Gregg

We just lost another soldier — my friend and so many of yours — Gregg Sutton. As I type this my fingers can’t believe it. Wiki hasn’t changed “Gregg is” to “Gregg was” … yet. 

He was a just guest at my songwriting class last month. Alive and well. We tested the Zoom link a few days before class to make sure his ‘tech’ was in order so he wouldn’t arrive to class upside down or sideways. And while we were there we talked. Like we always do. We joked about how all it takes to cure writers block is a conversation with the person you’re writing with. Duh. 

I met Gregg when his publisher sent him to my NYC Apt circa 19-something. He showed up at the door with a joint behind his ear and trouble in his eyes. I was terrified. But he wasn’t. He schooled me. He didn’t care that I was a more ‘polite’ writer. (He called me Muffy. I called him Biff.) He showed me the ropes. He pulled me out of the safety of my tidy world. He was sloppy. Dangerous. I was his passenger. It was such a good ride. 

After our first song we couldn’t stop. We were like new lovers who just discovered each other. There was never a session that started before a long walk and many cappuccinos. It wasn’t a time of wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am toplining and tracking. They were slow cooked songs and relationships. Relationships that lasted. We went on to have many songs recorded including a #1 (“Every Time You Cry”) with John Farnham and Human Nature. :) 

For those of you who didn’t know him, I’m sorry for that. I can list some of his esteemed credits … like he played with Dylan, Lone Justice, Maria McKee, wrote songs for the greats. But mostly he was this outrageous, hilarious, savantly talented human.

Gregg had no tolerance for artists who couldn’t write and when we did a 3-way with one of those artists it was likely he’d simply get up and leave when he discovered they were lacking this necessary ingredient — talent. His publisher would call me to see if Gregg was behaving and I had to deliver the news that yet again he … disappeared. I couldn’t blame him. I never had that kind of nerve. But I get it. Life is short. 

He lived hard. Life took a toll on his body. But not his soul. 

In the last few years, when we’d get together, it did seem plausible he wasn’t long for the world. On that Zoom call I asked him how he was doing and he replied, “Well, I have a lot of doctors and I take a lot of pills.” If we were writing that day it would have been our first line. So many places to go from there. Right? 

But perhaps it was a telling reveal. 

I said I’d call him in the beginning of October when I got back from travels and we’d make a plan to hang. But I didn’t. I’m not gonna beat myself up over that. We both know we would have eventually. We always did. It’s just that this time eventually didn’t come.

I’m finished typing. Wiki has changed “Gregg is” to “Gregg was.” So quickly. So impersonal. Fuck you WIki. And we are forced once again to get up and move about a world that feels so different. Emptier. Cloudy.

We will miss you, Greggy. I’m grateful I was your passenger.