My Friend Mac

One foot in the gutter, one in a conversation with God

Here’s a second go ‘round of a piece I wrote when I began this writing trip.

“I got ta go to the croaker see about my bi-polar bear dis-odor.”

Then he blinked once, lit a brown Nat Sherman cigarette, and shuffled off with the gravity of a man late to his own breakdown.

Mac Rebenack was a real-life jazz pirate, equal parts damaged genius and sidewalk prophet. He was as clever as they come, equally unstable, occasionally infuriating. If he got mad, he was scary as fuck. And, in keeping with his bipolar thing, he could be so childishly kind it made you look down at your shoes like you’d been caught stealing something you didn’t even want.

We were friends for forty years. That’s long enough to get married, divorced, and remarried in your mind at least four times.

He loved his words, did he. Wordplay was his constant genius, his artistry. He had no off switch for it. Always on. Permanently engaged. He’d get that gleam in his eye and a swinging, old-school rhythmic command of language he couldn’t stop once he started. Constant myth-making. A sly way of saying a thing so sideways it hit you straight in the gut.

Dear God, I miss him. My friend.

He was a walking contradiction. The guy who’d give you his last cigarette and then steal your lighter. He had an addict’s shame and a shaman’s confidence. One foot in the gutter, the other in a conversation with God.

I remember my 40th birthday dinner. He sat at the table like another broken tooth in the crown. A character among “care-actors” (his wording), all of us just trying to stay clean. Along with Mike Brecker, there were twenty-six Grammys at the table, as I remember it. Accomplished, shy, and always the most interesting cat in the room.

We were once gutted by the same woman, the dearly departed Libby Titus. Same brand of heartbreak that neither of us ever got over. His evisceration was romantic. Mine was political and career-damaging. Same knife, different organs.

Before I left on a solo “vision quest” workshop thing I’d found through the New School for Social Research catalog, because naturally every good Jewish boy needs to do Lakota shamanic rituals as if designer second bar mitzvahs in the Utah canyonlands were required reading; he handed me a bag of talismans. Like, actual talismans. Feathers, bones, strings. He gave them to me with all the gravitas of a dying medicine man and said they’d protect me.

From what?

He didn’t say.

Then we wrote a song called Lonely Girl in a World of Dreams to tether me back home.

His old school answering machine’s outgoing message was pure poetry.

“Leave a message, short and sweet, and if you keep it brief, I might just call you back.”

His Night Before Xmas is still a staple in my Christmas emails. It begins, “Money’s tight and times are hard… so here’s yo mother fucking Christmas Card.” Never gets old.

And his songs, Christ.

Anyone who knew him knew that Mac lied constantly, but never in a malicious way. For him, lying was performance art. A good story was its own currency. He’d embellish a trip to the grocery store until it sounded like a Tarantino film, and you’d find yourself nodding along like, yes, of course the cantaloupes were armed.

We spent many nights, loaded, at the downtown Lone Star on 5th Avenue, packed in with tourists, coke whores, and ghosts from the white-collar Midtown after-work crowd. Doc Pomus holding court at his regular table by the door for an easy roll in and roll out.

Mac would do that cane-supported saunter, sit down and light up like a goddamn Roman candle, and then, like an EverReady Bunny at the piano, just a keep on keepin’ on. One song after another, giving it a strong lickin’. It felt like he was trying to outrun death with an endless setlist.

I remember we played a Popeye’s Chicken jingle once. Midtown, at John Hill’s tiny studio. Ten A.M. sharp after a late night out. It was Arnie Lawrence on soprano sax, Ron Carter on bass, Mac on B3, and me on brushes. Squooshed together shoulder to shoulder. Man, if I had a tape of that. Talk about swing.

Funny aside.

I was totally scared shit of Ron Carter. This was way before YouTube and he was a bonafide jazz giant, a mysterious legend to me. He was a member of the classic Miles Davis Quintet. He gives me a look and stays silent. He’s very tall and my mind starts to play tricks on me. It felt like he was a militant Black Panther general looking down at this little white Yiddishe boy who was about to try to play jazz for the first time. We didn’t exchange a word.

Years later I watched countless video interviews and listened to his podcast. Contrary to my “you may need psychotherapy” projecting onto him, Ron Carter has got to be the gentlest, sweetest, classiest man on earth.

Whoopsie.

But alas, I digress.

There was the time we recorded with B.B. at Studio 3 at Western, the Pet Sounds room. My only time there. Mac got me on that to fill in for Earl Palmer.

Wait. What?

He introduced me to more musicians than I can count. B.B. King. Fathead Newman. Bob Babbit. Wilbur Bascomb, Ringo Starr. The kind of people who leave fingerprints on your soul. Mac was generous like that. He liked to share his stage, even if he hogged the spotlight.

Funny as hell. Terrifying when he wanted to be. Sometimes when he didn’t want to be. Bipolar Bear Dis-odor. He didn’t need to raise a fist. His darkness had a gravitational pull. You felt it in your lungs.

One time we played with Donald Fagen and Rick Danko and Ronnie Cuber. Three Mad Hatters for sure! That was surreal.

But the moment I remember most?

A coffee shop on 14th Street. His first night clean. Him and me. Two ghosts trying to believe in resurrection.

That’s the thing with Mac. You remember the music, sure. But it’s the in-between moments that stick. The talismans. The lies that told a deeper truth. The jokes you laughed at first, then cried about later when you were alone and the room went quiet.

Worth mentioning, he always had this childlike grief present. A silence that meant: I love you, I just don’t know how to say it without making a mess. That, I think, was his main attraction for me, beyond the musical genius. In fact, the music always felt like an expression of that grief, or a compensation for it, or a way to dress it up so it could walk through the world without getting arrested.

But that may be a little too deep for most of us.

The fact remains, he was undeniably special.

And the groove. Always the groove. He lived inside it. That Mardis Gras shuffle. Trudging the road to his happy destiny like the Grand Poobah he was.

Tears.