tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-57286245080045813472024-02-18T20:15:39.786-08:00BYLINE ITALIA: REX WEINERArticles published in Italian magazinesRex Weinerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12550540824346578426noreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5728624508004581347.post-28927999285929353952015-06-01T15:44:00.001-07:002015-06-01T19:57:02.643-07:00<h2>
<b>BRYAN FERRY</b></h2>
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<a href="http://icon.panorama.it/uomini/bryan-ferry-musicista-anni-70-rocker-louis-vuitton/">Published in ICON, November 2014</a><br />
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<b>By Rex Weiner</b></h3>
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Under a Manhattan sky that cannot make up its mind whether to
rain or not, camera technicians are adjusting tripods, setting lights and arranging
backdrops, ignoring the police helicopters clattering overhead. The President
is in town to address the United Nations on the latest world crisis. Assistants tending
a table of expensive items—men’s boots, sunglasses, carrying bags, everything
branded with the unmistakable monogram and quatrefoil of Louis Vuitton—move
with careful deliberation. </div>
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Ferryboats crossing the Hudson River sound a low
warning note with their horns, as though signaling that out there, beyond New
Jersey’s jagged skyline, lies a troubled land. <o:p></o:p><br />
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Just a stone’s throw from the river, on the rooftop of photographer
Mark Seliger’s West Village studio, everything is under control. This is a
Vuitton shoot, after all. A Kim Jones shoot, to be specific, and the
London-born LVMH designer, a calm intense young man, is on hand to make sure
the model shows off his latest creations in the best light—fabrics and colors
inspired by a recent visit to the Atacama desert in Peru.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Bryan Ferry emerges from the make-up room to confront a rack
of clothing. Jones holds out a long ash-colored coat. Ferry amiably tries it
on, its luscious wool fabric falling to a place between knee and shoe. He studies
himself in the mirror with eyes accustomed to honest self-appraisals. <o:p></o:p></div>
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“He’s a style icon to all of us,” Jones observes quietly.
“He comes from a generation that changed all the rules.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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Ferry sits down and waits for the shoot to begin. He emits a
slight cough occasionally. One leg over the other, a foot bobbing gently, he is
a man who knows how to come to rest, but only when he must. A throat infection
caused him to cancel shows in Washington DC and Boston. Nevertheless, the show
went on in New York and Philadelphia. Although reviews said those shows seemed
restrained, the King of Romantic Rock’s legendary panache was noted a week
before in Toronto where, according to one report, “the crowd finally rushed the
stage during Love is the Drug and stayed there for Virginia Plain, Editions of
You and the encore songs of Let’s Stick Together and Ferry’s moving version of
John Lennon’s Jealous Guy.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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The new studio album he’s promoting—Avonmore—is his 15<sup>th</sup>
solo effort, his 23<sup>rd</sup> recorded album counting the Roxy Music
releases. “Mainly my own songs, eight new ones,” he tells me, adding. “It’s
important to show people you’re still writing.” <o:p></o:p></div>
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It’s an odd thing to say for such a prolific lyricist—David
Bowie’s favorite songwriter, according to Ferry’s biographer Michael Bracewell.
Perhaps it’s something only another writer of a certain age would understand. And
anyway, it is not called the Can’t Let Go Tour for nothing. With the US leg of
the tour completed, a string of European tour dates lie ahead of him to the end
of the year. Another twenty-two date UK tour in January has just been announced.
He’ll swing back to the US next summer, playing up and down the West Coast. Ferry
is sixty-nine years old.<o:p></o:p></div>
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One of the most striking tracks on Avonmore—which features
guests such as Nile Rodgers, Ronnie Spector, Mark Knopfler, Maceo Parker and
Flea— is a cover of Robert Palmer’s Johnny and Mary. Thanks to his son Isaac, a
dance music enthusiast, the track is a collaboration with the Norwegian synth
wizard and DJ Todd Terje. Ferry has been performing the song in his shows,
slowed down from Palmer’s peppy beat, the curious words delivered with a
breathy melancholy…<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Johnny's always
running around<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Trying to find
certainty<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">He needs all the
world to confirm<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">That he ain't
lonely<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mary counts the
walls<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Knows he tires
easily<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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“Bryan? Ready?”<o:p></o:p></div>
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He rises, pausing before the mirror to fiddle with his hair.
