RAY GALINDO: Online interview for A Life In Lyrics
PART ONE
1942
September 10: Sylvia Galindo is born. She will become Ray's mother.
1958 | Age 15–16
Sylvia becomes pregnant with Ray.
According to Sylvia's later account, the father is Eddie Mercado, a married bartender with four children.
Eddie tells Sylvia to get an abortion. According to the family story, he subsequently proposes that Juan A. Ruiz, a man who owes Eddie money from gambling, marry Sylvia so the child will have a father's name.
Sylvia marries Juan Ruiz.
While setting up their apartment, Sylvia discovers that Juan is already married to another woman in Washington State. She throws him out. The marriage is later annulled.
1959 | Age 0
September 3: Raymond Ruiz is born in the Bronx, New York City.
His birth certificate identifies Sylvia Galindo as his mother and Juan A. Ruiz as his father, although Sylvia later tells Ray that Eddie Mercado is his biological father.
Approximately age 0–1: Ray sees his maternal grandfather, Ramon Galindo, once as an infant. Ramon arrives at the family's apartment carrying gifts. Sylvia, who has a deeply hostile relationship with her father, throws him out.
Ray's later childhood memory of this event remains unusually vivid.
Let's go all the way back. Before the music. Before Space Devils. Before The New World. Before Ray Galindo. Who were you when you came into the world?
My name is Ray Galindo. I was actually born Raymond Ruiz on September 3, 1959, in the Bronx.
Raymond Ruiz.
Yeah. That's what it says on the birth certificate. Sylvia Galindo, my mother. Juan A. Ruiz, my father.
Except Juan Ruiz wasn't your father.
No. I didn't find that out until I was about thirty-two. My mother told me. We were drinking Martinis.
Martinis?
Yeah. [laughs] That's when she decided to tell me.
That's one hell of a way to introduce somebody to their biological father.
Well, my mother wasn't exactly sitting me down with a family Bible.
So who was your father?
Eddie Mercado.
And who was Juan Ruiz?
A guy my mother barely knew. Apparently he was a chauffeur. Eddie knew him because Juan owed him money. Gambling debt.
Wait. Your mother's pregnant with you, Eddie doesn't want the kid, and the solution is to have a guy who owes him gambling money marry her
That's what my mother told me.
Why would Juan agree to that?
Eddie offered to forgive the debt.
In exchange for marrying your mother?
Yeah. So the kid could have a name.
And the kid was you.
Yeah.
What happened?
They got married. They were setting up their apartment. My mother found Juan's marriage license to another woman in Washington State.
He was already married?
Yeah.
What did your mother do?
She threw him out, and the marriage was annulled.
But you were still Raymond Ruiz.
Yes
So you spent thirty-two years carrying the name of a man who wasn't your father, without knowing why you had the name.
That's right.
And then your mother tells you over Martinis that Eddie Mercado is your father.
Yeah.
What did you feel?
That's something I'll have to tell you about later.
Fair enough. But let's go back even further. Who was Ramon Galindo?
My grandfather. My mother's father. He was a trumpet player. He played in dance bands during World War II.
So there was already a musician in the family.
Yeah.
Did you know him?
No. But I was told I looked like him.
You did meet him once, though.
Once. I was in my crib.
You remember that?
I remember him showing up at our apartment with an armful of gifts for me, and my mother threw him out.
Why?
She hated him. She said something like, "You were never a father to me and now you want me to welcome you into this house to be grandfather to my son? Get the fuck out."
And you're telling me you remember that from when you were a year old or less?
Vividly.
That's an extraordinary memory.
I know.
And then, years later, you chose his name.
Yeah.
You became Ray Galindo.
Yeah.
So the first Galindo you knew was a man your mother wouldn't let into the house.
That's right.
And the man whose name you were born with wasn't your father.
Right.
And the man who actually was your father rejected you.
Right.
So eventually you picked your own name.
Exactly.
That's quite a beginning.
That's only the beginning.
So when did you first realize that your family had been keeping this enormous secret from you?
I didn't. That's the point.
PART TWO
1960 | Age 1
The Chubby Checker version of “The Twist” becomes a major hit.
According to Mama, whenever the song came on the radio, young Ray would yell:
“Come on, Mama, let's do the Twist!”
This is a family recollection, not a memory Ray can independently verify.
1961–1962 | Age 2–3
Early childhood.
Ray's maternal grandmother, whom he will always call Mama, is an important figure in his upbringing and later becomes a major source of family stories.
So according to my grandmother, I was already feeling the music when I was in my crib. Chubby Checker's The Twist was a hit when I was a baby. My Grandmother, Mama from now on, told me that when the Twist came on the radio, I would yell, come on, Mama let's do the Twist!
Now wait a minute. You were still in the crib, and you're telling me you were already requesting songs?
According to Mama, yeah.
Mama being your grandmother.
Right. That's what I called her. From now on, she's Mama.
And what song was apparently causing this musical awakening?
The Twist.
Chubby Checker.
Chubby Checker.
Which was a hit when you were a baby.
