In October 1979 I was in the shower praying at the house I was living in in Rumson, New Jersey at 25 Washington Avenue. I don’t hear voices when I pray, I just get feelings which I instinctively turn into concepts. As best as I can translate it for you, here’s how the conversation went down:
Me: I wanna be a rockstar.
God: So what?
Me: Well, the story goes that if you sell your
soul to the devil then the devil gives
you a bunch of songs and you get to
be a rockstar. I don’t wanna sell my
soul to the devil so how about you
giving me some songs instead?
God: F___ you, go write our own f_____g
songs.
Mainstream, uptight, judgmental, hypocritical, conservative Christians – let’s call them “church people” – would scream bloody murder over this portrayal of the deity and insist it was blasphemous. Blasphemy? Hardly. Any theologian worth his or her salt would tell you that God speaks to people in the language and manner that they are most accustomed to and comfortable with. God was just rapping with me like I was one of his homies. Totally chill. Message delivered loud and clear: I was on my own with the songwriting thing. Word.
Got it, big guy.
No, the issue here was not blasphemy but rather one of civility versus transparency.
I, like most people, enjoy and prefer civility. In a perfect world everyone would be kind and gentle and loving and considerate and, well, civil. But in case you haven’t noticed, we don’t live in a perfect world. Far from it. That’s why in my book transparency trumps civility every time. Let me explain. If a person is acting civil but doesn’t really feel that way – in other words, if the civility is not an accurate representation of their true emotional state – then in that situation being civil is being phony. And being phony is a form of lying. I don’t want to see your game face. Spare me. Don’t blow smoke up my skirt, let me know what’s really up. Instead of being blind worshippers of the cult of civility, we should all prioritize being transparent. Trust me, society would work a lot better. And heaven knows we could use all the help we could get in the midst of this nightmarish, dystopian, dysfunctional society we currently find ourselves mired in.
God was just being transparent instead of confusing me with phony civility. I respect God for that, I really do. Game on. I was going to have to come up with my own songs. It was a wake up call.
Actually, I had been writing songs for quite awhile by the time this purported exchange occurred. I had started in earnest a few years earlier while attending Chatham Glenwood High School in the suburbs of Springfield. I had some beginner’s luck. A few songs that I performed with my high school combo, Jo Jo and the Rockets, had gone over well with my classmates and teachers and garnered me some attention and campus prestige. Two of the songs I wrote back then – the politically incorrect “Redneck Boy from Illinois” and an acoustic ballad called “You’re the One” – actually survived to eventually be recorded by Dr. Bob and can be accessed at drbobjdh.com /Free Music /Compilation. But most of the songs I wrote as a kid sucked.
Back then it was all for fun. But by the fall of 1979 the pressure was on. I had moved my college rock’n’roll ensemble, the Barney Fife Band, all the way from Salt Lake City to New York on the promise they would all be rockstars soon. My optimism was based on the fact that, as a result of my journalistic efforts at the University of Utah’s student newspaper, the “Daily Chronicle,” I had secured a position on the editorial staff at “Rolling Stone” in Manhattan and felt confident that the connections I would make there would soon lead to the band, newly christened the Utah Zoomers, to our big break. I needed songs pronto to make it happen.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. How did the Zoomers get here? We owed it all to a gentleman who was once the world’s richest man, one of the world’s first billionaires. Oil baron, financier, playboy, movie producer, cutting-edge aviator, he was the tech baron of his day. He had power and money coming out the ying yang. Without him there would be no Utah Zoomers sitting hopefully in the band house in Rumson as the ’70s came to a close.
Who was he?
None other than the legendary Howard Hughes.
Chapter 3
Dr. Bob meets the F.B.I.
– Coming Soon –
