Vinyard Didication Speech
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"George came to my house on South Street one day, he was going out with my
sister at the time…and he knocked on the door and said they were looking
for a lead guitar player for the band. He brought me over to Tex and
Marion's house for the first time. If Tex was here today he would be
insufferable, he was a terribly grumpy old bastard… actually the park
should have been named Saint Marion's."
"But Tex was also somebody who opened his house completely, opened his heart
completely, opened his wallet to us and allowed us to turn it up as loud as
we wanted when all of the other adults were trying to get us to turn it
down."
"It was a very unusual situation and I suppose, perhaps, some mirror of it
went on in towns all across the country where there were adults… Marion,
you were probably…were you 30 at the time? (Marion denies being 30 at the
time, much laughter) …adults anyway… who are really the unsung heros of
rock and roll, without which we wouldn't have had a place to practice and
hone our craft."
"And Marion… you feeding us those sandwiches every day and Tex coming home
on a Friday with his paycheck and going across the street and buying us a
Shore microphone or guitar strings or anything that we needed and long after
Tex stopped managing me when I came back and I needed somebody to co-sign a
loan for me… for a decent guitar and amplifier… I gotta' give the guy
credit, he did it… he put his name on the line and all I could say was
'Tex, I promise, I'm going to make these payments'."
"It was an amazing and very unusual thing and I can't… I couldn't quanify
how much it meant to my musical development and just to my life in general.
I think as you go on you carry with you a big part of the texture of the
town from which you came from, it becomes a part of your internal life, and
I've carried that with me long, long since I've, you know, moved out of
Freehold."
"When I come to this neighborhood… what do I think of? I think of this
building with its windows open and the sound of those looms clanging away in
the middle of the summertime, in the heat. And I think of the way the street
felt and the way this looked, and I always think of Tex and Marion Vinyard
whose kindness and compassion and amazing understanding and openess was such
an important, important part of that time in my life. I'm just so happy
about this for you Marion, we love you very much, always."
