How Paul 'PC' Cardone' became the 'Mayor of Tempe.' 'He embodied music till the day he died'

He was the Mayor of Tempe.

Not technically speaking.

But to anyone at all familiar with the impact Paul “PC” Cardone had on the Tempe music scene in his 30-odd years as the bassist most likely to bring the party back to his house when the show was over?

That’s just who he was.

Cardone died in his sleep on the morning of Thursday, Nov. 10. No cause of death has been determined. He was 58.

Rick Cardone, the youngest of three Cardone brothers, says, “He had been out on the town. As he normally was. He came home, kind of sacked out on the couch and didn’t wake up.”

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How Paul Cardone became a fixture of the Tempe music scene

Cardone had been a fixture on the local music scene since joining Shadow Talk within two years of moving here in 1983 from Evergreen, Colorado, near Denver, ostensibly to attend Arizona State University.

JoAnn Cardone, his mother, says, “He crapped around a couple of years in school, which didn't amount to much, and was constantly looking for the bands.”

He found the bands all right.

A partial list of those who benefited greatly from his personality and talents through the years include B. Strange, Undertow, Satellite, Los Guys, Gentlemen Afterdark, the Cigarettes, Dry River Yacht Club and Sara Robinson Band.

He led his own projects — the Chocolate Fountain Experience and a band whose name started with PC and ended with words that can’t be printed here.

And many local bands availed themselves of his bass-playing talents in a pinch, including Gin Blossoms, the Refreshments, Roger Clyne & the Peacemakers, Pistoleros and the Black Moods.

When fellow man-about-town Serene Dominic moved to Arizona in the early ‘90s, Cardone made an instant impression.

“I just remember seeing him everywhere in Tempe, playing with different people to the point that you thought there were maybe clones of him,” Dominic says.

Cardone’s bass, custom-made by his brother Chris, was displayed in a "Tempe Sound" exhibit at the Tempe History Museum.

Senior curator Josh Roffler says, “It was like playing Where’s Waldo? You could always spot him either on stage or in the audience. Committed people like PC make music scenes prosper.”

In addition to his instrumental prowess, Cardone brought what Brannon Kleinlein, with whom the bassist organized Apache Lake Music Festival for a decade, calls “unbridled enthusiasm” to the stage.

“That guy played thousands of shows and I can't ever think of a time he would’ve phoned it in,” Kleinlein says.

“You could just tell, when PC was onstage, that that's what he was supposed to be doing with his life.”

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When 'a very precocious, outgoing child' discovers rock 'n' roll

Growing up in Colorado, Cardone was “a very precocious, outgoing child,” his mother recalls.

“When he was young, he was more controlled," she says. "As things got into junior high and that horrible age, he did all the things lousy junior high school kids did. But he just was a good soul. A really good soul.”

In fourth grade, he learned cello.

“He was nine pounds, four ounces at birth and he never stopped growing,” his mother recalls. “So he was bigger than everybody else in class and had the biggest hands. When strings were offered, he got cello.”

By high school, Cardone had lost interest in cello and found a truer calling, playing bass in rock ‘n’ roll bands.

“He just liked music,” JoAnn says. “And like any other itch, he had to scratch it.”

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Stephen Ashbrook played with Cardone in a touring band called Satellite from 1992 to 1999.

“A lot of times, you'll get into a band with people who are aren't bass players, but they fill in because you need a bassist,” Ashbrook says. “His focus was on playing bass. That’s what he wanted to do.”

By that point, Cardone was already quite the presence on Mill Avenue.

“Even at that time, PC knew everyone in town,” Ashbrook says. “I got to know Gin Blossoms well. Dead Hot. Pistoleros. Just being in PC's band was automatic entry to a lot of social circles.”

Mark Zubia of Pistoleros played with Cardone in Los Guys for more than a decade, starting in 1995. They had met in the ‘80s, when Zubia and his brother Lawrence were just getting started in a band called Live Nudes.

“We all lived together in a house in downtown Tempe,” Zubia recalls. “And after PC saw us, he showed up the next day at the house with orange juice, some food and a keg and just inserted himself into our lives.”

They formed Los Guys on stage one Sunday night at the famed Tempe rock club Long Wong’s when the band that was supposed to play didn’t show.

