Well do they know what it’s like to have a graveyard as a friend
‘Cos that’s where they are boy, all of them
Don’t seem likely I'll get friends like that again
—Bernie Taupin, Talking Old Soldiers
Recently, Eric Mead handed me his laptop, with a copy of the first volume of the new Tim Conover books open on the screen. Unexpectedly—for us both—my eyes suddenly welled with tears.
I knew Tim for 30 years. The terrible night of his death, February 2, 2011, Eric and I spent—an hour, two hours?—on the phone together, sharing tears, and tales, and our mutual love for our valiant, fallen friend.
But my spontaneous reaction to seeing those pages, as you are now seeing some of them in Genii, was primarily one of joy, only edged with sadness. Ecstatic joy at seeing the legacy of this greatest of magicians now arriving into the light of the world. Feeling the thrill of the books at last being birthed, along with my long-held expectation that Tim will finally achieve the standing he was always due, but that in his lifetime was largely contained within the fortunate cognoscenti who knew him.
In 2003, I remember walking up to the registration desk at the World Magic Seminar in Las Vegas and seeing, stuck high up on the back wall, a sloppily handmade sign announcing a midnight show with Tim Conover that had not been advertised on the formal program. I spent that day telling anyone and everyone I encountered to make sure to attend this rare opportunity to see a contemporary master at work. Yet when show time came, the room was far from full, because outside of the informed world of working close-up magicians, Tim Conover was not a widely known name. But within that insiders’ world, it was a name often spoken in awed tones.
That night, I kept careful track of Tim’s set list. After opening with his personalized take on Albert Goshman’s legendary Shakers routine, Tim performed a bravura set of card magic, consisting of nine routines, brandishing his mastery of memorized deck work and demolishing most of the magicians in the room. He then proceeded to display his typical array of original takes on classical conjuring, including his original Bending Coins, a routine of progressive bill changes, the Ramsay Cylinder and Coins, the Professor’s Nightmare, a multi-phase Coins Across, Scotty York’s Goldfinger routine, the Kaps Chinese Coin Routine, the production of a shot glass filled with liquid, and finally, the Cups and Balls, climaxing with genuine billiard balls as the final loads.