RECORD STORE TALES #1182:  The Legendarium of George

Every neighborhood has a legend.  While in my own mind, I’d like to think that Bob Schipper and I were the legends, we were far too normal.  Oh sure, we were quirky, but we were not unique enough to be legends.   In our neighborhood, there was only one kid that was an absolute legend, and of his own making.  He was the obligatory “older kid” that had all the records, all the pornography, and reigned as the ultimate outcast.  That neighbor was George.

We lived in a relatively new subdivision.  When my parents bought their house, it was practically new.  Only one family owned it before.  Next door to us, George’s family had been there the longest.  Though he would only have been four years old, George always said he could remember when I was the new baby next door.

George was a dick from when he was just a kid.  He was also the ultimate neighborhood geek.  He had the big glasses.  He had the center-part.  But he was an enigma.  Even though he was most definitely a geek, he was also a braggart.  This probably came from his age, being the oldest kid on our street.  He was also one of the first kids to acquire a record collection, which meant there was often a reason to have to spend time with him, besides the times he’d just invite himself over.

His family was what you’d call dysfunctional today.  He never really had a chance, but George couldn’t be trusted.  While he could be sweet, he started young as a bad apple.

In one of my earliest memories, I was in my basement playing with Lego.  I built a colourful airplane.  I brought it outside to show George, and his two friends Todd and Sean.  “Make it bigger!” they egged me on.  I raced back inside and added another layer of bricks and brought it back out to show them.  “Bigger!  Make it even bigger!”  Eager for approval, I ran back inside and added another layer of multicolour bricks.  I leaped up the stairs and out the back door to show them again.  “Add more!  Keep adding!” they advised, and so I went back inside and added more bricks.  This went on approximately five times total.  The final time, I showed them my massive and impractical airplane, and George smashed it.  Laughing, they stole my bricks as I ran inside in tears.

Indeed, George soon earned a reputation as a thief.  In grade school, he was caught stealing Play-doh.  It became a well-known neighbourhood fact.  “George is a stealer!” said Michelle across the street.  It was like this black mark upon his house.  After he was caught, we didn’t see him around for a while.  He laid low.

Eventually the status quo returned, and George resumed joining the rest of the kids on the street in various activities.

We had a school with a baseball diamond and a tennis court nearby.  Two baseball diamonds in fact.  One summer afternoon, we were playing catch, but not on the diamond.  We were just playing in the schoolyard.  Someone threw George the ball; he ducked, and it went through the school window.

“Oooh George that’s your fault!”

“No it isn’t, you threw it too hard!”

“You should have caught it!”

We were all eager to throw George under the bus for that one.  We all felt he had it coming.

George would always bring two cans of pop with him when we went to the baseball diamond.  If you were thirsty, though, you didn’t bother asking George for a sip.

“These are mine for my diabetes,” he would always answer.

One of our weekend activities was playing “Pop 500” on the baseball diamond.  I don’t remember the rules, but the idea was to hit the ball as far as you could.  There was a regular group of us that played.  They included Bob Schipper, his brother John, George and his friends Todd Meyer and Scott Peddle.  It was well established that Bob was the best athlete in that group.  That wasn’t in dispute.  He was the biggest, strongest and fastest.  But George had his own ideas on how we ranked.

“Bob is the best at Pop 500,” he told me one afternoon.  “Then me, John, Todd, and you and Scott are in last place.”

He sure did think a lot of himself.  It seemed like he always had to be the best (or second best) at something.

Back to the Lego, when we were younger, George discovered this cartoon called Force Five.  It was a North American version of a few Japanese anime series.  Bob and I had never seen it or heard of it, but George was raving about this cartoon.  He built a Lego robot based on the show, but it was really shitty.  The arms and legs were just skinny little twigs that didn’t move, and it had a gun where its…well, where its dick would be.  Bob and I critiqued it fairly, but negatively.  However, we did take inspiration from George, and built our own robots.

We re-convened on my back porch with our robots.  Ours were cooler, had some movement and most importantly, didn’t have a gun for a penis.  (Oh, don’t worry, we’ll be talking about a different kind of “Love Gun” soon enough.)

