Paris: British rock singer Robert Palmer died today of heart attack. Known for his hits “Work to make it Work”, “Addicted to Love”, and “Simply Irresistable”, Palmer was 54.

His first hit album and single hit the charts thirty years ago (“Sneakin’ Sally through the Alley”), and more recently, his “Addicted to Love” video, with miniskirted models strumming guitars, was an all-time favorite MTV clip, drawing mucho grumbing from the feminists.

Of late a resident of Switzerland, in recent weeks Palmer had been working on a video in Britain. Always appearing in stylish suits, Palmer showed a sense of class remarkably absent from the dirty-boy image cultivated by lotso musicians who never rocked half as hard. Palmer was named ‘Best Dressed Male Artist’ in 1990 by Rolling Stone magazine.

“I loved the music,” Palmer reported, “but the excesses of rock ‘n’ roll never really appealed to me at all. I couldn’t see the point of getting up in front of a lot of people when you weren’t in control of your wits.”

Palmer wrote some great songs. Often these hit the charts more forcefully when recorded by other artists, such as Rod Stewart, but Palmer’s records rock you unmercifully. Other than being a fan, I know little about him, except perhaps what kind of girl he finds ‘Simply Irresistable’. In the video, a slender girl in a black dress dances to the music with a completely deadpan expression. In this video, she’s been multiplied to look like many, many swaying mannekins.

I’ll miss Robert Palmer. I wish he’d stayed. And now I will never find out the answer to my question. In ‘Simply Irresistable’, he sings:

“She’s so fine; there’s no telling where the money went.”

What the hell does that mean?

San Rafael, Summer 1996: Although the plan bombed later, I wanted to own my own home, and having very little money, decided to start with a houseboat or a house-trailer.

Sausalito has lots of houseboats, but frankly the mud beneath the dock stinks real bad at low tide, so yuck!

Marin County
Marin county, the most expensive real estate in California, so why was I living there? The answer: careful lack of planning. I’d developed my business in San Francisco, then moved across the bridge to Marin because Adrienne hated the Haight; too noisy, she said. When paying rent, $1400 in Sausalito was about the same as $1400 in San Francisco. But buying a house was out of the question, in these latitudes.

So why not start with a mini-house, save up more money, then parlay up to a small fixer-upper, then up to better?

Marin land values are high, so there are only four trailer parks: One in Olema (too far), one off Highway 101 (nothing available), one near the bay (that mud aroma again), and one in San Rafael, where I found the house-trailer that Waneta was selling.

While living here, I produced the MultiString Shopper. With a classified ad in Bass Player magazine, I offered to buy and sell used Stick brand musical instruments, because there was previously no existing market for used instruments. I made a pretty layout, and forced a free lesson onto one page, and on the reverse listed the instruments for sale. Popular with musicians, and most unpopular with Stick Enterprises, the company selling new Stick brand instruments. But that’s another story.

Meanwhile, the trailer was comfy enough in the winter, but on summer afternoons it was like sitting inside a waffle iron, so I started engineering. First I built a wooden framework with two arms between which I stretched a tarpaulin. This arrangement provided a kind of parasol for the trailer during the hot afternoons.

I Decided to Try Water Cooling
Next, I decided to try water cooling, so I bought a hose and a water-sprinkler and rigged it up on the roof. When I turned it on, it created a nice cool mist, and a big circle of coolth. It did sprinkle on the road, so all the cars passing got wet, but you can’t make an omelette without breaking a few dishes, you know?

And so it was that, as I was up on the ladder, attempting to adjust the sprinkler system to act more refined, that I looked over the top of the trailer and could see Tom, the rugged contractor-type guy who ran the trailer park. He was standing in the middle of the road, legs wide, arms crossed over his chest, wearing a plaid short-sleeved shirt and his usual crew cut.

He was shaking his head in wonderment.

Our eyes met, across the top of the trailer. An irate expression crossed his face. He said, “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

It was then that I realized that I was a wacko.

Nashville, September 2003: At age 71, singer Johnny Cash died today at Baptist Hospital. The medical report will say complications from diabetes resulting in respiratory failure. Friends will say he died from mourning the loss of his wife, June Carter, who passed away in May.

I hear that train a-rolling, it’s a-rolling round the bend
I ain’t seen the sunshine since I don’t know when
I’m stuck in Folsom Prison and time keeps dragging on
And I hear that whistle blowing … down to San Antone.

When I was just a baby my mamma told me: Son,
always be a good boy; don’t ever play with guns.
But I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die.
When I hear that train a-pulling, I hang my head and cry.

If they’d free me from this prison, if that railroad train was mine;
You bet I’d move it on a little further down the line.
Far from Folsom Prison, that’s where I long to stay
And I’d let that lonesome whistle … blow my blues away.

I think of Johnny Cash, lots of nights. A funny thing about our new home in Mount Shasta — a railroad runs through it. Amtrak comes whistling through, the deep two-toned sound echoing from the hills, and eternal long freight trains clattering in the night.

Does it wake you?

No, it’s soothing.

I’ve missed this sound, and hearing it again feels like home. When I was a child, the Katy line ran south of town. Katy means ‘MKT’, or Missouri Kansas Texas railroad. When the wind blew from the south, the soft clatter of the boxcars floated into my bedroom, and sometimes the far-off whistle.

Does anything capture lonely and vast space like that sound? And did anybody capture the lonely and vast spirit like Johnny Cash?

I think not.