Stephen E. Smith

I knew Steve for about six years both at work and play. He was quite a character. Steve was the kind of person you count yourself lucky to know. And I wish I knew him better, but we did share some fun times with each other in the few years that we were friends. He would drop by my place from time to time and hang out with his bird or some of his other friends and we would swap stories and have a laugh together. Steve was always up to something and he was always quick to see the funny side of things. In fact, what I remember most about him was his distinctive laughter.

If Steve had lived to a much older age, he would have appeared to be the absolute personification of a pirate sea captain with his missing finger, old sea-salt looks and his bird on his shoulder. But that would be in looks only because Steve was a kind, thoughtful, generous and compassionate human being under that rough exterior. He lived his life to the fullest, never wasting a single day. I think everyone who knew him would agree that he played full out in everything that he was up to.

Steve's mother told me about his childhood when he began to play basketball. Steve wasn't a tall guy, so that may have been a little surprising, but when his mother went to his basketball game, she saw the whole school cheer and yell when the coach put Steve into the game. Steve had something that made people love him, and it was present throughout his life.

He often told me stories about when he worked on concert tours with famous bands and his exploits in so many things, but particularly he would light up when he talked about sailing his small Prindle catamaran out of Marina del Rey with his parrot on his shoulder. He invited me to go with him someday. I wish now I had taken him up on his offer while I still had the chance.

I once asked him what he liked about sailing. He said that the spray of the water from the bow looks like millions of flying diamonds and jewels in the sunlight, and Funky Chicken, his parrot, would sit on his shoulder, lean into the wind and act like he was flying. He loved his bird as if it were a child - Funky was his child, his best friend and as Steve would say "The best birdster on the planet."

I asked him once to make a tape of his bird's mating cries for one of my album tracks, so we set everything up in his apartment - two microphones, a DAT recorder, the whole works. And Funky wouldn't make a squeak. So I left all the gear there overnight and Steve waited until Funky had forgotten about me and then recorded several minutes of him interacting with his bird over the next few days.