Monday, December 31, 2007


Bruce

I don't know how to write this. It's just... much, much too big. But Bruce always started with the story, and let things grow from there, so I'll try to do the same.

I met Bruce Steinberg when I was 20 years old, and I was vaguely scared of him. It was 1988, and I was halfway through college, and starting my first corporate job, at SCO. He was Vice President of something or other, and I was naive enough at the time to think that meant he was Very Important Indeed, and Not To Be Disturbed, lest he Rain Down Disapproval Upon Me.

I got to know him better over the next few years via the SCO-internal USENET newsgroups. He had a breezy, friendly, funny, encyclopedically-knowlegeable writing style, and as letters on a screen he wasn't so scary.

One day, someone said something in one of the groups about Bruce's "old band", It's A Beautiful Day. I was taken aback--I loved that band--and I went home and looked at the cover of their first album, and there his name was in the credits. I thought it must be a joke--the person posting must have been kidding Bruce around because he had the same name as a famous harmonica player. But when I asked Bruce about it, he said, "Yeah, that's me." It seemed oddly unimportant to him.

A few years passed. Bruce and I worked together on a short-term project, designing a customer survey card and a database for the results, and got to be friends. We'd shoot the breeze a little bit in the cafeteria from time to time, chitchat in the hallways. Then one day he walked past my office on the way to a meeting and stopped off to say hello. I don't remember now what we talked about at first--probably some recent upper-management idiocy at the company--and I said, "I am never going to be a manager."

He said, "Whoa, whoa, whoa. Okay, look... I just have a few minutes, but I need to tell you a story, so listen..."

And Bruce pulled up a chair, turned it around and straddled the back of it, and started telling me his life story. After a few minutes he realized he wasn't anywhere close to the end, so he decided to blow off his meeting, because this was more important to him.

Bruce started out as a child performer, doing summer stock and (I think) Broadway, singing as "The Li'l Bad Wolf" on a Mitch Miller-produced Walt Disney/Little Golden Record of the same name, and appearing on a Sunday morning live TV show. I'm not sure--I don't think he ever mentioned--how he'd gotten involved with all that, but he told me once that he'd had an insight working on that TV show: that the things he did for a few minutes every Sunday were appearing on 8-inch B&W TV screens all over metropolitan New York, and that that was really cool. It wasn't an ego trip at all, he wasn't immodest about it--but he really grooved on the feeling of action at a distance--a little thing done here that ripples outward into the world and has effects there. It was a formative experience for him.

He developed an interest in ham radio and electronics, and spent his time and allowance skipping signals off the ionosphere, getting signal reports from far-off countries, and tape-recording Sputnik. In the fullness of time he went to Cornell, studied electrical engineering, graduated, and went to work for NASA, designing telemetry hardware for Apollo at the Kennedy Space Center, and later working on the Mariner probes at Berkeley.

Meanwhile, he had developed an interest in music, art, and photography, and now that he was living in the Bay Area, he started taking pictures of rock 'n roll shows on spec. One day, with a casual fearlessness borne of having been around celebrities lots of times in his life, he called up Janis Joplin--her phone number was listed--introduced himself and asked if she'd like to see some of his photographs of her and her band from the San Jose Pop Festival. She was encouraging--eventually selecting one of his shots for cover art on her first solo album--and it led to regular work for him. He left engineering and pursued photography and art direction full time, designing some great album covers.



Somewhere in there he hooked up with It's A Beatiful Day, worked with them in his usual capacity as photographer and art director, but also played harmonica and worked as a truck-driver and roadie and all-around useful guy. Somewhere in there he produced an album by Link Wray. Somewhere in there he designed a billboard for Tower of Power, which gave him contacts in advertising, and somewhere in there he started branching out to working as an advertising designer and copywriter. As I remember the story, he'd done exactly one gig in that capacity, working for a hi-fi store, and the client was pleased--and recommended him to Larry and Doug Michels, who were starting a little software company in Santa Cruz called SCO.

They called Bruce in to help write copy for some early XENIX material, and the three of them hit it off. He hadn't been an engineer in a while, but he had the engineering background going for him--he understood technology, and he understood techies even better. And he had a key insight: That techies aren't any different from rock stars: kind of geeky, obsessive people who spend a lot of time immersed in highly technical details, building something beautiful. The story he told in his work was that techies are rock stars, in their own world.

