2016

March 12, 2016

Hey look, it's Harry in the Hall. All right so it's not really a hall, it's more of a stairway. These are some of my non-album Harry things, pics of him, pics of him and me, the note he wrote me that I read for the documentary, some album sales certifications, and a few other things.

This wall is at a 90º angle to my wall of Harry albums, so everything is all in roughly the same place.

March 28, 2016

June 24, 1982

San Francisco, CA

To be honest, I don't remember too much about this at all. I don't really remember why we were in San Francisco, what I do remember is that we were at SFO, the San Francisco airport. In 1982 I would have been living in Willits CA, which is way up in northern CA, in Mendocino county, inland of Fort Bragg and Mendocino.

I also remember that I was saying goodbye. This may very well have been the tail end of that mystery trip to Oregon and Washington I had written about here earlier, and it would make sense if I were going to fly back up to Willits while Harry flew back down to LA. Sorry my memory is so spotty on this; it was a long time ago and I guess my brain just didn't feel the need to register anything as worth remembering at the airport except for this.

As we were walking through the airport we went past a magazine shop, and Harry wanted to go in and look. So we looked around, I poked around in some video game magazines and Harry was looking around at the bookshelves. After a little while I heard Harry calling me, I guess we were done looking and we went back out to walk to my gate.

When we got there, we put our bags down and Harry pulled a book out of the magazine shop bag I hadn't noticed until right then, he produced a pen and wrote something inside the book. When he was done, he handed the book to me.

"Promise me you'll read this," he said.

I looked at the book in my hands, and it was Watership Down. I hadn't read it before but I had heard of it, so I was pretty excited. I was a voracious reader at that age (which would have been 11), devouring every book I could get my hands on, sometimes checking out entire stacks of books at a time from the library. I had a particular love of sci-fi and fantasy, and had just started getting into the relatively heavier reads in terms of kids' books.

With a flight ahead of me, it couldn't have been a better parting gift. I opened it up to see what Harry had written, and he had hastily sketched a heart and a little rabbit on the inside. He wrote:

"Zak - with all my watership heart. Isn't this rabbit a duck."

And then he dated it and initialed S.F. It's the only reason I know when and where exactly this happened.

I was old enough to get the rabbit joke, and I laughed. And then he hugged me, and I stopped laughing. I didn't like this part, I didn't want to go home. I wanted to stay with my dad, who was warm and funny and told me he loved me.

But I had gotten used to it. I knew I couldn't stay with him, so we hugged, he kissed my forehead, and he watched as I got on the plane. And I read that book nearly nonstop, every chance I got until I had finished it. And then I read it again.

Now I look at it and I recognize his handwriting, and old sadnesses come floating back almost like an old friend I haven't seen in years. Harry had his problems, we all know that. But Harry was an all out kind of guy, in every way. Many saw the self destruction and the drugs and drinking, but I saw his never-ending struggle with the guilt he felt over what had happened with me, and his endless pursuit of making it right by me. He never quit or gave up on me, ever.

I loved him for it. He never had to prove himself to me, all it took was a few kind words and a little sketch wrapped in a book, a vessel of knowledge. He wanted me to grow up to be an intelligent, thinking adult, as he did for all his kids.

He was a great dad. The best I ever could have asked for.

June 19, 2016

This is one of the last photos with me and Harry. It was the summer of '93, maybe 6 or 7 months before he died. I was in CA visiting, and I went to his home in Agoura Hills. He said "Let's go to this café nearby and get a drink."

"Get a drink", in the past, had always meant what it sounded like. We would go to a bar or something, and Harry would get drunk and talk to random people all night. But he had been clean for a long time at this point, and he wanted to get some kind of blended coffee drink.

So we went there, and we hung out and talked for a while. It was something I didn't get to do very often so I really cherished the time we had together. Even after all this time (I was 22 at the time), he still treated me like I was his son. He hugged me, he wanted to hear about my life, he kissed my head.

I treasured it. He was my dad, and he was a great dad, something I could plainly observe by watching him with his other 6 kids. He was great to all of us. I was always grateful for how he treated me, for how he loved me.

I was the black sheep, I was the one on the outside looking in, but Harry made me feel like I was still part of it, part of his family, and for me, being the outcast, that meant everything.

He didn't have to. I hadn't been a direct part of his life since I was 4 years old or so. He had his new family to take care of, and he was paying my mom a lot of child support and alimony. Like a ridiculous amount, proportionate to the guilt he felt about "failing" as a father (in his eyes). He did more than enough for me, and yet he never stopped caring about me.

What we had wasn't perfect, but it was pure. It was the love a father has for a son, no matter what has happened over the years. I don't miss him because he was famous, or talented, I don't miss him because of the money he gave my mom (which I never saw any of anyway), and I'm not writing this because it makes me feel important.

I miss my dad. I miss his kind face, I miss how he smiled at me. I miss his acceptance of me, and how it felt when he hugged me. And on a day like this, dedicated to great dads everywhere, I feel like people should know that Harry was one of the greatest.

July 4th, 2016

On June 14th, we celebrated Harry's 75th birthday at Molly Malone's in LA. When I went up to sing Life Line, I told a story about how, when I was born, Harry ran home from the hospital and finished painting what would be my room with scenes from The Point. The whole room was covered with these scenes, and I wanted to share the pictures with everybody.

So these are pictures of the walls of my room when I was a baby, all painted by Harry himself. Excuse the poor quality, these are the actual Polaroid pictures from 1971.

Comment: This house was on Woodrow Wilson Dr., in LA.

December 29th, 2016

Fun fact: At the Bel Air house, Harry's next door neighbor was Vidal Sassoon. Harry walked me down there to meet him once. Nice guy.