Just Kids

Just Kids by Patti Smith
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book is a gift. You do not know Patti Smith, but in committing to literature her relationship with artist Robert Mapplethorpe, she has crafted for you an exquisite offering, a rare act of generosity that will light you up from the inside. In that sacred space you will feel anew the love of absent companions, recall and smile at the purity of youth, marvel at the power of art, and nod in recognition of love beyond life, beyond weakness, beyond corporeal destruction. You’ll remember cohorts, consorts, conspirators who spurred and shaped you; maybe you’ll present one with this book, saying, “I haven’t been able to express how much you mean to me, as a lover/friend/mentor/adversary. Take this. She nails it.”

If you’ve become cynical, the power of Smith’s prose will cure you, at least for a while; Just Kids is that rare piece of work that surpasses hype. As the tale unfurls, dried up reserves of hope pour forth, the kind of hope necessary for almost any worthwhile human endeavor. If your hope generator is in need of servicing, look no further than Just Kids.

I read this book in three sittings. If I was a kid I would’ve done it in one. I would have put on a pot of coffee (probably Nescafe, to honor coffee enthusiast Smith’s brand of choice) and stayed up through the night, preferably in the small NYC apartment on West 23rd where I lived briefly in 1985. It was a couple doors down from the Chelsea Hotel, where a significant portion of this book takes place. Upon finishing at dawn, I would have looked out the casement window and envisioned, parading before the YMCA, the real-life mover-shakers of Just Kids, who often need only a line or two of Smith’s taut prose to rise off the page: Greogory Corso, Williams Burroughs, Sam Shepard, Tom Verlaine, Hilly Kristal, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Grace Slick, Candy Darling, Jackie Curtis, Jim Carroll, Clive Davis and, more than any of them, the handsome petulant demigod Robert Mapplethorpe. All were themselves creations, adventurers who crossed paths with Patti during her lengthy apprenticeship. Obviously, she was an apt pupil. With her, these mavens changed the course of our culture, though most remain largely unsung. In my mind they are walking West 23rd, going for coffee, all of them -even the dead ones – still circulating in the constellation that is Patti Smith’s remarkable life.

The book is mostly about Smith and Mapplethorpe, of course, and theirs is a fascinating love story containing pretty much everything except hate and abandonment. They love, lust, betray, support, inspire, repel, goad, dare, obsess, disappoint, entertain, take advantage of, and forgive; Their bond survives pretty much everything. And even though they misbehave, you root for them to stay connected, even as Mapplethorpe struggles with his sexual identity, Smith slips around, each watches from the wings while the other comes into their own, Mapplethorpe ascends into high society arts patrons, Smith pays the bills by working 12 hour shifts at Scribner’s. Part of the sweet tension in the narrative is: will this failure/success send them away from one another for good? But it never does. Not even Smith’s rock stardom breaks their bond. Even Mapplethorpe’s eventual death from the the ravages of AIDS doesn’t do it.

Mention also must be made of Smith’s rendering of her childhood, the early sections of the book, which are luminous, funny, at times even mystical. Her days as a leader of an army of neighborhood kids, singing, shouting, breaking rules, thieving, all seem to have been perfect training ground for her fame vehicle The Patti Smith Group.

I’m a a fan of Smith the esteemed groundbreaking rocker, and I’ve enjoyed her memoirist prose before – in Babel and Woolgathering – but this volume marks a new clarity, a sustained narrative force that loses no thrust as our heroine weaves in delicious details about New York, food (or lack thereof), the ebb and flow of the cultural underground, the late 60s at street level, art as a means of self-realization (among many other things), and the transformative power of music and kindness. It’s a marvel.

Interestingly, word on the street is she’s working on a crime novel. Not what I would have expected, until I learned in Just Kids what a voracious reader Smith is, consuming everything from the Beats to (lots of) Rimbaud to Mickey Spillane. Whenever she’s done with it, I do know this: It will be the first crime novel I’ve ever bought and read.