“We just got up and filled the night and proceeded to do that for many years,” Zubia says. “But we never rehearsed. We just learned everything on stage.”

Cardone could definitely roll with that arrangement.

“He had an instinct,” Zubia says. “I would yell out chords or he'd watch my hands. It was really nice in that regard because you could write a song one day and the next day you're playing it live.”

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Joining Dry River Yacht Club and Sara Robinson Band

In 2014, Cardone joined Dry River Yacht Club after guesting on a few tracks in the studio.

As Garnet, their lead singer, recalls, “It was a seamless transition.”

He was “always the life of the party,” Garnet says. “And he was always in a great mood. Even when he was in a bad mood, he was in a good mood.”

Big Jay Bender, the head of security at Hollywood Alley, a beloved Mesa rock 'n' roll dive, once told Rob “Fun Bobby” Birmingham, “If you ever see PC mad, be super on guard, because that is a sign of the apocalypse.”

Guitarist Yod Aquarian Paul got to work with Cardone for six years toward the end of his life after forming a band around a promising young singer, Sara Robinson.

“He always went up to 11,” Paul recalls.

“In rehearsals, we never held back. We’d try when we wanted to save Sara's voice for a big show tomorrow. But with him, it was impossible to hold back. Even with nobody watching. It's how he lived his whole life, really. Big. His laugh would fill the room. It was one of the most beautiful sounds to me.”

Sara Robinson Band had been on hiatus but Paul and Cardone had just gotten a new group together a week or two before the bassist’s death.

“When I first asked him to do this project, he said, 'No,’” Paul recalls. “I kept trying to think of who else in town I’d even want and I couldn't. So I just kept bugging him until he finally said yes.”

'Someone that could really teach and lead and follow and support'

Roni Helinski of the local rock band Future Exes, a longtime friend who performed with Cardone on occasion, says what he brought to the stage was “all-encompassing,” from the way he could lead others through a song they didn’t know to the way he played his instrument.

“He was someone that could really teach and lead and follow and support,” she says.

The first time she performed on stage, Cardone was there.

“I was singing with my eyes closed," she recalls. "And he got up there with a shaker. I look over and he’s shaking it right in my face. He didn't go out and smoke a cigarette. He came on stage with whatever he had and supported me. And, instantly, I felt like, 'Oh my gosh, I can do this.’”

He did the same thing for Garnet long before he’d joined Dry River.

“That’s how I met him,” she says with a laugh. “I'm holding a note with my eyes closed, and all of a sudden, I turn around and there's some guy behind me shredding bass."

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'The face and the voice' of Apache Lake Music Festival

In addition to performing, Cardone organized two major local music festivals — Jeromatherapy in Jerome and Apache Lake Music Festival, which he and Kleinlein launched and organized from 2010 to 2019 until the property was sold and things went south with the new owners.

“PC was kind of the face and the voice of the festival,” Kleinlein says. “He would introduce every band. Without PC, the vibe we had out there for 10 years that people came to know and love? I don't think that happens.”

A highlight of the local-music calendar, Apache Lake was one of Cardone’s “favorite things in the world to do,” Kleinlein says. “He cherished it.”

'He would give you all three of his last two dollars'

For Cardone, it was all about helping his fellow musicians.

“I don't think he sought to be the center of the music scene,” Paul says. “He just embodied it and lived it and did his best to help everyone else live it, too."

When Cardone didn’t have a show, he often watched other bands perform, either standing right in front or jumping up to join them.

“He just wanted to help people succeed,” Garnet says. “The thing that made him so joyous and proud was to find somebody who was talented and do anything he could to lift them up.”

If he saw that a singer had talent, he’d build a band around that voice. If a touring band needed a place to crash, his door was always open. If a local band needed a van to go on tour and his van was available, it was theirs for the taking.

As Zubia says, “If he liked you, he was going to be generous — with his time, his connections, his money, his house. Whatever he had? You could have it, too.”

Perhaps Helinski says it best: “He would give you all three of his last two dollars.”

It’s how he was wired.

“If all he had was his shirt, he'd give you that,” his brother Rick recalls. “And it was almost to a fault. Because he gave so much.”

It was never for the greater of glory of Cardone, though.