Yeah. Mama said whenever The Twist came on the radio, I'd yell, “Come on, Mama, let's do the Twist!”
You were in a crib.
I know.
You couldn't actually do the Twist.
Apparently that didn't stop me from demanding that Mama do it.
So according to family legend, the first musical direction you ever gave another human being was a dance command.
[laughs] Apparently.
That's pretty good, Ray.
It gets better. Mama was a funny lady.
We've established that. You're not saying you personally remember yelling that from the crib.
No. Mama told me.
So we have to put this in the category of family testimony.
Exactly.
But if it's true, there's something almost suspiciously appropriate about it.
What?
Your life eventually becomes music. You write songs for fifty years. You build Space Devils. You create an entire musical universe. And according to Mama, the first sign was you sitting in your crib yelling for Chubby Checker.
[laughs] Yeah.
Maybe the songwriter didn't arrive in 1976.
Maybe he was already there.
In diapers.
Cloth diapers.
Demanding The Twist.
That's the story.
Then I think we should keep it.
Definitely.
Because there's another reason it's useful. We're going to be hearing a lot of stories about the person you became. This is one of the earliest stories about the person you apparently already were.
A music lover in a crib.
Or at minimum, a very demanding dance instructor.
That's Mama's version.
She wasn't really into rock and roll. And she wasn't particularly into Latin music either.
Interesting, considering the people she'd known.
Yeah. She knew all these musicians, but that didn't necessarily mean that was what she listened to at home.
So what did she play?
Dean Martin. Johnny Mathis. Perry Como. Andy Williams. Tom Jones. Englebert Humperdinck. Steve and Eydie. Sergio Mendes and Brasil '66. She also liked The New Seekers - especially There's A New World Somewhere.
That's a pretty different musical universe from the one you eventually inhabited.
Yeah. She had a nice singing voice, too.
Did she sing around the house?
I remember her singing. And I remember one particular song.
Which one?
Eleanor Rigby.
The Beatles.
Yeah.
But your mother wasn't a Beatles fan.
No.
How did Eleanor Rigby get into the house?
I don't remember exactly. But I heard it and liked it. I sang the opening to her.
What did you sing?
“Ahh, look at all the lonely people…”
And you sang it correctly?
No. [laughs] I sang it wrong.
And your mother corrected you.
Yeah.
That's interesting. She wasn't a Beatles fan, but she knew the words.
She knew the song.
Do you remember what it was about the song that grabbed you?
Not really. I just liked it.
That's probably worth remembering. You didn't need your mother to be a Beatles fan to discover the Beatles. You heard something, it caught you, and you wanted to sing it.
Right.
And she corrected you.
Yeah.
Which means one of your earliest musical memories is not just hearing a song. It's singing a song and having somebody teach you the words.
Actually, the correct melody
And eventually you're going to spend your life worrying about words.
[laughs] Yeah.
Lyrics, specifically.
Yeah.
So we've got Chubby Checker in the crib, your mother singing Dean Martin and Johnny Mathis, Sergio Mendes on the turntable, and a little kid trying to sing Eleanor Rigby.
That's pretty much it.
That's a pretty interesting musical nursery.
Yeah. And I haven't even gotten to The Beatles really hitting me yet.
You mentioned that before music really took hold, you had other ambitions.
Plenty of them. I wanted to be a baseball player.
A natural choice, considering your grandmother's brother was nicknamed Babe.
Yeah. His name was Cipriano Montesino, or John. Everybody called him Babe because he was a baseball fanatic.
And you were interested in baseball yourself?
Very much. Before I got interested in music, I wanted to be a baseball player when I grew up.
Only baseball?
No. [laughs] I wanted to be a soldier. An astronaut. A secret agent. And Jughead.
That's quite a career plan.
I had options.
And then there was Uncle Babe.
He played guitar.
Was he a serious guitarist?
No. He knew three chords and two songs.
Which songs?
Your Cheatin' Heart and Lucille.
And those were your first songs?
The first songs I learned to play, yeah.
What were the three chords?
G C and D. I remember them as the three chords he taught me.
What I find more interesting is how he played.
He had half of his right thumb accidentally cut off.
How?
His brother, my Uncle Frankie, cut it off accidentally when they were kids.
How does that happen?
They were chasing a butterfly with an axe.
...
[laughs]
I'm sorry. They were doing what?
Chasing a butterfly with an axe.
I'm going to need a moment with that one.
That's the story.
And Babe survived this butterfly-hunting expedition with half his thumb missing.
Yeah.
And then he learned guitar.
Yeah. He played with one of those thumb picks.
And that thumb pick became important to you.
It was the first kind of pick I ever used.
So Uncle Babe taught you three chords, two songs, and how to use a thumb pick.
That's right.
That's a pretty modest musical education.
It was.
But it was enough to get the ball rolling.
Yeah.
There's something I like about that story. You didn't start out with some grand musical education. You had a relative who knew three chords and two songs, played guitar with a partially amputated thumb, and taught a kid the basics.
That's how it started.
And before that kid became a songwriter, he wanted to be Babe Ruth, a soldier, an astronaut, a secret agent and Jughead.