It is breezy on the roof now, potted plants swaying , miniature birch and dwarf
pine, graceful grasses. About fifteen people, Seliger’s trained crew and others
from London, Paris, Milan, and L.A., are assembled to carry out their various
roles, everyone performing their appointed task with silent precision.<o:p></o:p></div>
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“Look over to your left,” directs Seliger, lean and agile in
tight jeans and white Adidas, a slight twang in his voice betraying his Texas
roots. “Don’t smile. Yeah. That’s good. Beautiful. Relax one second…”<o:p></o:p></div>
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Against the white no-seam, hands in pockets, now smiling,
now serious, Ferry gives the camera a professional turn. Seliger clicks away
rapidly.<o:p></o:p></div>
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“Lean into your right hip with your right hand holding the
jacket open… love that. Very John Wayne!”<o:p></o:p></div>
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Ferry smiles. Unlike Mick Jagger and other fellow rockers,
he’s never acted in movies, but he moves instinctively, knowing how to take
direction. <o:p></o:p></div>
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“Flirt with me! Now give me your tough guy face, your best
Robert DeNiro…”<o:p></o:p></div>
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Ferry rotates before the camera, showing all sides, the coat
flaring. Vaughn the hairdresser tends to his ruffled locks, flecked with grey.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Seliger pauses to check the images on a laptop. “The
quietness in his eyes…” the photographer observes aloud. Then he moves everybody
inside, switching from the tripod-mounted Mamiya to the more intimate hand-held
Pentax, with Ferry bathed in warm sunlight beaming down through a skylight.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The shoot goes well, running to the late afternoon. At last,
we’re sitting together on the rooftop, staring out across the river as the
afternoon fades. Ferry clutches a cup of tea, a scarf wrapped around his ailing
throat. He’s not feeling great, he tells me, though you wouldn’t know it from
the photos he’s just shot. <o:p></o:p></div>
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“I try to sleep,” he says. He has no special diet. He
doesn’t go to the gym or perform workouts. “The show gives me enough exercise,”
he says with a chuckle. ”I’m quite lucky.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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Bryan Ferry has been lucky indeed. The son of a Northeast
English farmhand, he saved his money from a part-time job in a tailor shop to
buy one 78 record each week, listening to American blues and R&B imports. From
his days studying fine art at the University of Newcastle, Ferry formed bands
that helped lead the second wave of British rock, following the Beatles and
Rolling Stones with a style that combined fashion and art theory with fanciful lyrics.
Achieving early success with Roxy Music, Ferry’s smoky good looks and romantic
liaisons with a string of models and high society babes like Jerry Hall and
Amanda Lear established him as rock’s Number One Casanova, the one rocker for
whom black tie and tuxedo were trademarks. <o:p></o:p></div>
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He’s single now, having recently divorced his second wife,
Amanda Sheppard, after less than two years of marriage. The UK tabloids had fun
with the fact that Sheppard, a public relations executive, was 30 years younger
than Ferry and had told her friends the marriage fell apart because of her
husband’s “unreasonable behavior.” His first marriage, to socialite Lucy
Helmore, ended after 21 years together, and stretches of drug abuse for each.
Their four sons, Merlin, Isaac, Otis and Tara, are often in the gossip pages,
having been tagged the “feral Ferrys.” The Sunday Times Rich List estimates
Ferry’s worth at nearly 38M Euros, behind Roger Daltrey but about the same as Sade.
When not touring, he retreats to his country estate, a grand home on spacious
grounds known as Little Bognor House, near Fittleworth, West Sussex,<o:p></o:p></div>
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None of this seems to be a good topic for discussion as Ferry
sips his tea by my side and we watch the sun dipping towards the horizon. The
conversation moves easily, however, from one thing to the next. I mention Bowie,
as a fan of Ferry’s songwriting. “I never see him!” says Ferry “He was a big
supporter of Roxy Music early on. But he lives here in New York and I’m in
London.,” he says, adding, “I don’t really have many close friends in the music
world. Most are mainly in the art world. Because I work with musicians, and
after all day with them in the studio, you know…”<o:p></o:p></div>
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The shoot, fashion, and style: “Style is something you
really shouldn’t think about too much,” says the man who has been on countless
Best-Dressed lists. “It’s hard to analyze. All aspects of design interest me—architecture,
fabric, furniture. When I was a young boy, sixteen, seventeen, I worked in a
tailor shop on Saturdays, got my interest in clothing then. I’m very eclectic
about clothes. I like to mix things up , old-fashioned Saville row things with something
new. Kim is very good, works with very good fabrics. Clothing is about details.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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Music and fashion were intermixed in the UK when he was
growing up. The Mods and the Rockers… “I came from Newcastle in the north, a
Mod town in the mid-Sixties.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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Ferry should be writing a book, like Keith Richard’s autobiography.
