"I want the Jimi Hendrix Electric Ladyland album!" demanded my Depression-era mom

The year 1969, in retrospect, was one of the biggest in classic rock music. It was also the year my friends Sue, Mary Jane and I, three 16-year-olds, signed up for summer telemarketing jobs. It was during these working hours we perked up our ears, not for music, but the sounds of potential clients’ unenthused one-word responses across the wire, and the lilting, if not often monotonous, rhythm of our own voices as we repeated rote telephone pitches. Our goal was to sell small plots of Wisconsin resort property to older folks in the south Chicago suburbs, not an easy sell for a peddler of any age or experience.

For escapism from the din of the phone center, the three of us would take our lunch break together outdoors at the local snack shop’s picnic table. There, near the corner of North and Harlem Avenues, we’d quickly wolf down our brown bag lunches and purchase a pop at the shop counter to at least feign the impression we were legitimate customers.

Once food was consumed, we moved on to our true destination, Peaches Records, a few doors down from the snack shop. This record shop served as our rock music “museum.” Our paltry paychecks from the telemarketing job were needed to be spread elsewhere than on pricey record albums, for the likes of school clothes and bus fare. After we entered the record store, we headed straight toward the stacks. 

With Sue and Mary Jane at my sides, one particular afternoon I held up an album cover with the saffron yellow and fiery red solarized portrait of a man dancing before us -- “Electric Ladyland,” the Jimi Hendrix Experience’s third album. It was part of the ritual we undertook with one another, showing off the most recent rock albums that we admired, like auctioneers at an estate sale, presenting a beautiful object to bidders for examination. 

We all had our current favorites “of the moment” and took turns with this show-and-tell game until our lunch hour was over. We would examine, we would discuss, we would laud and fawn over, we would disagree, though we couldn’t bid. It was like touching fine paintings, something the guards wouldn’t let you do at the Art Institute of Chicago.

The graphics of “Electric Ladyland,” though colorful, weren’t as visually psychedelic as the group’s second album, “Axis Bold as Love.” “Electric Ladyland” featured large aforementioned solarized close-up of Hendrix singing. The back cover photo flanked Hendrix with his fellow musicians, Mitch Mitchell and Noel Redding, who were two white guys sporting Afros nearly larger than the man’s himself. Their well-fitted garb was totally psychedelic, jackets jumping with surrealistic cartoon characters, polka dot ties popping and brilliant neck scarves furling, all which satisfied the freaky fashionista in me.

The album cover wasn’t what really attracted me to this album. I, as many others were, found captivation in the originality of the music. I had been enamored with Hendrix’ music since “Purple Haze,” a single 45 rpm record I purchased in 1967 while still a dooper at Taft High School. A dooper, by the way, is a Chicago term for a collegiate, an acronym for “Dear Old Oak Parker,” meaning someone who’s similar to a suburban Oak Park youth who can afford Ivy League schools – and record albums – or, like me, a Chicagoan from the northwest side who merely dressed like one with clothes snagged from bargain basements and thrift shops. By 1969, my friends and I were “hippies,” or at least hippies who toned down their outfits enough to get summer jobs like the telemarketing ones, and still, evidently, trying to be all that in this Oak Park record shop. 

Double album “Electric Ladyland” is viewed by some as the peak of Hendrix’ mastery of the electric guitar. In recent liner notes, it read, “After Woodstock, Neil Young said that Jimi was ‘absolutely the best guitar player that ever lived; there was no one even in the same building as that guy.’” Besides Mitchell and Redding, a number of guest artists made cameo appearances in various tracks on “Electric Ladyland,” including Steve Winwood, Al Kooper, Dave Mason and Brian Jones. The most well-known song on the album is by far “All Along the Watchtower” of which music and lyrics are written by Bob Dylan. Hendrix wrote the remainder of the songs.

My personal favorite is “1983…A Merman I Should Turn to Be,” which tracks at over 13 minutes. Some say it is the most psychedelic and political song on the album, if not among all of Hendrix’ body of work. I fantasized as a child about what it must be like to be a mermaid, influenced by “The Little Mermaid” story by Hans Christian Anderson as well as the film “Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid” with Ann Blyth and William Powell. In the Mr. Peabody film, Blythe portrays a mermaid brought to land in order to try fit in like everyone else. When it’s clear she cannot, she is mercifully returned to the sea.