As Smith wrote on the back of Horses – for which Mapplethorpe shot the iconic cover photo: “Charms, sweet angels. You have made me no longer afraid of death.” Charms, Patti, right back atcha.

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Carry The One

Carry the One by Carol Anshaw

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Accidents happen. Twists of Fate, bad judgment, lousy luck. Regardless of whether or not one believes in a higher power or karma or The Law Of Attraction, all can agree we are shaped by events, as individuals and as groups. The notion can be both terrifying and exhilarating. In the hands of Carol Anshaw, it is both, and it makes for a spellbinding read.

In brisk, economical prose, Anshaw drops us in among a group of urbane early 20-somethings, moments after a wedding in a Wisconsin farmhouse in 1983. All are in various states of inebriation, via drugs, alcohol, and/or lust. Anshaw – also a painter – conveys a lot with small brushstrokes. Cardinal traits that will define the characters over the course of the book are in full view; we meet the socially conscious bride unsure of her choice of husband, her genius drug enthusiast brother (in a dress) and his ne’er-do-well girlfriend (in a tux), her lesbian sister and her sister’s lover connecting furtively in a hot attic room, an aspiring musician and his trustafarian gal pal. All except the exhausted bride and groom pile into the ne’er-do-well tuxedoed girlfriend’s “cavernous Dodge” for rides back to motels, lodgings, etc, and, with only their fog lights on, they hit and kill a young girl. That’s on page 11.

What follows is twenty-five years or so in which this tragedy reverberates in the lives of these individuals as they become themselves. That may sound like a downer, but it’s not. While tragic, Anshaw’s characters – for the most part – are funny, inspiring and just complicated enough to free them of stereotype (i.e. “The Lefty Do-Gooder,” “The Druggie,” “The Flighty Artist.”) . It is thrilling to watch them kick against the friction of their lives – not just the accident, but the more ordinary mishaps like heartbreak, disappointment, humiliation. They are spirited and, to a person, sexy. There’s much erotic heat going on, and Anshaw is a master at this, somehow using just enough restraint to let one’s mind reel in the most pleasant of ways. Sadly, the really good sex seems mostly reserved for the women. But it is really good sex. In fact, guys in general do not fare so well under Anshaw’s gaze. But that’s a quibble.

Anshaw uses engaging, sharply realized characters – the dialogue sparkles – plus impressively rendered factoids about astronomy and painting, to delve into the different, often fascinating, ways people handle guilt, resentment, despair. Everyone chooses to atone – both consciously and unconsciously – for the accident, and the magic of the book is that while one begins the story being pissed off at these fuckups, as we get to know them and their hearts, we begin to forgive. And that feels good.

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Levon Helm, Our Shining Pride

“You’re my pride, Loretty. My shinin’ pride.”

That was my introduction to Levon Helm. Perfectly cast as Ted Webb, father of Loretta Lynn, in the superlative 1980 biopic Coal Miner’s Daughter. (Put it in your queue. Just do it.) In the above-quoted scene, Levon, in his acting debut, calls up a complicated mix of love, dismay, and resignation to convey a father’s singular pain at letting a fiery 13-year-old (!!) marry a 22-year-old force-of-nature wingnut he does not care for. With only a few lines to get the job done, Levon lets us inside Papa Webb’s thorny knowledge that keeping his eldest daughter home (with seven other kids) will kill her spirit, which he respects with a depth even Loretta won’t understand for years. The affection for this spirit is what lets her go, and it is what gave the world Loretta Lynn. It’s a love scene that has nothing to do with romance, and Levon nails it.

I was 15 years old when I saw Coal Miner’s Daughter, and ignorant of any kind of love other than the hormone-y, adolescent variety. Fumbling towards musicianship, I was familiar with The Band not as personalities, but simply the men behind the catchy but lyrically trippy “The Weight,”in frequent rotation on WQXI in Atlanta. Someone told me Ted Webb was Levon Helm, The Band’s drummer. You know – the cool hillbilly guy in a constant alpha-male duel/duet with Robbie  Robertson in The Last Waltz. The one who sings his ass off while at the same time laying down the country funk.

Oh yeah. That guy. Click.

