Roger Zee Memoirs

"Life and Times of a Pandemic Musician"

Gwendolyn Armstrong 06/03/20

Never really dug Tom Petty despite needing to play his tunes on countless gigs. I always felt that he totally ripped off Roger McGuinn and The Byrds' sound -- from chiming 12-string guitars right down to the vocal delivery. So what do I go out and do? I marry a woman who holds Petty in the highest esteem as her favorite artist! Welcome to another excerpt from my memoirs, "Life and Times of a Pandemic Musician."

I met Gwendolyn B. Armstrong one serendipitous Friday night at my favorite hangout -- a place called Albuquerque eats / Rodeo bar on 27th Street and 3rd Avenue in Manhattan. They split the room in two. The dining area served Southwestern / Mexican food while on the other side of the wall they had rolled in an old, hollowed-out, white bus that served as the bar. Country bands played on a small stage in the rear where a large buffalo head mounted on the wall snorted smoke out of its nostrils every 5 minutes.

So I'm hanging out by myself listening to the band play in a very crowded room, when all of a sudden I feel someone brushing up behind me and pinching my butt! I quickly turn around but don't see any likely suspects. I turn my attention back to the music and a few minutes later feel another squeeze. Once again, I can't figure out who's doing it.

The third time it happens, I snap my head around and catch three, good-looking women leaning against the far wall snickering and giggling. So I walk over to them, "Did one of you ladies just grab my butt?" Back then, people did not deem pinching a crime, LOL!

Of course they all denied it. But I decided to stick around to see if anything might work out with one of them. The first one told me it couldn't be her because she has a boyfriend. Yeah, like that ever stopped anyone, LOL! So I moved on to Leslie, a very beautiful brunette. We chatted a little while but I didn't feel the heat.

So finally I turned my attention to the demure, very polite Wendy. Bingo! Of course she denied grabbing my ass, but we seemed to hit it off and I managed to extract her phone number. Later on I finally got the real butt-grabbing story... The woman with the boyfriend did it because she got tired of listening to Wendy and Leslie complain about never meeting any good men, LOL!

Gwendolyn and I started conversing on the phone and we finally met up for a lovely Cuban-Chinese dinner on 13th Street between 8th and 9th Avenue in Manhattan. Wendy lived in Hoboken with her roommate, Mary Ellen. In those days, Hoboken richly deserved its reputation as a very Rockin', party town. I should know. I played a lot of gigs there! At the time, I lived on 22nd Street and 7th Avenue right near the PATH train. So she made the trip here pretty easily.

Things progressed nicely and then one snowy morning, I received a frantic call from Wendy. The snow plows had had buried her car and she couldn't free it from all the ice. Could I come over and help? "Dudley Do-Right" to the rescue! You can take it from there.

At that time, I played bass in a blues trio akin to Hot Tuna. We rehearsed in the guitarist's loft a few blocks away from me in Chelsea. The band decided to throw a New Year's Eve party at our rehearsal space so I invited Wendy and her friend / co-worker Leslie. I also invited my fellow NYU MBA classmate Dave. Leslie and Dave ended up getting together at the party when she had a little too much to drink and needed help getting home. They ended up getting married and remain so to this day.

Wendy and I also married, eventually bought a house in Teaneck, New Jersey and produced two beautiful kids. I deem those my "civilian" years and sadly I did not adjust well to them. We stayed married for 9 years!

So on a day when riots, protests, and insurrection relegate Covid-19 to yesterday's news, I spend the morning in lockdown learning the bass parts to Tom Petty's. "Greatest Hits." Protesting in the street appears to many people a welcome option, a chance to finally get out of the house. Although appealing, I can't take the medical risk. So I just dream of the good times when all I could think about came down to "Here Comes My Girl!" One <3

YouTube - Here Comes My Girl - Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers