by Wayne23 » Wed Oct 25, 2017 3:16 am
1/1/1965: 9-2, 1-0, RPI #60.
Still singing. They wanted me to do a Xmas album. I refused. Absolutely no interest in singing that music. There are about three songs worth singing and an album would need about ten. No.
1/15: 13-3, 5-1, RPI #61. Alone in 1st.
The thing with Diana Ross didn’t last. I didn’t really think it would but it was fun while it lasted. She’s a very talented person, and a class act.
Catherine Deneuve and I had a little flirtation but it didn’t amount to anything.
A few days later I went to an insane Hollywood party. Spoke with Jane Fonda for at least an hour and there were sparks, but in the end she was just too political for me.
I’m into that, pro civil rights, anti-Vietnam, but it doesn’t consume me. I wound up getting gloriously drunk with Peter Ustinov and Richard Burton. Ustinov may be the most fascinating person I’ve ever met. Burton needs to stop making his life so melodramatic. There’s a lot of ego there.
I lead a very busy life. Fortunately, I don’t need a lot of sleep, because I sure don’t GET a lot of sleep!
1/29: 17-4, 9-2, RPI #37. +7.8 PPG, +5.3 RBs, +3.0 TOs. Still alone in 1st, 1 ½ up on New Mexico, 2 on Fresno ST. Junior PF/C Neil Dean is our best player, and SF Lan
Runn is our leading scorer- 15.0 PPG.
I’m giving a lot of thought to changing my musical style. I sing standards, old songs by people like Johnny Mercer, Hoagy Carmichael… But I absolutely love the music that people like Bob Dylan and The Beatles are making. I’ve been working at the piano in my spare time (What spare time!) to see if I can go in one of those two directions. Nothing definitive yet, but it’s interesting. I never tried to write songs until recently, and I’m enjoying that process. I haven’t come up with anything worth recording but I’m still learning.
I’ll probably do one more album of pop standards and by then I hope I’ll have figured out whether to go in the direction of folk or British rock and roll.
I’m still hanging out with Peter Ustinov. The guy’s an absolute genius. I drink too much when I’m with that crowd. They don’t do drugs though, which the younger actors and musicians I hang with do. I don’t indulge. A drug bust would finish my coaching career instantly. For that matter maybe being present in a place where a drug bust happened might do that too, but I don’t think I’m doing anything wrong, and it’s not my business if other people want to use. But when the hypodermic needles come out, I leave.
2/12: 20-4, 12-2. RPI #30. 2 game lead on #25 New Mexico, 3 over Fresno ST, with 4 to play. If we win all 4 I think we could get ourselves ranked. BUT, 3 of the 4 are away.
2/15: The maple leaf flag is introduced in Canada.
2/21: Malcolm X is assassinated while speaking to a crowd of 400. The assassins are members of Elijah Muhammed’s Nation of Islam.
2/26: We end the regular season at 23-5, 15-3, 1 up on #24 New Mexico, 4 or more on the rest. RPI #30. +10.1 PPG, +5.5 RBs, +3.6 TOs. The Mountain West tournament will probably wind up with us vs. New Mexico in the final. That would be a heck of a game. We beat them by only 2 at our place in the regular season.
The war in Vietnam sucks the U. S. further and further in.
I’ve decided that my voice is more suited to folk and blues than it is to rock, so I’m going in that direction. I have a song about Civil Rights and another one about the ever escalating war in Vietnam. I also have three blues songs written. Two are simple 12 bar blues types but the third is more complicated. I’m not the world’s greatest piano player so I need to be careful about what I write. At some point I may need to play it! I’m also learning the guitar. Some folk songs just need a guitar rather than a piano, and just being able to play a few simple chords helps. I’ll never be a Dave Van Ronk on the guitar, but I won’t need to be.
Anyway, it may be a while before I write music that I feel is good enough to release.
My last, at least for now, pop album and pop single are recorded, and they’ll be out some time in April. The single is “Laura.” That song is just hauntingly beautiful and mysterious, and it works really well with my Chet Baker style singing.