Kiss of the Mudman (both the album and the song) made Parallax instant (if fleeting) icons. Their two previous albums (both of which had done okay but not great) were re-issued and sold like crazy, giving them two gold and one platinum album the same year, 1978.

And then Alan Shaw, the bassist, died of a heroin overdose, and Tracy Jacobs, the drummer, was killed in an auto accident (it was later determined that he’d been drunk at the time). Byron Knight recorded a terrific solo album that just bombed, and then he dropped off the radar. Some college stations still dusted off “Mudman” from time to time when the DJs felt like making fun of it (or needed a leisurely piss break), and it, like the band who recorded it, was now nothing more than a curiosity piece.

Still, if you were a fan (like I’d been), to hear the man who’d written and sang the song mumble the word “…mudman…” was, well…still kind of a thrill, and I couldn’t help but remember the verse that had been all the rage for a few months back when I was a teenager:

“You wonder where it all went wrong and why you feel so dead

why it seems that every day you’re hanging by a thread

Are you still who you were and not what you’ve become?

Is this the taste of failure that lingers on your tongue?

Your dreams are ending in a place

far from where they began

Because what’s on your lips

Is the memory of the kiss

Of the mudman…”

Okay, “Blowin’ in the Wind” it wasn’t, but as a soul-sick cry of loneliness and alienation, it works—and that’s what “Mudman” was, an 18-minute musical suicide note, chronicling the last minutes of a dying rock star’s life as he looks back on all the people he’s hurt and left behind, knowing that none of it—the fame, the money, the women and riches—was worth it, that all he’d ever wanted he’d pissed away, and now had to die alone, and deserved his fate.

I’d always wondered just who or what the Mudman was (as did all the fans of the piece), but Knight would never say.

“…sonofabitch,” he slurred from the cot as he attempted to sit up. I went over and helped him, got him a glass of water, and watched as he pulled a bottle of pills from his pocket and popped two of them into his mouth. “For the pain,” he said, taking a deep drink of the water. Setting down the glass, he wiped his mouth, rubbed his eyes, and looked at me. “Was I dreaming, or did you say something about an ulceration?”

I shook my head. “That was someone else, the Reverend, the man who runs this shelter.”

“Ah.” He blinked, coughed a few times, and rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m kinda sick, I’m afraid.”

“Cancer.” It was not a question.

He looked at me. “Seen it before, have you?”