Carlos Alomar

When you’re a high school and college-age musician, you dream about certain things.

Carlos Alomar at Perfect Mixes, Brooklyn

I remember very clearly sitting in middle school chemistry class, doodling in my notebook.

This was just around the time Guns N’ Roses brought out the Use Your Illusion albums. To my friends and I, they were The Greatest Band Of All Time. They were our Stones, our Beatles.

I would sit there – I vaguely remember the teacher trying to tell us something about acids and bases, something about soap – and I would draw the members of G N’ R on stage in the margins of my binder.

The G N’ R poster I had in my room growing up.

Then on another page I’d draw my future band – my brother on drums, me on guitar, our two friends playing guitar and keys, and since we didn’t have a real-life bass player, I would fantasize it was John Paul Jones of Zeppelin.

At night my bro and I would talk about our dream lineups – Bonham on drums, John Paul Jones bass, David Gilmour and Jimmy Page on guitars, Axl singing (sometimes it was Perry Farrell, sometimes Robert Plant – we pretty must just wanted to be Led Zeppelin).

Later on, after college, once music had actually become my life, the fantasies became about making music with my musician idols from the various albums that had become part of my DNA.

Players like Tony Levin, “Pretty” Purdie, Mike Garson, Herbie Flowers, Bernie Worrell, Nicky Hopkins, Bobby Keys, Jim Keltner, Steve Gadd, Dennis Davis, Ry Cooder, James Jamerson, Manu Katché, and Carlos Alomar.

The so-called “sidemen” that make up music history.

Carlos Alomar recording Questions at Perfect Mixes, Brooklyn

These were the people who had created my favorite art (I didn’t think of it in those terms yet, but that’s exactly what it was).

My bro and I were both liner note junkies, reading every bit of what was contained inside our favorite records. Not to mention rock books up the wazoo. Biographies, tell-all’s, whatever – anything we could get our hands on about our favorite bands and artists we would devour.

So we knew all about all of the players, not just the singer (which is usually anyone knows or cares anything about).

We both had a keen understanding that it was each person’s input that made up the overall sound and feel of the songs and records.

And I’d listened so many times, so closely to each of these people’s signature parts on so many brilliant, classic albums. Each of these guy’s styles had become as identifiable to me as the singer’s voice.

The first thing I did after Carlos Alomar left the first background vocal session for my album Questions, after showing up completely unplanned and unannounced with his wife, the singer Robin Clark, was to call my brother.

“Holy shit man. You’ll never guess who was just here.”

We were our high school selves again, in awe at having met one of our music idols.

And then, to have this person offer his “services” (read: masterful, iconic playing and arranging) for the album, and then to read later – in a major music publication no less – that this childhood idol is saying some of the kindest things that have ever been said about you as a music artist. It’s just nuts.

So, I would just like to formally give thanks to a man that went from being a childhood idol / fantasy collaborator to an actual collaborator and musical (and life) mentor.

There is no musical situation, piece, or group that Carlos can’t make wonderful in a completely unique and generally mind-blowing fashion. He is, in the truest sense of the words, a gentleman, a professor, and a maestro of music, love, and life.

Carlos at Perfect Mixes, Brooklyn

I’ll leave you with one of the (many) moments Carlos shines on the album. I can’t think of this song without thinking of the man. Here is the official video for “Connect the Dots.”