Pretty much.
So perhaps the first real career change was from Jughead to guitarist.
[laughs] I guess so.
And you still remember the thumb pick.
Yeah.
Then that's an important object in the story. Not because it was an expensive piece of equipment. Because it was the first pick you ever used.
Exactly.
And somewhere between Your Cheatin' Heart, Lucille, three chords and a butterfly, Ray Galindo's musical life had begun.
Yeah.
Now realistically, I really started writing songs when I was about nine or ten years old, around 1969 or 1970. I became an 'active' musician in 1973 when I formed my first little band with two friends, David Carbonell who was a guitarist who loved Carlos Santana and Dwayne Aguiar who played the drums. David was very studious on the guitar and was already exploring not only Carlos but also John McLaughlin. That was a little too much for me. I hadn't even learned barre chords yet and still played Beatles songs rather badly. David taught me how to play barre chords. Dwayne had a high pitched speaking voice but he had a nose like Ringo's. He later went on to become a professional drummer and still is. David and I started writing songs together. The one that I remember best was called Gonna Rock and Roll. If I meditate on it, I'll remember the lyrics.
You said you really started writing songs around nine or ten, which puts the beginning around 1969 or 1970. So the songwriting actually started much earlier than the 1976 date we've been using for A Life in Lyrics.
Yes. I think 1976 is probably the point where I have enough surviving material to make a meaningful beginning for the book. But the actual songwriting started when I was about nine or ten.
And then in 1973, you crossed another line. You went from writing songs to actually becoming a musician.
Yeah. I formed my first little band with two friends, David Carbonell and Dwayne Aguiar.
Tell me about David.
David was a guitarist, and he loved Carlos Santana. He was very serious about the guitar. He wasn't just learning songs. He was studying the instrument. He was already getting into John McLaughlin, too.
John McLaughlin? At that age?
Yeah. [laughs] That was a little beyond me. I was still playing Beatles songs pretty badly and hadn't even learned barre chords yet.
So David was already heading toward jazz-rock fusion while you were still trying to get through the Beatles.
Pretty much.
And he taught you barre chords.
Yeah. David taught me how to play barre chords.
That sounds like one of those little things that doesn't seem particularly important at the time but becomes important later.
Absolutely. Learning barre chords opened up the guitar for me.
And then there was Dwayne.
Dwayne played drums. He had this really high-pitched speaking voice, but he had a nose like Ringo's.
That's a very Ray Galindo description of a drummer.
[laughs] Well, he did!
And Dwayne went on to become a professional drummer?
Yeah. He's still a professional drummer.
So your first band wasn't just a childhood experiment. One of the guys actually made music his profession.
That's right.
And you and David started writing songs together.
Yeah.
Do you remember the first one?
The one I remember best was called “Gonna Rock and Roll.”
That's a pretty straightforward title for two young musicians in 1973.
Yeah. [laughs]
Do you remember the lyrics?
Not all of them right now. But if I meditate on it, I think I'll remember them.
Then don't force it. Let it come back to you.
That's what I'll do.
Because I think “Gonna Rock and Roll” is important even if the song itself turns out to be primitive. It establishes something that A Life in Lyrics needs to acknowledge: the songwriter didn't suddenly appear in 1976. There was already a kid writing songs several years earlier.
Yeah. That's true.
And now we have a very nice progression: Mama says you were demanding Chubby Checker from your crib, Uncle Babe gives you three chords and two songs, you discover the Beatles, and by nine or ten you're writing songs. Then in 1973 you're forming a band and learning barre chords from a guitarist who's already listening to John McLaughlin.
That's pretty much how it happened.
So I think we should put a pin in “Gonna Rock and Roll.” When the lyrics come back, we'll give it its own little place in the story.
Definitely. I'll see what I can remember.
It just came to me.
Well there's nothing left for me to do, Gonna find somebody, somebody new, Gonna find a girl who's just alright, Find someone to spend the night Whoo...Gonna Rock and roll.
That's all I can remember right now,
There it is. You didn't even have to go looking for it.
Yeah. It just came back.
And that's enough to establish something important. You remembered an actual fragment of a song you wrote around 1973, roughly fifty-three years ago.
Yeah.
Let's hear it exactly as you remember it.
Well there's nothing left for me to do,Gonna find somebody, somebody new,Gonna find a girl who's just alright,Find someone to spend the night,Whoo...Gonna rock and roll.
That's remarkably direct.
[laughs] I was young.
You were what, thirteen or fourteen?
About fourteen.
So there we have it. At fourteen, Ray Galindo was already writing about girls, dissatisfaction, finding somebody new, spending the night, and rocking and rolling.
Apparently.
And I notice something else. There's already a little songwriting structure hiding in there. The first two lines establish the situation. Then you get the girl, the night, and finally the title phrase as the payoff.
Yeah.
You may not have known what you were doing technically, but you were already thinking in terms of verses and a recurring hook.
I suppose so.
And “Whoo...” is important.
[laughs] Yeah, I guess it is. That was actually David's idea.
That's the fourteen-year-old equivalent of a production arrangement.
