| [And after three days of drinking with Larry Love, I just get an inkling to go on home. So I'm walking down Coldharbour Lane, head hung low, three or four in the morning, the sun's coming up and the birds are out singing; I let myself into mah pad, wend my way up that spiral staircase and stretch out nice on the chesterfield. Pithecanthropus Erectus already on the CD player, and I just push that remote button to Sublimity, and I listen to the sweet sculptural rhythms of Charles Mingus, and JR Monterose and Jackie McLean duet on those saxophones and the sound makes its way out the window, mingling with the traffic noises outside, y'know, and all of a sudden I'm overcome by a feeling of brief mortality. 'Cos I'm getting on in the world, coming up on forty-one years, forty-one stony grey steps towards the grave, y'know: the box awaits its grisly load, and I'm gonna be food for worms. And just like Charles Mingus wrote that beautiful piece of music, 'Epitaph', for Eric Dolphy, I say 'So long, Eric; so long, John Coltrane and Charles Mingus; so long, Duke Ellington and Lester Young; so long, Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald; so long, Jimmy Reed; so long, Muddy Waters; and so long, Howlin' Wolf.'] |
