It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll, and I Play It!

Irish Voice Entertainment

It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll, and I Play It!

May 15, 2008

By Mike Farragher

I HAD one of the most thrilling nights of my life recently. I played the U2 Joshua Tree album in its entirety. This doesn’t sound out of the ordinary for an Irish rock columnist, you say? Well, here’s the thing. I didn’t just listen to that classic disc, I played along with it on my bass guitar.

I spent each Halloween smeared in grease paint in homage to Gene Simmons of KISS, dreaming of one day playing the rhythmic sparks that emanated from his fire breathing cartoon persona. I passed the last 12 years of my writing life here at the Irish Voice reporting about the music that I could never create myself.

All that changed at the tender age of 41, when I embarked on a lifelong dream of playing a musical instrument.

“A few of us are going to jam tonight, wanna come?” asked my friend. He’s recently divorced and decided to fill the emptiness of his house with rehearsal space — a ringing endorsement for all men to ditch their wives if ever there was one!

I was always a spectator in these proceedings when he had “jam nights” in the past, providing wilted hand claps that may or may not have been in time with the beat if it was late in the evening, or if I got hold of a few bad pints of Guinness at his bar. (Did I mention the freedom of choice to install a new bar in the playroom is yet another ringing endorsement for busting out of your matrimonial obligations? But I digress.)

So there I was, in the middle of the mix, bringing the throbbing rhythm to the proceedings while two of my buddies flanked me at either side with guitars and percussion. It was a communion of the artistic and the sexual all at once, my hands stroking both the phallic neck and the hourglass, feminine-shaped bottom as Larry Mullen’s sexy beats propelled the evening.

I looked down, scarcely able to take in the sight of my fingers moving along the frets while my other hand plucked the right strings. My buds slapped my back and high-fived after each song, and I blinked back a tear because it would be so un-rock ’n’ roll to melt like a repentant celebrity on The View right about now.

I was overwhelmed by the simple joy of keeping time and the thrill of spontaneous creation during an evening I will go to my grave remembering.

This whole thing started as an experiment in the power of positive thinking. Sound a little New Agey? Perhaps.

Sigmund Freud once remarked that the Irish are impervious to therapy and I tend to agree with him. At the same time, I can’t resist the pop culture mechanisms out there that boost your self awareness and optimism.

I sat through enough Landmark Education classes and devoured enough books like The Secret to hear the same message loud and clear — if you speak it and put your mind to it, anything is possible.

So, it started with me speaking a little differently. The part of the Irish family tree facing the Limerick side is full of musical bearing fruit. My mother, brother, uncle, aunt and most cousins all know their way around a musical instrument.

“Sure, the Galway crowd couldn’t carry a tune on if it was lashed on their back,” my father said to me one time as he shook his head and looked longingly at my mother making beautiful music on the fiddle.

I shrugged my shoulders, assuming that I took after dear old dad. With the exception of a few high stepping Irish dancers who compete professionally, it is a barren wasteland of artistic expression of any sort within my father’s tribe.

Instead of telling people I am my father’s son in all things music, I created the possibility through my promise that by the end of 2008, I would be able to play fluently.

I have learned that while it is easy to speak this possibility, it is harder to actually play the bass guitar. I signed up for lessons and was greeted by Paul, my instructor.

Walking into the place, I feel each of the many years that separate me from the instructors at the school. In fact, most of the people my age on the premises are dropping their kids off for their lessons.

I am woefully conscious of how this raging midlife crisis might look to the passerby as I pass time in the waiting room with my cherry red bass, while chums my children’s ages pet their Mattel Spongebob Squarepants guitars.

Word got out that I was going to “school to be cool,” and my friends have been merciless in their teasing.

“I love you and all, dude, but if you think I am gonna sit through a recital of nine-year-olds to hear you pull off ‘With or Without You’ on bass this June, you got another thing coming,” said one.

So here is where the power of positive thinking and possibilities met with reality as Paul shook my hand for the first time. We settled in, and I was fascinated with the shaking of his dreadlocks as his fingers moved effortlessly around the fret like supple blades of grass swayed by the breeze.

His whole essence was riddim as he played a fluid line of reggaefied funk. By contrast, my short, fat fingers chewed through the neck of the bass like mangled sausages through a grinder.

Trying to buzzsaw through the strings with alternating index and middle fingers as my other hand busied itself on the frets proved overwhelming. Whatever I was paying Paul to sit in the room and witness this was not enough, I said to myself.

Learning musical notes and keeping time seemed to be an insurmountable task in the beginning of the process. Most bass players flow effortlessly with the beat onstage, but try as I might, I couldn’t wipe the constipated look off my face.

I often thought about throwing in the towel in the first few weeks, but there is no turning back now. I am obsessed!

If you’re looking for me at any given lunch hour, you can find me hunched over in the bass room at some Guitar Center or Sam Ash store. The shopping experience, however, is not always a pleasant one.

My tie grazes the strings and my ostentatious cuff links screech along the frets as the underpaid staff, whose heavily tattooed arms and necks resemble partially completed coloring books, eye me with white-hot contempt.

Of course, I am the white professional male embodiment of “The Man” who is cast as the villain that holds them back on the plot line in any one of their crappy unrecorded songs.

The cheap cherry red Dean bass I bought now has companionship. I have a tasty Hoffner violin bass knockoff in homage to Paul McCartney, and I am eyeing a vintage Fender American Jazz Bass whose purchase will likely be the tipping point between sending my kids to community college or university.

Our little jam session in my friend’s basement is now a weekly appointment in my Blackberry, and in a few short weeks we have scaled and conquered the mountains of songs by the likes of Sublime, the Police, Neil Young, U2, and the Rolling Stones.

With our advancing age and penchant for playing songs from the eighties, we are thinking about calling ourselves “Old Wave” and playing for burgers on the local backyard barbecue circuit this summer. For an encore and a shot at an extra hot dog, I might even spit fire like Gene Simmons!

There are other life lessons learned that go beyond playing the bottom end of the Pretenders’ “Mystery Achievement.” Being a Leo, I am allergic to coaching of any sort. What a waste of time! I know everything!

Slogging through finger exercises while the pre-pubescent virtuoso in the practice room next to yours plays Metallica bass lines will take anyone down a peg, which has been a healthy process. They say you can’t teach old dogs new tricks, but I now know otherwise.

“It’s too hard,” is the catch phrase I grow fond of when I attempt to lose weight, find an agent for my novel, or do anything else that does not come to me as easily as I would like. At the tender age of 41, the bass guitar has taught me that anything truly worth accomplishing takes perseverance.

Scoff all you like at the pop culture hoo-hah I consume, but I am living proof that if you say it, think it, dream it, and then do it, anything is possible.

Rock on!

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