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It was late night Dec. 8, 1980 and I just heard it over the radio: John Lennon had been shot and killed. A collision of shock, horror, anger, disbelief and numbness hit my brain. I was a fan of the Beatles and Lennon, and I was a rock journalist — a freelancer at the Boston Globe. What was I to do?
I rang Steve Morse, the Globe’s staff rock writer, at his Cambridge home, and he was in the same state. We decided to meet at the Globe on Morrissey Boulevard and got there sometime around midnight to co-write the saddest — and fastest — story of our lives. We divvied it up and banged out 1,000-plus words and cobbled them together to make the next day’s edition. It was my first page one story. There was no joy in that. Steve and I were both drained and fried, bereft and angry. We literally wrote through tears.
Now, nearly 44 years later, here I am again. By myself. And this time it’s about Steve. He died at 76, just before midnight on Saturday, Oct. 26. A couple weeks before, Steve, who’d been battling Parkinson’s disease for several years, felt pain in his chest and went in for an exam. Doctors found a large mass on one of his lungs and did a biopsy.
“I’m really in the Twilight Zone and am starting to feel very weak,” Steve emailed me on Oct. 11, “but I want to say keep up your great writing. We sure had some great times during the height of rock ‚n‘ roll and journalism. We were lucky guys.”
It felt a little like a farewell. My sense of worry ratcheted up.
Two days later: “I’m sweating out the news. Have a team meeting on Thursday and hope to get the results then. Then who knows what might happen.”
The next day, I reached out via phone and email, but that was our last communication.
On Oct. 16, he posted on Facebook: “The results are in. It’s malignant. They’re calling it Stage 4 lung cancer, and it is metastatic. Blessings to all my friends. Love you.”
He’d been in Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center initially, and last week was moved to a hospice facility in Lincoln. He died with his fiancée Jessa Piaia by his side. His body was cremated shortly thereafter, his ashes will be scattered at his beloved Wellfleet summer stomping grounds.
A private immediate family-only service — at Steve’s request — will be held this week. His sister, Cindy Carbeau, told me, he didn’t want the service to turn “into a zoo.” Already, though, his many friends are putting together ideas for a memorial tribute and benefit to aid his 35-year-old son Nick Morse, an abstract artist of some renown who is autistic and non-verbal. In his post-Globe years, Steve served as his son’s de facto manager and champion in the art world. A GoFundMe page will be set up for Nick.
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“Words cannot fully express our feelings of loss and deep sorrow at his passing,” Piaia posted on Steve’s Facebook page, speaking for the family. “Truly a remarkable man, Steve touched the lives of everyone whose path he crossed.”
Steve was the fourth Globe arts critic to die since summer, preceded by film critic Bruce McCabe, dance critic Christine Temin and classical music critic Richard Dyer.
“Steve was a noted fixture in the music community,” Peter Wolf, former J. Geils Band singer and solo artist, emailed me Sunday night. “His years at the Boston Globe gave a much-needed support to so many artists — those that were just starting out, or to the established artists trying to find new ways to keep their careers relevant.
“His retirement party at Foley’s Bar hosted by Bono himself was definitely a night to remember. I spent many nights sharing a glass or two or maybe even three with Steve, going over the motions of the oceans. He believed and lived for the music and his absence will be a real loss.”
The Cars keyboardist Greg Hawkes emailed, “He was an insightful and thoughtful writer, and was always a champion of the Boston music community. He was an early supporter of The Cars, and he reached a wide audience working at the Globe. He was an all-around good guy, and a wonderful advocate for his son and his artwork. I’m going to miss him.”
Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry was Steve’s one-time neighbor when he lived with his wife-to-be, Billie, on Broadway in Cambridge. “We’d run into Steve at the local grocery store and trade gossip,” Perry texted me. “When we were on the road, he’d occasionally throw us a text and let us know what was happening.
“As a music critic, he was always fair and called it as he heard it. To me, he became one of a few stalwart Boston icons that symbolized the unique Boston music scene and his work always reflected that. His passing symbolizes another sign that an amazing era of the Golden years of the Boston music scene is coming to an end.”
Steve brought several freelancers who became staffers into the Globe. I was one of them in 1979. Another was Fernando González, the jazz/world music writer.
“I remember my days in Boston and the dear friends I made there fondly,” González emailed Steve upon hearing of his illness. “But I’m especially grateful to you for opening the doors of the Globe to me. It led to an unthinkable career (when I arrived to the U.S. a few years earlier I didn’t even speak English) and an improbable life. And it started with you, who with one gesture took me to the world of writing.”
Steve exited the Globe in 2006, a year after I did. He continued to see music gigs, especially those in Cambridge, and taught an online rock history class at Berklee College of Music.
A former high school teacher before his Globe days, Steve, who grew up in Wellesley, spent a year and a half putting the course together. He read and re-read countless rock history books, drew from his own experiences on the frontlines and backstages (like talking with Bob Marley about music and weed) and secured some exclusive videos from the likes of Bob Weir (Grateful Dead), Hugo Burnham (Gang of Four), George Clinton (Parliament-Funkadelic) and others.
“I’m curious to see how this is going to come together,” Steve told me before the class began in 2012. “To see this mosaic come to life. With rock history going back to jump blues. It’s a big connect the dots course — social history, business history, political history, technological innovations, continuity and rock as a culture.”
Steve and I worked in the same field, but we used to joke that he came from the hippie/hard rock generation and me more the punk rock/new wave generation, so we each had semi-defined turf and definite attitudes. But there was overlap, both of us at various times covering Neil Young, U2, Prince, David Bowie, Bruce Springsteen, Pink Floyd, The Clash and The Pretenders. And he was a huge fan of AC/DC and James Taylor.
The last time I saw Steve was at the New England Music Hall of Fame induction ceremony at the Regent Theatre in Arlington on Sept. 30, 2023. We were both being inducted and wrestled whether we wanted to go in together — swapping stories onstage — or separately.
“I appreciate that you could go either way,” Steve emailed me. “But I’m at a point where I just want to do my two minutes and be done. I would certainly mention you favorably in my segment, so the camaraderie would still come across. I pretty much already have a short speech prepared. With so little time, two minutes each, I’m just too nervous about taking the chance that we’d go off on tangents if we did it together. If we had 10-15 minutes, that’s a different story!”
After it was over, he emailed me: “Most people know how we complemented each other. Heck, we did it long enough together, right? We had a good run for longevity. We were a very good team. The Globe got their money’s worth when we went out on assignment.”
Jim Sullivan writes about rock 'n' roll and other music for WBUR.
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