Nah, I Couldn’t Keep Her, My Little Rock ‘n’ Roller-With Chuck Berry’s Sweet Little Rock And Roller In Mind   

By Bart Webber

 

 

A YouTube film clip of mad man rock and roller Chuck Berry performing his classic Sweet Little Rock and Roller.

 

Sweet Little Rock and Roller-Chuck Berry

 

 

Nineteen years old and sweet as she can be.
All dressed up like a downtown, Christmas tree.
Dancin' an' hummin' a rock-roll melody.

She's the daughter of a well-respected man.
Who taught her how to judge and understand.
Since she became a rock-roll music fan.

Sweet little rock 'n' roller.
Sweet little rock 'n' roller.
Her daddy don't have to scold her.
Her partner can't hardly hold her.
She never gets any older.
Sweet little rock 'n' roller.

Instrumental break.
Should have seen her eyes when the band began to play.
And the famous singers sang and bowed away.
When the star performed she screamed and yelled, "Hooray!"

Ten thousand eyes were watchin' him leave the floor.
Five thousand tongues were screamin', "More! More!"
And about fifteen hundred waitin' outside the door.

Sweet little rock 'n' roller.
Sweet little rock 'n' roller.
Sweet little rock 'n' roller.
Sweet little rock 'n' roller.
Sweet little rock 'n' roller.
Fades. Sweet little rock 'n' roller.
Sweet little rock 'n' roller.

 

 

Joshua Lawrence Breslin was, is, a natural born liar so what he says, sometimes, can be, and should be, taken with a very large grain of Himalaya salt. Part of that characteristic stems from his long, too long according to some circles, stint as a writer, including those of us who had to subscribe to various journals and magazines that he wrote for over the years and place them unread on coffee tables on the off-chance he might drop in unexpectedly or when there was a party in which case he would definitely drop in. Part stemmed from his, and my, stint as a corner boy back in the day when we were growing up in the Acre, the working poor section of North Adamsville where we hung out in front of Tonio’s Pizza Parlor holding up the walls “up the downs” as they called that part of the Acre where the shop was located. The lying part came from various midnight creeps to places looking for, well, looking for stuff to get some dough from and we’ll just leave it at that. So we, of necessity, lied to cops, parents, teachers, judges and whoever else questioned us about anything at any time. We made it an art form, had those old fogies scratching their heads in despair, even the cops who often gave us the evil eye as they passed by and more than once one of us would find ourselves in a cruiser heading to the station to face their version of the “third degree.” Hell, part of it was that we just liked, very much liked to lie, liked to take our chances against God once we broke away a little from the Church (Roman Catholic of course since I do not believe others put the “the” in front expressing their understanding that there is only one such institution in the God business) whose mysteries were less awesome as we grew older and realized that worrying about heaven or hell as against figuring what to do about, and with, girls was wasting precious time.

The current cause for my characterization of Josh though is a recent little dispute that he and I have had about women who, well, were little rock and rollers back in the day. And what effect they had on us, then and now. For those not in the know, and there may be a few not familiar with the specific term  although once described it will sent bells of recognition ringing through your head, she (and “she” here is meant to be nothing more than the proper pronoun designation for the subject of two women-loving guys. Women and other combinations choice your own pronoun) was that little “hot” flirt that you (and about one hundred other guys in town or school) had no shot, nada nunca nada shot, at. And if you did get to first base then about a week later she left you for the next best thing on her next best thing list of conquests. And you? Well, you were left with either eternal regret that you didn’t at least take a chance and take a run at her or eternal pining away that that you did take a run at her and didn’t have what it took to keep her. Yah, I thought you would recognize the situation once I clued you in. 

