Still, was Central Park last night any place for a guy who was executive editor at the legendary Crawdaddy from 1971 to 1979, when my generation’s main exposure to Ludvig Van was via Stanley Kubrick’s Clockwork Orange?

As it happens, I have become obsessed with Beethoven in the past two years. Yes, there is a bit of the political to it — this is the man who always took the part of average folk and famously promoted the view (in his Ninth Symphony) that “all men are brothers.” His “Ode to Joy” accompanied the tearing down of the Berlin Wall — and was played when Kosovo declared its independence. But it is much more than that. Earlier this year, I was in London for my daughter’s wedding and “somehow” found a way to catch three Beethoven concerts within five days. Oh, I made it to the wedding, too.

In fact, if you had told me two years ago that I would spend the morning of my 60th birthday — and the evening of my 25th wedding anniversary — with Ludwig van Beethoven, I would have laughed, or perhaps played a chord of “Wild Thing” on my guitar. After all, until that time, I did not know the difference between a cadenza and a concerto, an oboe and a bassoon. So how did this former rock ‘n roll writer/editor become obsessed with Beethoven?

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