Being friends with someone for 37 years must count as some kind of marriage, shouldn’t it? Back in the summer of 1968 I met Deni when she and her mom came into the music store in Camarillo, California where I worked. Deni had a little acoustic guitar that needed new strings I think, or maybe she just needed it tuned, I don’t remember. Whatever it needed, I did it and when her mom paid me she taught me how to count back change. I was 16 and it was my first job.A few weeks later, on the first day of school as I stood outside Russian class waiting for the teacher to open the door, Deni rushed up to me, all smiles and exuberance, asking if I remembered her. I did, and as we talked we discovered we’d both signed up to study Russian. What are the chances? But more similarities would reveal themselves. We were both newly transplanted from smaller towns in California, and we knew no one. Our family background was similar and the houses we lived in were the same floor plan. In fact, we lived in the same neighborhood, only a block away from each other. We are both Libras, I a September Libra and she an October Libra. She had the Lennon edge I wanted, and I had the Donovan gentleness. We were inseparable. As a believer in reincarnation, it’s easy for me to see that we’d somewhere planned to meet in this fashion. As far as I’m concerned it was meant to be. End of story.
To tell the truth, I didn’t really want to make friends with anyone. I was very happy to be out of the Santa Ynez Valley (yeah, I grew up where Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch is now located), even if it meant I was alone in a high school that was literally ten times larger than the one I was used to. I was ready to enjoy my senior year as a solitary, mysterious folksinger/songwriter, free of the the complications of friendship, so when this tall, lanky, charismatic, intensely brilliant blond “accosted” me outside of Russian class, talking my ear off, I wasn’t sure I wanted to pursue any kind of relationship with her. The next thing I knew, Deni was coming to my door in bell bottom dungarees and poncho and beads, guitar in hand. It didn’t take her long to win me over. She knew songs by Peter, Paul & Mary, Bob Dylan, the Beatles, and better, she compared my personality to Arlo Guthrie’s. Flattery will get you everywhere.How many evenings did we sit in our bedrooms together, posters on the walls, incense burning, sipping Constant Comment tea and playing songs both together and for each other. I was writing a lot of songs at that time and Deni believed in me. She was even with me when I bought my first 12-string guitar.
When she went to Moorpark College after graduation I tagged along in my suede fringe and paisley and we marched in the national Vietnam Moratorium together. I brought my guitar and we sang many choruses of “I Shall Be Released” and “Come Together". Not long after that I hitch-hiked to Haight-Ashbury, and it was Deni who dropped me off at the 101 freeway entrance. As I got out of her navy blue VW bug she asked me, “Are you sure you want to do this?” God! How many times have I wondered how my life would have turned out had I said, “No, let’s go back to your house for a cuppa.” That was a major turning point in my young life and I can’t say I made the correct decision, but what the hell? What’s done is done.Since then we have been through a whole lot of life both as friends and individuals, and we each have surmounted some of life’s cruelest attacks, but man, we’re still here! Ours is one of those friendships that no matter how many years there are between our visits, we always pick up right where we left off. On Monday she called me and we were on the phone for over three hours — no mean feat considering my intense loathing for the telephone. Hopefully, we’ll be getting together soon. I hope we’ll each have our guitars. I want to jam!