I was just learning. Of course I had no idea I’d one day shake this guy’s hand in his home as he thanked me for working at a nearby preschool, nor could I have imagined  I’d make music with him, as part of Elizabeth Mitchell’s impromptu band during an afternoon Kids’ Ramble. The Kids’ Ramble was one of the many occasions Levon and his people raised funds for local public school district Onteora’s music program. Needless to say, I frequently conjure the memory – one of my top five musical recollections – of his joyful jack-o-lantern grin on me as I threaded my bass to his kick drum on the Lou Reed song “What Goes On,” while Liz, her daughter Storey, and husband/co-conspirator Daniel Littleton rocked, and families danced around us.

We have lost Levon, and the community grieves en masse. As I write, memorials are being planned in Woodstock. Of course, memories are flowing. My son is one year younger than I was when I sat in a dark theater and took in Levon’s instructive, moving performance in Coal Miner’s Daughter. But while I give props to that resonant bit of acting (even more potent now, as I am increasingly Papa Webb, less Loretty) the regard I feel for Levon’s Ted Webb is nothing compared to my awe for Levon the musician, and my respect for Levon the community man, a guy who kept coming back from adversity, swinging those tough, gnarly arms, giving and giving, and smiling ever more broad as time nipped at his heels like the goddamn dog that it is. (Seriously – do a Google search; the older Levon Helm gets, the more he smiles.)

Which brings me to: Levon is one of the few members of the rock and roll firmamanet who made me unafraid to grow old, because he did it with such style, dignity, fun, fierceness, and even sexiness. He left behind a unique template that I will struggle to follow.

While I appreciated Levon and The Band as I moved through adulthood, their music finally sunk into my marrow not long after my family and I moved into a 1910 Victorian a few towns over from Big Pink. This was 2002. By then I’d been a musician most of my life, and I’d sat around plenty of campfires and/or in the light of the Waffle House jukebox, slaughtering “The Weight,” but after getting that mortgage, things got serious with me and The Band. Sometimes music calls to you, and so it was with the Across The Great Divide box set, which asserted itself as I was negotiating some very grown-up problems; I needed adult blues poetry and ramshackle funk to help me settle into homeownership, parenthood, and joy-tinged-with-resignation, i.e. – the next chapter of my life. Levon and Co. fit the bill perfectly.

It took about two years for Levon and me to meet. My family and I gradually settled into our new country life, enrolling our son Jack in Phoenicia Elementary (part of the afore-mentioned Onteora), shopping locally, finding our folks. It seemed everyone had something up-close-and-personal to say about Levon; about the fire that had consumed his house, about his band, his continued rocking at local bars, his daughter Amy’s new group Ollabelle, his autobiography, his cancer and the subsequent loss of his voice, and finally, come 2004, his Midnight Rambles, a nighttime concert series in the barn/studio adjacent to his (rebuilt) home, begun as a means to pay off his medical bills.

By then, I was working as a teacher’s assistant at School Of The New Moon in Mt. Tremper (apparently, bartending and playing in bands is great prep for wrangling tots) and word on the two-lane-blacktop was that firemen and teachers got in free to the Rambles. By the time the scuttlebutt filtered down to me, it was around Thanksgiving, 2004, and the ticket price, if memory serves, was $100. It was potluck, too, with everything from epicurean delights to M & M’s, depending on who showed up. (The food was always good and plentiful, it turned out.) If my preschool teacher’s assistant status didn’t cover it, I was going to fork over the dough anyway and eat my weight in M & M’s. (Holly did pay. And it was the best C-note she ever spent.)

We’d heard the Rambles were shaping up to be must-see events, with local luminaries like Donald Fagen, Garth Hudson and John Sebastian frequently dropping in, and music extending into the wee hours. Shenanigans were afoot, old school man-mischief, people walking away grinning like Cheshire cats. I’d been assured Levon was in excellent form, cancer can kiss his hillbilly ass, and although he was not singing due to radiation treatments, elder bluesman Little Sammy Davis was handling the vocal duties admirably. When word got out that Howlin’ Wolf’s guitaristHubert Sumlin and Ollabelle were booked, Holly and I were strenuously advised to get a babysitter for Jack and get our butts over there.