Doug and Larry liked him enough to want to hire him full-time to do their marketing communications. He said he'd consider it, but set conditions: He wanted a title, so when he made calls it would be obvious he wasn't just some flunky, and he wanted the facilities to do all his production in-house. They gave him what he wanted, and he moved to Santa Cruz, and that's the story of how Bruce Steinberg, engineer and rock'n'roller, became the Vice President of Marketing and Communications at a high-tech company.

And here he got down to the point. "It sounds like a pretty random career, going from Apollo to rock'n'roll to SCO, but there was always a common thread that's run through all those jobs--it's always been about communication, about action at a distance. Every step happened organically, but I could never have told you five years in advance what I was gonna be doing. And I sure as hell couldn't have told you what I was never gonna do. Maybe you'll end up as a manager someday, maybe you won't, but you can't decide that now."

It was a hell of a good story, and well told, too, but mainly what I was struck by that day was the fact that this cat--this very hip and funny and in all ways admirable guy--was so generous with his time as to skip a meeting and sit down and Lay Wisdom on me, just because he didn't want to see me making the mistake of foreclosing too many options in my life. And he really did permanently change the way I see the world.

That set a pattern for us, afterward. We didn't talk all that often, but when we did, in person or by phone, more often than not it'd be two or three hours before we stopped. Sometimes there'd be email correspondences that went on for days or weeks, letters hundreds of lines long going both directions. He was one of only three people whose email I always saved. We were both storytellers, with similar conversational styles in some respects--both of us had a tendency to turn dialogues into monologues--the main difference being that his monologues were better. (Though I guess he appreciated mine. He once compared our conversations to "having a lounge gig playing for tone-deaf drunks who are challenged by the occasional jazz chord in a blues tune...then coming home to play with a neighbor who's into exactly the same kind of music you are".)

Several times, by happenstance, we ran into each other at Costco, and it got to be a running joke between us that we had a regularly scheduled meeting there. I always got home really late after those Costco trips, and my wife would want to know what took so long. "I ran into Bruce..." "Oh."

Bruce fell ill early this month with something I'd never heard of before called cardiac amyloidosis. I'd spoken with him for a few hours a few days before that, and he was fine--we had a great talk; I was trying to hook him up with my new employer, ISC, for some marketing consulting. But then I went off on a business trip, and then came back and got busy with holidays. A few weeks passed before I got around to one of my email folders and found a note from a mutual friend saying Bruce was in the hospital.

As soon as I read it, I called Bruce, and we talked for a while, then I went to visit him for a few hours the day after Christmas. He was obviously in bad shape, but in fairly good spirits, aside from some worry that he was having difficulty with words--"I feel brain damaged," he said. I knew he wasn't expecting to recover fully, but he had hopes of recovering enough to go home and get back to a less energetic version of his life. I left him an old powerbook we'd had around, and it turned out the hospital had wi-fi, so I was hoping that there'd be some email contact from him... but a few days passed and there was none.

Then yesterday the news arrived that Bruce had died in the wee hours of December 30, surrounded by his family. He was 64.

One of the last things I told him was about my six-year-old son, Ben--who Bruce quite liked, and it was mutual, though they'd only met a few times. "How's m'boy?" he'd ask me. I told him Ben has lately developed a deep enthusiasm for print advertising: paging through catalogs and magazines, pointing out the poses and props in the photographs, analyzing how and why each ad was made, improvising and reciting his own ad copy for imaginary products he's planning to invent someday, making the occasional powerpoint slide presentation on his mac. Bruce got a kick out of it, and showed me pictures and talked to me about his granddaugther Teagan.

I started noticing that Bruce was spacing out and falling half-asleep at odd moments during our conversation, so I told him to call me if he needed any assistance with the laptop, gave him a hug and told him I loved him, and drove home. I'm really, really grateful I had a chance to do that.

I told his daughter Jenny on the phone yesterday that Bruce was... well, not like a father to me, but a hip uncle, or a big brother. And one of the best friends I'll ever have. He might have given me some flack for saying this, but fuck it: The world's a much emptier place today.

Rest in peace, my friend. I miss you.