Hendrix wanted to be a merman, the male counterpart of a mermaid. But he longed for it as a means to walk away from war and oppression and straight into the sea “not to die, but to be reborn.” The title’s “1983” was a year that Hendrix was destined never to experience himself. His short but artistic career as a musician ended only a year after I held that record album in my hands at Peaches Records, with his death in 1970.

A fond memory of my mother involves the “Electric Ladyland” album. Our local department store in the neighborhood strip mall, Turnstyle, featured a flyer advertising select albums on sale for only a dollar. Most record albums sold for about six or seven times that amount at Peaches Records. “Electric Ladyland” was one of the albums featured in the Turnstyle photo. I rushed to Turnstyle only to be told by a manager that the array of albums pictured were for marketing purposes and that “Electric Ladyland” itself wasn’t actually among those on sale for that price.

When I came home and told my mother my disappointment, she took a close look at the flyer. My mother, Evelyn, had married my father during the Depression era. With money tight, they lived with my grandmother the first five years of their marriage, trying to scrape together enough to get their own place. They postponed starting a family, as well. During World War II, my mother did things like save cooking grease in cans and gather slivers of soap to ship to facilities using it to make munitions, from what my sisters told me.

She was one to count every penny, use every resource and read the fine print. She strived to get the best out of every deal, receipt, coupon and warranty. That was the way women from her era worked things to feel a tad more financially secure. My mother eventually became a widow and had to fend for herself, my two sisters and me on her own. As a result, she wanted to make sure I never had it too easy, that I might be independent and strong, as she had learned to the hard way.

With the “pull up your bootstraps” modus of her working-class stance, she usually let me fight my own battles and issues, whether win or lose. So I was a bit surprised that, with flyer in hand, she uncharacteristically decided to take up the cause. She took off her apron, threw a chiffon scarf over her dark curly hair, straightened the cuffs of her polyester pants as she slipped marshmallow white  flats onto her feet, then grabbed her car keys. “Cindy, let’s go,” she said. “Go where?” I said. “To Turnstyle,” she said. “Mom, really?” I said, as I slipped into the seat next to her and she drove off.

Once inside the store, she approached the manager. Yet he, too, told her that he couldn’t sell that particular album at that price. She wouldn’t let his proclamation immediately dissuade her. My mother raised her voice and, pointing a finger forcefully at the page in the flyer, said, “Sir, I see ‘Electric Ladyland’ pictured right here in your ad, and I want ‘Electric Ladyland’ for the price advertised. I don’t want any of those other albums on sale. I don’t want The Turtles ‘Happy Together’ album. I don’t want ‘Polka Favorites.’ I don’t want Dean Martin’s ‘Gentle on My Mind.’ I already have that one. I want Electric Ladyland!”

The manager sincerely apologized for the inconvenience. Hands on hips, his bald head glistening, his protruding belly battling three of his shirt buttons, the manager nonetheless held firm to the notion that he could not sell the album for a dollar. “You have to give it to us,” my mother demanded. Everyone was looking. He looked exasperated. Then someone called him away to answer a phone call.

Ultimately, my mother had as little success as I.  But I was touched that she went as far as she did to try to get some justice for me. And to hear my Dean Martin-loving, Depression-era mom demand a psychedelic album and reprise the words “Electric Ladyland” at the top of her voice, militant against this bait-and-switch in a public forum struck me as righteously incongruous as well as tremendously precious, dear, odd and sweetly funny. While I didn’t land a copy of “Electric Ladyland,” and the idea of how my mother and I had joined forces only to lose this small battle together made me proud of her, and feel loved by her.

Decades later, after my mother was gone, I  gathered with my own small family as we celebrated our usual Christmas stocking ritual for the holidays. By then, I had nearly forgotten about the album. When I spied a gift that my 20-something musician son, Julian, had tucked into my stocking, I thought it was a book. As I tore open the wrapping and uncovered the box it was in, I saw that it was none other than a CD version of Jimi Hendrix’ “Electric Ladyland.” Two years before, during a family visit to the Rock & Roll Museum in Cleveland and inside the Hendrix exhibit, I had told Julian about the episode at Turnstyle with my mother and me. 

So happy to receive the album, I wished I was able to call my mother to tell her I finally got it, although that was no longer possible. Once again, I was deeply touched by a family member who made a personal gesture for me in regard to the album, this time my son. I wept, and told him that this was one of the best Christmas gifts I ever received.

