I got a text message that morning:
From: Funky
Moog died 🙁
8:26am 8/23/05
I didn’t know what to think. It didn’t really hit me. I went on with my day.
It was only later that evening while trying to explain to my mom who Bob Moog was that I realized what an influence he had on my life. I saw him about a year ago at Winter NAMM in the Moog Music booth – crazy white hair, black tux, sneakers and a top hat, smiling, explaining a new product, signing autographs. I wish I had reached out and shook his hand. I wish I had told him how inspiring it was reading about his original synthesizers. I wish I had realized what a huge role his story played in forming mine.
In New York a couple weeks later, on the subway I saw the following poem by Ogden Nash:
People expect old men to die.
They do not really mourn old men.
Old men are different. People look
At them with eyes that wonder when…
People watch with unshocked eyes,
But the old men know when an old man dies.
Bob’s spirit was anything but old and it will live on in our music.