“Keith’s book was entertaining to say the least,: says Ferry, “And I would write
one someday, but I’ve never been so busy as now I enjoy touring, performing.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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Is this the life he imagined for himself, growing up in
Newcastle?<o:p></o:p></div>
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He thinks about this and replies with a memory from 1967. “I
once hitchhiked to London,” he recalls, “to the Roundhouse to see the Stax Volt
Revue. They were touring England. I saw Eddie Floyd, Otis Redding, Sam and
Dave… and I said to myself, ‘That’s what I want to do.’”<o:p></o:p></div>
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I mention the cover of Johnny and Mary. “It’s a beautiful
song, haunting lyric,” he says. “I like songs that have a mystery about them.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Johnny's always
running around<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Trying to find
certainty…<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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Overhead the helicopters hover nervously, their chop-chop
noise forcing a pause in our conversation. They are guarding the president’s limousine
as it travels up the West Side. Ferry stares into the distance where the pale
October sun is sinking lower across the river to where New Jersey rears its
industrial head briefly before giving way to the land beyond. </div>
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Kerouac once said
“In October, everyone goes home.” But Ferry is not home, nor is he going home
anytime soon—he’s on the road, and the road goes on, like rock n’ roll goes on,
whatever the state of the world, to a cool shining Avalon glimpsed once upon a
time by a poor man’s son in a fevered dream.<o:p></o:p></div>
Rex Weinerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12550540824346578426noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5728624508004581347.post-90724818368174264912013-10-28T15:25:00.000-07:002013-10-28T15:25:22.467-07:00<b><span style="font-size: large;">LOU REED INTERVIEW - NYC - March, 2006</span></b><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyAe7bfHxy1qy_hO0yYwt8D_Wzkof7tD5xCpHVKA5UVuf2pMqDMTrZ4y8vWRMZQLYz4EH5QyWYZlS9P5J4eSDI6-D2BEtzgdUxY8uZ0eP1rGOcyd89wXIRJ17_LYses7dfWgjwmbNK9Dk/s1600/LOU+REED+IMAGE.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyAe7bfHxy1qy_hO0yYwt8D_Wzkof7tD5xCpHVKA5UVuf2pMqDMTrZ4y8vWRMZQLYz4EH5QyWYZlS9P5J4eSDI6-D2BEtzgdUxY8uZ0eP1rGOcyd89wXIRJ17_LYses7dfWgjwmbNK9Dk/s1600/LOU+REED+IMAGE.jpg" /></a></div>
<b><span style="font-size: x-large;">I</span></b> arrive late at this Italian joint in the West Village, and
Lou’s already here. He’s punctual. Black tight jeans and a blue flannel shirt covering
a powerful chest, barely showing a dark tangle of curly hair slightly grizzled.