Since then, it has turned out to be more than a mere rock album for me. Every time I play it, I walk hand-in-hand with the living and dead, with the musical and otherwise, with the caring and savvy of my mother, son, Sue, Mary Jane, and Jimi, too, right into Electric Ladyland.

(Excerpted from a memoir in progress: "The Year of 14 Jobs")

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"I want the Jimi Hendrix Electric Ladyland album!" demanded my Depression-era mom

Meeting Dennis Farina when he was officer friendly; future TV and film star

Before Dennis Farina became a popular, noteworthy actor, and while he worked as a Chicago Police officer, he also moonlighted evenings here and there at area teen clubs as a security bouncer.

My best friend Sue and I were regulars at these clubs and venues when we weren't working our various odd jobs. In 1969, in addition to being a high school student, I personally worked a total of 14 different part-time jobs over the course of the year, at places with names such as Bum Steer Restaurant, Rose Grill and Morrie's Clothing.

During our free time, dancing was what it was all about as far as Sue and I were concerned. I toned down the hippie garb a couple of levels when we danced at the rather collegiate Deep End Teen Club in Park Ridge versus romps through the psychedelic Kinetic Playground in Chicago.

One warm spring Wednesday night, Sue and I walked the three miles from our Chicago neighborhood to the Deep End. By the time we arrived, a long line of people fanned outside, waiting along the tall wooden fence surrounding the patio. The regular entry door where you paid your $1 to $5, depending on who was playing that night, was yards ahead of us.

“Hey, Sue, give me a boost,” I said. I wanted to see if we knew anyone already inside hanging out in the patio. As Sue held my feet, I grabbed onto the top of the fence. I pulled myself up, only to come face-to-face with a handsome, full-grown man in a dark uniform.

“Going somewhere?” he asked, slyly. I made a high, little gasp and reeled back, not from being caught snooping, but because he was so gorgeous. With feet now firmly back on the sidewalk, I looked up. He looked down on us over the fence, which was six feet tall itself. He was taller. Eight feet?

“You’re mighty tall,” Sue called up to him. “I’m not short,” he said. Then he paused and looked as us askew. “What do you think? I’m standing on a box.”

“Sure you are,” said Sue. “You’re probably a midget.” A look passed over his face as if he caught himself, annoyed to have let the banter go too far with teenage girls.

“Are you girls trying to sneak in?” he said, in a mock authoritarian tone. “My friend Cindy here only wanted to see who was in there,” Sue said. “What’s the hold-up getting in, anyway?”

“They just opened,” he said. “I guess everyone showed up at once, including you two.”

I examined him with fascinated curiosity. Deep End hired a number of moonlighting police officers like himself from Park Ridge and Chicago to work as bouncers for a few hours each evening. Parents in the area had complained that their children were coming home from Deep End inebriated. It wasn’t because the Deep End served liquor. They did not.

The Deep End had opened to give teenagers something to do and somewhere to go where liquor or drugs weren’t part of the scene. Nevertheless, certain kids entered with hidden flasks of whiskey or marijuana joints in their pockets. Bouncers weren’t as concerned with kids sneaking in as they were with kids handing six-packs of beer or other contraband over the fence to friends already inside.

Sue and I liked to chat up the cop bouncers. Most had both textured, carefree senses of humor and more mature, polished bearings than most of the silly teenage boys our own age. There was Farrell, a wise-cracking Irish-American Park Ridge cop who often played the grump, but had a warm heart. There was Showalter, a former Taftite who had Miss Marquardt as homeroom teacher. When I told him she was still at Taft High and my current homeroom teacher, he said, “She’s still alive? Miss Marquardt must be 100 years old.” I once told Showalter that he looked like Hugh Hefner, the kingpin of the Playboy empire. He said in response, “Oh no! That fag?”

I looked up again at the tall, beautiful man on the other side of the fence. A newbie. “Do you know Farrell or Showalter?” I said. “Am I supposed to?” he said. “What’s your name?” I asked. “Dennis,” he said. “No, your last name. We call all the cops here by their last name,” I said. “Farina,” he said. “Dennis Farina.”

“Isn’t farina just another name for cream of wheat?” said Sue. “What if we call you Cream of Wheat?” The head disappeared from the top of the fence as he got off his box on the other side. “Oh, he’s mad now, Sue,” I said, turning to her. A huge portion of the fence swung open. I never knew that part of the fence held a door-like panel that opened on hinges. Dennis Farina stood there, at his actual height of six-feet, two inches, holding the panel open for us.