And that is where my liar accusation comes in. Josh Breslin when he wound up meeting me out in San Francisco a couple of years after I had finished high school introduced himself (without one bit of self-consciousness) as the Prince of Love in those summer of love, circa 1967, San Francisco love-in nights. (Josh’s full moniker, Joshua Lawrence Breslin, which he tried might and main to make us call him like he was some Mayflower swell, hell, nobody called him that three name monte thing back in the day he just picked that up again when he started writing for those small publication magazines and journals that we had to make sure we displayed prominently on those poor harmless coffee tables of ours because he thought it sounded “cool” and distinguished him for other average joe writers.) Pete Markin, another Tonio’s corner boy, had beckoned us all out there after he had dropped out of Boston University to “find himself” in the great American West night and I then Josh had heeded  the call.   Josh, after he had graduated from high school, was not sure he wanted to go to college, not sure if his grades were good enough and not sure if he could hack it and was looking, well, looking for something like we all were that year and had hitchhiked across the country in that quest before starting off on some career. Well, one thing led to another and that college idea of his got pushed back a couple of years when  he decided to tag along with Markin, and me, on Captain Crunch’s merry pranskster-ish, yellow brick road bus as we headed up and down the West Coast looking, well, looking for the great American West night if nothing else.

 

 

 

 I have now known Josh for over forty years through thick and thin and while we parted ways for a while, he off to write and I to do this and that, the last few years have brought us together like that sneak thief (love variety) pair we were back in the day so I can feel free to call him a liar. And I can say so (actually call him out is what I am trying to) in the public prints a place where he is (or was until his recent retirement) fairly well-known as journalist for various left-wing and progressive magazines and newspapers, the ones that eventually after doing enough service on those coffee tables to satisfy him wind up in the back hall recycle bin.

The subject of our current “dispute” centers on whether one “Butterfly Swirl” (real name Karen Riley, Carlsbad [CA] High Class of 1968 the last time we saw or heard of her) was a little rock ‘n’ roller heartbreaker, or rather THE rock and roll heartbreaker of his life. Ms. Butterfly had been my girlfriend before Josh “stole” her away from me on that merry prankster bus trip. I had met her in Frisco, in Golden Gate Park where our yellow brick road bus caravan was perched for time a few months after I and then Josh had gone out west when she had heard down in Carlsbad that big things were happening that year up north in Frisco town and decided to leave her perfect wave tan blonde, blue-eyed surfer boy to check out life on the other side. So she travelled with us for a while, made me happy with her to me totally foreign young California surfer girl persona. As a slender, blonde, blue-eyed, nice legged and well-turned ankle young woman she had a lot of guys on and off the bus taking their looks and was flirty enough to drink all that admiration in. No, could not get enough of the attention and was as flirty as any woman we had ever known. We both agreed on than, then and now. One night, one night when we were doing hell-broth load of drugs and had the music from the sound system blaring away something happened, something I should have seen coming at least from Josh’s end since he had taken half a shot at my high school sweetheart, Melinda Loring and I had to evil-eye him out of whatever he was attempting to do, between Josh and Butterfly and the next thing I knew they were together and I was out in the cold.

Now in those days, those wild days and nights when the drugs, booze, and rock and roll music all came together and we were supposed to be “cool” the whole boy-girl thing was also supposed to be turned around and nobody was to take umbrage if somebody took up with another guy’s girlfriend. Or the other way around either. Of course the corner boy system that we both grew up in, which was still strong in us, but which we were supposed to have shed dictated that one corner boy’s girl was off-limits to another corner boy. That was mainly honored in the observance although like I said I had to have words with Josh over Melinda and in the interest of full disclosure Markin had had ot warn me off his high school sweetie, Mimi Murphy.

But that whole boy-girl exchange thing is not, or only a little, of what burns me up at this moment. See I had said that Butterfly was the heartbreaker of his life and quoted chapter and verse the number of times HE said she was but now Josh has conveniently nominated another girl (young woman) whom he met after he left the prankster bus and headed home. He met her up at the Sea and Surf Club in Old Orchard in Maine when he went up there to figure out what he wanted to do with his life. He now says that Butterfly was nothing but a surfer girl and not much of one at that compared to one Allison D’Amboise, the heartbreak girl of the ocean night according to Josh. He can tell you about Allison’s virtues as a heartbreaker sometime but I want to speak of Ms. Butterfly Swirl right now.    