We greet each other. He rubs his face, once boyishly handsome and now rough and
lined.<br />
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The wear and tear seems written into every one of his songs, from “Heroin”
to “Perfect Day,” and his songs engraved on his face. I guess you could call it
harshly beautiful. It could be the face of Hank Williams, who wrote “I'll Never
Get Out of this World Alive,” who failed to survive drug and alcohol to make it
to his 30 birthday, unlike Lou Reed who miraculously celebrated his 64th on
March 2.</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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He looks at me from the other side of the table without a
smile, eyes cast downward, darting occasionally to the PR girl at his side. I
know he dislikes journalists. He’s exhibiting all the symptoms of a restless
patient, tied to a dentist's chair, about to be drilled. Which bodes ill for my
interview. But it’s too late. I have already ordered two double espressos and
I'm ready to rock and roll!<o:p></o:p></div>
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On the other hand, if you're really curious to know what
makes Lou Reed tick, in the depths of his soul, and what it really means when
he sings of a life "saved by rock &roll," you've only got a
handful of options:<o:p></o:p></div>
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\1) You can listen to the music and speculate on its
production over fourty years, ranging from the top 40 single of 1964 “(Do) The Ostrich” ("<i>All right, everybody get down on your face – whoo!</i> ") to
classics like the Velvet Underground’s “Heroin,” to the more recent Grand
Guignol of “The Raven” ("<i>Once upon
a midnight dreary</i>... ").<o:p></o:p></div>
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2) You can embark on a tortuous online journey through
dozens of archived interviews with a man whose caustic manner has reduced
reporters to pitiful piles of stuttering jelly.<o:p></o:p></div>
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3) You can watch “Rock and Roll Heart,” the 1998 Grammy-award
winning documentary.<o:p></o:p></div>
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4) You can meet him yourself, try to relax and see what the
fuck happens.<o:p></o:p></div>
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So when Lou's assistant informs me that a dentist’s office
is exactly the place where Lou will go, scheduled for a root canal, after our
brief chat, I relax. "I'm sorry, Lou," I say, but really I’m thinking:
<i>Ah! Better him than me!</i><o:p></o:p></div>
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Lou Reed was born in Brooklyn, grew up in a middle class
family in the suburbs, went to college, played in high school bands and used
his share of drugs and probably your share and mine. Writing and recording for
the Pickwick label, Lou paired up with John Cale, a viola player with a
classical education who was a disciple of the avant-garde composer LaMonte
Young.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Cale and Reed formed the Velvet Underground (so baptized after
of a sordid pulp novel about sexual predators in the suburbs) along with
Sterling Morrison and Maureen Tucker. Discovered by Andy Warhol while they were
playing in a club in Greenwich Village called Café Bizarre, they became the pop
rockers residing in the artist's studio, The Factory, as well as the pivot of Warhol’s
extravagant performance art circus, The Exploding Plastic Inevitable. At that
time, the mid-to-late 1960’s Lou and I did not know each other, but we walked
the same East Village streets and probably shared the same dealers.<o:p></o:p></div>
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So we chatted about mutual friends long gone such as Mickey
Ruskin, the owner of Max's Kansas City, the club on Park Avenue South where Warhol’s
superstars the Velvet Underground reigned. Ruskin, who died in 1985, helped
support a slew of demi-monde celebrities with free food and a place to hang.<o:p></o:p></div>
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"At Max's Kansas City I had a tab that I finally paid
off," says Lou in a generous spirit. He is not known to be nostalgic about
"those different times," as he defines it in “Sweet Jane.” But now he
recalls the pinched nature of those years. "My earning capacity at the
time was equal to zero," he continues. "But Mickey knew, and he was looking
out for me and for everyone else. Mickey was the first of the people I whom repaid
when I could. When things got a bit 'better I was able to eat at places other
than Max's. But it would surprise many people who revere Reed and the Velvet
Underground to know that it despite the seminal role of the Velvet Underground
in the history of rock, it took a while for things to get better. </div>
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Ultimately,
the group generated musical movements such as glam, punk, not to mention the
millions of clones of the Velvet, and entered into the Rock and Roll Hall of
Fame in 1996.<o:p></o:p></div>
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However, in the Sixties, the Velvet Underground was anything
but a commercial success. Their four discs sold a pittance. The black leather
sado-masochistic performance style, the obvious abuse of hard drugs, the dark
lyrics and sonic dissonance failed to gain many followers in times of Flower
Power, and their concerts did not sell many tickets. Self-righteously, Bill
Graham, the main music impresario of the Sixties, pulled the plug during a Velvets
concert at his Fillmore West. San Francisco hippies were more accustomed to the
"peace-and-love" of Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane than the
psychodrama of the Velvets.<o:p></o:p></div>
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When the Velvet Underground broke up in 1970, Lou's finances
were a disaster. "Things were really tough," he reflected ruefully.
Things got so bad that one summer, after the group’s last concert at Max's, Lou
retired to his parents' home in Freeport, Long Island, and at odds with the rock
&roll, he worked as a bookkeeper for his father, a tax advisor.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I wonder if Lou learned anything about accounting from his
father, but I hold back on the question. Personal questions make Lou fall silent,
and any attempt to get him to talk about his sources of inspiration provoke
general statements about how and why music was the complete and utter center of
his life. Going forward, he declares his dedication to the capricious and
irritable twin deities of Sound and Tone. Many interviewers who have been
granted far more time and access are still in their offices dissecting hours of
taped interviews in which Lou Reed grumbles endlessly about the most minute
details and mysteries of magnets and speakers, vintage tube amplifiers, the cones
of amplifiers, which <i>kind</i> of cones, and
then he goes on to guitars, what makes a good guitar. And not much else from Lou about
Lou Reed, the human being.<o:p></o:p></div>
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And now, somehow, he’s on the subject again. "All my
stuff is made just for me,” says Lou. “Each guitar that I like is made for me."
