From A Dimmed Elegy For The Late Peter Paul Markin Series- In The Heat Of the Be-Bop 1960s Rock Night- Yah, We Were All Exiles On Main Street

 

From The Pen Of Sam Lowell

 

A while back, a few months ago although the project had been percolating in his brain for the previous year or so after some incident reminded him how much he missed his old corner boy from the 1960s North Adamsville night, the late Peter Paul Markin, Bart Webber wrote up what he called, and rightly so I think, an elegy for him, A Dimmed Elegy For The Late Peter Paul Markin. Bart had approached me about doing the chore since we now live in the same town, Carver about thirty miles south of our growing- up town. He figured that since he had retired from the day to day operations of his print shop which was now being run by his oldest son, Jeff, and I was winding down my part in the law practice I had established long ago I would have plenty of time to write and he to “edit” and give suggestions. He said he was not a writer although he had plenty of ideas to contribute but that I who had spent a life-time writing as part of my job would have an easy time of it. Bart under the illusion that writing dry as dust legal briefs for some equally dry as dust judge to read is the same as nailing down a righteous piece about an old time corner boy mad man. I turned him down flat which I will explain in a moment.

The way Bart presented that proposal deserves a little mention since he did it one night when the remnant of Markin’s old comrades still alive who still reside in the area, Frankie, Josh, Jack Callahan, Jimmy Jenkins, Bart and me were drinking now affordable high-shelf liquors at “Jack’s” in Cambridge near where Jimmy lives. During the conversation, not for the first time, Bart mentioned that he was still haunted by the thought  he had the year before about the time that Markin had us in thrall one night out in Joshua Tree in 1972 when we were all high as kites on various drugs of choices and he, at first alone, and then with Josh began some strange Apache-like dance and they began to feel (at least according to Josh’s recollection) like those ancient warriors who tried to avenge their loses when white settlers had come to take their lands and we all for one moment were able to sense what it was like to be warrior-avengers. Markin had that effect on the rest of us, was always tweaking us on some idea from small scale larcenies to drug-induced flame-outs. Yeah, that miserable, beautiful, so crooked he could not get his legs in his pants, son of a bitch, sainted bastard still is missed, still has guys from the old days moaning to high heaven about that lost. Bart insisted there was a story there, a story if only for us and someone (all eyes on me) should write it up.             

I can say all of that and say at the same time that I can say I couldn’t write the piece. See while at times Markin was like a brother to me and we treated each other as such he also could have his “pure evil” moments which the other corner boys either didn’t see, or didn’t want to see. These may be small things now on reflection but he was the guy who almost got me locked up one night, one summer night in 1966 before our senior year when Frankie who usually was the “on-site” manager of our small larcenies was out of town with his girlfriend. Markin figured since he was the “brains” behind the various capers that he could do one on his own but he needed a look-out, me. The caper involved a small heist of a home in the Mayfair swells part of North Adamsville whose owners were “summering” somewhere in the Caribbean. Markin had “cased” or thought he had cased the place fully except he didn’t factor in that the owners had a house sitter during that time. Markin startled her as he entered a side door, she screamed, Markin panicked, as she headed for the telephone to call the police and he fled out the door. But see Markin came running out that door toward me just when the cops were coming down the street where we met in their squad car directly toward us. They stopped us, told to get in the car and headed to that Mayfair house. As it turned out the house-sitter couldn’t identify either of us, couldn’t identify Markin and the cops had to let us go. No question Markin panicked and no question he made a serious mistake by heading my way knowing what he knew. I had, and have always had, the sneaking suspicion that he might have rolled me over as the B&E guy if it had been possible. I have a few other stories like that as well but that gives you a better insight into what Markin could turn into when cornered.