Bligs (14)


Comments:
Evan

I'm Fernando Pierry. I was a partner in SCO's distributor in Brazil till 1999.
I had just learned about Bruce passing and found your blog note a few moments later.
It was great to read that and remember Bruce a little bit. I was very moved. We met during Bruce's years at SCO; he always helped us a lot. We had him in Brazil once and it was a lot of fun.
I regret not being able to keep a link with him as you did. You sure have to feel rewarded by being able to be with him in the last few years and these last few days.
Just to add a funny note (he'd surely love to remember this): when he came to Brazil, he spent a weekend in Rio and then came back to Sao Paulo, where we had our office. When I asked how was it, he said: "Great. The Christ monument was closed and so was the Sugar Loaf trolley". I said: "Bummer. I'm sorry to hear that". And he went like: "No way! I collect photos of closed monuments. I have pictures of myself in front of the Big Ben totally covered during a renovation, the Taj Mahal..." and he went on and on with the story, saying he started to hunt closed monuments and built a gallery around it. This was classic self-mocking Bruce, always keeping a high spirit and his unusual angle at everything. It is sad to close 2007 with this news, but our memories of him will always be happy ones.
 
Thank you Evan for sharing that. And I love Fernando’s story about the closed monuments in Brazil. That is SO Bruce.

Got a minute? (As you probably know, that is Bruce’s classic opening line meaning you should relax because you are going to be listening for awhile.) I met Bruce in his first days at SCO in late 1983 or early 84. He was wearing his black leather jacket then, still wearing it when I left SCO in 1990, and still wearing it whenever I bumped into him (usually outside Lucky’s on 41st) in the years since. I suspect he would have worn it in the hospital bed if they’d allowed it. I imagine it was hanging nearby.

I was one of his first employees in Marcom, He taught me plenty as we watched SCO grow from 40 to 1000+. Aside from being one of the smartest and most imaginative people around, he was also a great mentor. His favorite line for me was, “there is no higher intelligence” delivered in his “serious as a heart attack” voice. What he meant was, listen to yourself, don’t expect anybody else to know more than you. I know he valued my particular brand of common sense amid a sea of new marketing suits and corporate politics. And I know that he always trusted and believed in me, more than I believed in myself. I still don’t understand why exactly, but it gave me a solid underpinning of confidence that I didn’t have before that.

Bruce was also a boss that could absolutely drive you crazy. He thought nothing of asking you to stay into the late hours to babysit a press release that needed rewriting, he never showed up for meetings on time so you’d often have to have the meeting over when he arrived. He had standards so high, and insights so complicated, he drove other departments insane. He was also right about 99.9% of the time, and smarter than almost everyone around him.

I owe a lot to Bruce and I will miss him. I still hear his voice and see that red ink pen when I write a press release that I know could be better. If he were writing this story it would be 10 pages longer, 10 times more complicated and 10 times more funny. I hope people have saved his classic emails. I’m going to look for the one about him finding an SCO XENIX manual in a gutter in San Francisco… that was one of my favorites.

I’m picturing Bruce at the pearly gates explaining in some detail how the whole dying process could be done a little better, and then maybe high-fiving Janice and Jimmy as he steps on through.

Brigid
 
Hey Evan,

George Hoffer pointed me to your blog. Well said, man.

Bruce once told me that software and rock-n-roll were the same thing, and it was an enlightening moment for me, and that thought has continued to illuminate my career no matter what I've done.

I'm sorry he's gone - as you noted, he was the genuine article.

Jeff Zurschmeide
 
In remembrance of B*, I went to work for Bruce in 1983 at SCO until 1993 as one of his "marcats" the job interview was unique in that it lasted several hours well into the evening (which I came to know was standard operating procedure - an endurance test) I came out of the interview knowing a little bit of everything about Bruce and he must of known that I was a good listener. For the next decade I spent, which seemed like a lifetime, with B* in his poorly lit office (which he preferred) with a glaring green screen illuminating his face watching his fingers fly across the the keyboards in a prolific torrent of email. Write he could. He was the energizer bunny of e-mail. Screens full of impeccably written insights. I know all to well about his red-editing pen, clipboard, corn nuts, and his black leather jacket. Bruce's saying for me was 'I don't know whether to kiss ya or kill ya' We definitely had our battles but I never doubted his logic or integrity and if he thought I did he would go to the ends of the earth to explain why I was wrong.
I'll miss you B*
Zee
 
Hi Evan,

Thanks for sharing. I think I see some of Bruces influence in your writing.

Bruce was one of a kind, and this is a huge loss. We'd only spoken a handful of times since I left SCO, but still he was one of my favorite people in the world. He was a good and brilliant man who aways had a great perspective, and a wonderful easy style of conversation. He always got it. He could always make it better, whatever it was. He was always able to find the positive and turn it into Rock and Roll.

I don't think I'd ever had a short conversation with Bruce. And it was always well worth it. He will be dearly missed.

