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Paul McCartney: Ever-Present Past
Paul McCartney’s name hasn’t been associated with a lot of good news lately. First there was the very depressing divorce from his second wife, who, with the cooperation of the tabloid press, consistently made herself look not very nice (to put it mildly). Now there are alleged death threats circulating as a result of his plans to play in Tel Aviv as part of the 60th anniversary of Israel. What the hell did the guy that wrote “Let It Be” and “Pipes of Peace” and a whole litany of other songs that inspire and enrapture do to deserve this?
Less experienced pop stars might throw up their hands and admit defeat when confronted with such adversity, but it must be remembered that Sir Paul has been mostly famous since he was a teenager, and such adversity has been thwarted repeatedly throughout his illustrious 40-plus year career. Even in 1989, there was a sense of triumph as McCartney announced his first American tour since 1976. Having previously admitted to being a bit timid about performing following the tragic murder of John Lennon, the multi-talented singer felt the time was right to traverse the globe again, delivering the gift of song.
In this press conference and interview from that period, Paul’s mood is jovial and lighthearted, consistent with the public persona that has made him so beloved since the ’60s. Many topics are covered, including song selection for the upcoming tour, and his opportunity to bring his music live to a new generation of fans for whom he had never performed.
Paul Westerberg
Paul Westerberg
49:00
(Self-released)
Of all the various ways I could have experienced Paul Westerberg’s new album for the first time, headphones plugged into a PC didn’t even make the list. I stopped around #112: Hearing 49:00 muffled through my neighbor’s wall while trying to extract a rusty fish-hook from my finger. That would have been an experience. That would have been memorable. But for me, as I suspect it was for many others, the first time came pumped directly into my cochleae from the same box to which I am tethered day-in, day-out.
It should be pointed out to those that have been on holiday in Antarctica that the method of my initial exposure was not chosen by me; rather, it was chosen by Paul Westerberg. In an effort to side-step the usual label fiasco that surrounds all new releases, Westerberg has casually made 49:00 available exclusively by download. If it were anyone other than the guy that wrote “Sixteen Blue” and “Bastards of Young”, personally, I wouldn’t have bothered. But the thing that allows Westerberg a pass is the music, and once again Minnesota’s finest has delivered.
Lou Reed: Metal Machine Maniac
Typically the category of self-destruction most closely associated with rock ‘n’ roll is the too-much-too-soon excess that inspires otherwise gifted individuals to take their new-found wealth and snort it, or inject it, or drive it into a swimming pool. Rarer is the sort of performer whose slow-burning career instills a sort of artistic self-destructiveness designed to help maintain a certain comfortable distance from glittery stardom. Some legendary artists have fallen into this latter category—Neil Young, Paul Westerberg—but the all-time champion of antagonistic crash-and-burn renegades has to be Lou Reed.
Throughout his long and occasionally sordid career, Reed has commonly veered left of just about all expectations from fans, critics, producers, and bandmates. Beginning when he went AWOL on the Velvet Underground after completing their one and only bid at commercial success, Reed has consistently followed a creative triumph with at least one effort designed to drive us all insane. Surely there have been some pharmaceutical explanations for this behavior, but for the most part it would seem that Reed just loves to piss people off.
In an uncharacteristic show of civility, Reed thoughtfully contemplates this facet of his persona in this 1982 interview. By all accounts clean and sober by this time, the songwriter acknowledges his destructive tendencies and stands by them, no matter who he managed to offend, even taking some jabs at the state of popular music and radio at that time that ring unsurprisingly true in our age of nostalgia for the not-so-distant past.
Pete Townshend: Classy and Articulate
Pete Townshend would be widely regarded as a self-important arse if he weren’t Pete Townshend. As the principle songwriter in one of the most ambitious, frustrating, but ultimately beloved rock ‘n’ roll bands ever, he’s earned the right to hold court on just about any subject. With the Who, he first mashed up the residue from half an art school education with the aesthetic of West End mods and a touch of violence, creating the ultimate expression of teen nihilism. Next, the resultant sound was tempered with equal parts mysticism and theatricality, inventing, for better or worse, the rock opera. From there it was a fast ascent to the upper stratosphere of international superstardom accompanied by the anthemic fist pumping and what-does-it-all-mean navel gazing we’ve come to expect from rock gods. And we’ve come to expect it because Townshend and the Who invented it, and every popular band since has done their best to repeat it.