George’s critique back at us was also in the negative, but for unexpected reasons.

“You see, yours are based on the idea of ‘robot’.  Mine is based on Force Five.”

Always had to be the best at something, to the point of basing the contest upon a show that neither Bob or I had heard of.  Sometimes it was hard to like George.

He was not the giving type, though he was always happy to show his younger neighbours his Playboy magazines.  I can distinctly remember one afternoon, we were out on the sidewalk, burning stuff with a magnifying glass.  I had an awesome plastic magnifying glass that could really burn.  For George though, burning holes in leaves and newspapers wasn’t entertaining enough.  He brought out a Playboy and encouraged us to burn the nipples.  That might have been the first pair of boobs I ever saw.

His young obsession with pornography put my parents on alert.  I think they considered George the neighbourhood pervert.  Indeed, he was the one who would introduce, shall we say, new terminology to our vocabularies.  He was the first one who had porno videos.  He would often talk about girls and sex, and at my age, I would have rather talked about Star Wars or comic books.

Because George was older, he was often first on board with many fads.  He had a Commodore computer early on, as well as a great collection of Transformers and GI Joes, including their accompanying comic books.  He had his own VCR, and he would borrow a second one from Todd to record porn videos.  And, he had a pretty killer record collection early on.  His favourite band was Kiss, and there is no question that without George, Kiss would not have been my favourite band.  When I discovered music, I spent a lot of time learning about Kiss, and other bands, from George.  He would bring his VCR over, and let me tape his music videos.

George’s big weakness was money.  He was stupid with money.  He would come into some money, and go to the comic store and buy a whole bunch of comics.  Then, six months later, he would get into something new, and sell off all his old stuff dirt cheap to fund his new obsession.  And so, he sold to me the first 24 or so issues of GI Joe: A Real American Hero for something like 50 cents each (except the early issues, which were a couple bucks).  This included the super rare first printing of issue 2, which I still have.  Unlike George, I kept every single thing I bought from him.  I still have everything.  This included G1 Optimus Prime, and a ton of early GI Joe figures and vehicles.  I have the GI Joe “MANTA” sailboard, which was mail-order only.  These things are priceless today.  He sold them to us for a few bucks.  Every time we came into some money, from allowance or chores, we could go over to his basement and buy a GI Joe toy.  This went on for a few weeks until he eventually sold everything, to buy records.  Because records were his new big thing.  Until CDs.  But let’s not jump ahead.

When George got into music, Kiss were his favourite band followed by Iron Maiden.  He quickly became a know-it-all.  He would play a tape, and try to stump us.  “Who’s this playing?” he asked.  We’d never heard the song before.  “I don’t know, Black Sabbath?”  He’d smirk and go, “NO, it’s Uriah Heep!”  This went on and on, to an annoying degree.  Bob and I decided to get our revenge and stump him instead.  Bob had recently acquired a cassette called Masters of Metal Vol. 2.  This compilation included a cool song called “Balls to the Wall” by a band called Accept.  “Who does this sound like to you?” asked Bob of me when he got it.  “It sounds like AC/DC to me,” I answered, considering the similarity between Brian Johnson’s grit, and Udo’s.

A plan was hatched.  We were going to put George in his place.

And so, in my back yard, gathered around a boom box, Bob challenged George to “name that band.”  Masters of Metal Vol. 2 was cued up to track five on side one:  “Balls to the Wall”.

George was quiet for the first minute of the track.

Then, “Watch the damned!” screamed Udo Dirkschneider from the speakers of that boom box.

Immediately George answered, “AC/DC”.

“No!  It’s Accept!”  exclaimed Bob in victory.

“Sign of victorrrrryyyy!” sang Udo behind us.

Bob and I stood up and high-fived in our own sign of victory.  George immediately tried to justify his mistake, by saying my stereo wasn’t very good quality, and that was the reason he got it wrong.  He certainly knew AC/DC when he heard it, he claimed, but my boom box was too cheap and crappy to tell the difference between AC/DC and Accept.

