Our mother had a favorite cousin named Raymond who lived Back East, which made him “Good People” and she would routinely run up phone bills talking to Raymond that were so big, she would hide them from our father until they threatened to turn our service off. She would then be forced to show the bills to our father and they would fight and she would then call Raymond to tell him all about it, and the cycle would begin anew.
In 1978, my sister Sheila and I were living with our mother, who even with child support, was just scraping by since the divorce. We all had jobs, partially to pay for Mom’s calls to Raymond, but for other bills too, including the rent on our condo that teetered on the side of a ditch that realtors described as a “charming creek.” Sheila was attending Saddleback Junior College across town while I was slugging it out as a Mission Viejo High School sophomore.
One Sunday night, after a long call with Raymond upstairs, our mother came down and joined Sheila and me at our dining room table, a table that always looked like we had pulled it off a pile of furniture in an alley after a barfight. “How’s Raymond?” Sheila asked. “Well…” Mom said. “You ready for this? Remember how I told you his son Alan is in some rock band?” Sheila looked at me over the top of her Diet Tab and I rolled my eyes back at her, nursing my Dr. Pepper with thinly veiled contempt. It was the late 70’s, it was an age of rock and if you weren’t in a rock band, chances are you were probably just between bands, having just left one, or soon to be in a rock band again. We humored our square mother and said yes, we remembered that Raymond’s son Alan was in a rock band. “Well…” Mom said “…his band is coming to town and we can go hear them for free if we want” Oh shit, Sheila and I thought at the exact same moment, imagining us being forced to go hear Cousin Raymond’s son bang on some instrument at a Knights of Columbus Hall out near Fullerton probably. “Where is he playing?” I asked. “At a wedding?” “Well, smart ass” my mom said. “For your information, his band is playing at The Fabulous Forum in Inglewood? Is that a big enough wedding for you?” Sheila and I both mockingly laughed out loud at our poor, poor mom. “Yeah, right!” Sheila said. “Raymond Greenwood’s son’s rock band is playing at The Forum?” Ummm, we seriously didn’t think so. We knew The Forum is where real rock stars played concerts, like Electric Light Orchestra, Queen or Rod the Bod Stewart, not to mention it was where The Lakers and The Kings played. And even though it was a complete fluke that I had sung in my 4th grade chorus at the Anaheim Convention Center, The Forum was certainly not where Al’s band was playing. We told our mother in no uncertain terms that Al Greenwood and his band that was probably traveling across the country right now in a beat-up Chevy van loaded with their gear may be playing somewhere in Southern California, but it was definitely not The Fabulous Freaking Forum. Before chugging a huge gulp of soda, just for kicks, I asked “So…what’s the name of his band?” Our mom gently tap tap tapped the tip of her cigarette against the bottom of the black plastic triangular ashtray, until the butt crumpled a little and went out. “I think Raymond said they’re called Foreigner? Yeah, Foreigner, I think…ever heard of them?”
This question was followed by an immediate and simultaneous spit take of both Dr. Pepper and Diet Tab that exploded out of me and my sister respectively. Because Sheila was older, going to Junior College and it was after dark, she was allowed to use profanity in the house, so once it stopped raining soda she asked “What the Hell are you talking about? Al Greenwood is NOT in Foreigner!”
“That’s what Raymond said” my mom told us. “Should I know who they are?” Should she know who they are? Oh, I don’t know Mom…should you know Cold As Ice? Feels Like The First Time? Should you know Hot Blooded? Yes…you should know who they are! I anxiously popped some Fritos into my mouth while Sheila, considering our next move, thoughtfully peeled the tin foil off of a Ding Dong. We knew our mother from time to time to bend the truth a little shall we say, and even told us once that lying sometimes was “just fine...just don’t overdo it, and don’t get caught.” she said. “What does he play?” Sheila asked, hoping to catch our mom and Cousin Raymond in their little ruse. She lit up another cigarette and said “Ray said it's like an organ but with a bunch of electricity in it” “A synthesizer?” I asked. “Yeah, he plays that thing, it’s like an electrical piano I guess.” We sat in stunned silence now, because one of the signature sounds of a Foreigner song was indeed a piano with “a bunch of electricity running through it” as our mother would describe it and just how the HELL would she know that? Mom started flipping through a People magazine with the cast of Little House on the Prairie on the cover. “If you don’t want to go, I’ll just take some other kids” she said, before pointing to a picture of Michael Landon. “Hot damn…now that’s a sexy head of hair on a man.” That was it for us. We both had had enough and went upstairs to get ready for bed. After brushing my teeth, I stopped by Sheila’s room to say “No way” one more time and she agreed. “No way…no possible way” She told me to turn out her light before closing her door and I gladly did, before turning it back on and off quickly several times to simulate lightning, followed by my trademark thunder and then rain sound effect. “Goodnight, Sheels”
One week later, Sheila and I both died of massive heart attacks because a large manila envelope arrived in the mail, bursting not only with tickets to Foreigner, but also complete with bell shaped adhesive backstage passes to slap on the bell-shaped pockets of our bellbottom jeans. We were officially second cousins to a rock star! It was time to go record shopping!
