I’m not all that much of a Bruce Springsteen fan, or a golf fan, either. (I like to play golf. I have no interest in watching other people play golf, or in following their doings on or off the course.)
But I enjoyed this story, which I was turned onto by Twitter:
SUMMIT, N.J. — Bruce Springsteen had fired him in 1974, and as he stood outside the Canoe Brook Country Club, stood there as a caddie who helped his man qualify for the U.S. Open, Vini Lopez did not blink when asked why he was banished by the Boss.
“I’m not a sheep,” he said. “I didn’t blindly follow Bruce. In fact, the only person I’ve ever blindly followed in my life is standing right there.”
The original drummer and founding father of the E Street Band was pointing at Mark McCormick, a 49-year-old club pro from New Jersey who needed to throw down some Advil during a morning rain delay to temper the arthritis flaring up in his right knee and to somehow make it through 36 all-or-nothing holes.
McCormick had never played in a Grand Slam event. He said this was his fifth and final crack at a sectional qualifier, his last shot at playing in an Open, and he brought with him a 63-year-old caddie who could’ve been the biggest star in the field.
Vini “Mad Dog” Lopez met Springsteen in the late ’60s, played with him in a band called Steel Mill, and later with what would become an iconic American act. Lopez ended up in a dispute with Springsteen’s manager, and a year before “Born to Run” became the game changer for the E Street Band, Bruce decided he needed a new drummer.
“He did it face to face,” Lopez said. “Bruce just said, ‘You’re out,’ and there weren’t going to be any second chances.”…
You should read the whole thing.
I know who Max Weinberg is — in fact, I know his daughter. Never heard of Vini Lopez, though. Translating it into terms I might better understand, I guess Vini is sort of Pete Best to Max’s Ringo Starr. (Except that the Beatles didn’t have the nerve to fire Pete — they made Brian Epstein do it.)
I’ve always felt bad for Pete Best. But how cool would it be to learn, decades later, that Pete had been doing something else for all these years, and had done it so effectively that he was about to hit the big time doing that? Very cool, actually.
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Another analogy… in golf terms, Vini is sort of Romeo to McCormick’s Tin Cup.
You had to see the movie to get that…