A grey and rainy Monday morning. Appropriate for the times...
A lot has been written about Alex over the last few days and I won't bother to post links to everything. But you really should read his wife Laura's tribute that was read at SXSW (linked above). I spent quite a bit of time thinking about and analyzing Alex's approach to music (even experiencing it a bit) and talking to others about it – Laura put it all into words on a deeper and mre insightful level than any one else ever did. The co-existing sides of Alex...analytical and the spontaneous...a brilliant and accurate observation. What a fitting tribute at a unbelievably difficult time for her. One little thing bugged me about it though (just kidding a bit). I had no idea that Alex liked the band Free, one of my all-time favorites. He was generally so quick to dismiss anything connected to rock that was made after 1968 that it never would have occurred to me to wax poetic about the sparse musical structures of Kossoff, Fraser, and Kirke. But then it that way, Free was sort of like a baroque classical trio, parts interlocking perfectly. It makes perfect sense.
I've had a fair amount of feedback, mostly positive, about my reply to Bob Lefsetz's piece. It was done in the moment and if I had maybe cooled off a bit it would have been more measured and nuanced. But I knew that he would be compiling responses and given his platform within the industry, I had a visceral reaction to his perpetuating an inaccurate image of Alex as a person and his circumstances. It was a verbal equivalent of throwing him (and the rest of the rock critic / fan world that revels in this inaccurate garbage and outright slander) up against a wall and saying "cut it out, damn it!" You see that picture in the above link of Alex in the above link? Does that look like the type of guy Lefsetz was describing? You tell me...
One more tidbit on a lighter note (inspired by the picture linked above)...one little thing Alex and I had in common from the first day we met was our affinity for Brooks Brothers-style oxford cloth button-shirts. I was wearing one when we met (they've been a staple of my wardrobe since high school - at the time of the gig I was working as a stockbroker for Merrill Lynch and I would drive to Brooks Bros. in Pittsburgh to stock up – Buffalo was more of a double-knit town) and he complimented me on it. Keep in mind, this was 1979...the height of the punk era. When I did the interviews for the book one of our side topics was how you could never go wrong wearing a white Brooks Brothers shirt. Perfect for almost any occasion. Maybe mix it up a bit sometimes with a pinstripe, muted tattersall or a pastel color. If you look at pictures of Alex performing in recent years you'll see what I mean. He had his own version of being a sharp-dressed man.
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