Sure…

Though George was seriously into music, as were Bob and I, there was one guy on the street that was miles ahead because he was in a band.  Rob Szabo is talented singer/songwriter today, but I remember when his favourite bands were Motley Crue and Stryper.  Rob had started playing with Peter Coulliard down the street.  He had even written and recorded two songs.  The second one was called “The Stroll”, and I can still hum it today.  George desperately wanted to be in that band.  He wanted to be cool.  He wanted to play in front of girls.  And Rob’s band needed a bassist.  George would hang out with Rob, watching him play, and Rob was kind enough to show him a few things on guitar.

George sold more of his stuff, and saved some money.  Soon, he had enough to buy a brand new bass.  He decided to surprise Rob one day by showing him.

“Look what I have!” he grinned.  “Now I’m your bassist!”  Only, George couldn’t play.  Rob was horrified.  He didn’t want this.  He was serious about music.  He also felt terribly guilty, because George bought the bass specifically because Rob needed a bass player!  For two weeks, George was technically “in the band”.   Rob made a copy of his two-song tape for George.  I was there when George played that tape for the girl he liked.  We were outside on the sidewalk, and George had his ghetto blaster in hand.  He played the first tune.

“That’s us!” he said.  “That’s my band.”  He wasn’t on the recording at all.

Like a kid who didn’t know how to break up with his girlfriend, Rob took a while to tell George he was “out” of the band.  He was crushed, but to his credit, he didn’t give up.

George kept practising.  Gene Simmons was his favourite bassist, followed by Steve Harris.  George would often bring his bass and amp outside to play, so he could be seen and heard by the neighbours.  Desperate to look cool, George brought his bass over to my house and plugged in on the back porch.  Then, he’d be back to “Guess this song” again, trying to stump us.  “Guess this song from the bassline!”

Durm durm durm durm.  Durm durm durm durm.

“Uhh, I dunno, ‘Shout It Out Loud’?”

“No, it’s ‘Love Gun!’”

Bob and I hated that game.  We may have schooled him on Accept, but he was relentless with the basslines.

Most of them were Kiss anyway.  He had a growing Kiss collection.  He would frequently come home from Sam the Record Man with new Kiss albums.   There was a point when he only needed two:  Hotter Than Hell, and The Elder.  There are good stories about each, but the main thing is that I actually got Hotter Than Hell before he did.  I had acquired it and Kiss Alive!, my first two Kiss albums, in a trade with Ian Johnson.  I gave him my sister’s Atari 2600 cartridge of Superman and got the two Kiss albums in return.  She was angry with me, but today accepts the importance of that trade to me.  I still have that copy of Kiss Alive!  As for Hotter Than Hell, I immediately phoned George and leveraged it in another trade, for a Walksman, a Black Sabbath cassette of Paranoid, an Abbot & Costello record of Who’s On First, and some Iron Maiden 12″ singles.  I definitely came out the winner.  That copy of Hotter Than Hell was brutally scratched.  But, I was now well on my way to having a rock music collection.

I taped most of my Kiss off George as I began my collection.  The annoying thing there wasn’t so much that I had to hang out with George to tape his records.  The annoying thing was that he would sit there and play bass as we were taping.  So, I had to politely compliment his playing, as he played along to the records I was taping.  The bass would bleed through, and therefore my dubbed cassette of Kiss Unmasked had his bass all over it!  I wasn’t able to get a proper copy of Unmasked for about two years, so for a long time, all I had was the cassette with George’s damn bass on it!  I can still hear it in my head, especially on “Naked City”.

George finished highschool, but I was just beginning.  In grade nine, I saw my first Battle of the Bands.  Rob Szabo was playing the regionals, and it was a big deal.  The grand prize was recording time at an actual studio.   I sat with Bob Schipper and Scott Peddle.  We were there to support Rob Szabo’s band, Over 550, but also to heckle George.  He had joined a band called Zephyr.

George was really rocking out.  He leaned way, way back as he played his bass.

“Don’t fall over George!” I yelled.

“You suck George!” shouted Bob Schipper.  Scott had his own comments that he yelled at the stage.  We thought we were absolutely hilarious.  It was our revenge for all the stupid bass he made us listen to in the back yard.

