From The Pen Of Peter Paul Markin- Nah, I Couldn’t Keep Her, My Little Rock ‘n’ Roller

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of mad man rock and roller Chuck Berry performing his classic Sweet Little Rock and Roller.

Sweet Little Rock and Roller-Chuck Berry


Nineteen years old and sweet as she can be.
All dressed up like a downtown, Christmas tree.
Dancin' an' hummin' a rock-roll melody.

She's the daughter of a well-respected man.
Who taught her how to judge and understand.
Since she became a rock-roll music fan.

Sweet little rock 'n' roller.
Sweet little rock 'n' roller.
Her daddy don't have to scold her.
Her partner can't hardly hold her.
She never gets any older.
Sweet little rock 'n' roller.

Instrumental break.

Should have seen her eyes when the band began to play.
And the famous singers sang and bowed away.
When the star performed she screamed and yelled, "Hooray!"

Ten thousand eyes were watchin' him leave the floor.
Five thousand tongues were screamin', "More! More!"
And about fifteen hundred waitin' outside the door.

Sweet little rock 'n' roller.
Sweet little rock 'n' roller.
Sweet little rock 'n' roller.
Sweet little rock 'n' roller.
Sweet little rock 'n' roller.
Fades.
Sweet little rock 'n' roller.
Sweet little rock 'n' roller.


Joshua Lawrence Breslin is a natural born liar so what he says, sometimes, can be, and should be, taken with a very large grain of Himalaya salt. The current cause for my characterization is a recent little dispute that we had about women who, well, were little rock and rollers back in the day. And what effect they had on us, then and now. For those not in the know, and there may be a few not familiar with the specific term although once described it will sent bells of recognition ringing through your head, she (and she here is meant to be nothing more than the proper pronoun designation for the subject of two women-loving guys. Women and other combinations choice your own pronoun) was that little “hot” flirt that you (and about one hundred other guys in town or school) had no shot, nada nunca nada shot, at. And if you did then about a week later she left you for the next best thing on her next best thing list of conquests. And you? Well, you were left with either eternal regret that you didn’t at least take a chance and take a run at her or eternal pining away that that you did take a run at her and didn’t have what it took to keep her. Yah, I thought you would recognize the situation once I clued you in.

And that is where my liar accusation comes in. Josh Breslin (hell, nobody called him that three name monte thing back in the day he just picked that up when he started writing because he thought it sounded “cool” and distinguished him for other average joe writers) when I first met him introduced himself (without one bit of self-consciousness) as the Prince of Love in those summer of love, circa 1967, San Francisco love-in nights. He had just graduated from high school up in Olde Saco, Maine and was looking, well, looking for something like we all were that year and had hitchhiked across the country in that quest before starting off to college in the fall. Well, one thing led to another and that college thing got pushed back a couple of years when he decided to tag along with us on Captain Crunch’s merry pranskster-ish, yellow brick road bus as we headed up and down the West Coast looking, well, looking for the great American West night if nothing else.

I have now known Josh for over forty years through thick and thin and while we parted ways for a while, he off to write and I to do this and that, the last few years have brought us together like that sneak thief (love variety) pair we were back in the day so I can call him a liar. And I can say so (actually call him out is what I am trying to) in the public prints a place where his is (or was until his recent retirement) well-known as journalist for various left-wing and progressive magazines and newspapers, the ones that wind up in the back hall recycle bin half-read (or unread).

The subject of our current “dispute” centers on whether one “Butterfly Swirl” (real name Karen Riley, Carlsbad [CA] High Class of 1968 the last we saw of her) was a little rock ‘n’ roller heartbreaker, or rather THE rock and roll heartbreaker of his life. Of course Ms. Butterfly was my girlfriend before Josh “stole” her away from me on that merry prankster bus trip but that is not, or only a little, of what burns me up this moment. See I said Butterfly was the heartbreaker of his life and quoted chapter and verse the number of times HE said she was but now Josh has conveniently nominated another girl (young woman) from up in Olde Saco where he grew up (and moved back to several years ago) whom he met when he left the prankster bus and headed home. He met her over at the Sea and Surf Club in Old Orchard and he said that Butterfly was nothing but a surfer girl and not much of one at that compared to one Allison D’Amboise, the heartbreak girl of the ocean night according to Josh. He can tell you about Allison’s virtues sometime but I want to speak of Ms. Butterfly Swirl right now.

