Please Join in A Toast to Genius & Greatness Today, Saturday July 24, at 2:30 Mountain Time
My friend Albert Leccese, who designed the best sound systems in rock’n'roll, died last Saturday. We’d had just a nodding acquaintance ’til four and a half years ago, when he developed lung cancer. I helped him find the doctor who came up with a series of clinical trial medicines that extended a four month prognosis to more than 50 months of survival. That’s when I got to say he was my friend.
Tributes poured in all week from his friends in the music world–especially the backstage world where bonds of brotherhood are made like they are among soldiers. Everybody looked up to Albert because he was smart, funny, wise, fluent in half a dozen languages (Springsteen guitar tech Kevin Buehl says Albert taught him to say “No cheese” in seven), always willing to help. A huge man but his spirit was bigger. Imagine Terry Magovern with the ears of a god, perhaps the god of invention.
If he was a perfectionist, he was the best kind: He wanted to make the world a perfect place and he was willing not only to do his share but to help you do yours. Every time.
As Jon Landau said to me last night: “It’s simple about Albert: He made every room he walked into a better place.”
George Travis, who counted Albert as his best friend, no small compliment to either of them, told me, “Everybody who knows me and knows Albert knows what I feel about Albert. He was the definition of a friend, he was the definition of a father, he was the definition of a professional, he was the definition of basically what someone should be. And if only more of us could be like that. He was a mentor, he was a teacher. But mostly he was just Albert.”
There are people who leave the world a far far better place and do it all behind the scenes. The only people who remember them are the ones whose lives they touched, improved, changed profoundly.
Albert’s last request was that at his memorial, which is today, a toast be drunk. His favorites were sambuca and lemoncello but whether it’s water or wine, Coke or cognac, lift a glass today at 2:30 Mountain time.
Celebrate his greatness and humanity by pausing a moment in pursuit of your own.
Tags: Albert Leccese
