Last week, I attended NAMM2024 (National Association of Music Merchants) at the Anaheim Convention Center in Los Angeles with all its explosion of life and music blasting from the stages and booths of 1600+ exhibitors creating a papalooza of sound burgeoning into a riveting cacophony. Horns blowing, guitars shredding, keyboards symphonizing, and vocalists singing or rapping their hearts out to be heard over the ocean of sound.  I loved being around so much music even if it was all at once, so alive. I went because I could and because I wanted to be in the room for Mike Lawson’s presentation, “Deconstructing Steely Dan: The Roger Nichols Methods”. Being in a large standing-room-only of people excitedly clapping to Mike’s poignant exploration into the genius of Roger and his integral role in the success of Steely Dan as well as his part in pioneering digital recording was all the reward I needed for the trip but the show had more to give me.

My life continues to be a circuitous journey of synchronicity after synchronicity, especially about bumping into people, famous or otherwise. Like all the times I bumped into Bob Dylan backstage and in the studio, yet somehow never really met him. But who really meets Bob? Then Donald Fagan bought Dylan’s house in Woodstock… Various politicians, no one took pictures, selfies or otherwise, back then. In my circle then and even sometimes now, it’s considered gauche. Okay, tacky.

Then there were times with Stevie Wonder. Once (of many) I was sitting in a chair in the lounge at Soundworks, NY waiting for Roger to finish when Stevie walked in and stood over me in a huge fur with braids flowing, looking every inch like the lion of sound that he is. (The same thing happened with Frank Sinatra, only I nearly feinted from the shock of being next to him.)

But this year at NAMM an entourage leading a blind guy to the down escalator nearly bumped into me as I was trying to get off. I have a gimpy leg, so I am very careful these days and since I was alone, I was paying more attention to not falling as I stumbled around this glob of people.

Cut to later as I’m cruising the Main Hall, I see a crowd and there he is: Stevie. Many that consistently go to NAMM know that Stevie usually shows up somewhere. He’s hard to miss with the crowd around him. He was not looking the lion-part and I wouldn’t have even recognized him if I’d looked up during the “almost bump” getting off the escalator.

Unfortunately, a hitchhiker at NAMM called COVID jumped on me and while convalescing at home I looked at Facebook way too much. A thread on a John Denver Fan Club site caught my eye. There is already a lot out there about why didn’t We Are The World organizers invite John? (Which was very ugly of the organizers.) But then someone posted that Stevie felt sorry for John being left out and sent him the demo of a new song, If Ever, for John’s last album on RCA, Dreamland Express.

The part of the story that I know is that engineer Daniel Lazerus was doing something with Stevie and Roger Nichols (my husband and producer of the project) asked Lazerus to ask Stevie IF he had any new songs appropriate for John. He did! John recorded it. If Ever wasn’t a hit, but it happened. John loved that Stevie gave him the song and especially loved that he played harp on the track.  

And here it is: Stevie’s cassette demo forty years later. Another one from my dusty desk that ended up in a special box that survived after so many moves, so many that I’ve lost count…like Steely Dan’s Second Arrangement.

IF I ever get to be in the same room with Stevie again, I will wipe off all the germs and happily hand him back his cassette.