Sheila and I had heard plenty of Foreigner on the radio, but had never owned their self-titled debut album, let alone study it’s cover art. Cover art that featured a tasteful illustration of the band themselves standing six abreast. We had many questions. Why were they bundled up, standing in the desert next to a railroad track? Were they asked to leave the train before they even pulled into a station? If so, why? Did they trash their train car because that’s what rock stars did in the 70’s? No, their restrained turtlenecks seemed to suggest they were waiting for a train. Why not wait at a proper station? Is that what huge rock stars did? Just wander near a train track and the train would stop for you because they don’t need to play by the rules? Is that storm in the sky blowing in or blowing out? Why were they wearing so many tasteful long coats? Where were their instruments? Why so little luggage, only 3 pieces for six people, two of which seemed to belong to the second young gentleman from the right, the one peeking out from side bangs, the only band member we cared about because we were related, by BLOOD to him! Al Greenwood! With his coiffed hair that framed his close-set eyes, high cheekbones and a square chin, making him resemble a cat in our opinion…a cat that just charted at number three on the Billboard 200. Know any cats like that? We fucking did! And we were about to go see him play his electrical piano organs at The Fabulous Forum in Inglewood. Center seats, 7 rows back.
For some reason, the concert itself is a mysterious blur in my memory, including the opening act, Walter Egan, famous for his one hit Magnet and Steel, an homage to the polarity of the human heart. But in truth, this amnesia makes sense somehow, because I feel looking back that we were completely merged with the moment and carried away by the sheer spectacle of seeing Foreigner live really super close up! It was if I was trying to remember a distant dream…a dream that featured all of the band members of Foreigner, but our eyes were glued to Al, second cousin Al, leaning way back from his stacked keyboards plural, at times throwing his head and hair back and up toward the towering circular concavity of the Fabulous Fabulous Forum! And after the concert, proudly displaying our bell-shaped adhesive passes, we all were escorted backstage, to what was known as The Forum Club…Me, Mom, Sheila, Sheila’s hot friend Laurie, 2 of my first cousins and my hero Uncle Jimmy, who from time to time, would use a wheelchair to get around in because he had Ataxia. Now, again, I am suffering from post-show amnesia because of the sheer scope and scale of this experience, but I vaguely remember a LOT of food, a LOT of adult drinks, a lot of noise, meeting some of the band, but most importantly, a chaotic meeting with my second cousin Al who I remember, was still soaked in sweat which was fucking awesome, but in the midst of this dreamscape, we lost track of my Uncle Jimmy.
Now, this next part I do remember very clearly for reasons you will know in a moment. As I walked around some back hallway of The Forum Club, where there were a series of large heavy industrial doors, I wondered if my missing uncle had perhaps gone into one of these rooms for some reason, which I realize is insane, but it didn’t stop my 16 year old self from trying some of these doors which were locked, until I got to one door that opened and I stepped inside. Now, you have no reason to believe what I’m about to tell you is true, so just relax and just take it in…but as you do, just know that this actually did happen, even though it sounds exactly like I’m describing a dream. In my memory, the room was nearly dark, but in the hallway light that was spilling in from the open door, I could see that this room was apparently a storage room for folding chairs that were stacked on rolling racks, and by my estimation, there were thousands of these chairs, stacked on hundreds and hundreds of racks, as far as the eye could see…but that wasn’t all. As my eyes adjusted, I could vaguely make out that there was someone perched atop a row of these racked chairs, about 15 feet away…and speaking of making out, this person was making out with another person atop those same chairs. Owing largely to my familiarity with my mother’s deep deep catalogue of People magazines, I immediately recognized one of these canoodlers to be none other than pop superstar Leif Garret. Leif, alarmed by the sudden entrance of a young unfamous contemporary, looked up with fire shooting out of the bottomless pools of his deep brown bedroom eyes, conveying what in today’s vernacular would translate simply to: “Dude!” And do I blame him, no, because there, resting in his tan slim arms, was Oscar winning adolescent Tatum O’Neal, who appeared equally alarmed and upset with me. Based on some of my Leif Garret dating history research, in the low light, could I have mistaken Tatum O’Neal for her on-screen rival Kristy McNichol, who were probably in pre-production for their 1980 classic two hander Little Darlings? I easily could have, but look, I’m not here to stir up any intrigue after all these years, okay. I’m just telling you by my recollection, I remember it to be either Tatum O’Neal, possibly Kristy McNichol and if my research is accurate, there is a distinct possibility that this could have also been Michelle Phillips of The Mommas and The Poppas, because Leif, during that period, could not Leif well enough alone apparently. I broke the tension the only way I knew how. “Did a man in a wheelchair come in here?” I asked the two superstars. It didn’t go well, as Leif appeared ready to slide off of those chairs and threaten-wobble over to me on his chunky platform heels, but he didn’t need to. I got the message, and backed out of the room without having to announce, “Look, I’m the second cousin of Al Greenwood, keyboardist for Foreigner? I’m one of you!”
We eventually found our uncle nursing a Tequila Sunrise over near the deli meats, snapped a few more pictures with our Kodak Instamatic with Flashcube and headed to the nearly empty parking lot.
Almost 45 long years to the day that we attended that blessed concert, Foreigner was finally inducted into The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame…formerly a hall of shame for taking that long to honor one of the greatest bands of our generation…an injustice finally rectified, or is that ROCKtified! In honor of them finally being honored, I timidly reached out to my second cousin, Al Greenwood, via his website to congratulate him on his induction and thank him for a night we will never forget. He graciously wrote back and asked me to please stay in touch.
Rock on, Al Greenwood!
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