Mark Lebow and I were inseparable during high school even though he lived 2 towns away. When we started Blue Monday in September 1973 with Bill Galey and Mike Webster, we had no idea we would be embarking upon an odyssey that would last more than 50 years through countless bands, trips and other shenanigans. Mark has died from pancreatic cancer. I got to go down to Florida and see him in his last days. Thanks, Debbie, for seeing him through. Thanks, Mark, for being a great drummer, a passable bassist, and a good man in a storm.
I remember my first sighting of Mark when he was walking down the road in the development in North Stamford, CT where he lived up the street from Mike Webster. Mike had convened a jam of musicians whom he knew from various milieus in his life. Eventually Mark and Bill and I would go on without him due to creative differences but I am always indebted for this introduction.
Mark was walking down the road in his matter-of-fact confident manner, head up, shoulders back, holding a pair of drumsticks. We were all good musicians and were able to piggy back on what we offered each other. The Allman Brothers’ Brothers and Sisters had just come out so we ran through Ramblin’ Man.
Bill was an amazing guitarist and an Allman Brothers savant. Mark was in orchestra at school and was studying music. Bill was also trained. I was self taught as was Mike. I would go to Rippowam High School to see Mark perform in the pit for musicals like South Pacific. I was always in awe of this level of musicianship; the reading, the professionalism, the being part of a greater musical source. Eventually, I would experience that in Jazz Band at Brien McMahon High School in Norwalk.
Bill was in boarding school, so we would only be able to play on school breaks. But in January, Mark turned 16 and shortly thereafter got his license. He would drive down to Rowayton and we would hang out. He’d bring his acoustic nylon string guitar and we would play songs out of two songbooks he had: Cat Stevens’ Tea For The Tillerman and Crosby Stills and Nash. Mark would sing a lot of these and when we did our 2024 Copake Grange Concert, we reprised Long Time Gone which his strong baritone enveloped well.
I remember one time he came down to Rowayton with some Stamford friends to bring some girls to this make-out spot in the woods. He had such a way with the ladies, a quality I was always envious of.
He had long thick black hair, an easy smile and the “Lebow Drawl”, his accent, which, while easing somewhat over the years, was still there in the end. I don’t know if it was a Stamford accent or just a general local Connecticut accent but it was slow, deliberate, enunciated and each word was carefully considered. There was a lilt of humor in it, like inside, he was cracking himself up. He was often cracking all of us up but he never seemed like he was trying to. It was just the way he was and we were all laughing with him.
In September 1974, I joined Sea Scouts, a Boy Scouts of America organization, and gained a whole new group of friends. This was a group of kids who liked sailing, playing music and having a good time. The group I was hanging with before were mostly potheads and relatively aimless. While many of the Sea Scouts still smoked pot they had more going on for them than just a party. They were artists, musicians, good students and deep thinkers. I introduced Mark to this group and they loved him. He continued to come to Rowayton and developed his own friendships and romances with folks from this Ship (we had a 36 foot cutter, the Golliwog, which was the center of our world.). Also at the center of our world were the Proctors, the parents who were responsible for the ship. Dave and Bev Proctor had 4 kids, Dave, Joy, Lesley and Craig. They lived in a house on Flicker Lane and when we weren’t working or sailing on the Golliwog, we were there. Dave had a room in the basement which was the ground floor and we had parties there every weekend.
Mark dated a few Rowayton girls but wound up with Joy. He became a member of the Proctor family who were loving and welcoming. Joy was reserved and somewhat shy but had a wry sense of humor and a talent for making everyone feel like they belonged. He remained with her until they divorced in the late nineties.
Dave called his new little brother Sparky. Dave was in a band called Airfix along with Greg Smith, Tom May and Ed Flinn. When some of the older guys were off at college, Mark and I started a band with the people who were locals. This was originally called Broken Wind but when someone informed me of what that meant, we changed it to a variety of other names. This was the melding of Airfix and Blue Monday which eventually became Noyes and The Boyes.
Over Christmas break each year we would have a recording project. Mark was very particular about his equipment, as he was about everything. He was neat and wanted everything just so. I particularly remember us going out to a dinner break at one of these recording sessions and him coming back and saying, in his drawl, “Who’s been fucking with my drums?” I don’t know why, but that has always stuck with me.
Eventually all of us went off to school somewhere, many to Boston, me to Marlboro College in Vermont. Mark would drive up to visit me and, true to form, made a bunch of new friends. One summer he played drums for our band, No Nukes Of The North, when we played a party weekend in Ocean City, New Jersey. Mark brought the acid and a good time was had by all. He was such a good musician that he was able to sub for our drummer with pretty much no rehearsal. And of course, everybody there loved him.
Blue Monday at Pinkney Park
There are so many memorable musical experiences that I had with Mark. One party we played with Blue Monday early on was a sleep over situation. There was another band with a really good drummer and they played “Moondance” and I remember Mark being particularly impressed with him. We did a series of gigs at Rapson’s in Stamford and that was where Blue Monday really got to cut our teeth. This was on Mark’s home turf and his organization and professionalism really kept us in line.
1977-78 I took the year off from school and lived in Rowayton at my parents house. Mark was also working, at his uncle’s car dealership, Ted Miller Buick and then at Parsons, Bromfield and Redniss, his first surveying job. He was living in a house in Norwalk with Alan Freedman and Scott Wyland and some other people. We would hang out over there, getting high and playing music. In February, during the blizzard of ’78, I walked the 2 miles over there in the snow because I’d rather spend the blizzard with him than with my family. Mark was a good man in a storm, as they say. The snow gets deep and you watch the news; I don’t even remember what we did, probably nothing. But that is what you do with great friends in a blizzard. Nothing. Nothing has to be said. Nothing has to be sung. Nothing has to be drummed, guitared or played in any meaningful way. You can just exist with one another, talking your secret language, your tropes, your accents, your mimicry, your phrases from so far back that you don’t even know why you say it. One time, when I had missed our regular Monty Python Sunday night viewing, he came to my house the next day and we sat at the dining room table while he recited the entire episode I had missed: “Number 1: The Larch”, “It’s all in a day’s work for Bicycle Repair Man!” and so on, doing all the voices and English accents. And years later, one of us would say, “Number 1: The Larch” out of nowhere and crack each other up.
We would go camping on Mohawk Mountain in upstate Connecticut when we were in Sea Scouts and there was a fire tower. He would talk about belaying from the fire tower and then switched it to Ballet From A Fire Tower, which cracked us up, for no apparent reason. Eventually I used that phrase in Loose, one of my best songs. I thank God I have so many recordings of him. His music and humor will live on in me forever.
Conceptual Irregularities 