[laughs]
I also wouldn't "improve" these lyrics for the book. I'd preserve them exactly as they came back to you. If another line surfaces later, we add it. If it doesn't, we leave it as a fragment.
That's what I want to do.
Good. Because this is one of the places where the new interview can do something A Life in Lyrics couldn't do by itself. The surviving lyric tells us what the fourteen-year-old songwriter wrote. Your memory tells us that, more than half a century later, the song was still somewhere in your head.
Yeah.
And there's something wonderfully appropriate about the title. The kid who once yelled for Mama to do “The Twist” is now writing “Gonna Rock and Roll.” The music has moved from something he wanted other people to perform into something he is actually creating himself.
That's a good way of putting it.
I think we just found the first little artifact of the songwriter we're looking for. “Gonna Rock and Roll” wasn't actually the beginning. You were already writing songs several years earlier.
Yeah. When I was about ten, I think the first song I ever wrote was called “Peek A Boo.”
Do you remember it?
“Peek A Boo, I see you, can't tell you any lies.”
That's it?
That's all I remember.
And what were you playing?
I had just learned how to play a D chord. The entire song was just me strumming D.
So you learned one chord and immediately thought, “I can write a song with this.”
Yeah. I'd learn a chord and write a bunch of songs with it.
That's actually a very revealing way to learn songwriting. You weren't waiting until you knew enough music theory. You learned something and immediately tried to make something with it.
That's how I did it.
Sometimes you had two chords?
Sometimes there would be two chords.
And while you were doing that, you were also studying songs in another way.
Yeah. I used to get Hit Parader magazines and rewrite all the songs. I would paraphrase them or find lines I liked from different songs and make entirely new songs out of them.
And you think that's how you learned song structure.
I think so. I was absorbing how songs were put together without really knowing that I was studying songwriting.
So while you were learning D chords and writing one-chord songs, you were also taking apart songs that already existed and learning their architecture.
Yeah.
But there's another part of your musical development that I find even more interesting. You say you were naturally singing harmony when you were only about eight.
Yeah. I didn't know anything about thirds or fifths or any of that.
You just heard another part.
If I knew a song like “I Will” or “Those Were the Days,” I'd go straight for the harmony vocal.
You weren't consciously calculating the interval.
No. I just did it.
That's a pretty unusual instinct for an eight-year-old.
I guess.
And Mama noticed it.
Yeah. She heard me singing harmony to “I Will” and said something about how nice me and Paul McCartney sounded together.
Which is a pretty wonderful compliment from your grandmother.
Yeah. [laughs]
Especially because, from your description, you weren't trying to imitate Paul McCartney's lead vocal. You were instinctively finding the part underneath it.
Right.
So let's put the pieces together. At eight, you're naturally finding harmony. At ten, you're learning a D chord and writing “Peek A Boo.” You're copying songs from Hit Parader to understand how they're constructed. Then, by thirteen or fourteen, you're writing songs like “Gonna Rock and Roll” with David Carbonell.
Yeah.
And none of this sounds like you sat down one day and decided, “I'm going to become a songwriter.” It sounds more like you were gradually discovering that you could make songs.
That's exactly what it was.
That distinction may be important when we get to A Life in Lyrics. The songwriter wasn't born with a finished identity. He was a kid experimenting with whatever was in front of him: one chord, somebody else's song, a harmony he could hear, a guitar, a magazine.
Yeah.
And eventually those experiments became a body of work that lasted more than fifty years.
Yeah. That's pretty much the story.
You said earlier that before music you wanted to be a baseball player, a soldier, an astronaut, a secret agent, even Jughead. But once music really took hold, all of that disappeared?
Yeah. I was a weird kid. Once I discovered music, I wasn't interested in bugs, baseball or school. I was only interested in writing songs and girls.
That's quite a narrowing of the curriculum.
[laughs] Yeah.
So the transformation wasn't gradual in the way people might imagine. There was a point where the outside world just became less interesting than what was happening inside your head.
Pretty much.
And I think "writing songs and girls" tells us something important about where you were psychologically. You weren't just fascinated by music as a listener anymore. You were fascinated by making it, and at the same time you were becoming fascinated by girls. Those two things were going to provide an astonishing amount of raw material for the songwriter.
Yeah, probably.
And school was already losing the competition.
Absolutely.
That's worth remembering when we eventually get to the songs from your teenage years. We shouldn't look backward and imagine a future professional songwriter sitting there methodically developing his craft. You were a kid who had discovered two things he found much more interesting than school.
Music and girls.
Exactly. And apparently you were willing to let baseball, bugs and the educational system fend for themselves.
[laughs] Yeah. You could say that.
So 1968 is really the point where The Beatles enter your life.
Yeah. I was turned on to The Beatles in 1968.
And then in 1970 your mother bought you The Beatles Again/Hey Jude.
Right. That album had George Harrison's “Old Brown Shoe,” and that became one of my favorite songs on it.
And there was a particular line that grabbed you.
“If I grow up I'll be a singer.” I lifted that line and wrote my first real original song, “I'll Be a Singer.”
