DiMartino and Walter Cronkite, circa 1971. (“From a Miami TV show when Walter ‘met the press’ himself – the youth press. I was editor of my high school paper. “)

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AR: What was the scene like in your formative years? What you were listening to and seeing that perhaps influenced what you wrote about?

DD: I was listening to Soft Machine, Pink Floyd, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Love, Velvet Underground, Nico, Traffic, Van Morrison, Kevin Ayers, The Nice, Captain Beefheart, Frank Zappa, The Incredible String Band, Procol Harem, King Crimson, Tim Buckley – was a big fan then – Todd Rundgren/Nazz, and Humble Pie.

AR: What else was shaping your young mind, culturally, or sub-culturally at that time?

DD: I reviewed a lot of that stuff in the paper, back then. I used to spend a lot of time at the record store, where you could by three LPs for $10. Used to buy a lot of records merely because they looked intriguing – stuff like Mandrake Memorial, Mott the Hoople’s first album. I spent time going to the local pop festivals – several in Miami, one in Palm Beach, and saw a lot of live bands; was very focused on the music culture. I played the keyboards, which meant that the high school bands we were in covered music that featured an organ – artists like Vanilla Fudge, Traffic, Iron Butterfly, Blues Image – pretty funny stuff. We were briefly the house band for a college fraternity, which was pretty cool for high school kids. Like I said before, was very interested in music, dopey films that played at drive-ins. As “younger” baby-boomers, we looked at the hippies in San Francisco, the guys in Easy Rider as potential role models. It was an interesting perspective in that they were doing things that we couldn’t quite do yet because we were too young, but aware of all that seemed to be promised. Sex, drugs, and rock hadn’t become a formal cliché yet.

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