When I said, “I’m a teacher,” the door guy not only let me in gratis, he slapped me on the back, and welcomed my wife and me to a sold-out Ramble. Excellent beginning. Guys were gathered around burn barrels, helping people park. Inside, it was packed, but just enough to be warm and comfy. Downstairs was schmooze and merchandise, with Levon’s many framed photos and posters on the walls, and comestibles in what once had been a garage. Very homey. In those days, upstairs seating in the high ceilinged barn/studio was a bit more laissez-faire, with folks plopping down cross-legged in front of worn Persian rugs on the small stage. I think about 150/200 folks could get in. Balconies had been built around the edges of the performance/recording area. The hum of equipment and the smell of warm amplifier tubes permeated the air alongside the familiar stank of sweaty, excited people.

Ollabelle‘s T-Bone Burnett-produced eponymous CD was freshly out, and the band had a bit of the golden buzz. All five members came across as pure naturals in the stage lights, laying down a deep-dish blend of folk, soul, and rock and roll, immediately winning everyone over. It was my first time seeing Amy, and I was struck by how her moves sometimes resembled her dad’s when she played mandolin. 

Speaking of her dad, I spotted him during Ollabelle’s set, walking around, shaking hands, embracing audience members, nodding in approval at the music, grinning wide. But he was so skinny, so… slight. I’d not seen him since checking out The Last Waltz at a midnight movie decades ago, so I was expecting him to be older, but… I was worried. I wondered if he’d actually be getting behind the kit.

Then he did. And that was magic. Like Disney-style magic. As soon as he picked up the sticks, a glow emanated from him, expanding his presence beyond his body, across the stage and into the room. It was breathtaking. In all my years as a musician and a fan of bands, I’d never seen anything like it. All his frailty was gone, and first the band, then the entire room, filled with energy.

All of Ollabelle responded, but Amy in particular connected to her dad, and he to her, in a rare, wordless stage communication. Their eyes met and before I knew it, someone put a microphone in front of Levon’s face and he opened his mouth and sang.

Pandemonium. No one saw that coming.  The surprise and subsequent communal joy resounded off the walls. As intense as the atmosphere already was, it ratcheted up a couple notches. Levon and Amy duetted on a few tunes, both of them laughing and smiling like: welcome to the miracle. I recall thinking, I heard his singing days were over. But they were not. Radiation can kiss his hillbilly ass.

When Ollabelle finished, Holly insisted on meeting Levon. I was shy, but luckily, she dragged me over to him, as is her wont. He was sweaty, but still in his music-enhanced state, vibrant, moving from person-to-person, touching people like a the wise rock and roll elder he was. I was dazzled and mush-mouthed, but as I shook his hand, I thanked him for his “teachers get in free” policy. To my amazement, he kind of bowed to me, Japanese-style, and, hand to his chest, thanked me for working with kids. He said he knew teachers did not get enough respect and anything he could do to remedy that, well, he was gonna do it. It was one of the only times we spoke, but those hoarse, heartfelt words echo around in me like a benediction from a holy man. Because that’s what they were.

Over the next few years I would come to know a few of Levon’s band and crew, his sentinels, his protectors, the folks who spun a circle of love around the man and helped him to wrench a surprising fourth act out of his life, a span of extra credit time in which Grammys glowed and the once-forsaken road beckoned. I am proud to have been a small part of this unexpected reprieve, when Levon used his windfall of time to bring music and much-needed attention (money) to those in need, those who suffered, those undervalued and taken for granted. He used his age and status to lift folks up in ways both material and spiritual, and it is one of the joys of my life that I can say I was there and privileged to be a part of it with the Kids’ Rambles.

Levon’s largesse is catchy, too. Just last year, his core band – Larry Campbell, Teresa Williams, Amy, and Byron Isaacs – played a benefit to help raise funds for my small-town library, which had suffered a devastating fire. Thanks in part to them, rebuilding will soon commence.

