January 20, 1999
Rock Dreams Elude the Numbers,
But They Just Keep On Trucking
By ROBERT TOMSHO
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
KENT, Ohio -- Robert Kidney still gets up every morning believing that he could
become a rock 'n' roll star. "I am not grasping at straws," declares the founder
of a
local outfit known as the Numbers Band.
The 51-year-old guitarist is, however, bucking odds that grow more astronomical
by the day.
Although he and his 44-year-old brother, Jack, have kept
their band going for nearly three decades, the nightspots
where they once reigned as local heroes are long gone.
Meanwhile, despite a few agonizing brushes with broader
fame, age alone now dooms them among MTV-era
recording executives who have never heard them play a
note.
"Kids want to buy the records of artists they perceive as
their peers," says David Simone, the top creative executive
at Los Angeles-based Geffen Records. "My advice to them
is to get a day job."
That would all seem to make the Kidneys' continued quest
grandly delusional. Even in a culture that worships great
dreamers who fulfill their youthful ambitions, most people
aren't destined to become the next Bill Gates, Mick Jagger or Meryl Streep.
Instead,
they make thousands of little compromises and bend to the limits of their
energies,
talents and fears.
But there are still people like the Kidneys, who discover that there is
sometimes
more to a dream than simply making it come true.
Not that living with such knowledge is easy. As old venues have closed, they
have
often found themselves competing with blaring sports-bar televisions or playing
in
cramped cafes where they must dodge dancers while performing. At one club, the
young crowd took to the floor only when the jukebox was fired up during their
breaks. "Some nights," says Robert Kidney, "you're about as important as the
popcorn machine."
He might have given up years ago, except that the Numbers Band seemed to stir up
some rare magic when it came together here in 1970, at a sprawling basement club
known as the Kove. As many as 900 people a night packed in to hear their dark
but
driving mix of Chicago-style blues and wild bop jazz. Amid talk of tours and
recording contracts, the brothers "were getting there," says former Cleveland
disk
jockey Lawrence "Kid Leo" Travagliante, now a vice president at Columbia
Records.
"They were hot."
'Fastest Gun in Town'
Jack Kidney, who joined the band on harmonica and sax in 1973, presumed that it
was only a matter of time before they were on world tour. The attention was even
more intoxicating for his charismatic brother, the band's guitarist, frontman
and
primary songwriter. "I was the fastest gun in town," says Robert Kidney.
But at an age when most careers are only beginning, their fortunes suddenly
cratered. A 1975 fire destroyed the Kove, triggering a fruitless search for
another
venue with the same allure. They found one promising spot, but it closed down
for
health-code violations. The once-loyal crowds dwindled. The musicians bickered
as
Robert Kidney balked at shifting to a more commercial sound or a lighter-hearted
stage presence.
Every move they made seemed wrong. Fired from the Numbers Band one night
after he wore a chimpanzee mask on stage, bass player Gerald Casale formed a
band
called Devo, which almost instantly became a top recording act for Warner
Brothers.
With Numbers Band performances still netting praise, Robert Kidney thought his
time had arrived one night when famed record producer Jerry Wexler pulled up in
a
limousine outside a Kent club where they were playing. Mr. Kidney rushed to the
door but, instead of coming in, the man who had helped launch Aretha Franklin's
career headed into a nearby bar. There, he signed up a novelty band that played
with
a large electric goose on stage.
By the mid-1980s, band members were clearing less than $100 a week each and
making their own albums on a shoestring. Players came and went. Demoralized and
confused, Jack Kidney took a day job digging ditches and, later, as a
maintenance
man. Although he continued playing, he also got married, moved out of town and
vowed not to build his life around the band. "The whole thing that I had carried
around with me since childhood was over," he says. "I had to start looking at
the
band in another way."
More Drink, Darker Music
Robert didn't adjust as quickly or as well. He drank increasing quantities of
gin and
his behavior became erratic. He wrote darker songs peopled with bikers, hit men
and thieves. There was "Hotwire": "So when I look out there/All I see are
yesterdays
... /I mean, it's just like that/It's all gone."
"I just wanted my little piece of the action," he says. "I thought we deserved
it. It
was killing me."
Indeed, his debts mounted, his marriage crumbled and by 1990, his health had
unraveled to the point that he had to withdraw from the band for five months to
recover from a kidney transplant.
At that point, the Numbers Band might have finally disintegrated, except that
Jack
stepped forward, found another guitar player and learned to sing some of his
brother's songs with eerie similarity. After so long in the background, Jack
loathed
being the leader, but he had also concluded that, whether he ever became famous
or
not, music was not a mere hobby that he could abandon. "When I get done
playing,"
he says, "I feel exorcised."
Having come so close to death, Robert Kidney returned to the stage with a
different
outlook. After months of pondering what he had done with his life, he had
decided
that becoming famous for his music was not as important as simply creating it.
"Make music first, that's what it was about," he says.
Lately, the Kidney brothers have gotten good reviews for some European gigs as a
duo, and artists such as former punk-rock icon Johnny Rotten have recorded some
of Robert's songs. But back in Ohio, the Numbers Band has pared back to clubs
where the audience seem appreciative, even if it often means working only one
night
a week.
Next Generation
Robert Kidney drives an ancient truck and lives in a cramped rented duplex with
a
cemetery for a front yard, but he has also started a small home-renovation
business
and learned to take pleasure in attempting the occasional duet with his
15-year-old
daughter, a budding violinist.
He hasn't abandoned the slim hope that, on the right night with the right person
in
the audience, anything could happen. And so, on a recent evening, the
middle-aged
handyman wore a sleek, double-breasted suit and a custom fedora as he toted his
Gibson guitar into a tiny brew pub a few blocks from the empty lot where the
Kove
once stood.
The crowd was smaller, the pay was $50 a man, and with the first note, a drunk
at
the bar began bellowing for golden oldies. But for a few hours on a cold winter
night, the Kidney brothers and their band were still able to stir up the sort of
creative
fire that had sparked their journey so long ago.
Nothing more may ever come of it. Even so, after 30 years, Robert Kidney has
learned to live and play like a man who treasures the pursuit. "Now I can take
the
music to where I want it and stay there," he says. "That is a lot."
