Kelly was one of the Old Guard, and it’s a gross understatement to say that the group, and the years I spent in Worthington, Ohio, would not have been the same without him.
From Air Guitar to Zappa
One common theme in our friendship was music. We were passionate rock and roll fans at a time when MTV was a brand new thing, and we jammed together—with or without instruments—on many occasions. In fact, playing “air guitar” was a favorite pastime of ours. We fantasized about forming a rock band (tentatively called “Fury”), and Kelly had his outfit for the MTV video ready for show time before he had his guitar licks ready. He did actually play guitar, but he also wanted to play drums—an idea that either got vetoed by his parents, or proved too expensive for his budget. Whatever the cause, a real trap set never materialized, but that didn’t stop Kelly from playing a faux trap set made of pillows arranged on his bed. He had the ’80s rock drummer act down pat, right down to knowing when to hold the drumstick aloft and twirl it between his fingers for dramatic effect. Those were some good jam sessions, and I can still hear Rush’s “Fly by Night” and “Spirit of Radio,” and see Kelly wailing away in a heroic impersonation of Neal Peart.
(Not long ago, before I heard that he passed away, I sat down to write Kelly a letter, and I was going to tell him about the new PlayStation game called “Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the ’80s.” We would have had a good laugh at that, because we were already doing the low-tech version of it in his bedroom in 1981. We were ahead of our time, I guess.)
He liked Rush, the Pretenders, Journey, Yes, Phil Collins, the Police, Van Halen, and (inexplicably) Kiss. I’m not sure what kind of professional musician he would have made, but I know this: He would have made a good MTV VJ.
We both had an affinity for progressive rock, and it was a strong common theme in our friendship. It seemed a fitting thing to draw us together. The music was sophisticated and intelligent, and the particular bands to which we gravitated (e.g., old Genesis and Yes) were filled with optimism and an adventurous spirit that rose above teenage angst and songs of unrequited love, and made a heroic attempt to reach for a larger world amid the stars. That common thread in our friendship lasted from high school right up until the end. (We were both enjoying the current crop of “neo prog” bands that are active these days.) Kelly even touched upon prog rock in his Zappa biography, and I thought that was a fitting way to put his enthusiasm for the genre to good use in his professional life. In fact, the whole Zappa book seemed an ideal pursuit for him, as it combined his adult academic prowess with his boyhood enthusiasm for rock and pop culture. I was really pleased to see him write it, and was pleased it was well received.
Kelly was a Frank Zappa fan even in high school, and it was little wonder why. With Zappa’s wild hair and outlandish lyrics that sliced and diced modern American culture and poked sacred cows and looked at things from strange new angles, it was not surprising that Kelly liked him. It some ways, Kelly was like Zappa: smart, yet without any stigmatic taint of nerdiness about him; popular, yet iconoclastic; a wild party animal, yet disciplined enough to do well academically. If Kelly had gone on to become a famous musician, I could well imagine him writing songs like “The Dangerous Kitchen,” and also using his public platform to speak out about social and cultural issues in his characteristically intelligent yet casual way.
The Madwoman of Shallot
Kelly and I were both active in high school theatre, and performed together in several plays. One of the highlights of our time at Worthington High School together was in our junior year (1983), when we both auditioned for, and landed roles in, the fall school play. This photo of us in “The Madwoman of Shallot” is the only photo of Kelly that I have. He played a police officer (on the left), and I played The Ragpicker (in the middle).
Kelly seemed right at home in the limelight, which perhaps foreshadowed his future profession of becoming a school teacher. I think Bronwyn Hopton, our theatre teacher, would have approved of the way Kelly chose to put his theatrical talent to use.
Dr. Everyman
Perhaps one of the most memorable aspects of Kelly, and one that certainly pervaded our friendship, was his sense of humor. Part of it was in his outlook, and part of it was in his delivery, but either way, words won’t do it justice. You had to be there. Suffice it to say that he always knew how to put me in stitches, and one of the most persistent memories I have of him is his great rollicking laugh. It made him very easy to like, and it was one of the things that marked him as a “people person.”
Kelly was always very bright, he was always an avid reader, and he always had an eye for popular culture. He seemed at once both critical of it and fascinated by it, as though he had one foot planted firmly within it, and one foot outside of it, which allowed him to comment on it from both the inside and the outside. Though I never had the pleasure of seeing him teach, I imagine he was right at home lecturing in his American Culture Studies class. He always was a lively and engaging commentator on our times. (Coincidentally, his nickname in high school was Doc, so we both got a kick out of the fact that he really did become “Doctor” Lowe.)
Kelly was writing a book about Jackson Browne, and I’ve thought about him more than once when listening to Browne’s solo acoustic version of “Everyman.” The protagonist in the song talks about getting away from humanity in order to find his true self, but somehow always ends up coming back to humanity in that same search. It’s an elusive and poetic piece that speaks of the energized tension between a critical assessment of society and a hearty participation in it. Perhaps Kelly related to Jackson Browne in part because he sympathized with his outlook on such things as this very tension. I think it takes a certain art for living to hold that tension in balance. Kelly was good at that.
Farewell
Kelly and I lost touch when I moved back to California, and he went on to attend college in various places, but we eventually reconnected, and although we wrote to each other only infrequently, there was something about that friendship forged in our adolescence that remained, a bedrock that I somehow felt even during the long spans of silence between our correspondence. I feel its absence now, like a strange, aching hollow. It’s hard to believe he’s gone.
This rambling reminiscence is probably too long for those who did not share those times with Kelly, yet it’s far too short to do more than scratch the surface of a friendship that meant a great deal to me. Kelly’s unwavering acceptance of me, his loyalty, his irresistible sense of humor, his authenticity, and his easygoing, affable demeanor, all helped me weather the sometimes trying times of middle school and high school. In fact, I often look back on those days as the Good Old Days, and one of the things that made them good was Kelly Lowe.
For me, losses of this magnitude can only be managed in small does over a long span. I’m sure I’ll be grieving the loss of Kelly for a long time. I can’t hear certain ’80s rock tunes these days without thinking of him, and getting a lump in my throat. Some of those old tunes will never be the same. Certainly the Old Guard will never be the same. Kelly was a good friend, and I’ll miss him more than words can say.