“Get in here,” he said. We entered the Deep End patio and he closed the panel. “Are we in trouble?” I asked. “No, I’m just getting sick of listening to you. Go inside and leave me alone to do my job,” he said. “You mean you’re letting us in for free?” I asked.

He then turned his back, pretending as if he didn’t see us. Sue and I ran up the patio stairs into the club and danced the night away doing the "Funky Broadway," the "Boogaloo" and other dances of the era as local bands covered Motown favorites, or groups like the New Colony Six and Blood, Sweat and Tears played original material.

From then on, when Farina was on duty, we stopped to chat once or twice a night. We tried to behave ourselves and not act too silly, but it was hard. At age 16, “Silly” could often be both our middle names.

Farina grew up in the St. Michael Church, Old Town area, with his Italian father and German mother, by heritage. “My area was a poor, Italian neighborhood before the hippies came in and gentrified the place,” he said. “But it was a solid neighborhood. My parents lived there for decades. Now even they can no longer afford the neighborhood anymore.” They were forced to move to a less expensive residential area far west of Old Town. He was upset that what he once called home wasn’t the home he had once known.

By day, Farina served as a rookie cop on the Chicago police force, then worked at Deep End and at some of the area Catholic church teen clubs a few nights a week. When he’d see us at the Catholic venues, he’d just sigh and roll his eyes. “Not you two, again. Can’t I get away from you for one evening?” he’d say.

On one particular three-mile walk back to our neighborhood after Deep End closed, we spied Farina sitting in a corner coffee shop. He was wearing his police hat low on his head, the glow of the restaurant contrasting both the dark night and his chiseled, rugged face.

“He’s like ‘Nighthawks’ by Edward Hopper,” I said. “Remember we saw that painting at the Art Institute, Sue? The people sitting at the restaurant counter in the middle of the night? Farina’s a work of art,” I said.

Sue answered, “I wouldn’t go quite that far."

Another time, right in front of Farina, Sue said, “Cindy’s got a crush on you.” I was embarrassed, but only for a moment. “But I’m old enough to be your father,” Farina said. He was about 12 years older than I, 28 to my 16. “You might be old enough to be my brother, not my father,” I said. Somehow, that didn’t seem to impress Farina.

One night in late spring, Farina was on duty at Deep End as usual. “Some day I’m going to be far away from here and not a cop anymore,” he mused out loud.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“What I really want to be is an actor,” he said.

“And I want to run as Senator for the state of Connecticut,” Sue said.

“I just don’t want to be an actor,” he said. “I will be an actor. It’s going to happen.” Sue just laughed him off, but I could tell he was serious. In the midst of his intensity, his pronouncement seemed prophetic, as if it really would come true.

About a week later, Farina came up to Sue and me. “This is it. Tonight’s my last night,” he said.

“What? You’re leaving?” I said.

“I can’t take these places anymore,” he said. “Too much nonsense for what they pay me.”

We both couldn’t blame him and told him we’d miss him. He picked up his paycheck from the owners and took off early. Sue and I watched as he walked away, headed back down the block to his car, back toward Chicago down Touhy Avenue. Sue looked over to me.

I watched Farina and his elegant long legs move almost in slow motion farther and farther away from us. “Somehow, I feel that man might haunt me the rest of my life,” I said. And as it turned out, in a strange, unexpected way, he did. Just when I thought I’d forgotten him, he’d turn up in living color on a billboard, in TV shows such as “Crime Story,” “Law & Order” or “Unsolved Mysteries,” or movies such as “Get Shorty” or “What Happens in Vegas.”

Coincidentally, Farina’s character’s name on “Law & Order” was the same as one of my high school classmates who was also a Deep End regular, Joe Fontana (who coincidentally also became an actor).

Of course, I got over my teenage angst. When I witnessed various celluloid, four-color process and digital images of Farina, I really wasn’t “haunted” in the strict sense, but happy instead to be reminded of him, delighted to see what a success he had made for himself. Farina’s dreams of Hollywood came true, in a realm as far away from the Deep End of things as you might possibly get. #

RIP Dennis Farina -- July 22, 2013

(excerpted from Cynthia Gallaher's memoir-in-progress: "Year of 14 Jobs") ◦

Meeting Dennis Farina when he was officer friendly; future TV and film star