Stewart Alpert
 
Brigid - here is the B* Xenix doc story told by the man himself. -rr-

re:

So I'm in San Francisco early yesterday evening, on my way to visit an
old friend who's been in and out of the hospital for the past few months
following major surgery and a variety of related problems.

She's currently in a nursing and physical rehab facility a few blocks up
Bush Street from Polk, and I eventually find a parking space in a faded,
outdated red zone in an alley that runs between Polk and Larkin. There
is almost no auto traffic down this short one-way street at this hour,
and the only pedestrians are young hustlers stepping off Polk Street for
a minute to take a leak behind a dumpster.

I walk up the alley towards Larkin, and as I turn the corner towards
Bush, I notice a number of nondescript but similar pieces of paper
strewn on the sidewalk near the curb, some falling into the gutter among
other trash. Inner-city gutter trash, especially in the vicinity of the
Tenderloin and Polk Gulch, wouldn't ordinarily be that remarkable, but
there's something vaguely familiar about these sheets. For some reason,
the first thing their common size, text layout, and three-hole punching
remind me of from a distance is old software doc. Funny how the mind works.

But this is Polk Gulch, and these apparent pages (if they're related to
each other at all) could be discarded three-ring binder filler that came
out of just about anything from a hair salon manual to a leather-goods
pricing guide. In any case, I'm curious, so I go over to the curb and
pick up the closest one. Instantly, my eye is drawn to its footer line:

XG86/286-1-27-86-2.1.0 - 36 - The Santa Cruz Operation

Incredulous, I look immediately at the header:

XENIX for personal computers

Perhaps it's a spooked reaction to the incongruity of this discovery,
but I find myself going native and shaking my head momentarily over the
fact that (sigh) someone in Doc left the "Inc." off "The Santa Cruz
Operation" again -- and even more importantly, they left the "SCO" out
of what should've been "SCO XENIX." Old editing habits die hard.

And then I realize that as early as "1-27-86" we didn't yet have any
such thing as an actual corporate style guide, and weren't yet even
officially calling it "SCO XENIX" anyway -- we would just start testing
reaction (both customers' and Microsoft's :) to sticking "SCO" in front
of "XENIX" by handing out low-profile "SCO XENIX" pins at UniForum '86
in Anaheim a month or more later.

(Most of the staffers in Microsoft's booth -- recall that MS had a
~major~ UniForum presence in those days, pushing their own XENIX 286 --
weren't aware that SCO even sold XENIX and somehow thought the pins were
the coolest thing they'd ever seen. They kept coming by for handfuls of
them, and by the end of the first day every lapel working or visiting
the Microsoft booth was sporting an SCO XENIX pin. This is the same
Microsoft that only months before had sued SCO to prevent us from moving
out of the 8086 ghetto and into the brave new world of the 286 at all --
go figure. But I digress... )

I quickly pick up another page, and another, and another. What I am
gradually gathering here -- from between crushed Corona six-pack cartons
and discarded fliers for nipple-ring emporiums and XXXX-rated live shows
-- are clearly the remnants of an original set of XENIX 286 Release
Notes. Unbelievable.

I'm soon reminded that "XENIX-286 System V" could run on such a variety
of classic hardware as the IBM PC AT ("20 or 30 meg version"), Compaq
Portable, Kaypro 286i, Mitsubishi-286, Sperry PC/IT, Tandy 3000, NCR
PC-8, and Victor V286. (For extra bonus points, can anyone honestly say
they remember the equally supported Contel/CADO AT/4, Corona ATP, Epson
Equity III, and Tomcat 3200-AT? :)

Can you get nostalgic about memory cards from AMI, AST, Quadram, Tecmar,
Talltree Systems, and Silicon Valley Systems?

Do you get all misty contemplating the Boot Hill of hard drive vendors
represented by the likes of the CMI 15, the Miniscribe 20, Seagate 20,
CDC 30, Rhodime 30, Mountain (20 or 30), or the ever-popular Mountain
Hard File?

Wait -- there's more! Another series dated March 15, 1989 (hey, whoever
owned this doc was a steady, long-term, early-adopting SCO customer!)
does not specify the OS release number, but offers descriptions of such
random features as 86rel, dialcodes, and an Intro to File Formats. (For
a shot at being an SCO History Black Belt -- okay, maybe a Brown Belt --
can anyone Name That OS Release? Is that your ~final answer~...? :)

I have absolutely no clue where these pages came from, nor why they
appeared on the mean Streets of San Francisco at this time. In any
case, they are all in remarkably good condition (for 14-year-old gutter
trash, anyway). Several are exquisitely embossed and/or watermarked by
what appears to have been a high-performance radial tire with plenty of
tread life left on it.

