On Nine One One, while the whole of America was in fear and shock from those true believers diving our own commercial airlines into our skyscrapers, Larry Kegan was unable to get his tracheotomy suctioned and he couldn’t breathe. The lack of oxygen caused him to have a heart attack and he was gone before Jose came out of the Seven-Eleven with the batteries. Not one television reporter noticed that September 11 was the day Kegan returned to his God.
If he could have stood up he would have been six feet tall, and he wasn’t any wider than a beer truck. It always looked like the wheelchair had two flat tires and he was riding on the rims because of all that weight. Larry hated being overweight, and was not heavy until late in life when his organs went more and more haywire and they had to keep adding machines to keep him alive. He never saw anything wrong with himself, just some bad luck as a teenager, and a broken body. He used to say, “If I was on my feet I would never be fat.” So his friends became extensions of his arms and legs and tried to stay out of the way.
Larry Kegan the musician never brought up his Dylan connection except if you knew. Sometimes he’d mention Bob with a grin. He’d always put an emphatic spin on Bob. He’d open his eyes real wide, look dead at you, slowly shake his head, and smile like that cat outta Alice in Wonderland. The tone of his voice and smile said he was telling some kind of secret, important, inside joke. I never saw anyone put so much English on a name.
Larry knew he was mortal and that quads don’t tend to live as long. He would always say, “If I can just make it one more year…” That was his mantra. “One more year.”
Geno LaFond wrote songs and played guitar with him. They toured off and on for 15 years. “I would fly out and meet up with them, hang for a few days and then fly home,” Geno says. “Larry would go for weeks sometimes, and different people would meet up with him and help him. First time I traveled on tour was 1975. The Rolling Thunder Tour. Incredible!” Kegan and LaFond called themselves The Mere Mortals. They came up with the name when Geno first met Bob. “Larry and I laughed that even Bob was mortal. Although maybe we were a bit more so.” When The Mere Mortals played, Kegan avoided saying Bob’s name. Instead he’d say, “Here’s a song by a friend of mine.”
On the wall over Larry’s bed there were snapshots: Bob, Kegan, and Louis Kemp at 13 and again at 50, three boyhood buddies who kept in contact their whole lives. Below that was a snapshot of Kegan and Muddy Waters. Leaning on the top of the dresser there was The Bridge Concert poster featuring Neil Young, Edie Brickell & the New Bohemians, Cheech Marin, and The Mere Mortals. (Neil Young throws The Bridge Concert every year to raise money for the school his two disabled kids attend.) Over the years, The Mere Mortals had played front act for Bob, Neil Young, Eric Clapton, and a who’s who of some of the biggest names in music. Kegan was always in the middle of things with Scarlet Rivera, Kinky Friedman, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Kris Kristofferson, Rick Danko, Jackson Browne, and local blues and folkie players such as Willie Murphy, Paul Metsa, and Larry Long. It’s like the old joke where the Pope comes out with Kegan at St. Peter’s Square, huge crowds cheering. Somebody pulls your coat and asks, “Who’s the guy with Larry Kegan?”
Larry was a hip and talented guy, but only a mere mortal, with all the failings that come with the territory. Take this, for example: Larry was a high quad, so he had to get someone to brush his teeth, feed him, wipe his ass, or it didn’t get done. Let’s say it nicely: Larry was skillful at “motivating” people. He was among the best at playing the players because that’s how he got his nose scratched.
Kegan and Marty Keller were trying to market a film script, written from their unpublished book, Some Get The ’Chair: A Memoir of Sex, Disability and Rock ’n’ Roll. Knowing Kegan, Marty did most of the work. (“Some Get The ’Chair” is also a song by Kegan and LaFond.) It covers the sex resort Kegan started in Mexico for disabled Vietnam Vets—an achievement commemorated by the Willem Defoe character in Born on The Fourth of July. It covers the SAR, the sexual attitude reassessment program for disability now required at medical schools across the country, which was founded by Kegan with Dr. Ted Cole. It covers Kegan and Dylan as kids.
Last fall at Easy Creek was one of his best shows, but things were changing. Kegan and Geno were not tied to each other as they had been for years. Kegan always took the spotlight, but Geno wanted more recognition and Kegan resented that. Kegan’s living situation changed a few years ago when he and his significant other, Carol, bought a house together. He was not as “accessible” to his pals. She gave him something to live for and encouraged him to take better care of himself. He focused on Carol. He stopped saying “One more year,” stopped taking so many risks.
There was strain between Geno and Kegan, but it never erupted. I’d hear nasty behind-the-back comments from Kegan. About 3 one morning after he died, I got a call from Carol, saying it had been about a song. Kegan had tried to finish writing “Just Because of Your Kiss” with Geno and Tom Greenwald, but here the stories diverge. He did finish it with Dennis Morgan, a Nashville songwriter originally from Sleepy Eye (“Sleepin’ Single in a Double Bed”). To me, it looked like Dennis, a songwriter with a wall full of gold records, finished it. Larry finally agreed that Geno and Tom had a part of the song, and it ended up that Dennis got half ownership while Larry, Tom, and Geno split the other half. That incident put a strain on Geno and Larry’s 30-year friendship. The fact that Larry loved a woman and shared a house with her—pushing 60, he was starting to settle down—and that Geno wanted more recognition meant they needed to renegotiate their relationship. What would have happened is anybody’s guess because Larry died first.
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