Pirate’s sendoff reflects Cayucos at its best

April 3, 2025

By DELL FRANKLIN

Editor’s Note: The following series, “Life in Radically Gentrifying Cayucos by the Sea,” to be posted biweekly includes the notes, thoughts, and opinions of an original American voice: author Dell Franklin. 

Franklin’s memoir, “The ballplayer’s Son” and “Life on The Mississippi, 1969” are currently on Amazon.

Call it a celebration, memorial, festivity, etc. but the Pirate’s send-off a couple months after his passing was a rousing event with an attendance of close to 300 friends from every walk of life—ranchers, farmers, cowboys, surfers, fishermen, landscapers, bartenders, framers, teachers, tradesmen, business people, artists of every ilk and genre, millionaires and paupers, and every kind of local bar denizen, men and women alike.

They were all there to eat and drink and kibitz and talk about the Pirate. Everybody had stories, some solemn and reverent, others bawdy and outrageous, and plenty irreverent and anarchic, or it wouldn’t be about the Pirate.

Most of us have been to affairs like this, whether in other parts of the country or in Cayucos, but I recall none where the person celebrated was hailed as a…well…rock star. An icon. Hell, high-powered politicians and big shots in industry or the arts or wherever, hardly receive the adoration and genuinely kind and sometimes outrageously humorous words Randy “The Pirate” Crozier received on a Saturday afternoon at a venue close to the Cayucos tennis courts and water department.

It was a kind of love-in.

What’s more, the Pirate’s passing brought together a community, as Brad Heisenrader put it, that “doesn’t care how much money you have, or how entitled you are, or what your so-called status is, but accepts you if you’re just a good person and part of the community.”

Which is why many people had a hand in creating the celebration, none of whom, according to Brad, wanted their names mentioned, because it was all about Randy, and not the free beer, wine, liquor, beef, chicken, side orders, cooks, barbecue crew, bartenders, band, crooners, a 20-minute loop of Randy on screen, and the venue itself that amounted to a lot of financial contributions and effort.

It was a sharing.

Men and women, one after another, visited the mic before the bandstand and launched into memories of the Pirate; some breaking down, but all, in their own way, talking about somebody so simple and unpretentious yet sneakily talented and charismatic.

As I sat at one of the tables with a friend, listening to the stories, I was convinced I would not join the steady procession of speakers, because I have already written so much about the Pirate for both the Rogue Voice—a monthly alternative paper I published for almost four years from 2005 until 2009—and CalCoastNews, that I didn’t think anything I had to say added to the event.

But my friend Sue—reading an interview in a copy of the Rogue Voice of Randy as “Rogue of the Month,” in  a Sept. 2006 issue which I had shared with a few people at the gathering—insisted I read the last half page of the interview to the gathering as tears formed in her eyes. Accordingly, it received laughs and a rousing ovation.

So now I will share it with an audience that has been reading about Randy the Pirate in my column at CalCoastNews for years, but doesn’t really know him personally.

Rogue Voice: You’ve been working nonstop for more than 30 years at a tough, dusty job and you’re almost always broke. Where did all your money go?

Crozier: For awhile it was drugs, sex and rock-in-roll. Now it’s wine, women and song.

Rogue Voice: Wine? Bullshit. You don’t drink wine.

Crozier: You’re right. I’m a beer and brandy man,

Rogue Voice: You own nothing. Your clothes are rags. You’ve been injured badly. You’ve suffered woman trouble. But you’re always smiling. A local artist, Grady Houser, told me it was you who cheered him up and gave him hope when he was at the lowest point of his life. As a fellow guitar player and artist, you played for him, and danced for him to Mr. Bojangles. You made him smile and laugh again. Why are you so happy?

Crozier: Because I guess I’m always trying to keep everybody else happy, and I guess that works. I don’t know. Work makes me happy. I love my work. I do some jobs for money, to pay the bills, I’ll stucco, pound nails, whatever, but building a stone fire place for somebody (Randy is a stone mason by trade), or the face of a building downtown, that’s art, that’s my passion, just like my guitar. I don’t know what I’d do without my work and my music. I stopped getting into trouble when I got dead serious about my music and the band I’m with and the guys in the band. I love that base guitar. Sometimes, when we’re all in a pocket, nailing a groove, finding the perfect crescendo,…those moments when we trade those licks, playing something like “Red House,” man, that’s what I look forward to. How could I be anything but happy when I got those things?

Rogue Voice: You’ve lost your reputation as town drunk and insurrectionist.

Crozier: Not intentionally. I never tried to be those things, but I was always fair about the things I said and did. I’ve never been one to take bullshit from people. I guess I was an idiot, sometimes, but if that’s the way it was, so be it. I don’t regret any of it…the scars, the broken bones, the brain damage…ha ha ha. I’m still here, happy as hell.

Rogue Voice: What’s your epitaph?

Crozier: Well, when they bury my ass, they will have a guy who used himself up about as much as he could. This old body’ll be as beat up and used up and rode hard as you can ride it, There won’t be nothing left to use, and I doubt there’ll be enough money left over to buy a six pack.

After the party ended, hard core fandom, myself included, went to Schooner’s wharf–where the 20-minute visual loop of his life ran over and over on a large TV–and got totally and joyously crocked in a final tribute to the Pirate.