They are all a regulation 5-3/8" x 8-1/2", suitable for framing, and
available free of charge to any interested historical Xenix Doc buffs on
a first-come, first-served basis. Operators are standing by -- call or
write today! B*
 
Evan,

Thanks so much for the rememberances about Bruce.

Three quick stories, brought to mind by the album covers:

The Doobie Brothers: Living on the Fault Line. I met Bruce when he interviewed with Doug and Larry at SCO on Mission Street. His card had the Transamerica-in-the-bay image on it. I remember wondering why the heck he had this image on his card. Someone else saw it and told Doug he'd just ripped it off of the Doobie Brothers. Doug grinned and told them this was the guy who created it. Bruce and I talked a little and he mentioned he was making a calender featuring the Transamerica building in the middle of various locales, hoping to sell it to Transamerica.

The Flying Toasters: Hm, two stories here. One: According to Bruce, he came up with this image while hanging out with the Airplane. Grace Slick came in, drunk, and said she had a joke: "Why did the roadie throw the toaster out of the window? Because he wanted to see time fly!". Later on, he got a call from a screen saver company that featured Opus from Bloom County shooting flying toasters from the sky. They were being sued by the screen saver company that featured flying toasters, and they wanted to know who had the original rights to the album cover! Why, Bruce, of course. I never heard the result of that, but I hope Bruce made out like a bandit.

Kingfish cover. Bruce gave a copy of this image to me and my first wife as a wedding present, inscribed "Robin + Dean - Blue Skies, Green Lights + Sweet Music Always, Bruces 6/8/86" It's a beautiful, beautiful image.

"bruces" was his SCO email name, as I'm sure many of you remember.

Well, hope to see y'all at the memorial. Sad times, good memories.

Yrs Trly, Dean "Ace" Thomas
 
We will miss Bruce!

Amazing how many lives he has touched.

I would also bump into him from time to time (like in front of Dharma's in Capitola several times) and his loving smile and black leather jacket embrace was always welcome to my being with a reciprocal purple hug. (I can still feel it!) He would follow up sometimes with an email, like time had never passed between us.

The guy was always cool, always sweet (even when he was pissed off) and I will never forget the light in his eyes behind those glasses. Thank you, Bruce, for sharing your vibe!

My condolences to his family and the zillion friends that love him.

He is gone, but not forgotten.

Love and Purple,
Cherrie McCoy "cherriem"
 
Yesterday, in the middle of another hectic day at the evil empire, recovering from flu... I received an email from Doug Michels, regarding the passing of Bruce Steinberg. It threw me back to a most wonderful time in my life, when I had moved from LA to Santa Cruz with my boyfriend John, into a half finished house in Bonny Doon, and shortly thereafter started working for this crazy company in downtown Santa Cruz, where everyone was barefoot, and the principals interviewed me munching on popcorn. I remembered the camraderie of all the early SCO employees - Doug, Larry, Julie, Brigid, Laura, Dean, Scott, Dave, Jim, Paul and so many others and I remember when Bruce Steinberg first started. He was so erudite, funny, thoughtful, and possessed such a wicked sense of humor. In those days, Saturday Night Live was still popular and I had latched onto Eddie Murphy's Buckwheat sketch -- and replied to everything with an 'oTay! Buhweah!' I did that to Bruce in our first conversation and he laughed and laughed, and we thereafter called each other 'Buhwhea' - and asked each day if everything was 'Otay?' Bruce was a great storyteller and a stickler for detail - he had a warmth and understanding that was like an older brother - loving and watchful, but also willing to slap you upside the head when you needed it. He was so low key about the many accomplishments in his life. The world is certainly dimished with his passing.
 
Evan
Thank you for the history and great memories

They say that memories are often closely associated with scents or tastes.. well. the first thing that came to me on hearing of the loss of B* was leather, the smell of his cool leather jacket that he often wore. A warm, happy, hip memory to have I think...

-clarissa "lion" eastham
clarissa.eastham@finisar.com
 
What made Bruce different from the rest of us was his brain structure. Most of us have brains partitioned into areas with fancy names like cerebellum and hypothalamus. Bruce just had one big play area. The rest of us divide the world into Science and Art and Politics and History and Business and Music (and don't expect a jazzman to talk about rock, much less bluegrass or classical). None of this applied to Bruce.

