A Deceptive Calm…
By: Louis Cennamo
Tags: Autobiography, Post Yardbirds, Renaissance, Bassist, Musician

In my blog I am going to be sharing short extracts from my autobiography in progress, plus some of my metaphysical short stories, meditations, even memories of my career in music that don’t make it into the book, and much more. Observations, insights into the challenges of life, which may present as problems, but seen from a higher perspective reveal themselves to be opportunities for transformation.

Continuing now with another extract from the opening chapter of my autobiography, as my previous post finished on a cliffhanger; the year is 1970 — I am bassist with the original post-Yardbirds ‘Renaissance’ — touring America coast to coast : On the verge of a life transforming experience which until now I haven’t shared.

Autobiography extract 2…

Upon leaving Chicago, there was no sign of its impact to come. Yet touching down in San Francisco bathed in early March sunlight — at once I could sense an energy so electric and welcoming — so familiar somehow, like coming back, though in my present moment then I had no recall of a before.

The trick of linear time, as I was to discover soon, is to create an illusion of separateness, and what was to occur in a few days from that first landing might be described as a breakthrough from the illusory veil of passing dream sequences that masquerade as reality. I was soon to realise the true meaning of the word ‘renaissance’ — a rebirth without physically dying or in a deeper sense — a death and rebirth.

A return journey to a home never left? Surfing the wavebands, exhilarated. A rider on the storm…

In the beauty of Sausalito across the Golden Gate Bridge I could feel a calm stillness present in the musty air of our old hotel perched by the side of a marina in San Francisco Bay — I also sensed a time warp approaching. It could have been a dream apparition, not of this world — I wasn’t sure if I was in any time either –more ‘dimensional’ I would say now, but not then. There were no words, just feelings, mostly warm, gentle — inviting, and again that strange sense of returning.

Keith and Jim moved hotels due to the dust; around the bay at Tiburon. We kept close though and I remember we had some time before the first night at the Fillmore, a day or two — welcome rest and explore time amid astral scenes of passing moments — absorbing atmospheres, filling each outer sense with all the colours of Sausalito’s rainbow dream — yachts bobbing on the bay and narrow streets lined with eating places and gift shops. A leather emporium close by the hotel did entice me in, with the sound of Neil Young, who we had supported at a great gig weeks back in Cincinnati…Strains of ‘Helpless’, his song, now stored faithfully in the miracle ‘cloud’. Neil Young had been kind to us; lending us his band Crazy Horse’s amps and drums for the concert, as our roadies had got lost on the road from New York. In an aura of loving kindness, both bands blew up a storm, and brought the house down.

The first night at the Fillmore was on my birthday,. I had woken to another sunny day and was greeted by an unusual amount of space. The band were nowhere to be seen. Did they know? — odd. We had done most things together and now I was alone and in the nature of a dream, unsuspecting. Twenty-four years young and surrounded by an air of mystery now, I dream walked downstairs to see if they were at breakfast — no-one — might have had coffee then or just dreamed on. Next thing I am back upstairs in the bedroom — no people, but something odd; shaving cream! all over the mirror… spelling out ‘HAPPY BIRTHDAY LOUIS’. In a flash! — a memory-snap of happy faces popping out from places they had been hiding — the whole band in raptures. ‘Could life get any better than this?’ I might have asked the mirror image.

Only a scant memory of the opening night. We shared the bill with Paul Butterfield’s Blues Band, very sophisticated blues, ‘was this what the audience expected from us?’ — absolutely no memory of a note we played, I think it went OK, but we were not playing Yardbirds songs — no Clapton, Beck or Page licks to wow them with, just a wow piano and bass in the front line instead, much of the time, playing fast classical music passages in unison — how could that be a logical replacement?