THE SIGNAL from David Katznelson
“To forgive is wisdom, to forget is genius. And easier. Because it's true. It's a new world every heart beat.”― Joyce Cary,
The first time I ever heard of Brian Rohan was when Roberta Petersen, my boss at Warner Bros. Records, handed me a stack of demo tapes with one that Brian sent her on top of the pile. There were dozens in front of me, and she made sure to tell me to listen to the one Brian sent first. And unlike most of the demos received, Bert made sure to get back to Brian after I listened.
I first met Brian at the Haight Street Fair in the early 90s. I was just finishing up college at UC Berkeley and Bert asked me to meet up with him to check out his newest band, Four Non-Blondes. I am not sure how I found him in the tumult of the fair, but I did, and the way the sun hit him, he literally glowed… I had come face to face with a larger-than-life force of nature, a person who controlled his space and was happy to bring you in.
While he only spoke with affection for Roberta, he did not have much fondness for many of the leaders of the music industry. And since I was just starting out my career, he decided to offer me his insight on what and who I was getting involved with. It was during that first conversation that he told me of the time he lay David Geffen flat at a party with one fierce punch. Geffen had disrespected him and his artists and Brian was not one to put up with that kind of treatment (details of the incident are in his obituary here, although I am told Geffen was probably wearing a tee-shirt, not a suit).
Through Joel Selvin, Brian and I reconnected last year…it turned out he was a fan of the newsletter. Brian and I went out to lunch in Larkspur soon after. He was much frailer now, yet still commanded his space, jokingly bossing around the waiters that he obviously knew well, throwing loving (but crazy) insults for the whole café to hear…and they matched his sparring, asking me why the hell I would be seen with such a reprobate.
As Brian was brought his usual beverage, he decided to tell me the tale of when he represented Neil Cassidy in court in South San Francisco. Why he was in court was unimportant: drugs, vagrancy…SOMETHING typical for Cassidy. They went into city hall, approached the bench and in front of a group of private school girls who were visiting the courtroom (a detail Brian emphasized), when Neil was asked by the judge to tell his story he went deep, telling the judge his life story from the beginning…filled with color and intrigue. After the long, crazed soliloquy, the beleaguered judge took a moment, and then dropped all charges against the famous beat. Cassidy and Brian walked out of the courtroom, right passed the dumbfounded students, who were still processing what they had just seen and heard.
Brian was battling cancer when we dined, and soon after we finished our meal, was tired and ready to go back to his apartment. We planned to get together again, but between his health and Covid, it just didn’t work out. There were so many more stories I wanted to hear. What an amazing character. RIP.
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Lines Written Near San Francisco
By: Louis Simpson
I wake and feel the city trembling.
Yes, there is something unsettled in the air
And the earth is uncertain.
And so it was for the tenor Caruso.
He couldn't sleep—you know how the ovation
Rings in your ears, and you re-sing your part.
And then the ceiling trembled
And the floor moved. He ran into the street.
Never had Naples given him such a reception!
The air was darker than Vesuvius.
"O mamma mia,"
He cried, "I've lost my voice!"
At that moment the hideous voice of Culture,
Hysterical woman, thrashing her arms and legs,
Shrieked from the ruins.
At that moment everyone became a performer.
Otello and Don Giovanni
And Figaro strode on the midmost stage.
In the high window of a burning castle
Lucia raved. Black horses
Plunged through fire, dragging the wild bells.
The curtains were wrapped in smoke. Tin swords
Were melting; masks and ruffs
Burned—and the costumes of the peasants' chorus.
Night fell. The white moon rose
And sank in the Pacific. The tremors
Passed under the waves. And Death rested.
2
Now, as we stand idle,
Watching the silent, bowler-hatted man,
The engineer, who writes in the smoking field;
Now as he hands the paper to a boy,
Who takes it and runs to a group of waiting men,
And they disperse and move toward their wagons,
Mules bray and the wagons move—
Wait! Before you start
(Already the wheels are rattling on the stones)
Say, did your fathers cross the dry Sierras
To build another London?
Do Americans always have to be second-rate?
Wait! For there are spirits
In the earth itself, or the air, or sea.
Where are the aboriginal American devils?
Cloud shadows, pine shadows
Falling across the bright Pacific bay ...
(Already they have nailed rough boards together)
Wait only for the wind
That rustles in the eucalyptus tree.
Wait only for the light
That trembles on the petals of a rose.
(The mortar sets—banks are the first to stand)
Wait for a rose, and you may wait forever.
The silent man mops his head and drinks
Cold lemonade. "San Francisco
Is a city second only to Paris."
3
Every night, at the end of America
We taste our wine, looking at the Pacific.
How sad it is, the end of America!
While we were waiting for the land
They'd finished it—with gas drums
On the hilltops, cheap housing in the valleys
Where lives are mean and wretched.
But the banks thrive and the realtors
Rejoice—they have their America.
Still, there is something unsettled in the air.
Out there on the Pacific
There's no America but the Marines.
Whitman was wrong about the People,
But right about himself. The land is within.
At the end of the open road we come to ourselves.
Though mad Columbus follows the sun
Into the sea, we cannot follow.
We must remain, to serve the returning sun,
And to set tables for death.
For we are the colonists of Death—
Not, as some think, of the English.
And we are preparing thrones for him to sit,
Poems to read, and beds
In which it may please him to rest.
This is the land
The pioneers looked for, shading their eyes
Against the sun—a murmur of serious life.