The last few times I attended Rambles, Levon didn’t do the rounds in the audiences. I reckoned he was pacing himself, saving it up for the stage, which consistently lit up with his presence as it had that first time. But the audiences had swelled and folks could be smothering, so I reasoned he needed his space prior to showtime. Then I saw him perform at the Apollo with Elvis Costello, Nick Lowe, Richard Thompson, Larry Campbell, and Allen Toussaint as part of Elvis’s Spectacle, and he did not sing (Ray LaMonagne did). I put that down to his touring schedule. Or a virus. Or the crazy way he sat and played drums, wrenching his body. Anything but the  inevitable, which I’d started to believe he’d somehow avoided, like a musician in a folktale who has outfoxed the devil.

Why would I think that? Because I saw Levon do magic. And the kind of magic he performed still lingers among us, and will fill the air as we celebrate him this weekend and beyond, as his music plays on down the decades. I will be there for any celebrations this weekend, and I am certain wherever he is laid to rest will attract pilgrims far into the future. As for me, I will visit him often in my memories, as I grow old and try ever harder to be like him.

Rest In Peace, Levon. And thank you.

RBW, Paris 4-25-12

P.S. photo credits to follow…

Rock Paper Photo Roundup: Winter 2012 Selection – Madonna, The Boss, Johnny Cash, Global Jukebox, etc.

Spring is my favorite season, always has been. From my windows I see pale green leaves unfurling in lengthening light, and my insides respond in kind, releasing a bit of energy which I am using to bring you somewhat up to date, dear reader.

I’m happy to say I’ve been busy writing a lot. My work for Rock Paper Photo continues. A selection of 2012 posts:

Bruce Springsteen’s keynote speech at the SXSW conference in Austin. The Boss stunned everyone by regaling a packed audience with a fifty-minute, hilarious, moving, profanity-laced personal reminiscence that actually made me cry.  It wasn’t just about him, it was also a history lesson, sermon, and motivational speech, delivered with all Springsteen’s  rough-edged finesse, honed from years of bringing the noise to the lip of the stage. This is the only time I’ve witnessed a performer compress the ebb-and-flow dynamics of rock stagecraft into a hypnotic speaking style. It reminded me of the Pete Townshend quote, “Rock and roll is the spiritual movement of the late 20th century.” (And now, early 21st.)

The Johnny Cash Boyhood Home Project. It’s a minor miracle that Cash’s boyhood home still stands. It’s one of 40 remaining Colony houses provided along with 40 acres, seed, and a mule to impoverished farmers as part of the New Deal. In this post I write about the ongoing effort to turn it into a museum, which includes an annual concert that sounds pretty great. (Next show, October 5, 2012. Click HERE for details.)

Madonna’s new CD MDNA. Madonna is one of my own. She’s six years older than me, which means Like A Virgin came out when I was 19, just before I moved to NYC. My friends – male and female –  and I lusted after her, thirsted for the orange soda she drank in the “Borderline” video, before she became hyper-toned. (“Like getting in a bed with a ten speed,” a wise man once said.) I recall thinking I might see the diminutive siren strutting through the East Village, her erstwhile ‘hood, when I settled there in ’85.

Folks were still gossiping in Alphabet City, telling tales of a “chubby and zitty” Madonna frequenting the Pyramid club in underwear and a trench coat. A couple of guys claimed they’d had sex with her, one on the Danceteria fire escape.

These past three decades or so, I’ve watched her with brotherly admiration, professional fascination, occasional deep embarrassment, and garden variety desire. I’m crazy about her. Once upon a time, the intensity of the critical sniping bugged me in a ridiculously delusional protective way. Yet, at 53, she still turns it all around, all punky alpha female chutzpah, working the negatives into positives, a tricky alchemy mastered by a precious few. (Prince comes to mind. Who else?) I have broken bread with plenty of critics, and the cliche of the jealous parasite scribe, the self-appointed member of the cognoscenti who possesses courage only behind a wall of words, not action, and who has no original work to offer, is only too real. As I posted before about Brian Wilson (last paragraph), as I get older, the value I place on sheer artistic audacity increases, especially in the face of more critics than ever. And where Madonna certainly suffers in some areas (voice, acting ability, wifedom, blah blah blah) she more than makes up for it with audacity. (Not to mention an instinct for ear-wormy pop hooks.) Go, big sister.

