This is an interview with Bruce, fifty-nine years old, a former shipping department employee, and general music enthusiast. Bruce is usually quiet, but always up to talk about his first love.
He is also my dad.
***
Sarah Legg: Your first, sorry, second love is music. When did you first discover your second love?
Bruce Legg: Sitting in my bedroom. Specifically for me it was records. Categorizing them, worrying about them. I made a lot of mistakes—finding out that maybe I did it the wrong way by trying to find what writers were writing about instead of doing it myself, viscerally.
Sarah: The band that always comes up is The Ramones. Is that the first time you went down the track of just doing it because it sounded great?
Bruce: The Ramones were so good to me that I thought, “No one is ever going to hear this band the way I hear them.” I saw them twice with Tommy on drums. They were always the same; loud, fast three-chord songs, not a break between them. No stage really, just them facing front and going for it right in front of your face. The bass player wasn’t grooving with the drummer or anything like that.
Sarah: Why do you think they played that way?
Bruce: I think they were scared out of their minds.
Sarah: In grade school, you didn’t have friends who were interested in the same music as you.
Bruce: There were the people that played in bands. I thought they were untouchable because I was just so nerdy but I talked to them later and they seemed like nice guys. I’ve heard it said that Seattle people seem snobbish, elitist. And they’re not. They just think, “Who in their right mind would talk to me?” And that’s the way I felt.
Sarah: When did you talk to them later?
Bruce: We were talking on the playground during gym class. They wondered why I was so quiet, so they started bugging me, trying to get stuff out of me. That’s when it came up. One of them started it with, “Are something? Or are you a nothing?”
Sarah: What? What did you say?
Bruce: I said, “Uh … I don’t know. He asked, “What kind of music do you like? The Beatles?” No, don’t like the Beatles.” Went on like that. “Do you play an instrument?” Yeah, I play piano. “You should play guitar.”
Sarah: You should play guitar. Yeah.
Bruce: So I think the week after that I went out and got my first guitar. It was 29 bucks from Myers music.
Sarah: Did you ever go up to him later and say ‘I play guitar.’
Bruce: No. God. He was so much better than me.
Sarah: Hey man, I went out and got that guitar like you told me to.
Bruce: No, no. I started listing off all the bands I liked and that’s when one guy started singing Dedicated Follower of Fashion by the Kinks just to kind of make fun of me. But, yeah, they were all cool guys. I wasn’t a cool guy and I knew the distinction.
Sarah: Did you ever have a time when you felt like a cool guy?
Bruce: I felt like a cool guy in my own mind. I had a complete fantasy life going at all times. Some kids are like that and I was one of them.
Sarah: You describe the quintessential Seattle sound as being humorless, overly serious. Do you think your record collecting was the same way?
Bruce: It is until I find something funny… like Kurt Cobain’s solos, which are always bad. Fumble fingered. Noisy. Unintentional humor. I see this, I’m getting away with it, and there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it except jump in. Or hold your ears.