As Garnet says, “It was always about ‘How can I help these broke musicians?' A lot of people just want to be successful themselves. He wanted everyone to be successful.”

There are hundreds of stories of Cardone helping people through the years.

Josh Kennedy of the Black Moods, who played with Cardone in the band whose name can not be printed here, tells of the time Cardone loaned his van to a then-unsigned young Tempe group called Gin Blossoms so they could get to South By Southwest Music Festival in Austin, Texas, a pivotal moment in their rise to fame.

“He's taken people into his house that were down on their luck and said, 'Hey, you can crash on my couch until you get back on your feet,’” Kleinlein says. “He just wanted to make sure everyone was taken care of and having a good time.”

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'Paul, when he jumped in, he didn't see how deep the pool was'

Being the life of the party had its downside.

“The sad part of this is the toll that it took on him physically and emotionally,” Rick Cardone says. “It ruined his body. And it took its toll on his heart. He had a big heart. It was easy to break.”

Although no cause of death has been determined, Rick Cardone is fairly certain drinking played a role.

“He did party more than his share,” he says. “When you have a cracked block, you can't drive it full throttle all the time. That kind of lifestyle, unfortunately, can catch up to you.”

His drinking took its toll on Cardone's parents.

“I didn't have a problem with that if he had only been moderate about it,” JoAnn says.

“But Paul, when he jumped in, he didn't see how deep the pool was. He just went in full body. So it didn't work. He carried it to an extreme and that always hurt me. But he's 58, for God's sake. What are you gonna do? He's a man. He makes the decisions, even though I foot the bill.”

Cardone had cut back on his drinking after being diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver, which required what his mother calls a “tough, tough, tough transplant” in 2004.

“He damn near died,” JoAnn recalls.

“So he had a new lease on life. And at first he was cooperative. But the cause of the liver problems was a clotting disease, not alcohol. When he discovered that it wasn't alcohol, I think it kind of said to him, 'Oh, well… hell, I can drink.’”

And drink he did.

When his friends from the ‘90s were settling down, starting families, Cardone just kept going.

“He partied through our generation, then he partied through the next generation and was on to the next,” Ashbrook says. “That was kind of his thing, you know? But there's a reason why people were so attracted to him. I mean, the guy's got a heart that's huge."

'He was like a puppy ... You couldn't stay mad at him'

JoAnn Cardone is standing in the house her son shared freely with his friends, reflecting on the life she wouldn’t necessarily have chosen for him but had come to admire.

“He didn't spend the money on himself,” she says. “He doesn't have anything here. I mean, he's got guitars and stuff like that. But with the money that he spent, you'd think he would have a Mercedes or a tricked-out house.”

Instead, he spent that money helping others.

“How can you get mad at that?,” JoAnn says, her voice trembling as she fights back tears. “People would come up and say, ‘If it wasn't for Paul, I wouldn't do this. I wouldn't have that.’ So it all did good.”

It’s clear in talking to his family that whatever tension Cardone’s lifestyle may have caused, it didn’t dampen their affection for the Mayor.

Rick Cardone says, “He was like a puppy. He would (expletive) on the rug every once in a while. And you would say 'It's OK.’ You know, pet him and give him his (expletive) treats. Because at the end of the day? You couldn’t stay mad at him. He didn’t have a mean bone in his body. He was just a good guy.”

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'He embodied music till the day he died'

Music meant the world to Paul Cardone.

“It was his life,” his brother says. “He did nothing but that. This was his job, his love, his passion, everything. He’d come to visit us in Colorado. And we'd see him for an hour. Then he’d take off to find some band that was playing in Denver.”

It didn’t matter if that band turned out to be the greatest thing he’d ever seen.

As Rick Cardone says, “You could put the (expletive) band in the world on stage, and he'd find something great to say about them.”

Making music his life was the source of some serious friction between the bassist and his father.

As JoAnn Cardone explains, “My husband came from nothing. He became a civil engineer and started his own company in Denver that my son Rick runs now. When you come from that, you expect your kids to kind of follow, not not go to school. But it's a fault of the parent because not every kid is interested in school, OK?”

The Monday after Cardone’s death, his friends and family gathered at Tempe's longest-running home of rock 'n' roll, the Yucca Tap Room, for an open mic night.

