have no idea how business really works, how people end up at the top.

Tiger ended up at the top.

And he sacrificed his complete life for it. He played no other sports, he had no friends, and when he finally had a girlfriend, his parents made him break up with her, cut off all contact in a letter after three years. You see they were afraid the girlfriend was going to impede Tiger’s progress, that he wouldn’t get to the destination.

Now I never envisioned having a wife, kids and a house. But I certainly never wanted to be so focused that there was no room for anything else.

And Tiger’s father is training him. Pushing him. It’s relentless.

But it was his mother who carried the big stick. She set the limits, and if you crossed her, there was going to be trouble.

Now one thing that has always bugged me about Tiger is if he hits a bad shot, he can get angry, he can throw down his club. I was taught etiquette in golf was key, by my mother, at the public course, she loved to play golf. But Tiger lived in his own bubble where winning was everything, he was Vince Lombardi on steroids.

And he and his mother made fun of Phil Mickelson. That he was twenty pounds overweight and didn’t practice as hard as Tiger.

Now the truth is I know a lot of famous people. And fame comes with a lot of perks. Old school fame, based on talent, comes with a lot of money, and if you don’t blow it…and if you’re a musician you can continue to tour and you get your ASCAP/BMI and…

But fame won’t make you happy, no way. And if you lose too much of it, people make fun of you, call you a has-been. It’s a tough row to hoe and very few people know the inside game. Instead you’ve got fans who support you, but irritate you. Sometimes you don’t want to hang out and sign autographs. Tiger plays and he’s endlessly signing autographs, it’s a burden, and anybody who’s famous will tell you…one false move, give one fan a bad look, don’t pay fealty to them, and they’ll hate you and talk about you whenever your name comes up for the rest of their lives, it’s their brush with fame, and you didn’t come through. Talk about the pressure…but it’s nothing like playing sports, certainly golf, which no one plays perfectly.

But few athletes are well-rounded people. They do something physical, whereas…artists have to experience life to express themselves, it’s part of the process, and how you express yourself is important, which is why when you’re just the face of a committee production…it’s hard to have faith, it’s hard to believe, unless you’re a mindless fan entranced by the fame, just like Tiger’s army, some of whom hated blacks, but Tiger wasn’t seen as black.

Not even to himself.

But there are some other athletes who set the record straight. That Tiger can call himself a Cablinasian, but no matter what he says, most people see him as black. There are immutable truths, but somehow Tiger felt they didn’t apply to him.

And then there were the enablers, first and foremost Nike. To Nike you’re a product, and the only reason they’re interested is to sell stuff. You’re fungible, there’s always another athlete coming down the pike. And Nike presses the button and…whew, suddenly you’re everywhere!

It used to be this way in the music business, back before the internet and the fracturing of society. Actually, Tiger would never be as big if he started today. Then again, everybody’s interested in a phenom, remember when Steph Curry started hitting all those three-pointers? People who had no idea where the Warriors played were now following the story, just like non-golfers followed Tiger Woods.

So… They’re setting up Tiger’s infidelities. Turns out his father and his friend the golf pro were horndogs, married, but playing the field. And it’s not like Tiger had any other role models, these were almost the only people he had contact with!

But Tiger was made to self-destruct. It always happens. You can only stay that focused for a while, then the world creeps in and you re-evaluate and…

They reference how much bodily effort Tiger puts into his swing, they ask the question of whether it would hurt his back. Tiger just had his fifth back surgery and…once you go down the back surgery road, you never get completely better, surgeons never really tell you this, they live to cut, and they’ll cut again if you want them to. But, the truth is the body breaks down, and injuries come primarily from overuse. You can’t really overuse your mind. Which is why my father always focused on it, whenever I spoke of being an athlete he’d go berserk, and discount any time spent pursuing my goal, he considered my two years in Utah a waste. I don’t agree, if anything I learned I didn’t want to live that life. But this was long before the rich got richer, when you could work at a bank or become an entrepreneur and pull away from the rest of society, and the truth is today’s smart kids know this, they don’t want to start at the bottom, they want insurance, they want a job, they’ll put their dreams aside because they don’t want to be broke. And never forget, for every Tiger Woods, of which there is one, there are thousands of wannabes that you’ve never heard the name of.

So this documentary is riveting. I didn’t watch the Michael Jordan doc because I lived through it, I watched way too much basketball in the nineties. I felt the same way about Tiger. None of the reviews of the Tiger doc conveyed the experience of watching it. The talking heads talk and…it’s like listening to audio Dead Sea Scrolls. And you see everybody’s job, and wonder where they fit in, and where you fit in. Years have gone by, people look old. Happens to the best of us, unless you check out early, O.D. And you can get plastic surgery, but like Lowell George sang, you’re just fooling yourself. Your interior doesn’t care about your exterior work, and to young people you’re a joke. It’s extremely rare that you don’t look done, that you look natural, and people know and make fun of you behind your back. That’s the truth.

So, the golf pro at the Naval course… He just lived a life. He’s not famous. And there are a bunch of writers, some very articulate, but unless you read the sports pages back then, most specifically “Sports Illustrated,” you don’t know their names. And sports writing, like music criticism, has fallen on hard times. “Sports Illustrated” was sold, it’s not the same magazine, and who wants week old sports news these days? Today it’s just the facts, no one is paying big bucks for sports writing like they used to. Same deal with “Vanity Fair,” the new editor produces a lame magazine. But the truth is… Condé Nast cut her budget severely, so the best writers have gone elsewhere.

So you watch this documentary and your whole life flashes in front of your eyes. Tiger started almost at birth, but it’s too late for the rest of us, that ship has sailed. So you evaluate your choices, try to feel good about them, but… This Tiger documentary also disincentivizes you to achieve goals you wanted to. Rich, famous, the best? People pay attention to you for a minute, and then they move on. And when your time is done, and it’s done for almost everybody, you’re forgotten. And the biggest of stars can soon be nonentities. Ask a kid about Johnny Carson. Who?

So the Tiger documentary is quite an achievement. It’s anything but a rote telling of the events of his life. And it’s much more than a melodrama. It’s about life itself. And you only get one. What do you want to do with it?