Jay Rinkel's Note:
Erick Nelson is an old friend of Bob's from the early
years of Maranatha Music.
I asked Erick Nelson to do a writeup about Bob Bennett for
The Bob Bennett Web Page and he came back and told me to give him some
questions to put him in the right direction. Texts in bold are my
questions, the rest is his text.
Bob Bennett Writeup
For Jay Rinkel (and The Bob Bennett Web Page)
November 26, 1996
How did you first get to meet Bob?
The first memory I have of Bob is when we went to a Maranatha retreat. (I'm sure I had already met him, because I knew who he was.) In the evening, the music groups were each asked to take turns doing a couple of songs, and in due time Bob came up to play. He did "You're Always Welcome Here." It was like a breath of fresh, honest air. The simplicity, the theme, the turn of the phrase caught my attention. And "a house is known by the company it keeps" - who else at Maranatha could have come up with that? Certainly not me.
Beyond the technical things, the overall impact was overwhelming. Here's a guy singing "There are dark rooms deep inside me, where the light has never shone, and I try to hide inside them - but I guess you've always known . . . " which made me want to cry (still does) because it's so so true. For that one moment, we didn't have one musician showing off for the others, we had a simple human being reaching out and making contact.
One of the great things about working out of Calvary Chapel was that the artists automatically had an audience - and not only one audience at Calvary, but a network of related Calvaries all around Southern California. Even so, when Bob was starting out nobody knew him and he had a hard time getting concerts. I was singing with Michele Pillar at the time, and we asked him if he'd come along to local concerts with us and open for us (for free of course), and he said "sure." We only did this a few times, but we had a great time with him. We quickly figured out that he had such great "invitation" songs that we would have him come back and end the concert. Naturally, the sponsors always asked him back (all they needed was to see him once), and within a few months we were opening for him at a big Calvary concert.
You say Bob is one of your best friends -- why/how is that?
Our paths crossed many times, and we became pretty good friends. What probably made me like him so much as a person, beyond the artistry, was his sense of humor. Bob has got to be one of the funniest people I've ever met. He is an absolute panic. He and I got in trouble at Maranatha gatherings more than once for "visiting with our neighbors", making little quips to each other. Not very mature, but a lot of fun. His Ed Sullivan impression used to lay me out. He would be Ed introducing the Maranatha bands, and wouldn't be able to pronounce Maranatha after stumbling over it several times - would switch gears and loudly announce "The Kids from Cose-ta Maysa." Killed me.
When Bob and I met at Denny's restaurant to come up with a (very serious) one paragraph theme statement for The Misfit, everything we came up with would sound hokey, and Bob would deviate into some soap-opera-type phrase that would crack us up. Or, he proposed writing liner notes like "Almost made a believer out of me! - Madeline Murray O'Hare."
Partly because I was so busy doing music and apologetics, I just didn't have a lot of close friends. Even though our schedules kept us from convening often, I still think of Bennett as one of my very best friends of all time. I have great admiration for his intellectual integrity. He found a possible Bible contradiction ("staff or not a staff") that was serious to both of us. We talked it over with Bob and Gretchen Passantino ("Answers in Action") and tried to resolve the problem. (Two gospels have Jesus telling the disciples to go out and don't take even a staff; one, Mark, says for them to take nothing, except a staff. Real problem.) One scenario we tried out was to say that Mark was not talking about a walking stick when he used the word "staff", but rather was referring to executive assistants (again, I think this was Bob's suggestion). That was obviously a faulty solution.
If you had a chance to work with Bob on a project of some kind, how was Bob to work with?