A couple of other incidents involved women, one my sister, the other an old flame or rather someone I wanted to be my flame. One of the reasons that I, unlike Markin who did serve in Vietnam which I think kind of turned him over the edge to the “dark side” once his dream about a “newer world” as he called it started to evaporate in the early 1970s, did not do military duty since I was the sole support, working almost full time after school during high school, of my mother and four very younger sisters after my father died of a massive heart attack in 1965. My oldest sister, Clara, was smitten by Markin from early on and I could see that he was willing to take advantage of her naiveté as well although I warned him off more than once since she was only thirteen when we were in high school. Now I could never prove it, and Clara would not say word one about it to me, but I believe he took her virginity from her. I do know during that period I found a carton of Trojans in her bureau drawer when I was looking for something I thought she had of mine and she was not around to ask. I didn’t confront him directly since among corner boys such things would have been “square” to discuss even about sisters but I continued to keep warning him off like I didn’t know anything had happened and before long I saw Clara had taken up with a boy her own age so I let it drop. The flame thing involved Laura Perkins who I was “hot” for from the ninth grade on and who I had several dates with in the tenth grade and it looked like things were going well when she threw me over for Markin. Now that situation has happened eight million times in life but corner boys were supposed to keep “hands off” of other corner boys’ girls although I was not naïve enough to not believe that was honored more in the breech than the observance having done a couple of end-around maneuvers myself but this Laura thing strained our relationship for a while. Here is the funny part though after a few weeks she threw Markin over for the captain of the football team (she was a cheerleader as well as bright student, school newspaper writer, on the dance committee and a bunch of other resume-building things) who we all hated. Funnier still at our fortieth reunion a few years back Laura and I got back together (after her two marriages and my two marriages had flamed out something we laughed about at the time) and we have been an “item” ever since. But you can see where I would, unlike say Bart, have a hard time not letting those things I just mentioned get in my way of writing something objective about that bastard saint.                   

So Bart wrote the piece himself, wrote the “dimmed” elegy (the “dimmed” being something I suggested as part of the title) and did a great job for a guy who said he couldn’t write. Frankly any other kind of elegy but dimmed would fail to truly honor that bastard saint madman who kept us going in that big night called the early 1960s and drove us mad at the same time with his larcenous schemes and over-the-top half-baked brain storm ideas and endless recital of the eight billion facts he kept in his twisted brain (estimates vary on the exact number but I am using the big bang number to cover my ass, as he would). I need not go into all of the particulars of that piece except to say that the consensus among the still surviving corner boys was that Bart was spot on, caught all of Markin’s terrible contradictions pretty well. Contradiction that led him from the bright but brittle star of the Jack Slack’s bowling alleys corner boy back then to a bad end, a mucho mal end murdered down in Sonora, Mexico in 1976 or 1977 when some drug deal (kilos of cocaine) he was brokering to help feed what Josh said was a serious “nose candy” habit went sour for reasons despite some investigation by Frankie Riley, myself and a private detective Frankie hired were never made clear. What was clear was that he was found face down on some dusty back road of that town with two slugs in his head and is buried in the town’s forlorn potter’s field in some unmarked grave. That is about all we know for sure about his fate and that is all that is needed to be mentioned here.

That foul end might have been the end of it, might have been the end of the small legend of Markin. Even he would in his candid moments accept that “small” designation. Yes, been the end of the legend except the moaning to high heaven still every time his name comes up. Except this too. Part of Bart’s elegy referenced the fact that in Markin’s sunnier days before the nose candy got the best of him, brought out those formerly under control outrageous “wanting habits,” in the early 1970s when he was still holding onto that “newer world” dream that he (and many others, including me and Bart for a varying periods) did a series of articles about the old days and his old corner boys in North Adamsville. Markin before we lost contact, or rather I lost contact with him since Josh Breslin his friend from Maine (and eventually our friend as well whom we consider an honorary Jack Slack’s corner boy) met out in San Francisco in the Summer of Love, 1967 knew his whereabouts outside of San Francisco in Daly City until about 1974 wrote some pretty good stuff, stuff up for awards, and short-listed for the Globe.