The Global Jukebox Of Alan Lomax, Music Visionary.  Some of my favorite music in the world was collected by Alan Lomax, especially the Scottish children singing on the Rounder release Singing In The Streets. (Check out – and download – “The World Must Be Coming To An End” – track 46 – and “Down In The Valley” – track 31). After I wrote this blog post for RPP, announcing the debut of The Global Jukebox , a couple of in-the-know folks pointed out my omission of Lomax’s notoriously prickly, difficult personality. What a shocker. A genius, without whom we wouldn’t have paragons of civility Bob Dylan and The Rolling Stones, was hard to get along with. Frankly, I knew about his occasional harshness, but in the scheme of things, to make mention of his  mercurial personality seemed akin to, say, writing “known felons The Rolling Stones,” “ex-addict Johnny Cash,” or “famously grumpy Dylan.”

I do have a fascination for antiheroes and a growing distrust of social graces, but for the RPP post I focused on the long-awaited launch of Lomax’s Global Jukebox, a concept hatched years ago, before technology could make manifest Lomax’s imagination. (Sadly, our [anti] hero did not live to see this event.) I figured that should take up most of the word count, not Lomax’s tyranny. Maybe next time.

Here’s an antique (circa ’98) video of Lomax, his minions, and the prototype for The Global Jukebox.

That’ll do for now. If you’d like to check ut any of my other posts for Rock Paper Photo, feel free to do so by clicking HERE.

Thanks for reading. More soon. Much more to tell. – RBW

Go, Rock Star, Go!

A few months back I reviewed the book Fathermucker, which is a great piece of thinly-veiled fiction in which a stay-at-home dad deals with dreams deferred, middle age, and a straying wife, all while caring for two small kids, one of whom has Asberger’s. My review is HERE.

Turns out author Greg Olear has a blog of the same name, which “is a series of guest essays about modern parenting, with an emphasis on the blurring of traditional gender roles.” Greg asked me to contribute, and I took the opportunity to write about something that has been banging around in my head for years: how my time amongst the dreamers of NYC prepared me for fatherhood and working in a preschool. It’s entitled Go, Rock Star, Go and you can read it HERE.

I have often said, “Kids are like little drunks, just more manageable,” and this usually gets a laugh. In fact, I was a little miffed when Johnny Depp said almost the same thing, but at least it was Depp who was on my wavelength and not, say, Kim Kardashian.

An astute  friend read between the lines of my post  and said it sounded like I really miss the tykes, which I do. I can’t believe it’s been six years since I was a childcare worker. But it was time to move on. And a novel I am working on at present – a roman a clef thing – will feature a “hippie preschool.” I am looking forward to revisiting my many memories, which are intense, to say the least. It was a four-year crucible of sorts for and, since I barely attended college, I see it as my higher education. The last time I laughed so hard I cried was there. And there are friendships begun in that atmosphere that retain a “we met in the trenches”-type of closeness.

Moving on to all the events happening outside my window at present: Republican primary, impending vote on fracking ban, and possible closure of my son’s former elementary school. AKA the real world.

 

 

 

Rock & Roll Rabbit Hole

Today is January 8th, the birthdate of Elvis Presley, David Bowie and Soupy Sales. And there’s a huge, full moon over the Catskills, peeking in and out of a curtain of slate-blue clouds. These factors suggest auspiciousness, so I’m using that notion to compel me to return and add an entry to this blog, which I promised myself I’d keep alive when I revived it a few months back.