This history affords Townshend the authority to speak as he does: In conversation as in music, he is unafraid to explore any avenue, treating each topic with respect and humor and following it until he can go no further, as he would a song. This 1982 interview finds him discussing life and art and everything in between with great detail, making it as intriguing a listen as any of his albums.
While lucrative reunion tours and crime drama credit sequences have threatened the integrity of his legacy, Pete Townshend has never ceased the restless pursuit of his vision; the Who’s most recent release and his own embrace of technology as a means of both communication and art are evidence of this. For insights on creativity and creation, listen to Pete, and experience a classy and articulate rock star for a change.
Geddy Lee: Banshee Vocalist Nonpareil
For those who have never seen Rush live, the wailing castrato vocals and lightning bass licks may have been mistakenly attributed to a faulty tape machine in the studio, or a turntable set to 45 rpm. Nope. That shit’s for real, and for well over 30 years these unique sounds have been a crucial component in what is arguably the most successful progressive hard rock band in history.
From the moment he squealed, “Finding my waaayyy!,” on Rush’s eponymous 1974 debut, Gary Weinrib entered the public consciousness as Geddy Lee: banshee vocalist nonpareil and major rager on the four-string motherfucker. It was the sound that launched a billion arguments as geeks ‘round the globe divided into camps that variously defended his operatic vibrato or eschewed his high-pitched screech, hailed his immense technical ability or played the Jaco card.
Whatever your opinion, it cannot be denied that Geddy and Rush have consistently remained one of the world’s most popular touring acts, and inspired in their fans a rabid devotion. The secret to their longevity is a simple equation that has escaped many who are lucky enough to record a sophomore album: your music needs to evolve, and to achieve this, you must have some proficiency on a musical instrument.
Keith Richards: Monkey Man
The rock star caricature has taken on mythical proportions, and few other archetypes possess such a wealth of absurd material amassed in a rather short period of time as a basis. It’s only been about 50 years since Jerry Lee Lewis married his cousin, a little over 40 since Pete Townshend smashed his first guitar, and around 30 since the alleged fish incident involving Zeppelin’s road crew. In historical terms, the rock ‘n’ roll era is just a drop of spit in the ocean, and already many of its most notorious perpetrators have matured, disappeared, or expired. But there are those few for whom controversy and chaos have remained a lifelong pursuit, and who have managed to avoid sensible behavior and the grave for far longer than modern science could hope to explain. The undisputed king of this latter category? Keith Richards.
His Majesty of Debauchery, King Keef, has reigned over the post-Elvis period as the ultimate rock star. At the peak of his powers, his appetite for opiates and wanton hotel room destruction was unparalleled, and matched by his proclivity for unusual fashion accoutrements. There have been arrests, there have been love triangles, and there have been brawls with bandmates. Some of these events may even have been related.
It is, of course, an oversimplification to reduce Keith to a violent pile of gypsy scarves and heroin; this is the man described by his peers as the Human Riff, after all. The driving force behind all of this excess was the music, and it is on that subject that the most musical of scrawny Englishmen holds forth in this 1983 interview with Lisa Robinson. Perhaps most intriguing during this segment are Keith’s thoughts on originality in popular music, and his opinion that all musicians essentially borrow from everything that came before—a statement which, though entirely true, completely disregards his own unique musicianship and songwriting.
Zappa en Regalia
With an utter strangeness matched only by his prolificacy, Frank Zappa cut a totally unique swath in the fabric of music history. His career began before the Beatles stormed the beaches at the Ed Sullivan Show and persisted for more than 30 years, unassisted by any psychotropic substances stronger than hot dogs, black coffee, and nicotine. To say that he was an innovator, an iconoclast, and ingenious would only be a start, not to mention somewhat redundant and using only words that begin with the letter “i”… but Zappa was all of these things. Drawing on a wide range of influences, including ‘50s vocal groups, early 20th century avant-garde composers, and his own demented sense of humor and morality, Zappa created a bizarre amalgam of disparate musical styles and perverse lyricism that he used to poke fun at and holes in everything that, well… just everything: no further qualification is necessary.
