Not Without My Guitar

This story took place in a wedding in the port of Akko, Israel.

Peppy was a funny guy. He was an unofficial booking agent; he booked bands for clubs, and weddings, and things like that. It seemed that most of the time, he was disorganized, and either booked the same band for two gigs or booked a party before he actually made sure that there was a band available.
Even though he was very charismatic and likeable, he always got himself into trouble and somehow pulled himself out of it.

It was one of those beautiful spring mornings when he called me to ask if I was available to perform in a wedding on one Tuesday, May 15.
Unfortunately I told him that I was already booked for that night. He responded with his typical response of Ay, Yai, Yai.
Peppy was known for that, though. He always got stuck without a band after he already took the responsibility of booking entertainment for a client.

"Do you have someone to recommend?" he asked me. Since I was usually the vocalist and the guitar player on my gigs, I couldn’t think of anyone else who could sing and play the guitar as well.
"I can recommend to you a guitar player" I said, "but he doesn’t sing". "Oh, no, Mama Mia", he said, " I need a singer too."
"I’m sorry,” I said, "He doesn’t sing"
Peppy hung up the phone, not hiding his disappointment. He already promised a band for a wedding in a pretty fancy place: Palm Beach hotel, in the old city of Akko, right on the waters of the Mediterranean sea.

A day after, he called back and he said that he found a singer, so he will hire the guitar player. I asked him who was the singer and he said a guy named Lonny. God help us, I thought to myself, because this singer had a very small repertoire.
I called my friend, Musco, the guitar player and gave him the info about the gig in the hotel on the beach.
From now on, the guitar player, Musco, is telling the story.

The hotel was beautiful and the wedding hall was outside right on the water. If you looked down, you would see the seawater under you.
Since I don’t sing and I never met the singer before, and I had no idea what he was going to sing, I tried to fill up a big part of the evening with instrumental guitar melodies.
After about half an hour, the brother of the groom came to me somewhat angry and impatient and said to me: "can you guys start running the evening and start singing, talking, and inviting people to the dance floor, or what?"
I said: "no problem" and asked the singer, Lonny, to start singing.

Lonny sang his 2 songs and told me: "ok, now it’s your turn"
"I don’t sing" I said, "I can only play, you are the singer".
"Peppy told me that you sing too, I only know 3 more songs, let’s keep them for later then, play more instrumental music"
I had no choice and, with uneasy feelings, I started to play instrumental music, the same exact tune I had just played.

The brother of the bride marched over extremely angry. "If you guys don’t start singing I’m going to take this guitar and throw it into the sea!"
I felt very uncomfortable, even though I am not a small guy, I came to play and have fun, not to fight. What made it even more serious was the fact that both sides of the bride and the groom were of Moroccan heritage, and they are known to be hot tempered. I asked Lonny again to start singing.

Lonny sang the only 3 songs that he knew and again told me to play melodies.

Suddenly, without any other warning, the brother of the bride came to me and tried, forcefully, to take the guitar away so he could literally throw it into the sea water, outside the stage.

There was a forceful fight going on, while I was fighting to save my guitar, holding on real tight to it.
At this point, Peppy, who was there through the whole thing, realizing that there was going to be troubles, ran away for his life.
Musco was a big guy and he wasn’t going to let the sea waves assume his guitar. The brother of the bride was pulling it with all his strength; Musco continued to hold it with all his being.

At some point, just to make things worse, the brother of the groom came to join
his new brother in-law to gain a hold on the expensive guitar just to dump it into the sea.
The harder that Musco was holding on into the fight, the angrier the two were. With the encouragement of other family numbers that were watching the fight, they suggested to throw the stubborn guitar player, with his guitar, into the sea.

To be safer, Musco moved himself toward the other side of the stage, farther from the water. The two family members were getting more angry now that they couldn't do what they wanted to, and grabbed a stronger hold on Musco’s dear guitar that was about to be ending her life right here in the sea.

At some point, the brother of the bride got really hysterical, yanking hard without any sense, lost his hold of the guitar, and suddenly found himself 10 feet below, swimming against the deep sea waves, right where he wanted to send the guitarist.

While the brother of the bride was screaming for help, and everybody else was shouting to do something, Musco knew that his life was in danger. At the first opportunity he had, he started running with his guitar, toward his car, faster than ever.
He told me "I remember failing every running contest in my younger days in school, hardly making it to tenth place. If I would have run as fast as I ran from that crazy mob, I would have set a world record." When he got home he was still shaking from the strange gig he just experienced. He could hardly wait to meet me to tell me the story.

Epilogue:

Later on we learned that Peppy did not just run away. While the riot was going on, he actually went to make some urgent phone calls until he found another band to come and save the rest of the evening.

We never found out, though, how Peppy got out of this one, but here is some advice:
If you’re planning to be a musician one day, make sure you are really good, unless you are a big guy or a good swimmer.

Yosi Saffi Levy