Let me explain how things happened with Butterfly that little rock and roll heartbreaker. Captain Crunch (real name Steve Silverman, Columbia Class of ’58) was a friend, not close as I recall, but a friend of the main merry prankster in those days, Ken Kesey (you can read about him and the whole merry prankster experience in Tom Wolfe’s Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test),and had put together his own merry prankster expedition which was running up and down the West Coast in 1966 and 1967. I had picked up the bus ride accidently when I was hitch-hiking up from Mexico and met them on the Pacific Coast Highway at LaJolla just north of San Diego in the spring of 1967. They were heading north toward San Francisco for some big bust out jail-break cultural thing that was going to change all of us forever (the”summer of love,” and maybe it did). Like I said from then on for a few years I was “on the bus.”

That is where Butterfly Swirl comes in, or rather the times, maybe. Butterfly (like I said before real name Karen Riley, but we were not into real names that year, or for a few years after that either, I was then calling myself The Be-Bop Kid) was nothing but a young girl getting ready to go into her senior year in high school in Carlsbad and that summer, but like a million others then, she was looking, well, looking for something. Now Carlsbad was (is) one of those eternal surfer towns where all the young guys “hang five” or ten or whatever looking for the perfect wave. And in those days all the “hot’ chicks (term of art used then, okay) sat on the sand waiting for those “hot” surfer guys to find the damn thing. Yes, as one can readily see boring, especially if you are waiting on the beach, “hot,” know it, and are looking to break out of the waves yourself and interested in taking no prisoners. That is what drove Karen to our prankster bus when we parked on Carlsbad Boulevard one beautiful blue sky day to take in the view of mother Pacific splashing fiercely to shore.

Butterfly was drawn like a magnet to the by then psychedelically-painted bus. She talked to a couple of guys, including the Captain, and the rest was history. She came with us up the highway and after a week or so although she was a few years younger than I we were “married,” meaning whatever that meant on any given day on the bus. (I did not find out until later as I was involved with another woman when Butterfly came “on the bus,” a woman who called herself Madame DeFarge in honor of the revolution, French she said, that Butterfly had twisted a couple of other guys on the bus around her finger before she go to me just for a little practice.)

That “marriage” lasted until we hit ‘Frisco and the Prince of Love showed up at a park on Russian Hill where we were parked and was also drawn to the bus, and eventually to my “wife” Butterfly. That affair lasted, hot and heavy lasted, for a couple of weeks and then Butterfly just disappeared one night leaving a short note saying she had to get back to her boyfriend, some golden-tanned, golden-haired water-pruned surfer boy she had left on the beach at Carlsbad forlorn and contrite.

Yah, that was the last we saw of her and Josh was crestfallen for a while. In those days crestfallen was a couple of weeks max, although I sensed for the many months after that while we were together travelling he had something eating at him. Later, like I said, when we talked it over finally he made his first confession, and would do so periodically for many years, years that encompassed three marriages and several other relationship combinations. But that was then. Now, over forty years later, he comes up with this Old Orchard flame burn-out story. This mermaid from the sea saga about Ms. Alison D’Amboise. And you wonder why I have to call him out publicly on this one.

The thing that Josh said knocked him out about Butterfly was that she was a tall, thin, sandy blond with plenty of personality, especially around guys. Fetching is the word we used at the time (and still do). She would flirt like crazy whenever a guy was within about ten feet of her [maybe five if I recall]. And she knew it, although not in a calculating way but more “here I am boys, take a chance on paradise if you dare.” And that got every guy’s blood up; especially once she got a guy in her sights but wasn’t going to let him get to first base. Jesus, and just 17. Like I said now Josh is calling her just another faded bleach blond sex trap bimbo. Nah, she was nothing but a little rock and roller. Hell, I was glad to get her off my hands at some point (to go back to Madame DeFarge) but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t glad, glad as hell to take a run at her even if I couldn’t keep her. And I still think that.