RIP Robert Bower

[susanm]

My heart is breaking over the passing of Robert. I met Robert in 1983 on the first day of my first job in NYC. It was during lunchtime - the job was on Broadway and 40th st. I wandered into Hotalings on 42 street and there was Robert - friendly and outgoing. We started talking about music, the theater and art. A few days later I went back to the store and to my surprise Robert had made a tape cassette for me with my favorite artists on it!!! I knew I would be friends with him forever. Robert was a sweet, kind and most of all loving person. He loved his family, his friends, his cats (and his martini with 3 onions!) My dear friend - I will miss you for ever.

[Joe Way]

Anne & I are so saddened to learn about Robert's passing. We met him for the first time at the "Came So Far for Beauty" tribute concert in Prospect Park. Robert had brought three of his lovely neighbors who joined us for the concert-one only had to notice his kindness and thoughtfulness toward them to recognize what a decent man he was. We were able to speak with him briefly at the Knitting Factory at the New York event.

We will miss him. Thank you for posting the lovely pictures of him. Rest in Peace.

Joe

[MaryB]

It is easy to see from all the recollections and tributes that this was a much beloved man who will be missed greatly. My condolences to his family and all his friends.

[dick]

HELP! Robert’s Cats Need Homes

One of Robert’s highest priorities during his life was care of his feline family. He rescued, nursed to health, and footed vet bills for many fortunate cats. Their well-being was always on Robert’s mind. When he so unexpectedly died, four cats were under his care in his Tribeca apartment.

The cats have all received shots and have been “inside” pets for some time. If you can possibly help with placement into good homes, you would be giving Robert the best tribute he could imagine. Please pm or email me your contact information, and I’ll see that you get in touch with the right person for further description and to arrange adoption -- dickstraub@yahoo.com.

Sincere gratitude for your help!

[lizzytysh]

My heart is with all of Robert's loved ones as you struggle with his loss.
What a distinctive life he led on behalf of others.
So very soon. So very sad. Too soon doesn't even come close.


~ Lizzy

[karen]

I want to express my deepest condolences to Robert Bower’s family and friends on his untimely passing. He was a special and kind human being who I was privileged to share time and space with on several occasions. I will greatly miss him. I am sorry this posting is late, but I cannot visit or post to the Forum as often as I would like to, because I have problems sitting at the computer. That is why, I did not learn until this week of Robert’s passing and I was deeply saddened and shocked to learn of Robert’s passing on August 5th. I was deeply touched to read all the outpouring of love for Robert in all the postings on the Forum since the news of his untimely passing was told to us by Dick Straub.

I first met Robert at the 2004 New York Event. I spent the most time with him at one of Perla’s fabulous concerts in New York (Makor, July 2006). Robert was sitting with Dick, Linda and Esther, Leonard’s sister, at the table next to mine at Perla’s concert. Before Perla’s concert started, Dick introduced me to Robert as “Leonard’s Archivist.” I briefly sat at their table before Perla’s concert started, to “visit” with Dick, Linda, Esther and Robert. Robert told me how he faithfully clipped and sent to Leonard (keeping a copy for himself and meticulously documenting in many large books every clipping that he had ever sent to Leonard) every article that mentioned Leonard that he found in various publications. He also told me that he collected all of Leonard’s record albums and even though he had all of Leonard’s albums, he was always looking for vintage albums to add to his collection. I told Robert there was a terrific store that sold vintage albums (I had picked up a copy of Leonard’s first album “Songs” there--even though I had two copies already--because I cannot do without that album!!—as “Songs” is the album I have listened to every night since 1973--to the present--before I go to sleep. I always looked for additional copies of Leonard’s first album in case one of my albums skipped!) I told Robert that the vintage record store was on City Island, which is, for me, a “magical” place almost “hidden” in The Bronx (in NYC). City Island is a boating and fishing village and is also known for its resident artists, pottery shops and antique stores. City Island is where I bought my “spare” copy of “Songs” many years prior at a vintage record store. (There was a wonderful 2009 movie called “City Island” starring Andy Garcia in which the Island was as much a “star” of the movie as the actors). Robert had never been to City Island and he gave me his address and phone number so that one day we might go to City Island together, visit the Island and go to the vintage record store. Unfortunately and to my deep regret, we never were able to coordinate that trip.

In 2007, when Leonard presented Anjani at Joe’s Pub, I saw Robert again. We expressed our joy at being able to attend this very special and beautiful concert.

I last saw Robert at Leonard’s concert at Radio City Music Hall in May 2009. During intermission, I went over to where Robert was sitting and we expressed our mutual joy at being able to see Leonard’s glorious return to the stage, his stellar performance with his stellar band in this landmark Hall.

That was the last time I saw Robert and I am so saddened to know that the concert would be the last time I would have “the honor of [his] evening.” Now that Robert has passed, another quote in another song that Leonard sings comes to mind when I think of Robert: “Passing through, passing through, sometimes happy, sometimes blue, glad that I ran into you, tell the people that I saw you passing through.” I was honored to know Robert and I will always remember him with great fondness and respect as Leonard’s Archivist and as the special human being that he was.