Pushed on by Bart’s desire to tell Markin’s story as best he could who must have been driven by some fierce ghost of Markin over his shoulder to do such yeoman’s work, he, Frankie (our corner boy leader back then who had Markin as his scribe and now is a big time lawyer in Boston), Josh, and I agreed that a few of the articles were worth publishing if only for ourselves and the small circle of people whom Markin wrote for and about. (Markin’s oldest friend from back in third grade, Allan Johnson, who would have had plenty to say about the early days had passed away  after a long-term losing fight with cancer before this plan was hatched, RIP, brother.) So that is exactly what we did. We had a commemorative small book of articles and any old time photographs we could gather put together and had it printed up in the print shop that Bart’s oldest son, Jeff, is now running for him since his retirement from the day to day operations last year.

Since not all of us had everything that Markin wrote, as Bart said, what the hell they were newspaper or magazine articles to be used to wrap up the fish in or something after we were done reading them, we decided to print what was available. Bart was able to find copies of a bunch of sketches up in the attic of his parents’ home which he was cleaning up for them when they were putting their house up for sale since they were in the process of downsizing. Josh, apparently not using his copies for wrapping fish purposes, had plenty of the later magazine pieces. I had a few things, later things from when we went on the quest for the blue-pink Great American West hitchhike road night as Markin called it. Unfortunately, we could not find any copies of the long defunct East Bay Eye and so could not include anything from the important Going To The Jungle series about some of his fellow Vietnam veterans who could not adjust to the “real” world coming back from ‘Nam and wound up in the arroyos, canyons, railroad sidings and under the bridges of Southern California. He was their voice on that one then, if silence now who those aging vets desperately a voice.  So Markin can speak to us still. Yeah, like Bart said, that’s about right for that sorry ass blessed bastard saint with his eight billion words.  

Below is the short introduction that I wrote for that book which we all agreed should be put in here trying to put what Markin was about in content from a guy who knew him about as well as anybody from the old neighborhood, knew his dark side then and when that came out later too:  

“The late Peter Paul Markin, also known as “the Scribe, ” so anointed by Frankie Riley the unchallenged self-designated king hell king of the schoolboy night among the corner boys who hung around the pizza parlors, pool halls, and bowling alleys of the town, in telling somebody else’s story in his own voice about life in the old days in the working class neighborhoods of North Adamsville where he grew up, or when others, threating murder and mayhem,  wanted him to tell their stories usually gave each and every one of that crew enough rope to hang themselves without additional comment. He would take down, just like he would do later with the hard-pressed Vietnam veterans trying to do the best they could out in the arroyos, crevices, railroad sidings and under the bridges when they couldn’t deal with the “real” world after Vietnam in the Going To The Jungle series that won a couple of awards and was short-listed for the Globe award, what they wanted the world to hear, spilled their guts out as he one time uncharitably termed their actions (not the veterans, not his fellows who had their troubles down in L.A. and needed to righteously get it out and he was the conduit, their voice, but the zanies from our old town), and then lightly, very lightly if the guy was bigger, stronger than him, or in the case of girls if they were foxy, and mainly just clean up the language for a candid world to read.

Yeah Makin would bring out what they, we, couldn’t say, maybe didn’t want to say. That talent was what had made the stories he wrote about the now very old days in growing up in North Adamsville in the 1960s when “the rose was on the bloom” as my fellow lawyer Frankie Riley used to say when Markin was ready to spout his stuff so interesting. Ready to make us laugh, cringe, get red in the face or head toward him to slap him down if he got too righteous. Here is the funny part though. In all the stories he mainly gave his “boys” the best of it. Yes, Bart is still belly-aching about a few slights about his lack of social graces that old Markin threw his way, and maybe he was a little off on the reasons why I gave up the hitchhike highway blue-pink Great American West night quest that he was pursuing (what he called sneeringly my getting “off the bus” which even he admitted was not for everyone) but mainly that crazy maniac with the heart of gold, the heart of lead, the heart that should have had a stake placed in its center long ago, that, ah, that’s enough I have said enough except I like Bart still miss and mourn the bastard.”