Somewhere in the middle of this unusual journey, Zappa paused to speak to Mary Travers about his upcoming live album, Bongo Fury, and a number of other topics of no small concern, including what it’s like to rehearse next door to Elton John and the inherent inaccessibility of commissioned classical music. No opinion is withheld, but Frank is always self-aware enough not to comment on subjects he knows nothing about; clearly his intelligence extended beyond the stage and studio.
For All the Honest World: Townes Van Zandt
Townes Van Zandt
Our Mother the Mountain
(Fat Possum, 1969)
The warm champagne glow of holiday reverie will soon be snuffed out by a sharp and brittle descent into the dead of winter where there’s nothing left to look forward to but the thaw still three months away. Huddled in cramped drafty flats stacked high and lonesome, with the hour growing late and the bottle getting low, sweet maudlin sentimentality slowly succumbs to the icy grasp of creeping bleakness around its neck. But the last gasp of fleeting memories is interrupted by the sound of boot heels in the hallway, and a sudden series of thumps at the front door. A bleary eye to the peephole spies a tall rangy fellow with a face like saddle leather framing a smile almost 88 keys wide. It’s Townes Van Zandt with a fresh jug of bourbon (minus a couple nips) and a pocketful of songs for precisely such an occasion.
The son of a Texas oil magnate, Townes Van Zandt grew accustomed to a lonely and itinerant lifestyle at an early age as the family roamed throughout the west in search of greater fortunes. Certainly the restlessness and solitude of his upbringing informed much of his music, as well as an adulthood spent splitting time between Texas, Tennessee, and Colorado, among other points. A singing career begun in Houston quickly lead him to Nashville where his songs were first committed to tape in a prolific outpouring between 1968 and 1972.
Eric Clapton: The Word of God
Many of the biggest names in rock ‘n’ roll have been the subjects of provocative books detailing the triumphs and tragedies of a life spent beneath the baking glow of stage lights and hopefully just out of the reach of hotel security. Some would sadly write their own endings too soon, and thus were not available for comment when pot-boiling biographies bubbled over, feeding the public’s insatiable hunger for tales of debauched sexuality and chemical excess. But others, through a series of not-so-minor miracles and, most likely, one or more lengthy vacations in a rehabilitation facility, managed to stick around long enough to commit their own stories to paper with the mature perspective of one that has faced six or seven decades and 12 steps.
Among the most recent additions to this latter cadre is Eric Clapton, an artist whose accessible music and wise countenance belie the utter chaos that defined his personal life for much of the ‘70s and ‘80s. Suffering at different points, though often concurrently, from unrequited love, drug and alcohol addiction, the fall-out from numerous infidelities, and the death of a child, Slowhand has undoubtedly spun an epic that would leave Homer at a loss for words (the Greek poet, not the jaundiced cartoon patriarch).
Just as intriguing, however, are his observations from the midst of all that turmoil. In this 1975 interview, recorded shortly before work had begun on No Reason to Cry and conducted by the “Mary” of Peter, Paul and Mary of all people, Clapton speaks openly and somewhat lucidly on a number of topics stretching all the way back to the Yardbirds.
Heart of Weirdness: Neil Young, “Revolution Blues”
by: Braden Towne
From the opening chords, the tension is palpable, and the first verse lets us know the sort of character we’re dealing with: “Well, we live in a trailer / At the edge of town / You never see us / ‘Cause we don’t come around / We got 25 rifles / Just to keep the population down.” It’s not difficult to imagine the scene, even now, but as the ideals of the counterculture soured, this stanza must have seemed uncomfortably appropriate. Radical principles and isolation rarely make for good neighbors, and firearms tend to complicate things further. The verse continues as some sort of recruitment, but our antagonist needs to work on his pitch: Admitting that he’s “not above suspicion,” he fails to establish much trust, so the reassurance that he won’t attack us in the penultimate line is little consolation.
Whew… well, that was a creepy encounter for sure, but who hasn’t brushed up against madness on the bus or at the bar? Unfortunately, this lunatic is a little harder to shake, and the terror quickly escalates in the second verse: “Well, it’s so good to be here / Asleep on your lawn / Remember your guard dog? / Well, I’m afraid that he’s gone.” This crazy fuck followed us home and killed our dog?! Turns out he’s been hanging around our work, too, performing weirdo stalker-type demonstrations. Jesus Christ, Neil… what happened to “Heart of Gold”?
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by: Braden Towne
published: April 14, 2009
in column: Lyrical Communique
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