Gardner Remembers: the lost tapes

CM: But, for the record here, how did you decide to go to L.A.?

  BG: One day, it was, oh about a month after the hospital. I’d been at home just sitting there, you know, letting my mind rot. Lorelei was doing a lot of painting and she left me to myself as much as I needed it. But, I was doing nothing. I was mindless. I was watching soaps, for Christ’s sake. Hooked on soaps and dopes.

  CM: You weren’t still using…

  BG: Well, no, uh…

  CM: What pulled you out?

  BG: I was watching late night TV. That Don Kirschner thing, what was it called? I don’t know. But Creedence came on. And there was fucking Fogerty singing “Wrote a Song for Everyone” and I just snapped back. It was like a puzzle piece popping into place. I thought, man, here’s a guy, been through the mill, right? and he’s singing about singing for everyone and, man, I saw that it was all so selfish, this exile, this block. I thought, it’s ego, is what it is. How dare I not write songs? How dare I? So, I picked up my guitar and wrote, “Alison All Gone.” Lorelei heard me and didn’t come into the room right away. She’s very intuitive that way. But she knew. She heard the words, heard the pain in my voice. She knew I was alive again. Pain is alive, right? A man obsessed is a man alive.

  And when she did come into my little home studio there I had finished the fucking song and I sang it to her and she just sat there and cried, man. Just wept. And I did, too. And I sang it again. It was just heart wrenching, man, I mean, we were just like two kids given a new lease on life. I wrote a song, I kept, thinking. I wrote a damn good song. I was back, you know, back, but different. Different but the same. This is what I want everyone to understand. What I want to say—the difference is not a drama, the difference is a poem, a song, a way of looking at life, that’s slightly atilt, slightly askew, perhaps, but it’s all me, you know? It’s what I am.

  I am a songwriter. That was finding my soul.

  (garbled)

  BG: Yeah, I’m ok. Ok.

  LE: It’s late.

  CM: Yeah, it’s actually dark outside, I think. You want dinner? I’ll buy dinner.

  BG: No, no, thanks.

  CM: Beautiful, the light there against that white wall, against the sash. It’s like a ruddle…

  BG: Blood. It’s the color of blood.

  CM: Which is life, right?

  BG: Yes.

  LE: Maybe just—

  CM: Yeah, tomorrow, right? Is that alright?

  BG: I’m tired.

  Day Three