Music Street Journal’s Gary Hill dedicated a chapter to me in his recent book, Poetry of the Air. The book interviews progressive rock musicians for their experience as music listeners. To quote from the book, “The basic idea is that musicians, before making the decision to get involved making music, were music fans.”. Indeed being featured in this book among prog musician giants is an unspeakable honor for me. Below is what I contributed to the book. At the end find more information about the book and how you could purchase it.
Chapter 70: Salim Ghazi Saeedi
We fall in love with our counterparts; what we don’t have; sometimes the complete opposite is the most wanted…
From early childhood – as an introspective and lonely child in Iran – I liked cheerful pleasures and green fields and outlaw freedoms. So I created all these realms in my mind by immersing in fantasized and abstract worlds of music and visualized what I did not have in real life.
Because in reality I had war, sadistic teachers in school and religious dogmatism.
So I sought:
Larry Groce’s colorful and cheerful fantasies in Walt Disney characters’ world (at age four)
Freddie Mercury’s burning love and passion (at age 12)
Michael Jackson’s erotic teenage desires (at age 14)
Pink Floyd’s voice of a lost generation (at age 16)
Kurt Cobain’s ecstatic anarchy (at age 18)
Aerosmith’s broken heart (at age 19)
Guns n’ Roses’ deviant pleasures (at age 20)
Megadeth’s rage and madness (at age 22)
Steve Ray Vaughn’s benevolent heart (at age 24)
Jeff Beck’s modern language of the lover boy (at age 25)
Thelonious Monk’s annihilating experience of unspeakable spiritual outburst (at age 26)
Tool’s occult and multi-facet presentation of mind (at age 28)
Munir Bashir’s demonstration of supreme mastery (At age 30)
Kayhan Kalhor’s unending pleasures of a dancing mystic (At age 31)
Yea! That was my biography! I found my life among the musical
notes I adored. Now I am older, and I know more about the world since
the Walt Disney fantasies of age four, but these artists shaped my life
and delivered the life force as music packages to my ears and into my
flesh.
Now, as a musician, my mind produces music as I walk, as I think
and breathe. I play my guitar and dream and fantasize about the
future…To pass on and deliver my life to you!
_______________________
List of artists included in the book: Jon Anderson (Yes, ABWH and more) Allan Atkins (Judas Priest and more) Albert Bouchard (Blue Oyster Cult and more) Bun E. Carlos (solo and formerly Cheap Trick) Jackie “Jax” Chambers (Girlschool) Alan Davey (Hawkwind, Gunslinger and more) Terry Draper (Klaatu and solo) Larry Fast (Synergy) Steve Hackett (Genesis, solo and more) Tommy James (Tommy James and the Shondells) Tony Levin (King Crimson, Peter Gabriel and more) James Lowe (Electric Prunes) Paul Richards (California Guitar Trio) Jordan Rudess (Dixie Dregs, Dream Theater and more) Billy Sherwood (Yes and more) James Lee Stanley Peter “Peavy” Wagner (Rage) Rick Wakeman (Yes, Strawbs and more) and many more
