By Deuce

“There are three types of people in the world today. Those that don’t know what happened, those that wonder what happened, and people like us, from the streets, that make things happen.” –Bushwick Bill on “Stranded on Death Row”, Dr. Dre, The Chronic, 1992.

Bill Greenberg—electric, acoustic, rhythm, and lead guitarist; singer, songwriter, and harmonica player—has been making things happen ever since he graduated law school from Syracuse University in 1973. By his own admission, the man’s been a member of the United States Supreme Court. He holds an LLM from NYU in taxation and has had his own practice, The Greenberg Law Firm (a Limited Liability Partnership) for years, if not decades, now.

He estimates he’s tried between 90 and 100 cases (as a prosecutor and defense attorney) over the past 50 years in various areas of commercial litigation, personal injury, wills, estates, and trusts and, of course, taxation. He’s written for nearly 10 legal journals, has penned a pair of novels, and has scripted dozens of songs, some of which, published with his rock and roll band, the eponymous Bill’s Band, led him to extensively tour Europe.

Three times, at that.

He’s seen million dollar investments vaporize into thin air. He’s been forced to practice law in the basement of his home, with assistance from local college students. Yet through it all, the vicissitudes of his dual careers as a musician and barrister, he’s stuck as close to his guitar as a man possibly can and, in spite of everything, is back in motion with a new single, “When I’m Stronger”—and quite an outlook as a musician.

“When I was a kid, the two things I really lived for was music and Perry Mason,” Greenberg recollected. “Growing up, that’s where you would find me, on Saturday night, when I was nine, 10, 11, 12 years old. Watching Perry Mason and The Defenders with a guitar in my hand and a bottle of Coke. That’s what I did the most.”

In fact, when Greenberg got to law school, he had become so accomplished at his guitar that he joined a band. The group’s first gig was anything but auspicious and, might have forever dashed the musical ambitions of one less versed in making things happen.

During the band’s inchoate performance, it was “so bad that they paid us to leave,” Greenberg laughed. “I wasn’t the singer. We had a fat, fat chick who was the singer. I was just playing rhythm guitar. We were so terrible that by the middle of the third song, the guy that ran the bar came over and he paid us extra money to leave because the customers were coming in and, after about five minutes, leaving.”

So, if it was the legal world that initially indoctrinated Greenberg into the music world, which almost kicked him out as soon as he entered as a ‘pro’, it was also the legal world that firmly ensconced him in the music world much later, in the 1990s. By then, Greenberg’s prowess as a lawyer was so stark that, in addition to winning a couple of key cases, he became financially endowed enough to return to his vision as a musician. The result was Bill’s Band, a rock and roll outfit showcasing Greenberg as the lead guitarist, singer, and songwriter, backed by a drummer, bass player, and keyboardist.

“I got together with some real pros,” Greenberg declared. “These guys were really serious professionals.”

The assemblage dropped the LP Basic Tracks in 1997. Bill and the gang toured Europe and parts of the southern United States over the next several years. The shows were coming in, the band was content, the music was flowing when suddenly, abruptly, everything came crashing to a halt by the middle of the next decade. Seems an unwise investment in a lady, who turned out to be the shrewdest of crooks, separated Bill from some of his hard earned money, to the tune of $1.5 million dollars.

“This catastrophe happened and I had to come back [to the US],” Greenberg recounted. “I had a wife and two young kids; I couldn’t just walk away [from them]. So, I had to make up this drop in a million and a half dollars overnight. I still had other assets, which I sold off. But I had to go back in. I started practicing law out of the basement. I hired kids from the local college to help me out and I worked my way back up from the ground and eventually made money again. I started doing well; I started wining cases in court.”

Thus, it was only natural that he returned to his ambitions as a musician. There are a few notable differences in this current incarnation of Greenberg’s music. The band is gone, as is the rock and roll fare that was one of its mainstays. The electric guitar has been replaced with an acoustic one, and Greenberg’s comeback is heavily steeped in live performances at open mics, which “When I’m Stronger” readily evinces.

Granted, there is certainly more music in the works for this guitar virtuoso (which is far from hyperbole; those with any doubts need only listen to “Stronger”). Similarly, there’s more legal work in the mix, too. But the halcyon future? It goes a little something like this…

“If you asked me what I would like to do with this, I would just hope that by some way, some mechanism, my name got out there with a couple of songs and then maybe someone would say: ‘you know, why don’t you go get on a plane and fly to Michigan State. And, they’ll put you in a hotel room for one night, then you ride over to the place, you get on stage, and there’s 100, 150, 200, 300, 400 people there and you play for an hour and a half.’ Whether I’m making money or not, I don’t care. That would be an absolutely stupendous achievement for me and my life. I’d be happy as a clam.”

Sounds like it could happen.