By Ken Lass
I came upon it the other day as I was scrolling through Facebook. It was a post from Charles Lopas. Seeing his name like that always made me smile. Nobody ever called him Charles. It was always Chuck, or Charlie. Charles seemed so formal. He was the opposite of formal. A more down to earth, regular guy you will never find.
Ken Lass, Tribune Columnist
He was the bass player in my old high school rock band. We had gone our separate ways after school, and hadn’t communicated in more than forty years. A few years back we reconnected on social media. Immediately, we began trading personal messages back and forth. Like me, he still had vivid memories of those teenaged days so many years past.
We recalled all those places where we played, some of them exhilarating, some of them boring, some of them just plain weird. We could still remember most of the songs on our playlist, mostly the top forty standards of the 1960s. Tunes like Louie-Louie, Twist and Shout, The Letter (by the Box Tops), Hold On, I’m Comin’ (Sam and Dave), Dancin’ in the Streets, The Lion Sleeps Tonight, Hanky Panky, and Come On Down To My Boat Baby, the classic one hit wonder from the group Every Mother’s Son. That last one is a sure-fire trivia question you can stump your friends with.
Chuck was the founder and leader of the band. We had six guys, which was large for that era. I played guitar and sang lead. We were just a bunch of kids having the time of our young lives. Often, the band members would disagree about what we should play, and how we should play it. Chuck was always the peacemaker. He would always come up with some sort of compromise that would keep all of our little egos satisfied. He managed our bookings and stored our equipment. He drove the car that pulled the trailer with all of our stuff.
We were together all through high school and, by the time we were seniors, we had multiple gigs pretty much every week. We made decent money, but we never got to divvy it up and spend it on ourselves. We were constantly reinvesting in new sound equipment, new lights, and new costumes. In the sixties, all the big rock bands had “a look”. All members dressed alike. After much debate (and, of course, arguments), Chuck got us to agree on Nehru jackets with medallions, to be worn over white turtleneck sweaters, tight white pants, and Revolutionary War boots. A white ruff extended down from our necks. If that reminds you of Paul Revere and the Raiders, it’s not a coincidence. We basically ripped off their look. We used black lights on stage so that our turtlenecks, ruffs and pants would glow. Yep, we were definitely too cool for skool.
It was Chuck who came up with our name. We called ourselves The Talismen. It was supposed to be a clever play on words. A talisman is a good luck charm. Nobody ever got it, though. People were constantly asking us what the heck our name meant. Chuck’s concept was ahead of its time.
He wrote that he still had his old Fender bass, along with a parade of other guitars he had collected along the way. He asked me if I still had my Gibson SG Junior guitar. I loved that thing, with its distinctive red cherrywood body and black string plate. Chuck groaned when I told him I sold it to a collector several years ago.
Through our messages he told me he wound up in the education field and taught for decades until his retirement. I can totally picture him as a teacher. He had just the right personality for it. He and his wife, whom he had dated ever since our band days, eventually moved to South Dakota to be with his kids and grandkids. Music remained a big part of his life, as he sent me pictures of him playing with local bands, and with his church orchestra. He was disappointed when I wrote that I had pretty much abandoned music after school to focus on my media career.
When Chuck turned 72 years old, I messaged him Happy Birthday. He wrote back that he just had open heart surgery and was struggling with recovery, but he had begun a new rehab process he was excited about. After that, his messages stopped.
Which is why I was excited to see his post on my Facebook feed the other day. Except this post was not written by him. It was written by his wife Sandy, informing all his social media friends that Chuck had passed away, finally losing his battle with heart disease.
On a wall in my Trussville home hangs a faded white poster in a black frame. It’s one of the posters our band would hang up in schools and dance halls to promote our upcoming performances. I kept one as a souvenir all these years. It’s been hanging on that wall for decades. It’s kind of falling apart, but I can’t bring myself to take it down. It contains a group picture of the band in the center, surrounded by individual shots. In the upper left-hand corner, above the others, is a picture of Chuck, bass draped over his shoulder, Nehru jacket, white jeans and boots in place, broad smile lighting up his face. This is how I will always remember him.
I haven’t been able to connect with any other members of the band. I pray they are still out there, and that life has been kind.
Treasure your friendships. Don’t let them slip away.
Rock on, Chuck.