George eventually got a job at Long John Silver, a nearby seafood restaurant.  He was memorably disciplined for “finding a faster way to cook the fish,” but that was his main gig.  He would leave early in the morning, walking down the street alone.  He was notorious for singing on his way to work, with a Walkman and earphones.  George was not a good singer.  Not in the least.  My sister and I took to watching him from the front window when we saw him leaving for work.  We’d laugh in hysterics at his horrendous, off-key caterwauling.

The best example of this had to be one time we heard him singing Kiss.

He started his walk silently.  He was already halfway down the street when he raised his fist in the air and shouted “Alright! Love Gun!”  Then he proceeded with the off-key chorus.  “Love guuuuuuun…looove guuuuuuuuuuun!” he bellowed.  Somewhere in the distance, a dog answered his howl.

It was absolutely hilarious.  If there was such a thing as cell phone cameras back then, you can be guaranteed that I would have recorded it.  It was a moment, for sure!

When he was old enough to get into bars, he acquired his very own beer belly, which he showed off with his short T-shirts.  He got a perm.  With his big glasses, it looked even more hilarious than it would have on its own.  He wore studded wristbands and assorted metal jewelry.  He looked like an actual parody.  He used to show off this one photo of him with a bunch of strippers at a strip club, as if it were a trophy.

He was always talking dirty.

“Hey guys.  Wanna hear something cool?  I was getting out of the shower the other day, and I had a boner.  I hung a towel on it.  Pretty impressive.”

“What, a tea towel?” chided Bob.

Unfortunately, George’s problem with money was genetic.  After two and a half decades in the same house, they had to sell it and move.  He moved around a lot, and then eventually we lost track of him completely.  There were rumours he was in Orillia, or Windsor.

One day in 1995, I came home from work to find a message on my answering machine.

“Hey Mike, this is George calling.  I just wanted to tell you, I just bought all the new Star Wars Power of the Force action figures.  Call me.”

I could hardly believe it.  We hadn’t seen this guy in years and he was still up to his old habits:  Going all-in on the latest thing.  I’m sure by 1997, he had sold them all at a tremendous loss.

I didn’t call him back, but kind of regretted it.  Over the years, curiosity got to Scott Peddle and I, as we Googled and searched.  There was no sign of George, anywhere.  It was as if he had vanished without a trace.  Scott and I made jokes about how George was probably plotting his revenge against us somewhere, but the truth is, we spent more time telling “George stories” than anything else.  Because he was a legend.  A total legend.

Eventually, Facebook reunited us.  It was as if none of the past ever happened.  Nothing need be said; we were friends.  Perhaps for the first time.  As for George, he was more into Star Wars than ever.  He started a fresh collection of Star Wars Black Series action figures.  He read this blog, and commented on it.  But the sad ending to the story is that George died young, before he could even see The Force Awakens in the theater.

George passed on Boxing Day, 2014.  He was 46 years old.  He went to a party the night before, came home, and never woke up.  It is strange to think that George was always older than us, but now he will always be younger.  He went far too soon.  We reconnected as friends, but we learned that we are only immortal for a limited time.

We may talk shit about him to this day, but Scott and I toasted George when we went to see The Force Awakens together.

“Cheers, George.”  It was a moment.  He would have loved to see Star Wars back on the big screen.

We talk trash about him, and we make fun of him, but I guess he really became our friend.  He did earn every bit of shit that we threw his way.  It was always deserved.  I mean, he stole Bob’s brother’s bike.  (We know, because he put it in his garage, and his garage didn’t have a door, so you could see the bike from the street.)  He stole Lego from me more than once.  (We know, because I had a rare 4×3 clear windshield slope that disappeared one day and re-appeared in his collection.)  He stole Lego from Bob.  But, he let us tape his records and videos.  He taught us about bands, albeit in the most annoying ways.  Maybe when we were kids, the better word would have been that we were “Frenemies”.  That word didn’t exist back then.  When we reunited as adults, we became friends for real, though so briefly.  I’m not sure if George had a happy life.  He always had a smile, but he lost his family fairly young, and never married or had kids.  He was a loner.

But he was a legend.