I answered the phone in my hotel room to find myself talking to Damon Lanza. He was about to come collect me and take me back to Chez Lanza/Dolfi where I was to spend the remainder of my time in America. But I already knew that. He was phoning to let me know that if I had any laundry, not to do it at the hotel — they could take care of it at the house. I marveled at how blessed I was to have the son of my singing idol phoning me up about my smalls!

That first pick-up was probably the only successful one out of many attempts in the years that followed. It went without a hitch. On my subsequent trips to America when Damon was scheduled to gather me up from the airport we somehow never coincided at the right spot at the right time (though there was a successful outcome by accident on one occasion when I spotted him in the airport bookstore). We blamed Bob, of course.

We built up traditions during these visits. A half-hour-each-way walk to the store when we could have driven, for instance. On one of these walks we were jabbering away so intently that a motorist, thinking we were about to step out unawares in front of him, jammed on his brakes and caused a pile-up. No one was hurt, fortunately ... but what stunned me on our return to the house was that when Damon recounted the incident to Bob, he remembered details that I hadn’t even begun to take in, as though there’d been a camera in his brain taking photographs. We christened the spot where the accident occurred “Linz-Lanz Crash Alley.”

Another tradition was the playing of Bob’s favourite Mario recording, This Land, as I departed. The first time we did this, with the door open and Mario’s voice soaring out to the ocean, I emerged to find the shuttle driver leaning against his van waiting for me. “Who was that awesome singer?” he asked as I drew near. I turned, pointed to Damon, and said, “That boy’s father.” The driver was rapt.

One time Damon took it into his head that he and I were to watch all of his father’s movies while I was there, one a night, in the order in which they were made. That was to be our project — and it was duly executed and completed with love. I’m not sure if Serenade was Damon’s favourite, but he certainly had a soft spot for it.

He took me to his dad’s grave. Colleen is there too, indoors with Mario, while Marc is out on the lawn. The personnel at Holy Cross Cemetery were delighted to meet the son of one of their celebrity residents, whose piped singing, they assured us, frequently graced the hallowed environs. To those environs Damon now returns, for ever.

Superficially we didn’t have a lot in common — me the head-in-the-clouds music nerd, Damon the down-to-earth regular fellow whose father’s music gene had bypassed him. By his own admission he was the world’s worst singer, and he confirmed this assessment with an excruciating rendering of Danny Boy at the dining table. But it was precisely during such hilarities round the table that we clicked. No subject was taboo, and he, Bob and I argued, caroused, and teased and kidded each other like schoolboys. I think with Damon I found the schoolboy playmate I never had at school. We were just short of one year apart in age — he born on December 12, 1952, me on December 14, 1951. The banter factor served us well whenever he came on air with me, to the delight of elderly Mario fans who never expected to have direct access to his son on New Zealand talkback radio!

He was a great patriot. Not for him the sniveling treachery of those who bagged America, and America’s troops, and the freedom they defended. He even wrote about it in Lanza Legend, and I ran the article in my pro-freedom magazine, The Free Radical. He was contemptuous of Hollywood celebrities who dissed his country, saying if they didn’t like it they should buy a one-way ticket out.

Above all he was fiercely proud of and loyal to his father, whom he and Bob were promoting, typically, in Rhode Island during his last weekend on earth. It was this self-same devotion that led to arguments between us over the content of Armando Cesari’s biography, and even a period when we didn’t speak to each other. I didn’t ever come round to his point of view — at least not fully — but I did come to appreciate and respect the love that informed it. I’m glad we reconciled, and were able to discuss the whole episode candidly during my last stay in 2006. He was not an early riser, but he’d gotten up early that morning to have that conversation with me.

I can’t begin to imagine the gap that will be there now in Bob’s life. Contrary to the assumption of some, he and Damon were not lovers, nor even remotely gay, but they certainly had a singular love for each other, and were inseparable. Bob’s pain will be unbearably acute. Mario’s My Buddy will never be so apposite. In fact, I’d suggest all we Mario fans repair to that song for catharsis at this time, a means of liberating the tears that well inside us over the shocking passing of this gentle giant whose heart and smile were wider than the gates of day. “My buddy,” the song concludes, “your buddy misses you.” Damon, my buddy, your buddy Linz misses you. Your special buddy Bob misses you. All your buddies all over the world miss you. To paraphrase another of your dad's heartfelt recordings: you left us alone — but still you’re our own ... in our beautiful memories.