At one point, someone asked the crowd to “raise your hands if PC ever gave you anything.”

JoAnn Cardone was there.

“And every freaking person in that room put their hand up,” she says. “I mean, I don't know 200 people. At his 50th birthday party, there were 400 people there.”

Cardone had turned the Tempe scene into a family.

“He had this personality that just made friends,” Helinski says.

And many of those friends would end the night back at Cardone’s house for an afterparty.

“Having a place where you could just show up at 3 a.m. after work or your gig and just jam until 6 in the morning was definitely not something I think everybody's got at their disposal," Helinski says.

"But he opened his home to everybody at all hours. And it gave everyone a chance to hone their friendships and their music skills together.”

When Helinski lived in Cardone’s house, she grew accustomed to waking up to music.

“You'd go out and everybody's jamming and singing these wonderful harmonies at the top of their lungs,” she says. “Some nights were definitely magical. And some nights were just loud and crazy.”

Cardone had other talents.

“You would be amazed at just how good he was at golf,” Garnet says. “He was great at pool. He had a lot of talents. But they all were little facets compared to the gem that was music. He embodied music till the day he died.”

There was never a question of him doing anything but playing music for a living,

“There wasn't a backup plan,” Ashbrook says. “That's the lifestyle he chose for himself. And he did it the way he wanted.”

Life as the Mayor of Tempe

He always enjoyed being known as the Mayor of Tempe. He made it his email address, after all.

The nickname started as the Mayor of Mill Avenue. Then, Mill Avenue started to change — and not in a way a guy like Cardone would appreciate. Long Wong's closed in 2004. And other cherished local rock haunts, from Edcel's Attic to Gibson's, had disappeared.

“The way I understand the story is that once he saw the changes on Mill Avenue, way back whenever, he said, 'I don't want to be in charge of this,' laughing of course in that PC laugh,” Birmingham says.

In 2006, Cardone told the East Valley Tribune, "With Mill Avenue the way it is now, I don't want to be associated with it anymore.”

As much as he loved being known as the Mayor of Tempe, Cardone kept it humble.

“He always wondered why people thought he was important,” Paul says. “But he was.”

He had a confidence about him.

"I've never known PC to be starstruck," Ashbrook says. "No matter who we were touring with or playing with, he saw them as equals. He never saw himself as anything less than a world-class rock star himself.”

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'There's a lot of glue that's come undone now that he's gone'

To Kleinlein, Cardone’s passing is “a big hit” for the local scene.

“His influence runs 30-plus years in this town,” he says. “I can't think of another person — at least in the 20 years that I've been in this music scene — that had more friends. It’s an entire community right now that’s mourning.”

As Garnet says, “There's a lot of glue that's come undone now that he's gone.”

To Zubia, there’s comfort in the thought of Cardone living life the way he chose until the very end and dying in the home whose doors were always open.

“He lived unapologetically,” Zubia says. “And he died in his sleep at home. So I'm thankful for that. We should all be so lucky to live on our own terms and go that way.”

Kleinlein and Helinski assembled more than 20 local artists representing more than 30 years of Tempe music for an indoor/outdoor celebration of Cardone’s life to take place Friday, Jan. 6, at Yucca Tap Room.

“It’s gonna be big,” Helinski says. “We’re gonna do something fitting of the Mayor.”

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Paul Cardone's Celebration of Life

When: 2 p.m. Friday, Jan. 6.

Where: Yucca Tap Room, 29 W. Southern Ave., Tempe.

With: Dry River Yacht Club, the Haley Green Band, Banana Gun, Jason DeVore (of Authority Zero), the Black Moods, Robin Wilson (of Gin Blossoms), Wyves with Strange Young Things, Sugar Thieves, Banshee Bones, Chocolate Fountain, Satellite, Future Exes, Dead Hot Workshop, the Cigarettes, Ghetto Cowgirl, Los Guys, Greyhound Soul, the Slims, Liz Rose, C3, Adam Bruce, Scott Howard and Walt Richardson

Admission: $25.

Details: 480-967-4777, ticketweb.com.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Remembering Paul 'PC' Cardone, legendary Arizona bass guitarist