It was 1993, and I was with my buddy Danny and a few other college chums at Lollapalooza in Mountain View, California. Primus and Alice in Chains were the headliners, though Danny and I were most excited about the side stage offering, a fairly new band we were into named Tool. It was sometime toward the middle of the festival that we headed over to check them out.
The crowd was only a couple of hundred strong, and we made our way toward the front. A few minutes later, an elderly, frail looking, grey haired man meandered out on the stage and said:
“Ladies and gentlemen, I’d like to introduce some good friends of mine. Put your hands together for Tool.”
The mushrooms and alcohol I had been consuming that day clogged the rusting gears of my brain, but eventually visual recognition kicked in. “Jesus Christ,” I yelled in Danny’s ear as the deafening music began to play, “I think that was fucking Timothy Leary.”
The show was great, though I remember it as pretty short. Lead singer and frontman Maynard had hardly broken a sweat on the scorching day before the band left the stage. I recall being a little disappointed as the two of us headed over to the bar for a drink.
But then, to our collective glee, we saw that Mr. Leary was sitting at a small, round table in the bar area with a fortyish, heavy-set man. Leary was staring into space and his companion seemed to be looking for something to say or do. We approached them aggressively, unable to contain our excitement.
“Mr. Leary, oh God, it’s so amazing to meet you,” I exclaimed. “You’ve been a big influence on me. You’re life’s work is, like, an inspiration.”
The Acid King said something, but I couldn’t hear him.
Danny chimed in, “You like Tool? How long have you known those guys?”
The Harvard professor mumbled and muttered unintelligibly. His eyes looked upward, as if searching for just the right word or phrase. Alas, the proper verbiage eluded him, though he continued speaking in his incomprehensible tongue. We waited for what seemed like several minutes on his every garbled word for some piece of wisdom, some kernel of truth; we waited in vain.
“Mr. Leary is very tired, gentlemen,” his companion-handler finally interceded haughtily. “I’m going to have to ask you to give him some space.”
We turned and departed the company of this legend of drug culture, disillusioned by the unexpected lesson we had received.
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