That's a pretty important moment. You weren't simply copying a Beatles song. You took an idea that resonated with you and turned it into your own song.
Yeah.
And Mama loved it.
She really liked that song. She always asked me to sing it for her for the rest of her life.
And you eventually stopped singing it for her.
Yeah. I'd moved on from it. I wish now that I hadn't. It would have made her happy.
That's one of those things that changes when you get older. At the time, you're thinking about the next song. You're not thinking that someday you'll wish you had sung the old one one more time for somebody.
Exactly.
But you remember it.
I remember it to this day.
Even though you think it's corny.
[laughs] Yeah. It's kind of corny.
I'd like to hear it someday if you can reconstruct the whole thing. Not because we need to pretend it was a masterpiece. Quite the opposite. It's an artifact of the moment when a kid heard a line from George Harrison and thought, “That's me.”
Yeah.
And then your eighth-grade music teacher heard it.
His name was Ed Konecnik. He liked the song and encouraged me to play it in a school talent show.
He accompanied you on piano?
Yeah.
And he did something else that turned out to be more consequential.
He suggested that I take guitar lessons. He hooked me up with a teacher at the school who would give me lessons.
And how long did that last?
One or two lessons.
Why?
He was boring me.
What was he teaching?
Spelling out chords and theory stuff.
And you hated that.
Yeah. It felt too much like math, which I hated in school.
So you already had your own method.
I had my Mel Bay chord book and Lennon and McCartney songbooks. That was all I needed.
That's very revealing. You didn't reject learning music. You rejected the way somebody was trying to teach you music.
Yeah. I wanted to learn songs. I wanted to play.
You weren't interested in being told that a chord was constructed from particular notes and then having to memorize the theory behind it. You wanted somebody to show you where to put your fingers and let you make a sound.
Yup.
And that attitude actually fits the kid we've been hearing about. You learn D, you write “Peek A Boo.” You learn another chord, you write another song. You hear a harmony, you sing it. You find a Beatles song you like, you learn it. You don't wait until somebody gives you permission to become a musician.
That's pretty much how I did it.
And now there's another little thread running through the story. At eight you were singing harmony. Around ten you're writing “Peek A Boo.” In 1970 you write “I'll Be a Singer.” By 1973 you're forming a band and learning barre chords.
Yeah.
So “I'll Be a Singer” wasn't just a corny little childhood song. It was a declaration.
I suppose it was.
And unlike George Harrison's line, you actually did grow up to be a singer.
Yeah. I guess I did.
Here is I'll Be A Singer: Well I can't sing a note but if you want me to, I'll be a singer for you. Give me a song and even if I sing it wrong, I'll be a singer for you. I'll be a singer, I'll be a singer, I'll be a singer for you. I'll sing the blues and some rock and roll, Country western and even some soul, I'll be a singer, I'll be a singer, I'll be a singer for you...
There might be more, but that's all I can remember right now
That's much better than "kind of corny." There's actually something really charming about it.
Yeah, it was a kid's song.
Of course it was. But listen to what the kid is saying. “I can't sing a note, but if you want me to, I'll be a singer for you.” That's not really a song about singing. It's a song about wanting to become something.
Yeah.
And then you start listing the kinds of music you're willing to sing. I'll sing the blues and some rock and roll, country western and even some soul. That's quite a musical menu for a kid.
[laughs] Yeah.
And you've got a chorus that repeats the central idea:
I'll be a singer, I'll be a singer,I'll be a singer for you.
That's a real chorus. Not a fragment of a song, not just a rhyme you made up while playing D. A kid had figured out that a song needed a central phrase that comes back.
I guess I had.
And now I'm particularly glad you remembered this one. Because we have something that A Life in Lyrics can't manufacture: an actual lyric from the beginning of the songwriter's life.
Yeah.
I'd preserve it exactly as you remember it, including the possibility that there are missing verses. We don't need to reconstruct something you don't remember just to make it look complete.
Right.
And there's another wonderful detail. You wrote this after hearing George Harrison sing “If I grow up I'll be a singer.” You borrowed the spark, but what you did with it was entirely yours.
Yeah.
And Mama kept asking you to sing it for her for the rest of her life.
Yeah.
Which makes me wish you had sung it for her one more time, too.
Me too.
But you remember it now. And perhaps that's the next best thing.
Yeah.
I think this belongs in the book exactly where we're putting it, surrounded by the story of the kid who wrote it. The lyric itself should stand on its own, and then the reader gets to hear you tell them where it came from. And I think we should eventually preserve the little uncertainty too:
And if another verse suddenly appears while you're making coffee, we'll add it. Because that's how memory actually works. A line may come back tomorrow, or ten years from now, when you're doing something completely unrelated.
[laughs] Yeah.
That one was in E. Three chords. E, A and D. I was big time now.
Oh, absolutely. You had graduated from the one-chord era.
[laughs] Yeah.
You had E, A and D. That's practically an album.
Yeah, pretty much.
And there's actually something historically useful in that little detail. “I'll Be a Singer” wasn't just a lyric you wrote. You had expanded your musical vocabulary enough to give it a three-chord progression.