Here is something I wrote after reading one of the articles that Markin wrote about the place of the Rolling Stones in rock history back in 1972, I think. That rock history was one of his serious interests, one that he wrote about like a lot of his work for the small circulation “idea” journals and off-beat magazines meaning no dough publications. He had written in that article about his youthful controversy with our corner boy leader, Frankie Riley (mentioned above), on those Friday no dough, no car, no date nights that plagued our youth concerning the better band, the Beatles or the Stones. I have just updated his basic argument with Frankie, who I also had the same controversy with (and still do as a recent meeting over drinks to rekindle the dispute for this piece demonstrated very clearly) to include my having seen a film documentary about the making of the album Exiles On Main Street.  This piece will also reflect on one of his experiences coming of age in North Adamsville which was very much like the rest of us had experienced as well when our world was fresh:  

In The Heat Of the Be-Bop 1960s Rock Night- Yah, We Were All Exiles On Main Street

 

I am sure that Mick and the boys will gladly take a back seat to Howlin' Wolf on this one.

 

In the old days, the old high school days when such things mattered, my best friend at North Adamsville High School (we actually went back to old North Adamsville Middle School days together), Frankie, Francis Xavier Riley to give his full moniker, spent endless hours arguing over the merits of the Beatles vs. The Rolling Stones as the primo rock band of the times. The times being the early 1960s, the time of the edge, just the wee edge of the beginning of the uprisings associated with our generation, the generation of ’68.

 

I will get into the specifics of that Frankie controversy a little later but for the purposes of argument a review of a film documentary about the making of the Stones’ 1972 album, Exile on Main Street, the real controversy is over whether this album was their best ever or not. At that point Frankie and I had lost contact so that I will just give as my opinion that for pure blues-ness, pure Stones’ foundational blue-ness, for country rooted-ness, and for musicianship it is hard to argue that any other Stones' album was better. And that opinion, now with the benefit of the documentary footage and current interviews with many of the personalities from Mick Jagger and Keith Richards to the sidemen, hangers-on, gofers, and their manager during this period, Marshall Chess (son of the controversial legendary Chess Records blues label founder, Leonard Chess, who gave the likes of Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Etta James and many other famous blues names a leg up in the Chicago night), about how it was produced, and what it all meant, still holds up.

 

I noted in the headline that in the 1960s we, at least those of us who were politically alienated from mainstream Western social norms or at wits end for some other more personal reasons, were all exiles on Main Street. Main Street being a convenient term of art for all that was square, not cool, up-tight, piggish, and a thousand other words we used to separate our youth culture out from the ticky-tack little white house with the picket fence dream that passed for social reality then (and, unfortunately, now, well kind of now). For the Stones this notion of exile, self-imposed exile, not glad-tiding self-imposed exile to hear the lads tell it, had another element. They had to flee England in order to escape from some terrible tax burdens that had accumulated and for which they did not have control over solving (or money to pay). So off to the south of France they go, to live and to produce the new album and in order to get some dough.

 

Of course, with such well-known edge city crazies as Mick and Keith this was not going to be a Sunday in the park. Along the way they picked up musicians, groupies, hangers-on, bag men, bad guys, dope dealers and everyone with a little cache who could get to France and be around the scene. And that scene included, surprise, surprise, dope of every kind- from pills to smack (heroin, then, as now, not a “cool” drug staple), booze by the buckets full, women, sex, and everything else under the sun. Let’s leave it that the scene was the epitome of the slogan “drug, sex and rock and roll” and along with the expression “live fast, die young and make a good corpse” will get you the flavor of what went on just about right.

 

Oh yah, in case you forgot, it also included an incredible amount of work by Mick and Keith writing material, all members playing riffs until arms got sore, throats died and fingers began to bleed. Not a recipe that your mothers would suggest for making successful careers, of any kind. But just the right recipe to unleash the rock energy built up in one of the great rock bands that every existed, then and AARP and old age home-worthy now.

 

Take an hour out and look at some serious rock history. Then go up in the attic and dust off the album, or check it out in your CD collection, or download it to your iPod, or Google it on YouTube but listen to it. Especially the blues-ish stuff like Tumblin' Dice (that will get even grandpa out of his rocking chair); Sweet Virginia; Sweet Black Angel; and the rootsy (Robert Johnson rootsy) Stop Breaking Down.

