“You’ll have to ask the right questions, then.”
“Have you always been musical?” he asks.
…
When Natalie trotted off to the soccer field in cleats and shin pads, Owen and I would goof off on our mom’s piano, kicking around our own variations when she wasn’t looking or listening. Owen and I took the obligatory piano lessons, and I’m sure, like all parents, my mom harbored secret desires that we’d want to be just like her, would want to become musical theater aficionados. She even cast me in some of the kid roles in her shows.
But when I had a break during rehearsals, I’d ride my bike from her theater to a nearby guitar shop in downtown Brunswick, the only one in town. It was called Play Without Ceasing, a name I later learned was a pun on a biblical directive from the Apostle Paul to “pray without ceasing.” The shop owner was Haley Mauvais, who wore tan cowboy boots, light blue jeans, and a jean jacket the same color. He taught me a few riffs—“Stairway to Heaven,” “Comfortably Numb,” “Brown Eyed Girl”—effectively becoming my first guitar teacher. But one day in his store, I absentmindedly started singing along with the songs, and he stopped me right there. He held up a big hand. “Whoa. You have some serious pipes on you.”
My mom had always told me I had a good voice, but something about hearing it from an outsider made it matter more.
“Let me tell you something,” Haley said. “When you have a voice like that, you don’t have a choice. You need to sing. The Gods of Music are commanding you to sing. They didn’t give you a voice like that to have you practice law or medicine.”
So while my mom set out to train my voice, Haley sought to train my style. He taught me respect for the Gods of Music. “Sometimes, you don’t know why they want what they want,” he’d tell me. “But you have to respect them. You have to let them guide you. They will always show you the way.”
I didn’t fully understand what he meant at the time, but I listened ferociously, memorizing his words so I could mull them over later when I would understand. “It’s like sometimes there’s just this muse and your job is to carry out what she wants,” he said. “You’re the instrument, the vessel. Let them use you, channel you, and you will make great music.”
I picked up the sheet music at Haley’s store for songs I liked, “Sweet Child O’ Mine” from Guns N’ Roses, “More Than This” from Roxy Music, and “Chain of Fools” from Aretha Franklin. When I was fourteen, Owen and I formed a band called Squeaky Dog and wrote our first song—“Sweet Summer Mine.”
We even scored a spot in the Fourth of July parade that summer and performed that song on the bed of a pickup truck that trundled along the parade route at two miles an hour. We were the hit of the parade and a deejay from the local radio station wanted to play our song on air. I can still remember our sheer unadulterated joy when we’d hop on our bikes and ride down the rolling hills of Brunswick, with a portable Walkman radio, riding out toward the water, tuned into the radio station the whole ride until our song came on.
Matthew shakes his head in amazement, his right hand still racing across the notebook to record the last bit. “You were a fearless little kid all right, getting yourself on the radio when you were just fourteen.”
“What about you? Did you always know you wanted to be a rock critic?”
“Ah, so now it’s my turn to be interviewed.”
“Well, isn’t that fair? We’re not at your place where I can check out whether you have posters of Bruce Springsteen or a whole collection of vinyl or even some of your columns framed.”
He laughs and stretches out his long legs, leaning back in the kitchen chair. “That would be a no. A no. And a no.”
“So what do you do at home, then? What are your hobbies, Matthew Harrigan?” I ask in a dark tone of voice, as if I’m a detective zeroing in on clues.
“I believe in the separation of church and state. I love what I do. I love my job. But home is home. I listen to music when I’m there, but if I can—and I try every night—I like to stop being the music critic and just be a person for a few hours. Read a book, not think about Geffen or Island or Atlantic Records or who’s going to be the next big star or whether I can convince any rising chickadees to come up to my bachelor pad when we’re done with the article,” he says with a wink.
I brandish my napkin, pretending I’m going to toss it at him. “And to think I was going to tell you a juicy little nugget I’ve never told any reporter.”
Matthew’s pen is in hand again, ready to take more notes. “I’ll let you throw a plate at me if you tell me.”
I hold up my hands, palms out, for emphasis, dramatic pause. “This will be the lead for your story.”
He looks at me expectantly, waiting.
“Me. Leotard. Leg warmers. I had a phase of extreme Olivia Newton-John worship.”
Matthew cracks up. “Oh, this is good.”
“‘Physical’ had already been a big hit in the early eighties, and when I discovered it a decade later, I blasted that song in my upstairs bedroom after school. I put on my leotard and my leg warmers and I danced around the room and jumped up and down on my bed and I sang that song as loud as I could. I didn’t have a clue what it meant, but I loved it. Every single afternoon for a year I played Olivia Newton-John.”
“I suppose now would be the good time to admit I really prefer Poison to Arcade Fire.”