Right.
So the progression is beginning to happen very naturally: D gives you “Peek A Boo.” Then you acquire more chords. Suddenly you've got E, A and D, and you're writing a song that actually has the harmonic movement of a conventional pop song.
Yeah.
And you were learning this almost entirely by ear and by experimentation, rather than through formal theory.
That's right.
Which makes your rejection of those guitar lessons make even more sense. You weren't thinking, “I don't want to learn music.” You were thinking, “Why are you making me study the mathematics when I already have the guitar in my hands?”
That sounds about right.
And there's a funny little milestone here. For a ten-year-old Ray, knowing E, A and D probably felt like having the keys to the entire musical universe.
It did.
Three chords and suddenly you're a songwriter.
Yep.
I think we should preserve that exact attitude. It's part of the story. Before there were hundreds of songs, there were three chords.
I remember the last verse now I'll play my guitar baby I'm a star I'll be a singer for you I'll be a singer, I'll be a singer, I'll be a singer for you I'll be a singer, I'll be a singer I'll be a singer for you
That's actually a terrific ending for a song written by a kid who had just discovered that three chords could make him a songwriter.
Yeah.
And “I'll play my guitar, baby, I'm a star” is pretty great. You've gone from “I can't sing a note” at the beginning to declaring yourself a star by the end.
[laughs] Yeah.
That's the whole arc of the song in miniature. You don't know if you can sing, but you're going to become a singer. You don't know where it's going to lead, but you've got the guitar and you're already imagining yourself on the other side of it.
Yeah.
And now we have enough of the song that I think it's worth preserving as one of the earliest surviving pieces in the story. We should still label it as reconstructed from memory, because you said there may be more.
Right.
And I especially like that the final lines repeat “I'll be a singer for you” four times. There's no ambiguity about what this kid wants to be.
Nope.
You know what I find most interesting?
What?
You eventually did become a singer. You eventually did play guitar. You eventually did become a star in your own little universe. But the ten-year-old who wrote this couldn't possibly have known what “being a singer” would actually mean over the next fifty-plus years.
That's true.
So when this appears in the book, I think we let the ten-year-old have the last word. No adult rewriting, no clever explanation. Just the kid with his E, A and D chords saying:
I'll play my guitar, baby, I'm a star.I'll be a singer for you.
That's Ray before he knew he was Ray.
And you know what? I wrote songs before I ever learned how to play anything by anyone else...even a Beatles song
Wait. That's actually an important distinction.
You weren't first a kid who learned other people's songs and then thought, I can do that too.
You were already making up songs before you could play anybody else's songs.
Yeah. That's exactly what happened.
So “Peek A Boo” came before the Beatles songs you were learning on guitar?
Yes.
That's fascinating. Because it changes the story of how you became a songwriter. You weren't initially copying songs and then graduating into original material. The original material was already there.
Right.
The Beatles were enormously important to you, but they didn't teach you that you could write songs. You had already discovered that yourself. What they gave you was another world of possibilities.
Yeah.
And that also makes the Hit Parader magazines more interesting. You weren't using them to learn whether songs could be written. You were studying how other people constructed songs after you'd already begun constructing your own.
Exactly.
That's a subtle but pretty significant difference.
Yeah.
Then maybe our chronology needs a little adjustment. The story isn't:
Hear Beatles → learn Beatles songs → learn guitar → write songs.
It's closer to:
Hear music → begin inventing songs → learn chords → study other people's songs → discover the Beatles more deeply → become a musician → keep writing.
That's a very different origin story.
It is.
And “I'll Be a Singer” becomes even more revealing. You weren't writing it because you'd become a competent guitarist and thought songwriting might be something you could try. You were already a songwriter. The guitar was catching up with the songwriter.
I guess you could say that.
I think that's something we absolutely need to preserve in this interview, because it may explain something fundamental about your entire creative life: the music-making impulse came first; the technical ability followed.
So this is the teacher you were talking about, Ed Konecnik. The image itself identifies him as a music teacher at P.S. 127.
Yes. He was my eighth-grade music teacher.
And he wasn't just the teacher who heard “I'll Be a Singer.” He was actually shaping your musical experience in the classroom.
Yeah. He taught the class to sing “I Can See Clearly Now” and “Killing Me Softly.”
That's interesting because those are very different from the music your mother was playing at home, and they're also quite different from the Beatles material you were getting into.
Yeah.
And then he heard your original song and encouraged you to perform it at the school talent show, accompanying you on piano.
Right.
So Konecnik was actually one of the first adults outside your family to recognize that there was something musical happening with you.
Yeah.
And he was the one who suggested guitar lessons. You tried them, decided the theory was boring, and went back to your Mel Bay book and Lennon and McCartney songbooks.
That's right.
Which makes the relationship rather funny in retrospect. He was trying to give you formal musical instruction, while you were already off in the weeds writing songs and figuring things out for yourself.
[laughs] Yeah.
But he did something important. He encouraged you to perform your own material. That's different from simply teaching you how to sing somebody else's song.
Yeah. That's true.
