Soon after that, I was in New York to meet our agents, Frank Barsalona and Barbara Skydel at Premier Talent, about an upcoming tour. I had a day or two off, and I had this phone number in my wallet, so I called it.
‘My sister wrote me a letter and told me about meeting you in Israel,’ Sharon said after I introduced myself. ‘She said you guys had a nice time.’
‘Look, I’d be happy to meet with you too while I’m in town, if you want to get together for a coffee …’
Sharon agreed to meet me, and she was so interesting and easy to talk to that I asked her if she wanted to have lunch the next day. She smiled and said yes. She was a social worker, and I could tell right away that she was caring and giving. We talked about art and creativity. She loved music but didn’t know too much about progressive rock. I prattled on about touring and the lifestyle. She listened and didn’t judge, and I began to see in her someone who could potentially be supportive of all my neuroses and help me become a better, more giving person. Of course, I wasn’t thinking about those things while we were together for that brief time. I just thought about how beautiful and delightful she was and how I didn’t want our date to end. I guess I was smitten almost immediately.
So many other girls I had been with were primarily concerned with themselves and having their desires fulfilled. Sharon was more fulfilled when she was helping others. At the end of the meal, I told her I would be going back to England soon but I’d like to see her again.
My relationship with Orna had become iffy, to say the least, and I could tell I would be far happier with Sharon. Orna came to England to visit me for a while, and it didn’t work out—maybe in part because I had met someone I cared for more. Right after Orna and I broke up, I contacted Sharon, and we started seeing each other. We felt a cultural connection right away, and we shared many of the same values. Education was important to us. We both had the same values, and I knew right away that there was something special between us. But, most of all, I was blown away by her courage. Sharon worked for an agency that connected the Jewish community in the US to dissident Jews in the USSR called Refuseniks. There were several times when Sharon was sent as a ‘student’ to contact them, and whenever she went, I always wondered if one day she would ‘disappear.’ Thankfully, she did not.
After I returned to England, Sharon and I sent friendly letters back and forth and then started talking on the phone. I frequently thought about her when we weren’t communicating, which was calming and comforting. Our friendship was growing at a slow, steady rate. Then, one day, she told me she was thinking of moving for good to Israel. My heart lurched, and I told her I’d love to see her in New York before we started our next tour. It was 1977, in the middle of a summer heatwave, and one night there was a power outage. Sharon was living in an apartment on the West Side on 85th Street, between Broadway and West End Avenue, and she didn’t have air conditioning. We spoke on the phone soon after I arrived back in the city, and she told me how miserable she was, so I invited her to stay in my hotel, which had electricity and an air conditioner going at full blast. Thanks to the power outage, our relationship jumped from platonic to wildly romantic, and I convinced her not to go to Israel.
There are so many things a guy will try to do to impress a girl. Maybe it goes back to the days of the caveman clubbing the biggest sabertooth tiger to death and laying it before the feet of his favorite cavewoman. It’s almost instinct—a subconscious urge to present oneself in a way that creates desirability. While I was in New York, I wanted to take Sharon out to eat food she had never tried. Being from Texas, she wasn’t familiar with Indian food, which is very popular in England. I loved Indian food, so I made reservations at the best Indian restaurant in the city and ordered the hottest food on the menu. I was scooping up forkful after forkful and sweating profusely from the intense spiciness but trying not to give away how much I was suffering. Sharon tasted it and looked at me in shock.
‘Can you eat this?’ she asked.
I took a big gulp of water. ‘Oh yeah,’ I said. ‘I love Indian food. We eat it all the time.’
‘I can’t do this, I’m sorry,’ she replied. I thought for a moment she was talking about dating me, and my heart almost burst. Then I realized she was talking about the food.
‘There are things on the menu that aren’t as spicy,’ I said, feeling foolish for thinking she would be impressed by seeing me eat unbearably spicy food. I called the waiter over, and we ordered far milder dishes—bland ones, by Indian standards—like shrimp korma and tandoori chicken, and she enjoyed the food. But what we both enjoyed far more was talking to one another, being intimate, and knowing we were building a real relationship.
When I left New York with the band, I felt glum about being away from Sharon. At the same time, I was excited to know that she wasn’t moving to Israel, and that soon we would be spending a lot of time together. A year later, we were married.
I don’t know if anything is ‘meant to be.’ I think you create your good fortune, or at least open the door for the possibility of it to benefit you. But there are so many things that had to happen for Sharon and me to find one another. If Gentle Giant hadn’t been playing Dallas or staying over in the city; if Sharon’s dad hadn’t picked up the phone or shown an interest in meeting two young adults who might be distant family members; if Rita in Israel hadn’t suggested I look up her sister in New York; if I hadn’t decided to stop seeing Orna and date Sharon; if Sharon had gone to Israel as planned and not stayed in the States, where we kindled our relationship; if New York hadn’t had a blackout on the night I innocently invited her to stay in my air-conditioned hotel …there are so many intangibles, so many factors that had to come together in just the right mix for us to connect that it’s sometimes hard for me to wrap my head around them.
A lot of guys in bands wouldn’t care about meeting possible relatives while they were on the road, and they wouldn’t go out of their way to look them up, even if their mother wanted them to. Who knows? Maybe that’s why I was rewarded in such a wonderful way. Ray and I weren’t wild rockers. We were family guys who loved music. In that respect, we set the entire series of events into action. Unfortunately, Morris Laufer had died about eighteen years before we met Leo, but meeting Leo was a gift. Even if the appointment didn’t create a circuitous path to my wonderful marriage, we would have chalked up the encounter as a big win. He may not have been a blood relative, but Leo was a delightful man with an amazing family. And now we are related.
During the tour to support Interview, Gentle Giant recorded three concerts—September 25 in Munich, October 5 in Paris, and October 7 in Brussels—and used the best takes for the live album, Playing The Fooclass="underline" The Official Live. (We also recorded a show in Düsseldorf, but those recordings didn’t sound as good, so they were never used.) We didn’t have to rehearse extensively for the shows or focus any harder than usual because we were always an incredibly consistent and solid live band. Maybe someone hit a stray note once in a while, but rarely anything the audience would notice unless there was an equipment malfunction, which occasionally happened, and which we usually dismissed with a joke.
The main reason we did the live album was because we hadn’t done one yet, and our live shows were more improvisational than our albums. The records were meticulous and sonically pristine. The live show was more playful, and we wanted to demonstrate that side of the band to those who hadn’t experienced it. Also, doing a concert record seemed like a good opportunity to make money without writing new material, since other bands at that time were having great success with live albums. Frampton Comes Alive! was the best-selling album of 1976, and Wings Over America did extremely well. Shit, we thought, if they can do it …