I Wanna Be A Star

Every kid who gets bit by the music bug wants to be a rock n roll Star. For me, it was a rerun of The Beatles at Shea Stadium shown on Ed Sullivan sometime around 1971. The actual concert was in 1965 but they aired the concert again. Those screaming girls and all the flash bulbs were intoxicating. Another program that fueled my interest would have been ABC’s In Concert program. This was way before cable and MTV.

Since I was only beginning my musical journey, I had to improvise a bit to pull off that feeling of playing at a big concert. In my Orange Room, I would take two flashlights, and place them on either side of the room, up higher on a headboard or a shelf and turn them on pointing at me across the room. I’d shut the lights off, put on a record, and I’d mime all the rock star moves as if I were on a stage in a darkened concert hall.

Sometimes, I play my dresser drawers like it was a piano to Elton John. Other times, I’d take an old snare drum and put it at the foot of my bed. I’d put pillows on the bed as Tom Toms and a clothes basket to my right with a pillow on top as my floor Tom. I’d play to the Let It Be album in the darkness with the flashlights shining in my face. It felt just like being in a stage.

Some nights it would be at a mic with my guitar miming to the Concert of Bangladesh album. Something about the lights shining into your face and the black darkness around them was very appealing.

The first time I got to experience that feeling was at grade school variety shows and later in the high school variety shows. Later on in my musical career, I got to experience that feeling often. I loved it. Probably my two favorite gigs where I really felt that connection, as I did so many years ago in my Orange Room with the flashlights was the encore we did at the 1974 Limestone variety show and our set with the Drito Brothers at the Limelight in Peoria for the Beatles 50th Anniversary on Ed Sullivan show.

As I looked out into those crowds and the spot lights hit me in the face, I was a boy again, miming to records in the darkness of my Orange Room.