New information about Bob's final months

[Spikey]

Howdy folks,

Haven't been around for a while, sorry, life gets in the way. Came across this tonight, apologies to Wendy if she reads this and this is too personal (I spoke to her last night on FB, so hopefully she knows how I feel about Bob), but it's already out there anyway..

This clears a lot of things up for me, and gives me a lot of closure. I've been really depressed about the Bob suicide for a while now, which is selfish I know, but I really loved (and still love) his work.
I may actually cry tonight, I haven't cried in a heck of a long time. Heh.. Miss you, rockstar.

Anyway- This is x-posted from the "Our Rock and Roll Hall of Fame" forum, fittingly enough. Read on:

A week ago, music industry critic Bob Lefsetz sent out a Mailbag of emailed responses to his newsletters. He doesn't usually if ever post his Mailbag to his archives - you'll have to subscribe to his newsletter to read them. Click here to go through Lefsetz's archives and subscribe to his newsletter. At the bottom of the Mailbag is a response to Lefsetz's newsletter on Bob Welch by Mike Lawson, a guitarist who apparently writes and plays music that connects to musicians 30 or more years older than he is. Check out the Fleetwood Mac webpage dedicated to Mike Lawson's CD Ticket To Fly. Welch played on Lawson's CD (among a host of others), and Welch and Lawson remained friends. Lawson recounts the last days of Bob Welch in details that just breaks the heart.

A few reactions. Welch was what would now be called a caregiver for his father, and as such he saw what his father went through when he died. This experience greatly informed his decision to take his life, because he did not want to put his wife through the same thing he went through. What's more, he was in severe pain from two causes - a spinal cord injury, and a surgery that was supposed to relieve the pain from the spinal cord injury but didn't. He also had atrial heart fibrillation, where the atrial valve doesn't work right and, if not caught within a short time after it starts, the atrial chamber enlarges. Heart surgery can fix it in its early stages, but there is only medication to control it if it's too late for surgery.

If you are easily disturbed by such unpleasant things, or you otherwise best not read such unpleasant things, stop now and go on to another post or thread.

Otherwise, here's what Lawson related to Bob Lefsetz about Bob Welch's final days.

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From: Mike Lawson
Subject: Re: Bob Welch

Wendy Welch was very grateful for your posting. She asked me to convey some of these thoughts with her gratitude. She wants everyone to know that Bob had the professional help he needed, and most importantly, he had her, with whom he shared an epic love affair. They were rarely apart from each other. I've known them all but the first three years they were married. Bob had Wendy, they were inseparable, it was an epic soulmate love many people will never experience.

Bob was in a lot of pain. He had a titanium plate put in his neck three months ago because he was in so much pain, the surgery was supposed to fix it, it made it worse. He had a spinal chord injury. He also had an A-Fib heat condition, which he got treatment for at the Mayo clinic a few years ago from, and was constantly worried he would have a stroke, end up an invalid like his father, the late film producer Robert Welch (he did those Pale Face movies for Bob Hope, among others), who had to be cared for by his mother. He said he couldn't put Wendy through that. He didn't want to slide down hill, was having trouble doing simple things, and between the pain and the depression it creates and/or amplifies, I guess he did what he thought he had to do.

Chronic pain is a horrific situation. Post-surgical pain is really hard on people, especially as we get older, and its especially hard when that surgery was supposed to stop the pain. I know this, first hand. In Bob's case, the surgery to stop the pain only increased it. He was miserable. We talked about medications, we talked about heating pads, we talked doctors, about soaking in hot baths, all the things that can help. Doctors are scared to treat pain for patients, scared of the DEA, scared of losing their licenses, they'd rather risk a patient be miserable than risk their license, and its because of the pill junkies gaming the system, combined with the crooked doctors who feed them. The innocent suffer who need the help. Bob had been to see the doctor the day before. Obviously, he did't feel like things were going to get better after whatever he learned in that visit. He did not like the idea of a pain management clinic being a next step.

The other side of this is that Bob was a heroin user 30 years ago. It was the hardest thing he ever kicked, and without his wife Wendy, he would not have done so. She was his rock. He was hers. When Wendy was hospitalized a couple of times the past few years, Bob and I had long conversations about him trying to make it without her, or vice versa. I promised I would be there for either when that terrible call comes, but it was still in my mind decades away. I never dreamed the call would be because of this.

Bob did not want to face dealing with the hell that is being in pain management systems, pissing in cups, random pill counts, monthly visits to the pain clinic and pharmacy, being treated like a potential suspect instead of a patient. The fact that eventually they have to up the dosage as the tolerance builds and at some point still be in pain anyway was not appealing. He didn't want to become dependent on pain medications. He wanted the pain to stop, that's all he wanted. He wanted to play his guitar again. Yesterday, Bob finally stopped the pain. I am comforted only by the fact that he is not hurting anymore, even though the price of his pain stopping is such devastatingly painful for his wife, for his family, for his friends, and even his fans to whom his hits became "their song" or held some special meaning in their lives, the way amazing music often does.

Bob, Wendy and I are/were close, and we talked many times a week, nearly every week. Over the past few years we started drifting from music business, politics, talking guitars, computers, recording, guffawing at the latest Lefsetz rant (which were frequent, believe me), to what doctors we were seeing, what medications we were on. I guess that comes with getting older. Several months ago, I tried to get him recording in his home studio again. He was a musical wizard, a mad-scientist, in that little home studio, using now-dated digital recording tools to achieve amazing results. What he could do with digital "stone axes and animal bones" compared to more modern recording tools, was out of this world. I had an extra Mac Pro and a couple of LCDs, and a MOTU 828 interface, that I gave to him, because the fan part of me wanted to see what wonders Bob could created with modern digital recording tools like Logic, on a super-fast Mac. He managed to set it all up, but he never got to use it much, Bob. He couldn't sit at the computer, use a mouse, or anything because of the pain. He had trouble making a chord on a guitar in the past few months. Imagine having the ability to feed your very life-giving muse slowly snatched away from you in a painful cruel fashion.

For the record, Bob was clean and sober, wasn't taking any strong medications, his actions were not the result of side effects of something. He was not a heavy drinker, or abuser of anything since getting clean from smack so long ago. Ultimately, he did this because he didn't want Wendy to suffer the long term care of a man fading in his senior years, he was hurting terribly, and he couldn't make music now. He did this, he said, because he loved her. As hard as that is for me to understand, and certainly even harder for her to understand, he did this tragic thing out of love. It wasn't anger, it wasn't depression (though his condition was depressing), he did this out of love. He detailed these thoughts in what he left behind in his notes. The exact words are to remain private, but this is the basic message.

His last words to me, late in the evening on June 5th as we hung up the phone, "I love you, Mike." Please remember Bob for the amazing music he left us, not for the way he left.

Thank you for your tribute to Bob Welch. You were a Bob Welch fan, but Bob Welch was also a bona fide Bob Lefsetz fan.

Mike Lawson