hal blaine at home...

 Hal in his living room (2015)

Hal has a modest home and it wasn’t filled with fancy furniture or things. He didn’t even have a fancy stereo system. He listened to his music on a small stereo that you see above him. He lived his life very modestly very much like we do. He was the every man. He didn’t wear fancy clothes. He would joke that he was able to save buying clothes because of all the t shirts he would get while attending places like NAMM. Part of what made Hal very endearing and approachable is that he preferred living just like everyone else and blending in

When he got into the studios at first he saw it as a means to have steady work instead of struggling and wondering if he’d ever work again. It soon took off and became something much bigger than he anticipated. Within weeks he said it turned into a wildfire. Suddenly he was making more money than he ever dreamed of. He could suddenly buy all the nice things he could only dream about as a poor boy and then a struggling musician. There was a little competition going on between him and Tommy Tedesco too. He said every time he would buy something big, Tommy would buy something bigger. Every time he would buy something small, Tommy would buy something smaller

When we are in our thirties many of us and Hal too think we want the biggest house or the fanciest car. And that’s what happened to him too. Part of it was also that he was embedded in this entertainment world and was surrounded by people that had nice things. He wanted to be part of that. And at the time at the peak of his career based on what he said he was making and adjusted by today’s dollars he was making millions. So he got caught up in the Hollywood hype. He bought a home in the Hollywood Hills. He said all his neighbors were noted people. He remembered seeing Barry Gordy’s young son being picked up for school by a huge stretch limousine.

Hal had a certain insecurity about him that came from growing up poor. Early on he tried to emulate one of his heros Dean Martin. He got his hair cut like him at the same place that Dean did. He bought some of the same shirts that Dean had specially made and wore. When he was in New York City he spotted a pinky ring and bought it because it was just like Dean’s. With all this money Hal wanted to buy the toys he now could afford. He bought his huge house, his Rolls Royce and a yacht. He also made a poor choice of a life partner as someone he felt he had earned and did love but this person turned out to be a superficial gold digger

At the time he knew this “party” wouldn’t last forever. He said later he wished that he had been smarter and saved more money back then. But he was caught up in the hype. And eventually all the walls came tumbling down. Unfortunately in Hal’s case he has three things happen to him concurrently….studio work waning, losing his gig with John Denver and his divorce. He had to sell almost everything he had. And so he was left with very little and almost had to start over both financially and career wise

In later years I’m not so sure that he really missed all the things he lost as much as he was upset at how they were taken from him. However he wanted to get back a semblance of that for his own peace of mind. At the end of his life he said “I lost everything for about ten minutes but I got it all back”. He just had a mini version of it with his modest home and another Rolls. The Rolls he had was about 20 years old. It was the last major thing he bought in 2015 and the last piece of the puzzle

He never wanted to live in LA again or be a part of the Hollywood scene. He called it Hollyweird. Although he had experiences and great joy during those years they also brought him much heartache. There were parts of that time he chose not to remember because it hurt too bad. Sometimes those thoughts would haunt him at night

The person you see here in this picture and how he’s living was the true Hal inside. He saw his time in the studio as just his job. He said he was just a worker. He was proud of being in the union. He said “I was no different than a fellow in a factory putting refrigerator doors on a refrigerator”. To many they looked at him and thought wow you played with Elvis. And even though Hal was indeed proud of playing with those noted people he never let it go to his head. It made him uncomfortable when people would fawn over him. He was very humble. The thing he enjoyed most was living quietly like any other retired person and being somewhat invisible when he wanted to enjoy going out to eat or shopping at the grocery store. He treated everyone like he was no better than them because that’s how he genuinely felt

If somehow he could have magically been given back in his later life all the things he lost I don’t think he would have wanted them. I’m sure he wished he could have retained them for the financial security they would have afforded him in later life. He probably would have sold them and would have avoided having to struggle so much mid life. He used to talk about how he wanted to live and die in Hawaii and maybe he could have been able to do that. But the way you see him living below was the real him and he was happy. He didn’t want much. He had a good pension and could live without money worries. And watching his tv, eating his sweets was enough for his happiness. Being self sufficient and having the freedom to do what he wanted, to get up in the middle of the night to make a snack, to sleep during the day and be relativity free of worries meant more to him than anything else

He didn’t want worshipped. What he wanted was to be able to take all his experience in both music and life and help other people in life. To him his success meant something to him not in that he had thousands of adoring fans because of it but that it gave him the means to teach and help so many people. He gave more than he took in life. Sometimes I forget that he played on all those hit records. I think of what a beautiful caring human being he was and how he suffered things he didn’t deserve in life and I miss him greatly