 

Now back to serious Frankie business. The Frankie business of figuring out the real places of The Stones and the Beatles in the rock pantheon, for eternity. Back on those hot, steamy, endless summer nights standing (or sitting on the curb) beneath those North Adamsville street lights when that question mattered, mattered as a "universal" question. I am not sure exactly when I first hear a Stones song, although it was probably Satisfaction, and it was probably up in Frankie’s cluttered bedroom, a place that served as a refuge from my own storm-tossed house what with my mother’s tirades against, well, against anything that I might do, or might think of doing. You know that song, or have heard about it.

 

However, what really hooked me on The Stones was when they covered the old Willie Dixon blues classic, Little Red Rooster. If you will recall that song was banned, at first, from the radio stations of Boston. Later, I think, and someone can maybe help me out on this, WMEX broke the ban and played it. And no, the song was not about the doings of our barnyard friends. But beyond the implicit sexual theme was the fact that it was banned that made me, and perhaps you, if you are from the generation of ’68, want to hear it at any cost. That says as much about my personality then, and now, as any long-winded statement I could make. And that is what also set Frankie and me apart on this question.

 

See, Frankie was from nowhere on the blues. And I mean nowhere. Although Frankie reigned supreme as the king hell king of our corner boy high school scene and was cool in many things, he was pretty square in his music tastes.  (Headquartered early on in high school at the local pizza parlor, Salducci’s, owned by a mad-hatter of a zen pizza-maker, Tonio, who loved Frankie practically like a son for some reason never explained, at least that I could figure out but who by senior year had sold out to other parties and gone back to Italy. Those “other parties” did not want ill-bred, vagrant, larcenous corner boys hanging around their to be family-friendly “let Ma have a night off and have a pizza” place and that was how we wound up standing one foot against the wall in front of Jack Slack’s bowling alleys.) He never got over Elvis really, never got over how the local girls treated him like the “king” when he swiveled his hips at the school sock hops, went wild when he put forth his Elvis-like sneer to be wiped off by those adoring girls, and followed his ever depressing descend into Blue Hawaii-dom (or worst) avidly. Frankie really believed that Roy Orbison was a demon based on his song Running Scared (there is a story behind that belief which involved the machinations of his girlfriend, Joanne, which need not detain us here). Carl Perkins was another idol, and I need not speak of the fact that he almost cried when they started picking on Jerry Lee Lewis just because he married his cousin, or something. Thus far though we were not that far apart.

 

But get this. He, king of the be-bop night, no question, a guy whom I talked about universal things to and got a thoughtful talking back to on, took it in strife when guys like Fabian, Booby (oops) Bobby Vee, Conway Twitty (be serious), Bobby Darin, the Everly Brothers, and Rick Nelson, jesus, Rick Nelson led the musical counter-revolution in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Music that made me, on certain days, abandon the transistor radio that was central to my home life peace. (Yah, that Ma thing mentioned previously). So when the Beatles turned up he was kind of nonplussed by them, and I swear he actually said this one night and I will quote his words exactly just in case there are any legal ramifications over it- “They did a nice cover of Twist and Shout”-jesus christ. Even I saw them as a breath of fresh air then.

 

Now you get the idea of the musical gap that developed between us. That hearing of Little Red Rooster, moreover, began my long love affair with the blues, although somewhere deep in my psyche, my projects boy psyche, I had that beat in my head way before I could name it. I swear I grabbed every Muddy Waters, Big Joe Turner, Ike Turner, John Lee Hooker album that I could get my hands on. And then branched out to such esoteric stuff as the work of blues pioneers like Son House, Robert Johnson, and Bukka White (he did Panama Limited and Aberdeen Mississippi Woman on the sweat-dripping National Steel guitar and flipped me out, and still flips me out. Google those on YouTube) and other early country blues boys. Some of this also got mixed in at the time with my budding interest in the folk music scene, the folk protest music scene. And that is probably why, although the blues, particularly the Chicago blues, also influenced the Beatles, it is The Stones that I favor. Their cover on Rooster still holds up, by the way. Not as good, as I found out later, as the legendary Howlin' Wolf's version but good.

