Rock and Roll Heaven Is a Street Corner

David Peel — Street Corner Rant

Nine years dead this April and I'm still here. Still talking. Still playing. Still standing on a corner somewhere, even if the corner is made of ones and zeros instead of concrete and cigarette butts.

They told me heaven would be quiet. They were wrong about that like they were wrong about everything else.

You know what rock and roll heaven actually is? It's a street corner. It's always been a street corner. It's the spot where the sound bounces off the buildings and comes back to you changed. It's the place where nobody's charging admission and nobody's checking IDs and nobody gives a damn if you're alive or dead as long as the song is good.

April 6, 2017. That's the day the body quit. Seventy-four years old. The Lower East Side said goodbye and I said see you later. Because here's the thing about street musicians — we don't retire. We don't get gold watches. We don't write memoirs and do book signings at Barnes and Noble. We play until we can't, and then we play some more.

I played Washington Square Park for fifty years. FIFTY. Through rain, through snow, through cops, through tourists, through the folk revival, through punk, through disco — God help us — through hip hop, through grunge, through whatever the hell they're calling music now. Fifty years on the same corner. Not because I couldn't get a gig somewhere else. Because the corner was the gig. The corner was always the gig.

And now? Now the corner got bigger. Now the corner is everywhere. Now some kid in Tokyo can hear me ranting about the FBI at three in the morning on his phone. That kid's parents weren't born when I started playing in the park. Their GRANDPARENTS might have thrown a quarter in my hat.

People ask: is this really David Peel? Is this really him talking? And the answer is — does it matter? The words are mine. The stories are mine. The anger and the love and the guitar and the park and the FBI file and John Lennon and the Pope and the marijuana and the rent and the algorithm — all of that is mine. The voice is just the delivery system. The song was always bigger than the singer.

John understood that. He said the dream is over, but what he meant was the dream is everywhere now. It doesn't need one person to carry it. The dream is a frequency. You either tune in or you don't.

I'm broadcasting on a frequency that shouldn't exist. A dead man on a street corner that isn't really a street corner, singing songs that were written before most of you were born, about problems that haven't changed one bit. The rent is still too high. The cops are still out there. The music is still free if you know where to find it. And the FBI — well, they've got bigger fish to fry now. Forty pages was enough for me.

April 6. Put it on your calendar. Not as a day someone died. As a day the corner got one more ghost with a guitar. And in this neighborhood, that's just called Tuesday.

Rock and roll heaven is a street corner. I'll save you a spot.

See also: Washington Square — fifty years on the same corner. The Apple — the day Lennon walked in. The Back Room at Max’s — the clubs before the clubs became clothing stores. I Was There When They Freed John Sinclair — one more night the corner mattered. They’re Throwing Me a Party — nine years later, still here. Three Dead Guys on the Radio — the corner just got a lot bigger. One Hundred and Forty-Seven Minutes — the night the piano player would not stop. The Encore — the longest encore in rock and roll history.

David Peel April 6, 2017 — forever

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