I’ve hardly been idle. Even without factoring in the Yuletide chaos, which is pretty intense in my home, I’ve been busy with my Rock Paper Photo gig. In addition to writing essays for them on Coldplay, R.E.M., the fantastic documentary The Other F Word, Ryan Adams, Ray Charles, Trent Reznor and The Black Keys, I wrote about 42 mini-essays about various Rolling Stone magazine covers dating from the inception of the magazine (1967) up to the ’80s. Rock Paper Photo has partnered with RS to market high-end reproductions of certain covers, which will also include a quality print of the cover shot signed by the photographer. They needed text to describe each shot, so I went down many rabbit holes, researching rockers and movie stars of the last forty-something years. I did a fair amount of time traveling, which, in a nutshell, is a rich, if occasionally bittersweet experience. I am only two years older than Rolling Stone, and I cannot recall a time I was not aware of it, so the photos and the old copies of the magazine – I have all issues on CD-ROM – brought back lots of memories.

I learned a lot, too. Like: Guess who sold the most records in the 80s. Madonna? No. Michael Jackson? Negative. PHIL COLLINS. And: Guess who’s the most paranoid, misogynistic, hateful, obnoxious movie star? EDDIE MURPHY. (That’s right, the current Disney star, whose managers/publicists, apparently, are dark geniuses.) And guess who came across as the most fascinating character, the one who could eloquently and authoritatively speak on songwriting, production, the impact of pop music on the culture, and the fame game? CONVICTED MURDERER PHIL SPECTOR.

The 1969 Phil Spector piece, like all early RS interviews, is comprehensive, detailed and luxuriously looooong. It is a treasure. I am a music nut and I’ve read literally hundreds – maybe thousands – of interviews with Music People and come across nothing  like it. You can read an excerpt HERE, but it’s only a fraction of the conversation between RS editor Jann Wenner – still a kid himself, just beginning to rise – and Spector, who speaks from a kind of exile.

In the early ’60s, Spector had been a kind of king – and kingmaker – but by ’69, as the Woodstock Generation marshalled itself on the borders of the culture, the oddball Spector had fallen from favor. Defying predictions, he would have an impressive second act in the ’70s, salvaging/producing the Beatles’ Let It Be, and producing masterworks by George Harrison (All Things Must Pass) and John Lennon (Imagine) before spiraling ever quicker downward into serious mental illness – and, ultimately, murder – in the ensuing decades.

It’s confounding, infuriating and tragic that, throughout all of this, Spector was both physically and emotionally abusive to his wife, the icon Ronnie Spector. He actively sought to hold her back from success – indeed, any kind of happiness – throughout their nightmare of a marriage, from 1968 to 1974. Even after their divorce, he hounded her.

As often happens when I read about artists who are geniuses in tbeir work but disasters in their lives, I find myself alternately fascinated and repulsed by yet another rock and roll fuck-up.

It helps to know that Ronnie kicked his ass in court; she and the Ronettes finally got $3 million from him decades after he screwed them over. Also, despite the powerful Spector successfully lobbying against her induction for years, she finally got into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2007.  A lot of this is detailed in her show Beyond The Beehive, which I saw a couple years back. In it, she sings her hits in a remarkably preserved voice (she still smokes… a lot), then sits down between songs, puts on granny glasses, and reads from her book Be My Baby: How I Survived Mascara, Miniskirts and Madness, which details her compelling story. Meanwhile, her ex-husband isn’t eligible for parole until he’s 88 years old.

And with that, I must away. I leave behind a trail of rabbit holes, via the links above, for you to venture into at your leisure. See you when you get back.

You Gotta Check This Out – Brian, Bobbie and Bob

I’ve written another blog post for Rock Paper Photo, this time on the release of “the most famous unreleased album in rock and roll history” (according to Rolling Stone): The Beach Boys’ – actually Brian Wilson’s – much-ballyhooed SMiLE, which, indeed, never was finished but is presented in cobbled-together form as part of a dee-luxe box set from Capitol/EMI: The SMiLE Sessions. My post is entitled You’re Never Fully Dressed Without A SMiLE. The majority of the release consists of extensive session documentation, which feature lots of studio chatter, 24-year-old Brian giving directions to L.A. session men, outtakes, alternate mixes, and a version of “Good Vibrations” that is worth the price of admission.

