The Beginning

The story so far....
I was once a young man trying to make a name for himself. Writing songs, hanging around the rock scene in London. I rubbed shoulders with a few so called stars and I was impressed. Some people liked my music... some said I was 'next in line'.

I recorded a few albums, heard myself on the radio, saw myself on television, did a lot of touring, saw a lot of hotel rooms, smoked a lot of dope, played to thousands of nameless faces. It was a great life, but somehow it wasn't enough.... I remember I would close my concerts with a song called 'Show me a Home.' It was a song about an outsider who looked at the world before him in bewilderment. And the refrain kept coming back... 'show me a home where I can lay down my head, where there's music and laughter and the hungry get fed...'

What I didn't know then... I know it now... is that whatever you wish for, somehow, mysteriously comes to pass. Meanwhile, my record company, my manager and my publishers were getting nervous. They had all invested a lot of time and money in me...and the line still wasn't moving.

So... the young man was still running around the concert halls of Europe, singing 'Show me a home' and waiting for that line to move. He got a few breaks... touring with Fleetwood Mac, for instance. He played to 10,000 people every night on that tour... solo... just him and his guitar... and the highlight of that young man's dream was 5 nights at the Wembley Arena in London. I don't remember much. I was flying so high... or so I thought. I remember the vastness of the arena... the power of the sound... the white spotlight blinding me to everything but The Moment... and my songs ringing out into the night. I remember seeing my little son sitting there in the front row, totally uninterested in me and my "achievement"... he was absorbed in his own world... but I remember the warmth of the people... that they were accepting me! But it still wasn't enough. 'Show me a home' was beginning to sound different... it was beginning to sound more like a desperate plea than a song of hope.

During this time my family life was falling apart. It was a pretty classic situation. I was married to a nice woman and on the outside we apparently had everything. My career was going well, we had some money in the bank... and a beautiful 2-year old son. But inside there was still this nagging question that wouldn't leave me alone: Where is my home? All I knew was, it was somewhere else. Eventually I left my family. We were all heart broken, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't live in the wrong home any longer. Then everything got crazy. My manager signed me to another record company... the same one that had made Elton John a star. Well, if they could do it for him, they could do it for me, right? Wrong. I'd never felt so out of place in all my life. I was writing music that I didn't feel with lyrics that meant nothing. Just bullshit...all for the sake of money...

I didn't know it at the time, but I was nearly ready... my emotional life was a mess, my career didn't make sense, and my music, the one thing that had always sustained me, was beginning to disintegrate into ridiculous pop music for nobody in particular. (...This is ready). So, where was the home? I began looking hard. One of my friends had disappeared into a Gurdjieff commune. Was it there?.... It wasn't in the drugs I'd been taking. I even tried the Church... (Dylan was in the process of discovering Christianity at this point in time)... But it wasn't there, either.

And then it happened.
A beautiful sister of a beautiful woman gave me a book to read. It was called, 'No Water No Moon' and it was by an Indian mystic. (There were a few around at the time). His name was Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh.

I'd seen disciples of his in London, even met one or two... the 'Orange People' they were called, because they dressed in the colors of the sunrise. I thought they were ok, a little strange, maybe. I didn't know much. But what I did know was, that for the first time reading his words, a voice inside me whispered, "This is it!" And by the end of the book the whispering had become a wild, ecstatic song! There was no question. There was no time to lose. I left my loved one... left my career... left my manager... left my record company... I just split. I disappeared out of their lives... and into my own. A world beyond my wildest imagination.

I was home.
It happened that fast. Literally overnight. And almost 20 years later, it still continues to amaze me. I began to meditate. Not only were Bhagwan's words incredible, but his methods were outrageous. For around one year I did Dynamic Meditation every morning at 6 am... and the "sister" meditation, named "Kundalini" at 6p.m. every night. I was given a new name and a mala and I wore red clothes. Now I began to get it. I had a new identity... I'd been given a second chance! Can you imagine how that feels..!? I began to live my life over again, in a new way. This time, with awareness.... suddenly that corny catch phrase that I'd seen around..."Today is the first day of the rest of your life" began to mean something! Every day was a miracle. I could walk down the road in my red clothes knowing I looked weird in the eyes of the world... but what did I care, when inside, I was vibrating with energy, optimism and... light. Without realizing it, I had dislodged myself from society... all its violence, its meaningless-ness, its hatred and confusion, its suppression and all its ridiculous ambitions and values... It all looked, in the words of Bob Dylan, mud-caked. I was seeing it for the first time, from the outside.

I sold my guitars. I didn't feel the need to justify my existence by playing music or writing songs any more. The need to prove myself to anyone was disappearing... fast. It was such an amazing relief. Just to be me! Well, I knew in the eyes of my old friends I'd copped out. But the truth was, I'd copped in!