January 21, 1994

Dear Reader:

You’re owed better. I’m a writer – a journalist, really. I’m no poet.

And this calls for a poet - or at least a damned good lyricist.

I have to say these things some time, and I guess that time is now.

We love our friends. We support them and we do our best for them – or we try to. We might call these our duties to our friends.

My duty here is to try to do my best for a friend. Since, As Robert E. Lee observed, duty is the “sublimest” word in the English language, I should feel honored and pleased to introduce this collection of writings by my friend, the rock star Jay Breeze.

But I’m not. Instead I feel cheated. Cheated and pissed and bewildered – the way I always feel when I see pointless waste.

My friend is dead. A guy who drank gallons of intoxicants and ingested pounds of medications (both legal and illegal) and otherwise engaged in reckless self-endangerment regularly loses control of his car driving home from my house in a minor snow fall and hits a tree.

He’d finally settled himself and made peace with losing the love of his life. He’d begun to develop a sense of himself as a person beyond his rock star status. He’d made it through the glitz and bullshit and was on his way to being just Jay Brent again. He was finally starting to be happy…a little….

And he hits a frigging tree.

Pointless waste…

* * * * * * * * * * *

It’s impossible to summarize people, of course. That’s the problem already with Jay – he’s been summarized way too often and not very accurately. Then, too, any summary could only tell you things you already know probably: Jay Breeze, nee Brent, was a member of the rock group called The Lost Generation. Most rock critics, including this one, consider them one of the best four or five bands to emerge in the 1970’s. As a result of being so good, they got wealthy and famous. Less the typical 70’s arena rock heroes like Led Zeppelin or The Doobie Brothers and more like their brethren from the 60’s, they took power pop, as it’s now called, several steps forward. They released nine albums, seven of which went platinum, the other two gold. (Update: the last two albums have now gone platinum in the years since the group’s “retirement.”) Like their heroes, The Beatles, they believed in and were good at writing melodic rock songs.

Those songs – “Mary Quite Contrary,” “Masquerade for Two,” “Never Stop,” “Her Smile, Winter, 1974,” “Loss of Control,” and my favorite, “Leaves Like Love on Fire.” If you’ve listened to rock radio between 1974 and the present, you know these songs. You most likely know all the words.

Jay Breeze wrote those words.

* * * * * * * * * * *

I’m reminded suddenly of an interview with Bob Dylan. In the interview he complained that people often approached him because of some song he’d written. He adamantly disavowed any responsibility toward his audience: “Just because I write some song he thinks is about his life don’t give him the right to come bothering me,” Dylan said.

How different Jay was. I spent a lot of time with him after he came to back to Chapel Hill once the band retired. He wanted to finish his undergrad degree and work on an M.F.A. in creative writing – to do some “real writing,” he’d say (as if writing song lyrics that millions can recite were somehow worthless). Wherever we went, whether to a local restaurant or a posh resort (his treat always – “Charlie, I’m a multi-millionaire,” he’d respond to my occasional protests) during our weekend rambles, a steady stream of people accosted him. Jay was unfailingly polite, signing sometimes a dozen or more autographs on many occasions. I asked him why he didn’t avoid the hassle – he certainly was rich enough to have handlers to protect him.

“Charlie,” he said softly, his face sad even when he smiled, which he did seldom once he became famous, “these people made me. They’ve bought my records. They’ve gone to my concerts. I’m theirs. They made me.”

“Like Dr. Frankenstein made the monster,” I said, smiling at him cynically.

“Yeah - I guess you’re right.” He looked away shyly as he often did. “The monster never could get a break, could he?” he asked, turning to me, his eyes full of a question for which I had no answer.

I shivered as if someone had walked across my grave. “Be careful, Jay,” I said.

I’ve always felt it wasn’t enough.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Jay wanted to be a writer – he wrote off and on all the time he was in Lost Generation. Once he came back to UNC he tried hard to write. I’m not sure how much success he had. I never expected he’d go so far as to name me as his literary executor. I didn’t know he’d even prepared a will….

There were lots of papers in his estate, but most of it was either unfinished ideas or pedestrian stuff that I knew he’d not want published. I found exactly one useable short story which I’ve included below. Finally it occurred to me to check his laptop. That’s where I found the stuff you’ll read below. I vaguely remember seeing a few of the things I’ve edited into the “Book of Days.” I never knew about the letters to Angel until I found them on his computer.

Check that. I think maybe Jay hinted to me about these letters.

Shortly after Angel’s death, just before he left to go out on that ill-advised winter tour that ended abruptly in San Francisco with Mick Norris’s broken hand and our friend Ralph Dodge’s death in a plane crash, Jay stopped by my office at the journalism school to ask me a crazy question. In those sad days after Angel died he often did that. Anyway, what Jay asked was something like, “Charlie, do you think the dead can read?”

“Damn, Jay. I never thought about it,” I remember saying. “Why?” I felt he wanted to talk about Angel and I hoped to get him to. If I could tell you one thing about Jay from my friendship with him, it would be that his greatest asset and his greatest liability as a friend were one and the same thing; his reticence. You could tell Jay anything and know that he would never repeat it. He had the trust of many and never betrayed anyone.

Of course, he never “betrayed” himself, either. He never opened any of those doors into himself that we all need to open on occasion to maintain our mental and spiritual health. Jay just kept it all in. Maybe that explains the alcohol and occasional drug problems he had.

Anyway, he never talked. Well, not to me. He talked to Angel - as these letters will attest. He told her everything, I think. Maybe that’s the definition of love. His, anyway…

* * * * * * * * * * *

I could launch into a long recital of the debate that went on among various factions and me about whether or not these letters should become public. Since you’re holding this book, you know where I stand.

If you’re feeling ambivalence, I’ll offer you the question that convinced all the relevant people (Jay’s parents and brother, Angel’s parents, Teddy, Mick, Sid, and me) to go ahead with this: “Shouldn’t we let Jay speak for himself?”

* * * * * * * * * * *

I had this brilliant plan when I started this introductory letter. I was going to use Baudelaire’s “Au Lecteur” as a gloss. Baudelaire’s poem, for those of you who don’t know it (shame on you), is an indictment. After a powerful, sinister and inclusive description of both writer and audience (I offer the English translation with a “get the fuck over it” for purists who expect the French):

Stupidity, delusion, selfishness, and lust
Torment our bodies and possess our minds,
And we sustain our affable remorse
The way a beggar nourishes his lice.

The poet goes on to catalogue the possibilities of vice and our gradual decline into it. After exploring the seven deadly sins and some other, more exotic ones (gotta love that Baudelaire), the poet points to the greatest monster of all, Boredom, of whom he says, “…you know this squeamish monster well/–hypocrite reader, –my alias, –my twin!”

I’m guessing you don’t get it. No, you have nothing to do with it – a rock star dies, you hear his songs played intensely for a day or two, then something else happens and you move on. There are plenty of other rock stars and plenty of other songs. Off he goes to the dustbin of history, his role played out.

What is it Jagger says about the singer and the song? Or Henley (via Yeats) says about the dancer and the dance? Or Breeze says in “Boys With Guitars and Dreams”?

See them struggle –
See them make it –
Sometimes see them fly;
Watch them stumble –
Watch them fall down –
Sometimes watch them die….

You can’t separate them. They’re all one.
We’re all one.
You, Jay, me.
Reader – alias – twin….
Face the music.

Charlie Beagle