Missing the point

By Jesse Sample

My father, Eric Sample, died at the age of 51. I was 27. He was loved by his friends, a group composed of bikers, random Albany residents, his not quite in-laws, and seemingly, everyone else. Everywhere he went, he knew somebody and was greeted with a smile.

I grew up in houses filled with Rock ‘n’ Roll. My mother and father were practically kids when they had me. They both had long hair and heavy record collections.  On any given night, I might be in sleeping in a playpen while my folks and their friends were hanging out and laughing while they spun Allman Brothers albums and did whatever it is that 20-somethings do. 

My mom was allegedly ambitious, and my father was most likely not. This might have been the reason that they didn’t stay together past my second birthday. This prognosis is probably accurate from a bird’s-eye view and incredibly unfair on the ground floor. I was too young to know what was happening and, looking inward, I don’t see any signs of damage. I lived with my mother and visited my father irregularly on weekends. 

My other home was my grandparents’ house, and this may be one of the great gifts of my life. They were, and are, kind, patient and stable people, not to mention, hardworking and funny. I formed the foundation of my musical world in my grandad’s record collection. I use the word “in” because his record collection was a room lined with shelves holding whole catalogues spanning many of the greatest recording artists that ever lived. And it wasn’t just Rock. There was soul, jazz, funk, show tunes, alternative, adult contemporary, and all sorts of things in between. He had every Flying Burrito Brothers album.  He also had a whole wall of Grateful Dead bootlegs. Jerry Garcia inspired me to start taking guitar lessons. Jerry had sainthood status in my grandparent’s house.

I started playing guitar in earnest when I was 14. Every Tuesday night, my grandad would pick me up at his house at 4:00. I was living with my grandparents in an official manner during this chapter of my life. We went to the Chinese Buffet, where I would eat four heaping plates of fat, meat and carbohydrates and then go to my guitar lesson around the corner. How I stayed awake after that feast is still a mystery to me. 

I learned a few chords and a few easy songs and since then, I’ve been living a double life. There is my life as a husband, son, friend, husband, grandson, employee, employer and a friendly stranger. Then there is my life on a fretboard where I exist in another place and speak another language. The latter gives me context to the former and the former gives me context to the latter. There were so many great guitarists and so many diverse styles and I was having my mind blown on such a regular basis. In the shadows of these artists, I aspired to develop something beautiful and unique as a guitarist and songwriter. I am a prolific songwriter and perform live in multiple entities.

I grew up on Rock’ n’ Roll soup. There was so much. From Aerosmith to ZZ Top. There was Bowie, Clapton, and David Gilmore. There’s too much to responsibly mention. But as a young man, I was seeking an identity. In the music of Led Zeppelin, featuring guitarist Jimmy Page, I found a place where I could focus my aspirations. Led Zeppelin was my favorite band and Jimmy Page was my favorite guitarist. I thought he was the best of them.

Nowadays, I can see the insanity of tying yourself to one thing or assigning the word “best” to anything in the musical realm. The spectrum of music is so broad. There are times in my life when George Benson picks me up unlike any other. Or perhaps, when I’m cooking in my kitchen, who better to drink wine with than Stan Getz and João Gilberto. Nowadays, I have Exodus to scratch my heavy metal itch on the treadmill and Byzantine Chant, Live in Brussels when my life is falling apart and I need to find peace. These are different arts and exist in different media. But in those young formative years, I thought Jimmy Page was the best one could be.

I never saw my father as a guy with a strong identity. I heard from my mother that he was handsome and a formidable chess player in his younger days. But I didn’t see anything too formidable in him. He was kind and gentle and all too happy to go with the flow. He didn’t come off to me as bold and daring. I wanted my identity to be different. I wanted to be a formidable guitarist. 

Let’s just cut to the chase: the word is “ROCK STAR.”