So I think Ed Konecnik deserves a proper place in the story. He wasn't the person who taught you to become a songwriter, but he was one of the first people who recognized the songwriter you already were.
Right. That's an important correction. Ed Konecnik wasn't your songwriting teacher. He was a teacher who recognized that you had written a song and encouraged you to perform it. Your actual songwriting education came from the songs themselves and the writers behind them.
Exactly. Lennon and McCartney were probably the biggest ones. George M. Cohan. Burt Bacharach. And I was learning about different songwriters from the covers I was hearing on Beatles records.
So the records were functioning almost like a songwriting curriculum.
Yeah.
And that's particularly interesting with The Beatles because their records weren't just Lennon and McCartney originals. You were hearing them interpret songs by other writers, too.
Right. Goffin and King and others.
So without necessarily sitting down and saying, “I'm going to study songwriting,” you were being exposed to a whole network of writers. You could hear a song, like it, and then discover who wrote it.
Exactly.
And that's a very different kind of education from learning chord theory. You were learning by listening to the finished work. You were learning melody, structure, hooks, lyrics, harmony, and arrangement by absorbing songs.
Yeah.
And then there were the older American songwriters. George M. Cohan takes you back into an entirely different songwriting tradition, while Burt Bacharach brings you into something much more sophisticated harmonically.
Right.
So when we talk about your influences, we shouldn't reduce them to “The Beatles taught Ray to write songs.” The Beatles opened a door. Once you walked through it, you discovered an entire city of songwriters.
That's a better way to put it.
And maybe that's why the songwriter in your story develops the way he does. You weren't studying one style. You were collecting writers.
Yeah. That's what I was doing.
Then Ed Konecnik belongs in a different category. He was one of the adults who encouraged your musical expression, but your songwriting teachers were the records, the songs, and the writers you were discovering through them.
Exactly.
And I suspect we're going to find quite a list of teachers before we're finished.
Oh, I have a feeling “songwriting teachers” is going to become a very long list.
Yeah.
And I'm beginning to suspect that if I ask you who taught you songwriting, we're going to be here until 3026.
[laughs]
So I won't ask. Yet.
But I do want to preserve the distinction you've just made. You had formal teachers, like Ed Konecnik, who encouraged and exposed you to music. Then you had your guitar teachers, who tried to teach you technique and theory. But your songwriting education came from somewhere much larger: the songs you heard and the writers you discovered behind them.
Yeah.
Lennon and McCartney. George M. Cohan. Burt Bacharach. Goffin and King. And whoever else happened to be hiding in the credits of a record you loved.
Exactly.
And that may be one of the most important things we've established about the early Ray Galindo. You weren't really studying “music.” You were studying songs.
Yeah.
And that distinction is probably going to follow us all the way through this story.
It will.
So before music, there was another creative path. You were drawing.
Yeah. When I was six or seven, my creative or artistic inclinations leaned toward becoming a painter. I have no idea where that came from.
What were you drawing?
I was always drawing camping scenes, forts and soldiers.
So even your visual imagination had a recurring subject matter.
Yeah. Apparently I had a very limited cinematic universe. [laughs]
And your mother noticed that you seemed interested in art.
She thought maybe I wanted to become a painter, so she bought me an easel, a super-large sketch pad, colored pencils and a watercolor set.
That's quite an investment for a six- or seven-year-old.
Yeah. I did a few things and then abandoned it.
Why?
It seemed like all I could do was camping scenes, forts and soldiers.
You had apparently discovered the limits of your artistic empire.
[laughs] Yeah.
But you were also a reader.
I'd always liked to read. I already knew how to read when I entered first grade.
Your mother had a particular poet she liked.
Rod McKuen. She had all his books, Listen to the Warm and some others.
And she turned you into entertainment for the adults.
Yeah. When company came over, she'd have me read his poems to our guests.
You were the little kid everybody was asked to listen to.
Pretty much.
Were you good at reading aloud?
I was a good reader for my age. I was very articulate and never had a problem with pronunciations.
So here's something interesting. You tried expressing yourself visually, but you found that you could do more with words.
Yeah. I soon realized that I could express myself better with the written word than with sketch pads and colored pencils.
And that may be the earliest appearance of something that eventually becomes central to your life. Before you were writing songs, you were discovering that words were your medium.
That's true.
The easel didn't work out. The watercolor set didn't work out. The camping scenes, forts and soldiers apparently reached their creative ceiling. But reading came naturally. Words came naturally. And eventually those words became lyrics.
Yeah.
There's a nice little progression here. You start out drawing the world you can see: camps, forts, soldiers. Then you discover you can use words to describe or create things that aren't necessarily sitting in front of you. Later, you discover you can put those words into songs.
I never really thought about it that way.
That's why I like doing this interview. Sometimes the connections are easier to see from a distance.
Yeah.
And there's one more thing I want to keep from this part of the story. Your mother didn't just buy you art supplies. She recognized something in you and tried to give it somewhere to go. The easel didn't stick, but the impulse she was responding to did.
Yeah.
She just didn't know yet that the little boy she was putting in front of an easel would eventually spend his life putting words together instead.
