9.11.1987

MOURNING A MAN WITH A GOLDEN ARM

Even before he became a junkie, Zohar Argov had the gaunt, hollow-cheeked look of the hungry.

Looking hungry was part of his appeal for in those days, only about 10 years ago, that kind of music was as much about being hungry, being on the outside, as it was about being from the disadvantaged neighborhoods. It was the music you heard in the open-air markets and in the bus stations, played over ghetto blasters. And the hunger wasn't for food-anyone can go into a grocer's. The hunger was for acceptance.

The radio wouldn't play that music.

Nobody would admit it, but it sounded too much like the music on the other channels on the radio dial in this part of the world-like Egyptian music, or Syrian music. It sounded like the music played in those countries where Argov's fans or their parents came from.

Argov would have taken exception to that, just as all those who followed in his footsteps would take exception to that. Menachem Begin, by the way, knew better than anyone else how hungry for acceptance Argov's fans were.

There's no way of knowing how many cassettes Argov sold. The annual reports showed Arik Einstein to be the country's most popular singer, but the magazines that keep track of such matters only heard of Argov long after he had become "The King". As king, Argov could make $5,000 or more a nights singing his love songs at weddings. He never made it to the Mann Auditorium.

The king, a high-school dropout, had a police record that stretched back to `1970, when he was 114. It included burglary, car theft, check-kiting, assault and battery, obstruction of justice, and, of course, drugs. When he hung himself on Friday, using a rope fashioned from strips of blanket, he was in the Rishon lockup as a rape suspect.

Being a junkie was the real flaw in his character, and he was sufficiently aware of it to go on television one Friday night to roll up his shirtsleeves to show the public his visible scars from shooting smack and to explain that he was off the stuff.

There aren't many people who can get off junk, once they've gotten on.

Another Zohar, named Rivka, who spent almost a decade in a daze in a basement nightclub in New York, got off. But she was one of the lucky ones. She came back to a lover's arms.

Argov never really had a lover. He had fans, and fans, as any performer can tell you, are neither lovers nor friends.

Lovers and friends don't make demands that fans make, and don't turn their back when you can't deliver because you can barely stand up, barely walk, barely talk, let alone make the kind of music that Argov knew how to make.

Argov went to America when the cassettes with that music began to be heard on radio here, and in a strange way, the most popular singer in Israel was discovered by Israel.

At first they called it cassette music, and it was on an hour a week, and then they called it Oriental music, and by then, without even knowing that it was one of his accomplishments, Menachem Begin had made it acceptable. Nowadays it's called the Mediterranean sound, but it's more Greek than Arabic. Nowadays even Arik Einstein sometimes sings it. It no longer needs its own hour on the radio; but it doesn't control the airwaves either, the way it did for about a year after Begin was re-elected in 1981.

Like many an Israeli performer-including Rivka Zohar
-Argov thought that his gold records in Israel would get him a gold record in America. All he got in America was a gold arm.

For a while he could even get to his gigs on time, and then he started being late, and then he started not showing up, and then he would show up but only be able to sit at a table of honour while another singer did the work.

Everybody talked about him and how he needed help, but somehow nothing even worked out. That's how it is for junkies, which is one of the reasons they are junkies.

Lately, of course, there was talk about his getting better.

He had been in Atlit jail, and was off Persian brown, and even eating a little, which like rape is usually the last thing on a junkie's mind. His last weekend dalliance that ended in a rape charge was his last vacation before getting of out jail after serving a three-month sentence for illegal possession of a gun.

A lot of people will jump on the Zohar Argov bandwagon now.

David Levy has already announced he's going to start a fund, as if there wasn't already Al Sam, which is a fashionable charity. There is also a plan for a rehabilitation village. Moshe Ish-Kassit, who also went a few rounds with junk before dying in last August's heat wave, was one of the movers being that plan.

But that's the way it is with famous junkies. They never know they have so many friends. Regular junkies, the most anonymous people of all, don't even get that.

| Previous | Arithmetic of the Soul: Tel Aviv and the Intifada | Next |

Back to the top