It got me thinking about “lost albums,” “lost artists,” and more specifically, times when people have attempted to turn me on to something via a bootleg, usually saying: you gotta check this out!

Regarding SMiLE, sometime in the mid-90s, my dear friend Luis, whose taste ran from the Velvet Underground to Teddy Pendergrass to Steve Earle, engaged in awkward pregnant-with-hope sharing of SMiLE‘s “Heroes & Villains,” “Surf’s Up,” and “Vege-Tables.” He’d been repeatedly listening on a boombox to those and other songs now officially presented on The SMiLE Sessions. I was impressed by the originality but not lit on fire. His disappointment was palpable. I LOVED – and love – Pet Sounds, which balances Brian’s rapacious ambition with taut lyrics, producing songs you can live in, but none of the SMiLE stuff excited me. It just sounded mostly like a mess, a swirling vortex of blind, drug fueled nerdy desire, famously – and fabulously – lampooned in Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story.

I’ve been on the opposite end of this dynamic with Bobbie Gentry, going so far as ordering her hard-to-find post-Ode To Billie Joe work and mailing it to friends, none of whom seem to get it. Ode To Billie Joe is a masterful single and album, but her magnum opus is Delta Sweete, a hard-to-find marvel of chamber pop opera that, maddeningly, no one seems to know about. Perhaps my fascination is tied up in her mystery, but if so, I cannot tweeze those things apart. Her mystery is this: Gentry retired from music in the early 80s, never to engage the public again. She literally dropped off the map, an act most compelling to me, as the world continues to evolve into a place where this seems almost impossible to do, especially for a celebrity. Word on the street is she either lives in a gated community somewhere down south or in L.A. No one seems sure.

By the way, you gotta check this out:

In the nineties I did make dubs of a half-demagnetized bootleg cassette of a “lost album” of songs that became much of Dylan’s “divorce album/return to form”  Blood On The Tracks. For the “official” album (the one you hear in the supermarket), Dylan reworked the tunes, changing keys, tense, tunings, P.O.V., structure. Reasons for this are speculated, of course. Speculated ad nauseam. The original versions, which, to me, sound like the most emotionally raw stuff Dylan ever did, were eventually released as part of the Bootleg Series Vol. 1-3. They are stripped down, and, for my money (although no money was spent) superior to the “official” version. I’ve forced those recordings on folks. Once in awhile, someone lights up and joins me in the sacred space.

Listening to The SMiLE Sessions now, some fifteen years since that day Luis attempted to enfold me in his ardor for Brian Wilson’s quixotic attempt to capture the ineffable, I finally get it a bit more.  There is a saying “Our sorrows carve room for our joys.” While the last fifteen years have been among my best ever – fatherhood springs to mind – this time has also been contoured by quite a lot of sorrow in my life (including the loss of Luis). I’m wondering if that sorrow has, indeed, carved out a deeper, broader space inside me, allowing more of Brian’s crazy essence to seep in.  I hear things now that I didn’t – or perhaps couldn’t – before. I hear a truly gifted man, a deeply dark man fighting demons with choirboy harmonies and lame jokes, emboldened by youth, drugs, money and the zeitgeist. I define some of the psychedelia as creepy, but that’s just me (and, likely, my childhood, when psychedelia scared the shit out of me.) While it is sad to know Brian suffered in the wake of SMiLE’s failure – indeed, his mental state never recovered –I appreciate more the miracle that the guy is still alive, a father of kids, a man functioning on this plane in a state of apparent happiness. That is a precious thing.

The misfires used to get on my nerves. But now I feel more forgiving of the aspects of SMiLE that do not work. Having faced a bit (a lot) of failure, I am not so afraid of it. Most of all, though, I have come to recognize bravery in its many forms, and as years pass, I appreciate it more and more; its currency goes up. If there’s one thing that jumps out of the speakers when you hear SMiLE, it’s audacity. To me, that is gold.

It’s still not as good as Pet Sounds, though.

By the way, ever hear the version of “God Only Knows” with Brian singing lead? You gotta check this out: