Page 18: nathan Foley rubs what’s left of the lucky Tree of hope, which stood outside harlem’s Lafayette Theatre, before performing during the apollo Theater’s amateur night on oct. 27. Opposite page: Foley arrives at the apollo’s rear entrance. At left: Foley and 15-year-old solomon hicks, who is in the children’s category, discuss guitars.


didn’t speak for his first 2½ years, then spoke in full sentences. Among his ear- lier phrases: “I want to play the guitar.” The origins of this singular desire are


mysterious to his parents and even to Na- than. “I don’t know if we could really say what creates that passion in us,” Sandy says. “That was God’s gift to him.” His parents never played instru-


ments, but music often filled the house and car. Sandy, a law librarian at the Library of Congress, loved gospel and contemporary Christian music. Mau- rice, a federal judge, dug the soul and R&B of the 1970s, especially the Isley Brothers, with those sizzling guitar solos by Ernie Isley. The Isleys had played on Amateur Night. On Christmas Day 2001, when Na-


than was 7, a guitar was waiting for him under the tree. It was a mini six-string acoustic model that cost about $30 at Toys R Us. “It was awesome,” Nathan recalls. He played it almost every day, with


no formal instruction, building chords note by note. The day he played a sim- ple version of the Isleys’ “Harvest for the World” was the day his father decided


to enroll him in guitar lessons, which began on his eighth birthday. He got his first electric guitar for


Christmas when he was 9. At 12, he joined the gospel band at Sharon Bible Fellowship Church in Lanham. “I saw this hunger in his eyes and


this excitement about playing,” says Tangie Rowe, minister of music at the time. “He’s one of those quiet-storm guys. You walk up to him and you could never tell, but once he gets on that in- strument, he’s a beast.” Nathan bought his next two guitars


himself, steadily upgrading as his sav- ings allowed, until he could afford an Epiphone Les Paul for about $500. “He deserves better,” says Bill Brooks,


guitar salesman at Chuck Levin’s Wash- ington Music Center in Wheaton. “He would come in usually on a Saturday. He would sit down and play, do some Hendrix things. He always got every- body’s attention.” But Nathan was shy about his play-


ing — and reluctant to try out for the Apollo. His parents urged him to give it a shot. They believed Nathan had some- thing special — divine, even — to share.


“We’re not crazy enough to think


that this is something that just hap- pens,” Maurice Foley says.


in 1971, a brilliant but troubled funk- metal guitar player named Eddie Hazel was in a studio with the band Funkadel- ic, psyching himself up to record what would become his legacy solo. According to rock legend, bandlead-


er George Clinton told Hazel to imagine receiving the worst news in the world, the death of his mother, then learning that the news wasn’t true. The result was a 10-minute instrumental epic — wailing, frenetic, fuzzed-out. It was called “Maggot Brain.” The band took the song on the road.


At the old Capital Centre in Landover, Clinton emerged from a coffin as Hazel jammed on “Maggot Brain.” When the 42-year-old Hazel died of liver disease in 1992, “Maggot Brain” receded into the mists of outrageous psychedelia. Foley’s instincts told him that “Pur-


ple Haze,” his successful audition song, was not the right piece to present on Amateur Night. It had become a cliche among guitar-stars-in-train-


november 28, 2010 | The WashingTon PosT Magazine 21


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