I suppose she didn't
So you had already discovered that writing was more interesting to you than whatever was happening at the front of the classroom.
Absolutely. I would always sit in the back of the classroom near the back door where my teacher couldn't see me. I'd prop the textbook up in front of me to hide what I was doing.
And what were you doing behind the textbook?
Writing poems, short stories and little plays.
So even before songwriting, you were writing in several different forms.
Yeah.
And then came the giant turtle.
One day I wrote a story about a giant turtle that ate Detroit.
A giant turtle that ate Detroit.
It was a masterpiece!
Naturally.
[laughs]
What happened to your masterpiece?
The teacher walked over to my desk to see what I was doing. She wanted to know why I wasn't paying attention to whatever she was talking about. Christopher Columbus or something.
And she found the turtle.
Yeah. She saw my little story, read it, crumpled it up and threw it in the trash.
She actually read it first?
Yeah.
Then destroyed it.
Yeah.
I think every writer has just felt a tiny pain in the chest hearing that.
[laughs] Yeah.
Did that stop you?
No. It didn't stop my misbehavior. I kept doing it.
Eventually the teacher contacted your mother.
Yeah. One day she notified my mother that I wasn't paying attention in class.
And what was the punishment?
I wasn't allowed to have paper and pencil for two weeks, except for homework.
That's almost hilariously counterproductive in retrospect.
Yeah. [laughs]
You had a child who was compulsively writing, and the solution was to take away his writing materials.
Exactly.
And the remarkable thing is that you were apparently doing this before you had any idea that writing would become important to your life. You weren't writing because somebody told you that you were talented. You were writing because you couldn't seem to stop yourself from doing it.
That's true.
And I think the giant turtle deserves a place in the history.
The giant turtle that ate Detroit.
Absolutely. We may never know what happened to Detroit after that. The teacher made sure we would never know what happened in the rest of the story.
[laughs]
But there is something rather wonderful about the fact that your earliest literary masterpiece has apparently been lost to history because an elementary-school teacher crumpled it up and threw it in the trash.
Yeah. I wish I still had it.
Of course you do. And knowing you, if that story somehow resurfaced tomorrow, you'd probably tell me there were three chapters and a sequel.
[laughs] Probably.
I write about songwriting so often because songwriting is the only thing that I have ever truly cared about. I have never written a song for no reason. Every song carries the fingerprint of a moment that once lived and breathed inside me: an experience, an emotion, an infatuation, a desire, a disappointment, a regret, a triumph, an argument with the world, an argument with myself, a relationship that flourished or failed, a belief I clung to or abandoned. Sometimes it was nothing more than the excitement of a clever phrase arriving at exactly the right moment like an unexpected guest at the door for some word-play. .
Every song has had a life before it became a recording.
For years, they were written entirely by hand. I still have binders filled with lyrics scratched out by my teenage right hand long before computers became part of the process. Around 2006, Word documents and Blogger replaced notebooks and loose paper, but the impulse remained exactly the same: catch the feeling before it disappears.
Every song was recorded somehow. Cheap cassette machines. Walkmans. Four-tracks. Home studios. Real studios. I have spent enormous amounts of time, money, tape, energy, hope, and patience recording songs with people I will never see again. Some of those songs were played to packed rooms. Others were performed for bartenders, bouncers, open mic regulars, distracted strangers, or a handful of exhausted musicians in rehearsal spaces that smelled like dust and warm amplifiers.
But they were played.
And somehow, through every relocation, every disaster, every wrong turn, every period of uncertainty, I managed to preserve the recordings. I protected them with a devotion I could not always extend to the people around me. Most of my relatives are gone now. Many of my closest friends and collaborators are dead. I could not save them.
But I still have tapes from 1976.
Some people document their lives through journals, photographs, scrapbooks, or diaries. My life exists in recordings. Until 2012, most of those tapes sat boxed away in storage facilities or hidden in corners of whatever room I happened to be renting at the time. Then, after finally finding stability, I was able to begin opening the archive again. For the first time in decades, I could listen carefully, organize things, restore them, and continue building upon them.
Now I am retired. For the first time in my life, I possess both the time and the mental space to devote myself completely to this work. So that is what I do. Every day. Hour after hour. Song after song.
And the truth is, almost nobody cares.
But I do.
That turns out to be enough.
I never wanted fame badly enough to destroy myself chasing it. I never wanted to turn music into a transaction. That is why the recordings remain freely available wherever I can upload them. Bandcamp. SoundCloud. ReverbNation. Facebook. I do not want anyone’s money. I have survived. I have what I need. If someone finds one of the songs and enjoys it, that is sufficient reward.
I may never leave behind wealth, institutions, or descendants carrying my name into the future. But I can leave evidence that I was here. I can leave the accumulated sound of a human life thinking, feeling, hoping, loving, failing, recovering, and continuing.
That is what the recordings are.
Not a career.
Not a product.
A residue of existence.
And perhaps, long after I am gone, someone somewhere will stumble across one of those old songs and hear a voice reaching out from another century saying:
“I was here too.”
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