Thoughts on the Passing of David Roback
Mazzy Star was a fixture of my 20’s and remain so today. Many a night, in the throes of some forgotten existential malaise, the angelic vocals of Hope Sandoval and the hazy textures of David Roback’s guitar eased my mind and lulled me to sleep. They were ever present in the score of my young life. Certain songs transport me to forgotten places, help me see the faces of lost friends, and playback the tapes of late-night conversations and thoughts. My focus was always on Hope Sandoval, her singing and lyrics. I realize now how important the foundation was: the woozy slide guitar, laid back acoustic strumming, and fuzzy electric rhythms of David Roback setting up the enchantment that was the voice and presence of Hope Sandoval. A singular, iconic sonic alchemy, effervescent melancholy, and a psychedelic reverie.
Mazzy Star She Hangs Brightly
Like most everyone else my introduction to the band was the song Fade Into You, and I fell in love instantly. So much music on the radio at the time was angry bombast (not a bad thing), and Mazzy Star was a refreshing change of pace. Being the obsessive completist fan I am I tracked down their first album She Hangs Brightly, and it quickly became a favorite of mine and the handful of friends I had at the time. We spent most of our time at a little two-story café and suffered from a string of star-crossed love affairs punctuated by therapeutic road trips. The music and lyrics of She Hangs Brightly seemed written and composed exclusively for us. Each song on that album recalls long lost lovers, crushes, and friends. The exuberant intensity of those relationships simultaneously buoyed and sunk by the ravenous optimism of youth. The smell and taste of coffee and cigarette smoke enjoyed while sitting outside. The cacophony of up to eight people crammed in my giant 1979 Ford LTD cruising the neighborhood around the café while smoking joints. Conspiring with girlfriends to go on cigarette runs to get away from the crowd. Hanging out after hours drinking the gin the baristas hid in the ice machine. One night playing strip poker upstairs.
Mazzy Star So Tonight that I Might See
The second album So Tonight That I Might See I reserved mostly for myself, one of a handful of CD’s I would play late at night while reading and writing. It was the sound of my creative environment, the lapping of the waves as I navigated the rivers of my mind. The song Blue Light is the reason I bought a string of blue Christmas lights to be the sole illumination in my room while I wrote, a ritual I maintain today in my office. There is a lonesome romanticism that flows and trickles throughout the songs on So Tonight That I Might See punctuated by the 1-2-3 punch of the songs Wasted, Into Dust, and the title track, that I always interpreted as, after the prolonged lost love of tracks 1-7, the forsaken narrator diving into drugs and alcohol to numb the pain (Wasted), going too far (Into Dust), and then a psychedelic post-mortem allegory (So Tonight That I Might See). I don’t suppose this was the intent of the band, rather I reckon it was just me painting my own vision onto the music as I wrote. Still, the album was a comforting blanket of empathy as I crashed my way through romantic notions I couldn’t quite untangle, relationships I didn’t fully comprehend, and the beginning of the end of the euphoria I once gleaned from drinking and drugs. The songs on So Tonight That I Might See were, and have always been, a salve for the frayed nerves of my own internal reckoning.
Mazzy Star Among My Swan
Their third album, Among My Swan, was a swan song for the band (no new music for 18 years) as well as my social scene at the time. The winter of 1996 was when the café closed down. Casual drinking and smoking weed had devolved into days long benders and snorting coke, some lines of which were chopped and lined up on the jewel case of my Among My Swan CD. What was once a relatively happy and hopeful tribe of reprobates, bound together by the common pursuits of spontaneity and enlightenment, had splintered into exclusive cliques. Swirls of conflicting interpretation orbiting common grudges. All the lovers had become scorned exes, the piled wreckage of unmoored affairs beyond salvage. The melancholy seems amplified on Among My Swan, at least to me, but it’s not just a slog through regret and loss. The final track Look On Down From The Bridge, is for me, a dirge. The opening pipe organs befitting a funeral, and the minimalist waltz of the drums the slow-motion procession. Sandoval’s voice is plaintive, and sorrowful, the lyrics mournful. The curtains are being drawn, the casket being lowered, but there is still a fading glimmer of hope, a battle against the finality, but not denial. A heroic effort until the bitter end, not as a vain attempt to prevent the inevitable, but a tribute to what will eventually be only memory, because it is worth fighting for.
That sentiment is a torch I try to carry every day, not to illuminate the sorrows of the past, or even my fading fond memories, but to try and maintain a sharp focus on the present. To take in the dazzling wonders of the here and now, before it slips away, as all things will.
Thank you, David Roback, for contributing to my peace of mind, then and now.
Mazzy Star Fade Into You Single