We "virtually" worked together when he was recording First Things First and I was recording The Misfit - both at Maranatha's studio. We ran into each other a lot and listened to each others' sessions occasionally. But we didn't play on each others' albums. We did play together on a song I wrote for my wife-to-be, Susan (called, oddly enough, "Susan"). We recorded it as a demo at a little recording studio at Garden Grove Community Church, with Phil Kristianson on second keyboards. Bob walked right in, learned the song from a simple chord chart, and played on the basic tracks. Never made a mistake that I remember. It was a piece of cake for him. We sort of arranged the song as we went along, and figured we should put some background vocals in at the end. Bob and I sang those and we blended well. I wish we could have done more! Susan's favorite part of the song turned out to be the "... lost in love with you" that Bob and I crooned together.
Bob was put in charge of all the text on The Misfit album - liner notes, words to songs, credits, etc. He prided himself on being just about the only person who could spell both my name and Michele's name (notice only one "L") correctly. He was super-organized. One tidbit that few will know about him - his "lettering" handwriting is state-of-the-art. Looks like a draftsman's lettering.
Describe Bob's character.
Bob, as I see him, is a great deal like other gifted people. He has a sensitivity that causes him a certain amount of emotional turmoil, moodiness, with which he sometimes struggles. He also loves to have fun, and is always looking for a funny twist to things. I don't think that his sense of humor is a cover-up for his real self at all (as some might surmise), I think it is just as real as his more serious side.
He has always come across to me as sort of vulnerable, and I viewed him as a kind of younger brother (which is a natural role for me, being a first-born, I guess). He also appreciated my own work, which didn't hurt! Is he shy? Outgoing? Probably both.
You know what I really like about him? He shares a quality that I admire in someone: he hates jive and pretentiousness. Bob will be the first to poke fun at anything that is phony, and is a really good satirist. That's why he, like Bill Murray, can do the "lounge singer" so well. That's why he doesn't fit in with certain types of church cultures (I'll let you decide which ones are the phony and pretentious ones).
How many people would start a song with "I don't think I'm supposed to tell you, just what this means to me ... " about playing music as a ministry ("Singing for my Life"). This is just like Bob - to reveal an inner-circle secret. He doesn't quite fit in with the pretentious ministerial crowd, and feels a little bad about it. He says that he knows he's supposed to be better than the audience, doing them a favor, giving them of his riches - or at least act like it. But really, guys, he has to admit that he needs you more than you need him.
If Bob ever becomes full of himself and starts acting like a bigshot, he will have lost his essence - he will have become the thing he has always mocked. If he ever does, let me know, and I'll have to get some friends together and we'll pants him or something.
What are some of the best memories of Bob?
The following reminiscences may be boring to others (I don't know), but I have fond memories of simple things we did together.
Bob and Gretchen Passantino one time invited us over to play Dungeons and Dragons, to test it out to see if they could detect any occult influences. We didn't find out much, except that learning a new game takes a lot of time.
Bob and Oden Fong accompanied me to see Godzilla vs. The Thing for my birthday, which I can assure you was a highlight experience. Bob and I also went on the harbor cruise celebrating Maranatha's new business arrangement with Word. We had to get all dressed up to meet the Word executives. Bob has described our experience in an Internet discussion group, so I won't go into it here.
When I took my wife-to-be on our first date, it was a Bob Bennett concert. When I wanted somebody to record a song for her, I asked Bob. When it came time to get married, Bob sang for the wedding. He was always available to assist me in my courtship activities! And it worked, too.
Bob came into the studio one time and heard an early mix of the song "Stand." I wasn't there, but Johanthan Brown told me later that Bob actually wept with joy when he heard that song, because it was so triumphant.
A few months ago, Bob came to town (Seattle), and I surprised him at the concert. We had a great time before the concert catching up, and he was the same guy. Hasn't turned all gray like I have. I got there before he did and waited for him. To greet him, I snuck up behind him as he was unpacking his stuff and said "Is it true you're the best songwriter in Christian music?" As he turned around, looking a little perplexed, it took about 3 seconds for him to recognize me. Then he jumped backward about 3 feet and said "Erick! It's you!" And then hugged me `way too hard. It was great to see him again.