Marshall Barer

marshall 

I've met some hilarious and wonderful people in my time, and some true eccentrics; not least of which was Marshall Barer, who was perhaps the wackiest man I've ever met. I'm sorry this photo scanned so badly - it doesn't do him justice at all.

Th story of how I met Marshall was pretty typical of the way things were for me at the time - crazy...

As I was "surviving" in Santa Fe for the first couple of years, I did pretty much anything that was going. Marshall hired me to do odd jobs around his house. It was a huge, circular affair somewhat resembling a flying saucer. My first job was to cover a bird cage in toilet paper and put a lamp inside it, then paint it. Then I had to tear bits of rag into strips and make curtains for the windows, and build an Icarus which would be suspended from the ceiling. Oh, and dig a moat around the house that would be filled with water...and a drawbridge so he could get indoors.

You get the idea?

Unfortunately, I don't have any photos of his cars, but he had a Mercedes-Benz and a little Subaru sports car, both of which were covered in denim.

Marshall was an original, it has to be said.

If I can, I'll post a video of one of his rather poignant, very unusual songs.

But Marshall wasn't a fool: he was responsible for not just writing the broadway musical Once upon a mattress, but also the theme tune to Mighty Mouse. He was known for composing some serious songs, too; some recorded by Tony Bennett and the like.

He really deserves a blog all of his own, but this little entry will do for now. Keep coming back to it if you're interested, because I'll probably keep adding to it as more comes to me.