 

Let me explain how things happened with Butterfly that little rock and roll heartbreaker. Captain Crunch (real name Steve Silverman, Columbia Class of ’58) was a friend, not close as I recall, but a friend of the main merry prankster in those days, Ken Kesey (you can read about him and the whole merry prankster experience in Tom Wolfe’s Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test), and had put together his own merry prankster expedition which he had been running up and down the West Coast in 1966 and 1967. After Markin had called us out to the Coast I had picked up the bus when I was hitch-hiking up from Mexico and met them on the Pacific Coast Highway at La Jolla just north of San Diego in the late spring of 1967. They were heading north toward San Francisco for some big bust out jail-break cultural thing that was going to change all of us forever (the now well-remembered “summer of love,” and maybe it did). Like I said from then on for a few years I was “on the bus.” As were Josh and Markin (a couple of other guys Frankie Riley and Jack Callahan spent a few months on that golden road and then left for home).

 

That is where Butterfly Swirl comes in, or rather the times, maybe. Butterfly (like I said before real name Karen Riley, but we were not into real names that year, or for a few years after that either, I was then calling myself The Be-Bop Kid) was nothing but a young girl getting ready to go into her senior year in high school in Carlsbad and that summer, but like a million others then, she was looking, well, looking for something. Now Carlsbad was (is) one of those eternal surfer towns where all the young guys “hang five” or ten or whatever looking for the perfect wave. And in those days all the “hot’ chicks (term of art used then, okay) sat on the sand waiting for those “hot” surfer guys to find the damn thing, find that five or ten. Yes, as one can readily see boring, especially if you are waiting on the beach, “hot,” know it, and are looking to break out of the waves yourself and interested in taking no prisoners. That is what drove Karen to our prankster bus when we parked on Carlsbad Boulevard one beautiful blue sky day to take in the view of mother Pacific splashing fiercely to shore.

Butterfly was drawn like a magnet to the by then psychedelically-painted bus.  She talked to a couple of guys, including the Captain, and the rest was history. She came with us up the highway and after a week or so although she was a few years younger than I we were “married,” meaning whatever that meant on any given day on the bus. (I did not find out until later as I was involved with another woman when Butterfly came “on the bus,” a woman who called herself Madame DeFarge in honor of the revolution, the French one she said, that Butterfly had twisted a couple of other guys on the bus around her finger before she go to me just for a little practice.)

That “marriage” lasted until we hit ‘Frisco and the Prince of Love (remember Josh’s moniker) showed up at a park on Russian Hill where we were parked and was also drawn to the bus, and eventually to my “wife” Butterfly. That affair lasted, hot and heavy lasted, for a couple of weeks and then Butterfly just disappeared one night leaving a short note saying she had to get back to her boyfriend, some golden-tanned, golden-haired water-pruned surfer boy she had left on the beach at Carlsbad forlorn and contrite.

Yah, that was the last we saw of her and Josh was crestfallen for a while. In those days crestfallen was a couple of weeks max, although I sensed for the many months after that while we were together travelling he had something eating at him. Later, like I said, when we talked it over finally he made his first confession, and would do so periodically for many years, years that encompassed three marriages and several other relationship combinations.   But that was then. Now, over forty years later, he comes up with this Old Orchard flame burn-out story. This mermaid from the sea saga about Ms. Alison D’Amboise. And you wonder why I have to call him out publicly on this one.

The thing that Josh said knocked him out about Butterfly was that she was a tall, thin, sandy blond with plenty of personality, especially around guys. Fetching is the word we used at the time (and still do). She would flirt like crazy whenever a guy was within about ten feet of her [maybe five if I recall]. And she knew it, although not in a calculating way but more “here I am boys, take a chance on paradise if you dare.” And that got every guy’s blood up; especially once she got a guy in her sights but wasn’t going to let him get to first base. Jesus, and just 17. Like I said now Josh is calling her just another faded bleach blond sex trap bimbo. Nah, she was nothing but a little rock and roller. Hell, I was glad to get her off my hands at some point (to go back to Madame De Farge) but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t glad, glad as hell to take a run at her even if I couldn’t keep her. And I still think that.