 

I have also thought about the Stones influence more recently as I have thought about the long ago past of my youth. Compare some works like John Lennon's earnest, plaintive Working Class Hero and The Stones' agitated Street Fighting Man (yes, I know these are later works, later than the be-bop corner boy schoolboy night, but they serve to make my point here) and I believe that something in the way The Stones from early on presented that angry, defiant sound appealed to my sense of working class alienation. Let’s leave it as they “spoke” to me and the Beatles didn’t. Frankie, always caught up with some “twist” although mainly the Joanne mentioned above moved to less defiant sounds. (That “twist” his term for girl, woman learned from seeing to many second run black and white 1930s gangster films and jaded Sam Spade/Philip Marlowe detective films at the Strand about six blocks from where we lived.) But he was the king hell king corner boy, and bailed me out of tough situations, tough girl situations and some other semi-legal things, more times than not so he draws a pass on his vanilla tastes here. Thanks, Frankie.

 

Afterthought: If we were really thinking about comparisons between rock groups as you move later into the heart of the 1960 after the counter-revolution got smashed the better one is actually not the Beatles vs. The Stones but Stones vs. The Doors. On any given night in the late 1960s when Jim Morrison, satanic, shamanic, mad man if you can be all three at once, or believe you can be all three as he probably did when he was in his drug-induced trance, leader of the band dug deeply into his psyche and bared his shamanistic soul (and dug, dug deeply, into his medicine bag as well) The Doors were the best rock band in the world. No question. Just listen to L.A. Woman, The End, Spanish Caravan and the like. But when you start to list the all-time classic Stones hits from Gimme Shelter to Tumblin’ Dice (like I say the one that will still get even grandpa up and about) and how they stand the test of time The Stones win hands down.

 

Street Fighting Man Lyrics
Artist(Band):The Rolling Stones
(M. Jagger/K. Richards)

 

Ev'rywhere I hear the sound of marching, charging feet, boy

'Cause summer's here and the time is right for fighting in the street, boy

But what can a poor boy do

Except to sing for a rock 'n' roll band

'Cause in sleepy London town

There's just no place for a street fighting man

No

Hey! Think the time is right for a palace revolution

'Cause where I live the game to play is compromise solution

Well, then what can a poor boy do

Except to sing for a rock 'n' roll band

'Cause in sleepy London town

There's just no place for a street fighting man

No

Hey! Said my name is called disturbance

I'll shout and scream, I'll kill the king, I'll rail at all his servants

Well, what can a poor boy do

Except to sing for a rock 'n' roll band

'Cause in sleepy London town

There's just no place for a street fighting man

No

 

"Working Class Hero" lyrics- John Lennon

As soon as your born they make you feel small,

By giving you no time instead of it all,

Till the pain is so big you feel nothing at all,

A working class hero is something to be,

A working class hero is something to be.

They hurt you at home and they hit you at school,

They hate you if you're clever and they despise a fool,

Till you're so fucking crazy you can't follow their rules,

A working class hero is something to be,

A working class hero is something to be.

 

When they've tortured and scared you for twenty odd years,

Then they expect you to pick a career,

When you can't really function you're so full of fear,

A working class hero is something to be,

A working class hero is something to be.

Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV,

And you think you're so clever and classless and free,

But you're still fucking peasents as far as I can see,

A working class hero is something to be,

A working class hero is something to be.

 

There's room at the top they are telling you still,

But first you must learn how to smile as you kill,

If you want to be like the folks on the hill,

A working class hero is something to be.

A working class hero is something to be.

If you want to be a hero well just follow me,

If you want to be a hero well just follow me.

 

The Red Rooster
Howling Wolf

 

I have a little red rooster, too lazy to crow for day

I have a little red rooster, too lazy to crow for day

 

Keep everything in the barnyard, upset in every way

Oh the dogs begin to bark,

and the hound begin to howl

Oh the dogs begin to bark, hound begin to howl

Ooh watch out strange kind people,

Cause little red rooster is on the prowl

If you see my little red rooster, please drag him home

If you see my little red rooster, please drag him home

 

There ain't no peace in the barnyard,

Since the little red rooster been gone

Willie Dixon