Peter Himmelman, Music and Faith

Two Years Ago, I Wrote These Liner Notes for One of My Friend's Songs

Peter Himmelman is the only musician I covered in these many decades who has become a friend. I began writing about him when I got a cassette tape of his Minneapolis new wave band, Sussman Lawrence, in the early 1980s. I wrote about it, the band moved to New York, they became Peter’s backing band, they made an album, it got picked up by Island Records. The label thought they had a sure-shot rock star, and then Peter decided he did not want to be a rock star as much as he was compelled to be a Jew. An observant Jew, completely frum, in the orbit of the joyous positivity of Chabad Lubavitcher Judaism. Joyous, but still totally observant. Tough to be a rock star when you will not work on Shabbas, from Friday sundown to Saturday—booking tours, much less club dates, becomes a challenge.

I wrote about this in the summer of 2014 for the Jewish online magazine Tablet. We had spent three days hanging out at his former home in Santa Monica, combining formal interviews with fooling around. When …