Have a Little Music
Although his latest book is called Have a Little Faith, Mitch Albom isn't the kind of person who does just a little of anything. He's written six books, which together have sold more than 28 million copies; he's been a columnist for the Detroit Free Press for 24 years; he was named America's best sports columnist a record of 13 times by the Associated Press sports editors; and he hosts a weekday sports radio show in Detroit and appears regularly as a commentator on ESPN.
If you were to take a look around Albom's home and offices, you might be fooled into thinking that he's a professional musician, as well. Pianos, keyboards, guitars, drums, and other instruments can be found lying around in nearly every room, and he even has a small recording studio. But for Albom, these are toys—things that help him escape from his work for a while.
"I find that you sort of tend to pick up what's in front of you. I'll see a guitar—pick it up and play it. See the drums—sit down and start banging on them," he says. "You can sit down at the piano and just launch into a blues riff, and it's never the same thing twice. With writing, it's about putting things down and keeping them; but with music, it's about the pure fun of creating something in the moment."
setting the scene
Those "moments" started back when Albom was just eight years old and his uncle gave his family a piano. "Music was really my first love," he says. "I went down to the piano and played after dinner every night; I just kind of taught myself by ear. My brother got lessons and my sister got lessons, but I didn't get lessons for some reason!"
Even so, Albom took naturally to the instrument, and soon picked up the guitar, too. He was the guitarist with his first band: a trio of 13-year-olds who played at kids' birthday parties around the New Jersey town of Oaklyn and called themselves The Crystal Reflection. "You have to remember, these were the '60s," Albom laughs.
But it wasn't '60s music that would be his true niche. "When I was 15, the '50s revival hit with American Graffiti and Sha Na Na and all of that, and I became totally enamored with '50s rock 'n' roll," Albom says. "I found it all, searched it out, memorized it, taped it—whatever I could do. I became sort of this teenage expert on doo-wop music."
With that expertise, Albom and his high school friends formed a new group, The Lucky Tiger Grease Stick Band, named for the hair grease that was popular in the doo-wop era. "We greased our hair back and sang '50s rock 'n' roll, with all of the backgrounds and harmonies," he recalls. "We played for about three years, and we were pretty successful on our little local level."
Then, Albom and his bandmates scored a gig that they thought would launch The Lucky Tigers to fame and fortune. They were chosen to open for a big comedy show at Rutgers University—but things didn't turn out exactly how they had hoped. "We went and opened the show in front of like 3,000 people," he says. "But the review the next day basically trashed us. They said that we only played one good song and that they could only understand why we were booked if we were part of the comedy for the evening!"
the plot thickens
The Lucky Tiger Grease Stick Band drifted apart as its members moved away from their hometown, but Albom's musical pursuits only grew stronger. After finishing a degree in sociology from Brandeis University, he moved to Europe to try to make it as a musician. And in a way, he did make it. For a while, Albom was a rock star—at least on the little Greek island of Crete.
"Through a series of accidents, I ended up in Crete, working as a nightclub singer and piano player. For about seven months, I was like the Greek Elvis Presley," he remembers. "I would be doing 'Blue Suede Shoes' and 'Hound Dog' and everyone would be screaming, not because I was very good, but because this place was so remote that I don't think anyone had ever seen the real Elvis Presley!"
Albom would swim in the sea by day and was the featured American rocker, singing with a Greek oom-pah band by night. Looking back, he says he wonders why he ever left that job. "I guess when you're 20-something, you just want to get on with your life and try different things," he says. "So I came back to the US, to New York City, to be a starving musician. I did the whole routine."
That routine included writing songs, making demo tapes, meeting with record companies, and playing at nightclubs. But after a couple of years, Albom was worn down by the stress of playing in bars until two o'clock in the morning and being turned down by record executives who barely gave his songs a chance. "It was starting to break my heart," he says. "I would come home at night so frustrated that I wasn't getting anywhere that I started to resent music. I used to play the piano for fun, but at that point, I had become sick of it."
To take his mind off of the frustration, Albom started to do freelance writing for the Queens Tribune in between gigs, and that was where his writing career began. It was also where his music started to fade quietly into the background.
key characters
Even though Albom was busy freelancing for Sports Illustrated, GEO, and The Philadelphia Inquirer, and eventually landed full-time newspaper jobs in Florida, and then Detroit, his music couldn't be silenced forever. "The first expensive thing I ever bought, once I made a little money, was a Steinway piano—on sale, of course!" he recalls. "I liked music better once I became a writer. I began to rekindle my love affair with it."
The funny thing is, Albom also had more success in music once he gave it up as a profession, thanks to his wide circle of musician friends. "Everybody I know around Detroit is either a musician or knows one. I know most of the bands in town, and sometimes, if I stop in somewhere, they'll put me up on stage to play something easy in the key of C," he says. "I 'get' musicians. I speak the language a little bit and I enjoy their company."
That includes his wife, Janine, who was trained professionally as a singer. Janine records some of the songs that Albom continues to write, including "Jingle Bells (Ring for the Lonely)," which was written for a Christmas CD to raise money for Detroit charity, and "Cookin' for Two," which can be heard during the ending credits of the 1992 remake of the movie Christmas in Connecticut. "Cookin' for Two" was a last minute request from his friend, movie producer Stanley Brooks. "Stuff like that happens once in a while, without even planning on it," says Albom. "I'm not a paid musician, but I get to do these cool things sometimes."
"I was like the Greek Elvis Presley ... Not because I was very good, but because this place was so remote that I don't think anyone had ever seen the real Elvis Presley!"
He's even had a little international success with his music. Albom wrote the song "Hit Somebody (The Hockey Song)" when rocker Warren Zevon, a good friend of his, mentioned that he'd like to record a sports song on a topic that no one else had done. "I couldn't think of any song that had been done about hockey, so I wrote a song about a hockey goon who has to beat people up, but doesn't really have the heart for it," Albom says. "Hit Somebody" received some airplay in Canada back in 2002, and now the song's story line is even being made into a movie.
Besides his songwriting, Albom still gets to take the stage at least once a year for an all-out concert with The Rock Bottom Remainders, a band he plays in with other famous authors who never lost their love of rock 'n' roll.
Still, Albom will always cherish his time with The Lucky Tiger Grease Stick Band above all else—which was apparent when the group got together for a reunion on Albom's 50th birthday two years ago. The new owners of Albom's childhood home gave the band permission to use the basement they used to rehearse in, and they put on a private concert for friends and family.
"We remembered the music better than we remembered where our car keys were! It was amazing how stuff came back," Albom reflects. "I remembered every doo-wop, and so did everybody else. There's something about your high school band ... it's the first music you learn, and you never forget it."
Meredith Laing found that she has a lot in common with Mitch albom: she's also a musician and writer, and hosts a radio program on WCNY Classic FM. Now she just needs a book deal!