When I wanted to understand where the phrase "not so much" came from, I emailed Bruce and within minutes (mind you, this was at midnight) he replied not only with the TV show where he thinks the phrase began, but with a discussion of the cadences in Yiddish that might have given rise to it. When I wanted to know the name of the adman who wrote the old Schaefer beer jingle heard on New York radio and TV in the 60s, I went to Bruce. When I wondered what a group of incredibly bright lights were in a night-time aerial photo of the Gulf of Mexico, Bruce shot back with the name of the oil rig and the company that operated it.

Bruce just knew more things and more people, and made more connections between jarringly different disciplines, than anyone I had ever encountered before or since. After a while, I just gave up asking the question: "Bruce, how the hell did you know *that*?" He just did. All of us who knew Bruce knew that he had packed several lifetimes into the same time the rest of us can barely manage one. Forrest Gump? Fuhgeddaboutit…Bruce Steinberg!

So I remember his marvelous brain, and his unrivaled storytelling abilities. But what I really remember is that big laugh that told me that I had scored with a joke. And how he would check up on my wife and kids long before he had met them. And how generous he was with his time; there was no such thing as a short conversation with Bruce. I once asked him "Could we get together when I’m in San Francisco?", and after an all-morning talk at Red's Java House (where some of Bruce's vertigo-inducing Bay Bridge photos hang), he decided to take me for a "quick" drive in his car to see the warehouse where he had erected that famous Tower of Power billboard. "Quick" indeed; he proceeded to tell me every single detail of that project, including (I am not making this up) the rules for character leading and kerning for freeway signs specified by the Federal Highway Aministration's Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices. Twice, he had to get out of the car to piss, and finally we decided it was time to get dinner, so we could talk some more.

All of us who knew Bruce will miss him like hell.

-Jim Simpkins (in Seattle)
 
I had the honor of helping design and run Bruce's gallery web site and got to work on two CD art design projects with him as well.

Jim mentions Bruce's knowledge of the Federal Highway Commission's "Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices". He's not kidding. When designing Bruce's gallery logo (based, obviously, on his famous Tower of Power "Back to Oakland" design), Bruce insisted that I refer repeatedly to that sleep-inducing tome until the sign was just right. In case you're wondering, the font is "Highway Gothic EM". Bruce knew that inplicitly -- along with the name of every conguero in each Bay Area Latin band in chronological order, and owner of the aforementioned oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. Incredible.

When laying out the text for the sign, Bruce labored over the kerning. "You'll know when it's right. Keep expanding it beyond any reasonable amount and all of a sudden your brain will just tell you it's right." As usual, Bruce was right. Finally, the sign was perfect!

Bruce checks it out and loves it! ... then says "You know what would really put it over the top?? Just a hint of sunlight coming from over your left shoulder to match the lighting in the panorama." AARRRRRGGGHH!! I just wanted to finish the logo and sleep! But... I knew he was exactly right. Everytime my instincts wanted to do a "really good" job on something, Bruce made me do it better.

Finally, the lighting was just right and Bruce loved it!

...

"You know what would REALLY sell it? Some bird droppings."

I miss you already, Bruce. You made me better than I would have been.
 
I can't remember a time when I didn't know Bruce. From my earliest memories, I can’t recall a birthday or anniversary when Bruce or Artie (his Dad) weren’t there.

Even after he’d headed west to make his fortune, no visit home was complete without a ‘swing by” to the house. Mom’s prowess as a prolific producer of the finest Italian food in the Tri-State Area is legendry. And both he and my mother welcomed the opportunity to stuff Bruce full of lasagna whenever he’d visit.
“Good God! Your Mother is trying to kill me” And yet, somehow, he’d always find room when Jesse pulled out the Lemon Meringue Pie.

Whether he was designing systems for NASA, shooting album covers for Janis Joplin or sending post cards from some place we couldn’t pronounce, we took a pride in his achievements that you only feel for one of your own.
He was, is, and always will be, family.

The flood of memories is overwhelming and only reminds me nothing I can share will change that fact that he's gone.

Those of us, who knew and loved him, know what we've lost and how sorely he will be missed.


So long Big Bro.


Alfonso Adinolfi
 
I just found about about Bruce's passing today and am very saddened. I've worked with some of the It's A Beautiful Day crew for many years and had been graced by meeting Bruce and getting to know him a bit as we both were in the Santa Cruz area. He would sit in with our local band as well as IABD when he could. He had such great stories and insight to the real summer of love days and was able to move his life far beyond his ties with the past in so many creative ways. A darn nice guy he was! RIP Bruce...

Toby Gray
 

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