Rolling Stone: We’re back with Stephen Morris, but what a difference a day makes. Something that he describes as “UFFC” which he identifies as “Unidentified Falling Frozen Crud” is coming out of the sky, bouncing off the roof of the unheated playhouse. After a few minutes, he suggests moving into the kitchen, where Sandy serves us green tea as we sit on kitchen stools.
SM: I wonder how the daffodils like it? This is pretty classic Mud Season Yin/Yang. At least we’re cozy in here.
Rolling Stone: Do you think the music scene had run out of steam by 1971?
SM: No, you still had strong offerings by great artists. You still have up-and-comers, and you still have wannabees. It’s the audience that had changed, at least that’s what was happening with me.
Rolling Stone: Describe your personal life in 1971.
SM: Laura and I married and resolved that whoever got a job first, that’s where we would move. I flubbed around trying to get a job in publishing, but not knowing where to start. Laura almost immediately got a job with her alma mater, Bradford College, as an admissions recruiter. The college hired a second recruiter, also a Bradford alum, Louise Eastman, whose claim to fame is that she is the sister-in-law of Beatle Paul McCartney. Louise later married Chuck Weed, who, coincidentally, was Bill Peck’s best friend from high school. Several years later we were invited for a weekend at the Weed family farm in New Hampshire, and it was there that our son Jacob was conceived! But that’s another story.
We lived in a small apartment at 23 Wonalancet Drive in Haverhill, MA that we rented from a guy named Ronnie Boisselle for $28 per week. We had only a tiny black and white TV, so I don’t remember ever watching any television aside from Boston Bruins’ games. Neither of us had ever been hockey fans, but the NHL had just expanded, meaning that the talent pool was diluted and established teams like the Bruins could beat up on their opponents night after night. You could barely see the puck on our television, but that didn’t stop us from becoming Bruins groupies.
I can name the starting line-up: Phil Esposito (center), Ken Hodge and Wayne Cashman (forwards or wings), Bobby Orr and Dallas Smith (defense), Ed Johnston and Gerry Cheevers (goal). The second line was Johnny Bucyk, Pie MacKenzie, and Fred Stanford; Terrible Teddy Greene and Carole Vadnais on defense. Derek Sanderson, the team hipster, centered the third line. Every night was like a home team slaughter, even when they were on the road.
The movie about wife-swapping called “Bob, Carol, Ted, and Alice” had come out a couple of years earlier, and now the Bruins defensemen were “Bob, Carole, Ted, and Dallas!” Har-har!
It’s amazing how our brains are filled with trivia like this. Then again, I can still name all the members of The Animals, Paul Revere and the Raiders, and more.
Even Laura became a big hockey fan. Bill Peck, rudderless after college, moved to Haverhill, and I got him a job at Graphic Litho where I worked. He watched hockey games with us, and we played table hockey in between periods. To time periods we played The Who’s “Pure and Easy,” and many a thrilling game was played to the chrescendoing Keith Moon drum rolls at the end.
My day job was selling advertising for “Power Boat Annual.” In my mind this was the start of my career in publishing. My pay was $2.00/hour as a draw against future commissions. I hated it. I worked with a guy named Dave Allen who chain-smoked and talked incessantly about what a great salesman he was and what a bitch his wife was. The truth is, however, that he never picked up the phone to call anyone, because he was spending so much time yakking at me. By the end of the year I was outselling him by a long shot, because I made the damn calls, and he didn’t!
Our hearts, however, were set in this completely unrealistic dream of emigrating to Nova Scotia where we would live off the land. What a joke! And yet I was the one who didn’t get it. There’s never been a person less capable of living off the land than me in 1971.
Rolling Stone: What did you do for Valentines Day of 1971?
SM: What a silly question. Seriously? I remember no specifics, but it was our first Valentine’s together, so it would have been special and romantic, at least by our standards. It probably was not a dozen roses, but a single rose. It wouldn’t have been a fancy dinner out, but rather breakfast at Angelo’s (our favorite greasy spoon).
Laura and I were well-matched in that way. Her need for acknowledgement were high, but her expectations were low. I had no difficulty remembering what Valentine’s was all about, but I thought it silly to squander our thin resources on frivolity. She was fine with that. Her birthday was critical, enough so that we celebrated her half-birthday, too. So long as I remembered, a card or poem was sufficient.
The modest expectations of Valentine’s were a microcosm for the rest of our financial life. Laura came from a wealthy family (compared to mine), and yet she never showed any sign of special privilege. I always insisted that we live within our own means. She was fine with that, even though in the beginning, those means were barely modest.
When we had dreams of moving to a rural paradise in Nova Scotia, she was all for it. When we found a broken down farm to buy for $8,000 and the only way we could afford it would be to combine our savings with money from selling the shiny, orange Camaro that her parents gave her as a graduation present, she was quick to say ok. Finances were never an issue with us, even when we didn’t have a lot.
When we went to live for a summer in our broken down farmhouse with no electricity, no running water, and an outhouse … Laura loved it!! She was very happy spending hours picking tiny raspberries that she would make into jam. When we moved to London in 1972 (another story) I remember going through customs wearing a duck hunting jacket with the game pouches stuffed with jars of raspberry jam. It’s funny how your priorities change over time.
She must have been in love. There’s no other explanation. From the perspective to committing to a partnership where finances were fully shared … she was perfect.
Rolling Stone: Were you still following the music scene?
SM: Not as much. I remember the clock radio going off every morning and, likely as not, Neil Young’s “Heart of Gold” was playing. In many ways I felt like I had outgrown AM radio. I was listening more to WBCN which was playing so-called progressive or album rock. Then, after seeing “A Clockwork Orange” I started listening to Beethoven and other classical music.