1975: Washington, D.C., The Cellar Door/1985: New York, Carnegie Hall/1993: New York, The Paramount/2009: New York: Beacon/Radio City/Madison Square Garden

[dick]

Update

Robert's friend Joe is caring for Rent, and the other two cats are in a shelter -- if they can be domesticated, they will go up for adoption. If not, they can get food and care where they are.

On December 15, 2011, at The Town Hall, NYC, Rufus and Martha Wainwright continued Kate's tradition of performing a Christmas show. This one dubbed "A Not So Silent Night." From now on, the shows will be benefits for the Kate McGarrigle Sarcoma Research Fund.

Show included most family members and long time supporters, plus Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson, plus Loudon and Sloan Wainright, Lucy Wainwright Roche, Teddy Thompson, Jenni Muldaur, Joan Wasser, and Sean Lennon. All performed. Of important note for this thread, midway during the show ...

Anna McGarrigle spoke glowingly of her dear sister, Kate, and "Robert Bower. the best fan any artist could have." Very moving moment!

[dick]

NYTimes on the concert

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/17/arts/ ... all&st=cse

In the Tradition of a Matriarch, This Family Keeps Crooning and Caroling
By JON PARELES

“A Not So Silent Night,” the concert at Town Hall on Thursday, was a typical Christmastime family gathering: motley, convivial, multigenerational, jokey, affectionate, conscious of passing years and tinged with both skepticism and faith. There wasn’t any bickering, though. The family onstage happens to be packed with singers and songwriters — troupers all — and this year the next generation was resuming a tradition.

Rufus and Martha Wainwright, children of the songwriters Kate McGarrigle and Loudon Wainwright III, have taken up their mother’s annual Christmas-concert-cum-family-reunion project, which was last presented in New York City in 2008; she died in 2010. This year’s show, a benefit for the Kate McGarrigle Fund for Sarcoma Research, easily reclaimed the homey charm of its predecessors, in a concert that hopscotched through the Christmas repertory, from old carols to brand-new songs, from hymns to Tin Pan Alley to rock. The wardrobe featured glitter, tinsel and quasi-medieval costumes, although Ms. Wainwright’s top was apparently from a marching band uniform.

Now the patriarch — Loudon Wainwright III, who divorced Ms. McGarrigle and went on to marry another songwriter, Suzzy Roche — has rejoined the family troupe. “If it weren’t for me, half of these people wouldn’t be here,” he crowed as he arrived onstage.

He had a topical number with hit-and-miss punch lines — “Newt Gingrich Is Running for Prez,” to the tune of “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” — and then one of his startlingly acute songs about nothing other than the sprawl, tension and hope of a growing family, with lines like “We gather for a holiday/And pray for quick safe getaway” and “What family is not insane?” His daughter Lucy Wainwright Roche sang with him.

The concert ambled between the serious and the lighthearted. Rufus Wainwright left his microphone behind to sing a reverent, unamplified “Cantique de Noël,” the French original of “O Holy Night”; he also sang a slinky, finger-snapping “What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve?” Ms. Wainwright touched on the anxiety behind “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” with her high, nervy croon.

Ms. McGarrigle was mourned, as her sister Anna McGarrigle and Ms. Wainwright performed the last song she wrote, the eerie “Proserpina,” and Anna’s daughter, Lily Lanken, sang “Wise Men,” which looks at the Middle East of the Nativity and of the present. Loudon Wainwright’s sister, Sloan Wainwright, brought her gospelly voice to her thoughtful song about the Rockefeller Center tree, “Big Bright Beautiful Tree.”

Friends were there too, including Lou Reed, Laurie Anderson and Marianne Faithfull, as well as a coterie of second-generation songwriters: Sean Lennon, who led a singalong of John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s “Happy Xmas (War Is Over),” and Jenni Muldaur and Teddy Thompson, who teased through “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.”

Ms. Anderson devised one of the concert’s quiet epiphanies: a spooky reinvention of “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” sung by Martha Wainwright, that used the chords of a simulated string orchestra to bring out all the foreboding in a song about “hopes and fears” and “deep and dreamless sleep.”

Mr. Reed had family in mind, with his guitar tolling as he sang John Lennon’s desolate “Mother,” joined by Sean Lennon on piano. Then, deadpan, Mr. Reed got girl-group backup from Martha Wainwright, Ms. Muldaur and Joan Wasser (a k a the indie-rocker Joan as Policewoman) to revive “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah” in its Phil Spector/Bob B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans incarnation. Earlier Ms. Wasser had offered a brand-new song of her own: a torchy, morose waltz about a Christmastime breakup.

In the three-hour show nearly everyone got a chance at the microphone: earnest amateur singers and cute children, as well as the professionals. The Wainwright-McGarrigle clan makes its Christmases inclusive, leavened — like any family — by imperfection.

[sturgess66]

Thank you to Roman/Goldin who posted a link on Facebook for this interview that took place in Copenhagen, Denmark on December 5, 1992
Talkshownet - Bonanza Forside -

http://www.dr.dk/bonanza/serie/portraet ... etId=65517

Leonard's sweet friend Robert Bower appears in a segment of the interview - from 31.00 to 34:18.

(And I just noticed that it was Anders Hansen who originally posted the link to the interview - here at the forum in another thread.
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=15500#p294314
Thank you Anders. )