Elvin & Me

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Several years later, the 'Machine' was playing the Jazz Bakery in Culver City, and I made another pilgrimage to Mecca. His playing hadn't deteriorated in the least. After the last set, I befriended another drummer, Len Curiel, who was obviously Elvin's number-one fan. 'You gotta come back and rap with him, he's very open. He'll give you his home phone number in New York. Maybe we'll all go out to eat later. I've done that with him many times.'

Wow, hangin' with my mentor? 'I wanna help tear down his set,' I said to Len, while watching Elvin's wife unscrew a cymbal stand. 'Oh, Keiko will never let you do that,' Len chuckled. 'She's his manager and his roadie.' I spotted Dave Weckl from Chick Corea fame and Blood, Sweat, & Tears drummer Bobby Columby, both looking up at the stage with apparently the same idea, but Keiko was very protective. She had lived with her man in a two-bedroom apartment on New York's Upper West Side for forty-some years. The neighborhood had changed, but their dedication to each other was the same.

At the risk of looking like a 50-year-old groupie, I asked Elvin to autograph some of my old Coltrane LPs. 'Don't be embarrassed by that,' Elvin beamed, as he John Henry'd my collector's items. Keiko tried to move the party along and get the living legend home -- there would be no late-night meals with the godfather of the skins tonight -- but as we walked toward their car, my guru let me take the cymbal bag from under his arm and carry it the rest of the way. It only lasted a few yards, but I'd waited 35 years to have the honor.

John Densmore's autobiography, Riders on the Storm (Delacorte Press), was a New York Times best-seller. He has written for The Nation, The Guardian, and Rolling Stone.

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