In an excerpt from his new memoir, drummer and music-industry mainstay Nabil Ayers looks back on his first sit-down with jazz legend Roy Ayers — the father he barely knew.
— the title of which riffs on Roy Ayers’ 1976 hit “Everybody Loves the Sunshine” — out June 7 via Penguin Random House. In this abridged excerpt from the book, Ayers looks back at his very first extended meeting with his father, which took place when he was in his mid-thirties.
“I saw that your father’s coming to the Triple Door,” she said casually, punctuated by a staple gun slamming a staple into the wall. The easy path would have been to ignore it, as I had for so many years. There was no risk in not seeing my father. I could make plans to travel to Portland, LA, or New York on that date and tell anyone who asked that I’d be out of town. But now, this new pull existed. For the first time in my life, I wanted to contact my father.
The only contact I could find online was for my father’s booking agent. I didn’t want to overwhelm him by saying, “He’s my father,” and I also thought that I might not be the first person in his life to send such an email. So I typed what I felt was a very simple email that my father would understand if he saw it:
I played Roy’s message a few more times to see if I could hear my voice in his. It was such a surprise to hear from him, and so bizarre to actually listen to the voice of the person who helped make me—not on one of his albums, but on my phone, actually speaking to me. He spoke with the warmth and relaxed pace of a man in his sixties.
Then I called my mother, who demonstrated even more concern than earlier, before she asked the scariest question: “What are you going to do if he doesn’t show up?”and I made the final turn toward my father’s hotel, I became fully aware of my lack of nervousness. I didn’t feel short of breath. My stomach felt normal — I was even a little hungry. I lifted my right hand off the steering wheel and held it directly in front of my eyes to see if it was shaking: nope, solid as a rock.
My favorite sushi restaurant was closed, so we drove to another one nearby, which wasn’t as good, and I worried that my father would be less impressed, since he’d originally suggested sushi.