(Lightning Flashes)

From my perspective, my father never made his mark. I was youngish when he died…mentally at least. Some guys had families by the time they were 27…like my father. I was trying to make my bones and seeking attention through any method I could fathom. I, like many, thought that attention equals love. I wanted people to love and revere me the way I loved and revered Jimmy Page

I’d learn through the next few years that the most direct path to love is to be loving. And in this, I’d also learn the true size of the mark that my father had left. The funeral home couldn’t fit all the people who showed up in their leather jackets and their suits, and naturally, a spontaneous party developed in the parking lot. Spontaneous parties always seemed to form around my father. If he existed in a comic book, his superpower would manifest in him snapping his fingers and kegs and bearded men with motorcycles would appear in a cloud of smoke to fight the forces of evil. But that’s not a mark. It’s just a skill…or a talent…or a vice.

My father’s mark is most evident in the way people go internal and smile to themselves when he’s mentioned, even 16 years after his death.

It occurs to me that maybe my measure for “making a mark” was a bit off. When Jimmy Page dies, many of us will feel sad for a while and play The Rain Song in our kitchens and, no doubt, the radio stations will be “getting the Led out” for a week straight. CNN will give him 22 seconds where they refer to him as, “blues-rock legend, Jimmy Page” while showing grainy footage of him patrolling the stage like a matador. And then the world will move on into whatever new insanity arises.

Most of us don’t really know Jimmy Page. We know the products of his achievements, the all too risqué rumors of his supposed dabbling in the occult, his killer wardrobe and the mythic rock lore surrounding hotel fishing expeditions in seas of voluptuous groupies. Us music fans know Jimmy Page about as well as we know Moses.

But I have it on good authority that my father let friends who were down on their luck sleep in the spare bedroom in the house he and Maggie- “my evil stepmother” -shared. I was there. I know my father liked walking down to the Colonial on Washington Avenue on a Saturday night for a beer… or a few…or all the beer. He liked to laugh and never really had a motorcycle that ran well for more than a week. He was an open book and a kind guy.

When he took his last breath, I was at band practice. I had stayed over the night before in the hospice unit and I was planning on coming back after practice. When my father died, my mother and my youngest sister were there. I knew he was close to going but I was chasing something. I didn’t want to be like my dad. I wanted to be like Jimmy Page.

When I think of it now, I realize that my father had the thing that I thought being like Jimmy Page would get me. He had people who truly loved him and people whom he loved. He was in the moment. I just wanted to be loved, and I was loved, but I couldn’t see it. I thought people get love for being good at something. I wouldn’t allow myself to be loved. I didn’t think that I was deserving enough. Maybe I put love out of my reach because I couldn’t believe that something that I wanted so much was so available. I wasn’t there when my father died, and I’ve been haunted by it ever since. My father died in a room with my mother and my sister. All the love I could have wanted in this world was in that hospice unit at St. Peters. And I was chasing it somewhere else.

I made a mistake. I denied myself an opportunity that I’ll never get again.  The time we have with others is precious. I have been trying to be in my moments and not looking down at them from a cloud of expectation, blocking the sun. What if my greatest achievement in this life is sitting with a friend at a bar, smiling over a pitcher of beer, and hearing him out as he goes over the details of his latest breakup for the hundredth time?

What if I could be the best in the world at turning off my iPhone and eating dinner with my wife while she talks about her day? When I think about my father, it seems like a worthwhile endeavor. Maybe I could stand among the greats in the fine art of being present in the lives of the people I love. I will continue to live my double life, here and in the fretboard realm, until I die. But the ghost of my father haunts me and reminds me that in these spaces, society and the fretboard, identity is not a mold in which you try and fit but rather something that is constantly being discovered and never truly finished. And being thoughtful, kind and gentle are paramount.

You only become an expert in what you practice. Babe Ruth might have been an absolute failure as a gas station attendant. But I’m willing to bet he would have poured the same magic into that alternate path. Jimi Hendrix comes off as a guy who would have made waves in whatever he did. My father was an artist. I just didn’t understand the medium back then. Maybe the paths we take and the people and things we encounter along the way, train us to be the thing we are…at least in the ways that matter to us.