Rolling Stone: Were movies filling the cultural void?
SM: Not “movies,” so much as “film.” The foreign directors— Fellini, Goddard, Antonioni— were becoming all the rage. I remember going to some pretty pretentious movies and pretending that I loved them!
Rolling Stone: Explain the significance of “A Clockwork Orange.”
SM: This was in the pseudo-intellectual period of my life. I was quite impressed with myself, I must say.
Not content to simply read the book, I taught myself a few sentences in Nadsat, the fictional language spoken by the teens in this apocalyptic novel and would say things like “I hit her in the vissy with me rooker and watched the krovvy flow between her groodies real horrorshow.”
Even now, it’s hard to believe I was actually this cool. I don’t remember where I saw the movie, but I was equally enthralled by the young Alex (played by a young, but still too-old-for-the-part Malcolm MacDowell) who ended part 1 by declaring “And me, Alex, being only 14 years old.”
The movie, like the book, went straight downhill after the visionary opening. I can’t tell you to this day, how the story ended, but for several years thereafter, dressing up like Alex with a derby and a cane was my go-to Halloween outfit (complete with eyelash). (Laughs)
Rolling Stone: What other movies interested you?
SM: The American directors started hitting their strides. I adopted Robert Altman as my favorite director. I fetishized “Brewster McCloud” which introduced me to Bud McCort as an actor. That, in turn, led to “Harold and Maude.”
“Harold and Maude” was not a blockbuster hit when it first came out. It was more of a cult movie that we learned about from our friends Dennis and Sharon.
Dennis Scanlon was the son of a wartime friend of my father’s. They had served together in China at the end of WW II. Dennis had graduated from Ohio State with a degree in veterinary medicine, and had moved to Providence for his first job. He arrived in about 1969. He drove a Corvette and briefly dated my sister, but his real heart throb was a girl who went to Alabama University. Sharon was unlikely student at Alabama, a northern Jew who bore a passing resemblance to Cher and who once dated Joe Namath. (“He was a shithead.” —Sharon).
I didn’t pay much attention to Dennis originally. He was more connected to my sister and father, but he was an occasional houseguest with whom I increasingly became familiar. Eventually, Sharon moved to Providence and they married. She was an English teacher and connected with me on the level of writing and literature.
Time passed, and Dennis started identifying more as a hippie. He grew his hair long, word tie-died shirts and a headband and dumped the ‘Vette in favor of a VW van. His values began aligning much more with mine, and as I began going out with Laura, we became as a couple increasingly friendly with (and influenced by) Dennis and Sharon. They were the ones with the homesteading dream of Nova Scotia, and they made it happen!
But that’s another story. Jeez … how did I get onto that tangent? You’re going to edit this down, right? A lot of this is just personal rambling.
Rolling Stone: Don’t worry about it. Just keep going.
SM: OK, you asked for it. Dennis was quite a pothead, and a visit to them always involved smoking a joint, but, more importantly, smoking a joint and doing something really fun and interesting. They introduced us to some of their favorite music and movies, two of them being “Harold and Maude” and “Brewster McCloud.” They became role models for Laura and me, because they showed you could be married, hold down responsible jobs, and still be kids at heart.
My interest in H&M was further piqued when my mother told me that Ruth Gordon had lived on Post Island. She was a Quincy girl, but I was never able to verify the Post Island connection.
Meanwhile, Dennis and Sharon emigrated successfully to Nova Scotia. We tried, but eventually ended up, very happily, in Vermont. We tried to maintain connections, most memorably on a trip to Nova Scotia to celebrate Canadian Thanksgiving in 1991 (long story), but inevitably, we drifted apart. We tried to keep the generational connection going when both their son, Noah, and Jake were both guitarists at the Berklee School of Music, but the magic didn’t happen.
Dennis died at age 72, not long after attending a ZZ Top concert. I wonder what happened to his mint-condition Star War toys and complete set of 1951 Topps baseball cards? RIP, friend and inspiration. “Lather was 30 years old today, and they took away all of his toys.” That’s Dennis, except he kept the toys. For about a decade (1970 to 1980), Dennis and Sharon Scanlon were the most influential people in our lives. Music was still a big part of the equation and connection, but literature, film, and theater now played major roles.
Rolling Stone: What other movies, sorry “films,” influenced you?
SM: Let’s run down the list. “Last Picture Show” was a hip favorite. I tried to like it, but couldn’t muster much enthusiasm.
“James Bond” and “Klute” were solid, mainstream entertainment.
“Bananas” (Woody Allen) and “Play Misty for Me” (Clint Eastwood” were promises of things to come.
“Big Jake” was a dying gasp from John Wayne. Do you see the parallels between music and film. John Wayne was The Beach Boys, while Woody Allen and Clint Eastwood were the Bonnie Raitts and David Bowies. They would become the major influences of the 80s and beyond.
“Billy Jack” was one of the early pissed-off, wronged dude movies, a story that is still be played out in America.
“Carnal Knowledge” another attempt to push the sexual envelope. Try watching it today. Not so good.
“Fiddler on the Roof” … Broadway stuff held no interest for me, until “Jesus Christ, Superstar.” That one hit the nail on the head.
“Shaft” … the first of the Blaxsploitation films. An interesting cultural development. I didn’t see the film, but I feel like I was witnessing history. Still do, still am, still are.
Most of what happened in my 20s is an embarrassment now. It’s a decade when you’re just feeling your way a long, and making things up as you go. Like I said … you’re going to edit this, right? Most of it is meaningful only to me.