Series 1, Episode 43: Walkin’ On The Earth Again

I discovered a song I had written 4 or five decades ago. It was a response to a very bad habit that I had fallen into in life. The song was written and performed in my living room studio and was a one take … this means that I sang and played it one time in the recording process. It was an imperfect performance, but, for me, it was a powerful reaction to a profound turning point in my life. It touched me very deeply to hear the depth of emotion contained in this one take. I loved the song and decided to re-record it. As it was , in several tries I could not match the depth of the song sung by the much younger me. So I used the original Guitar/Vocal mixed track and added an orchestration to it in my studio – a duet performed by the two Mes – young and old.

Theater of the Imagination is presented by Watchfire Music:  https://watchfiremusic.com/

Transcript

Peter Link 0:07

Welcome to Scatter Shot Symphony, the music of Peter Link. It's me. Hey y'all, this week, being the forty-third episode of this podcast, I prefer to let the music do the talking. However, if you need to know more about me, please visit Wikipedia.com, Peter Link. This episode is entitled Walking on the Earth Again. It was 1969, and my career was soaring. I was living the life in New York City with a hit musical, Salvation, that I had starred in and written the music for, and which would run for a couple of years, and produce a million-selling record. If you let me make love to you, then why can't I touch you? And also several roadshows around the world: Los Angeles, San Francisco, Amsterdam, etc. I won the New York Drama Critics Drama Desk Award for Best New Composer. And all this had happened just after I had played the leading role in the musical Hair on Broadway, when Hair was absolutely the hottest show in the world. On top of all that, I had also just finished a year doing a running part on CBS Television's soap opera as the world turns. Sudden fame was much to contend with. A rich hippie. And on top of all that, jazz great vocalist Peggy Lee decided to record another song from Salvation called Let's Get Lost in Now. And invited me to her recording session at Columbia Records with a 65-piece orchestra. A night I shall never forget. I was flying high. It was a time of flying high. Ray Charles hit record, Let's Go Get Stoned, was followed by Bob Dylan's Everybody Must Get Stoned. And it seemed the world was tuning in and turning on. All my friends were doing it, and I was simply too busy to get into it. But I'd go to parties and I'd be the only one there, not high. I used to tell people the old cliche. Why, I get high on life itself. Long story short, December thirty-first, nineteen sixty-nine, twelve o'clock, midnight. I took my first drag on a joint. At the time, it seemed like the thing to do, after all. Everybody else was doing it. No big deal. Thus began a ten year battle with addiction. For the first four years, I was what was called a social smoker. I was in control. Maybe get a little stoned on a Saturday night, you know. That was about it. Then I began to apply it to my writing and composing. I could get stoned and be immediately highly creative. That is if I could get my guitar in tune. That creative feeling would last for an hour or two, but then I'd be worn out and simply drugged. Consequently, still being in control, of course, I had a rule that I would never turn on until three o'clock in the afternoon. That went on for about three years. In the last year of those three years, I began to realize and accept that I had what I called a controlled addiction. There is no such thing as a controlled addiction. The dictionary definition of addiction is not having control over doing, taking, or using something to the point where it could be harmful to you. Let's face it, I was no longer in control of my life. The drug was. Perhaps. However, I knew it was not overall good for me, and that it was keeping me from the best of me. And so I knew I had to stop. So finally, I figured out that what I had to heal was the want. I had to become so clear that I would completely stop the wanting. So for three years I tried to quit every day. So every day, right after I first imbibed, I would ask myself, Pete, what are you getting out of this? And more and more often, the answer came up nothing. I knew that I did not ever want to quit and then regret it. Quit and then wish I could. I had to totally unwant this confusing bad habit. It took me those three years to take back the control of my life. But finally I got it. That brings us to December 31st, nineteen seventy-nine. Twelve o'clock midnight. I'm a pretty concise guy. I lived with my mistake for ten years to the second. I stopped in that second at midnight, and I never looked back. I never again had the wish, the impulse, the need, the want. I was totally healed in my thinking. I've been straight now for forty five years. Now it might take me fifteen minutes or a half hour to warm up in my work, but then I can work creatively for ten hours, sometimes twenty if necessary. I'm living my life, not the life suggested by a drug. Lately, I've been organizing a lifetime of music that takes me back over sixty years and some two thousand music compositions. I came across a song title in one ancient storage drawer a couple of months ago. Walkin' on the earth again. It struck me as vaguely familiar, but I had no idea of how it went, or even if I had written it. Oh perhaps it was a client's song that I produced. Curiosity got the better of me, and so I dug out of another drawer a dot wave file of the same title. The fact that it was a dot wave file told me it was studio produced. Surprise. It was me singing it and playing it on my old Martin D thirty five S acoustic guitar. One listen and I found myself in tears. It was written and performed by a much younger me in my living room on a Studer two-track tape recorder with two good mics, one for the guitar and one for my voice. About a week after that fateful New Year's Eve, 1979. I wrote it because I knew I had my feet back on the earth again. The song inspired me to orchestrate the already mixed guitar vocal performance and write this podcast. It's a little raw at times. After all, it's a one take. But I was struck by the depth of feeling coming at me from that young man that I once knew. I was proud of his decision, his commitment, his intensity, his spirit. I share it with you. Across to the heavens. Something deep inside me. Yes, today. Now I've come back. I've come back from the other side. Now I'm free. I'm no longer tired. A change in my life has cleared my mind. I can feel the power in my face. And my heart entered storm. Yesterday, my spirit floated into space. I've come back from the grave. I feel the light. I feel it beneath my skin. Open my eyes! Cause the light is shining from within I used to be left behind. Yeah, I am a brand new man. I can a brand new man. And also my music master of many decades, Phil Klum, who added his magic touch to the resurrection of this song. My favorite partner in the production of my music. Also, please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. And to keep abreast of the latest episode, you can subscribe to Scattershot Symphony from your podcast app of choice. And thanks to Watchfire Music and the entire staff for all your work in producing and promoting this podcast. A very special thanks also to Stuart Barefoot, our associate producer, for all your invaluable knowledge and great vibes. And lastly, a posthumous thanks to Ludwig van Beethoven for your opening four bars. This podcast is presented with loving care by the staff at Watchfire Music. If you liked what you heard, we've got lots more where that came from. In the meantime, you can find the songs you just heard on WatchfireMusic.com forward slash podcast. There, you can purchase the singles or albums and have access to all the lyrics. Also, there you will find all previous podcasts and future scheduling. If you just became a Scattershot fan, tell your friends and stay tuned.