I imagine that he could finally afford his customized equipment sometime after
her second album, “Transformer,” released at the end of 1972. Produced by David
Bowie and Mick Ronson, it contains Lou’s only hit single, “Walk on the Wild
Side.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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Today, after eighteen discs, manufacturers of guitars for Lou
include also the legendary luthier Rick Kelly of Carmine Street Guitars just
down the street in Greenwich Village, and the great Carl Johnson, who made the
seven-string models that Lou Reed played in his 2005 tour. Lou has a large
collection of Fender Stratocasters and Telecasters, as well as amplifiers, both
vintage and custom-made. The guitars made especially for him give Lou the sound
he likes, which is ...? Well, I’m sorry
I asked. He launches into a very detailed list of the greatest musicians of all
time: "There's Joe Mapes, Link Wray, Carl Perkins, Elvis’ guy... you know,
what's his name?"<o:p></o:p></div>
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We scratch our heads and none of us can remember the name of
Scotty Moore, probably because we're a couple of guys with brain cells equally diminished
by drug use. With only twenty more minutes left (the PR girl warns me), I want
to keep the conversation on track, and it is not a simple thing. There are
other things that Lou Reed does, in addition to music. He’s a photographer and has
exhibitions opening at the same time at the prestigious Steven Kasher Gallery
in New York and at Hermés' Gallery, writes theater pieces for renowned opera
director Robert Wilson and collections of his photographs are being published
by fine art book publisher Gerhardt Steidl.<o:p></o:p></div>
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But when you go to the core, there is only one thing that
makes Lou Reed tick: playing the guitar. The intro to the live version of Sweet
Jane on “Rock and Roll Animal” says it all. The pace of the guitar, the way in
which the licks whirl and, after a dizzying fret board stunts, burst of color seemingly
from Mars, hurled back to Earth and landing precisely on the classic
three-chord riff of the piece. <o:p></o:p></div>
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He's not kidding when he says—and he says it often enough—that
he has spent most of his life trying to learn how to play properly. Lou told Kung
Fu Magazine in a recent interview: "It was a very important thing for me,
to discover the exact way to achieve that tone, so that now I can do more with
the sound. It took tons of time, and sometimes seems to me that it has taken a
lifetime. When you think of someone who experiences an absurd number of years playing
with different woods and pickups, you'd say, 'Well, this person is a fool'. But
it's actually what I do. "<o:p></o:p></div>
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If you wonder why Lou Reed grants an interview to Kung Fu
Magazine, it is because Lou is also a big fan of martial arts. For over twenty
years, since he stopped drinking and taking drugs, Lou has studied Tai Chi
Chuan, starting with a dark form of discipline called Eagle Claw. He discovered
later the Chen style of Master Ren Guang-Yi, who has also been heavyweight
champion of Chinese boxing in 1998. Lou has likened the style of Master Ren to
ballet star Rudolf Nureyev. He brought Ren with him on stage during several
past tours. To an interviewer who protested that he was puzzled by the
combination of Lou’s bleak music and the Tai Chi master wielding a sword, Lou
said: "Think of this as a choreography by George Balanchine." <o:p></o:p></div>
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Lou hopes to bring his teacher on the current tour which
begins with opening the 2006 Winter Olympics in Torino. Lou’s companion, performance
artist Laurie Anderson, may also appear for a couple of concerts, and Lou can’t
wait to be in Italy. "What can you not love about Italy? It is one of the
places Laurie and I talk about when we think about leaving New York at all. We
love Italy very much." <o:p></o:p></div>
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At the invitation of Luciano Pavarotti, Lou has performed at
the maestro’s annual benefit concert in Modena. It’s an area they like.
"Modena, Bologna ... those parts would be completely happy for us just for
the food."<o:p></o:p></div>
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It is difficult to imagine Lou Reed, living embodiment of
the heart and soul of New York, leaving Gotham. Omnipresent at benefits and
social events, uptown and downtown, he even showed up by surprise at the annual
Tai Chi Day in Central Park and, along with Laurie Anderson. He attended the
opening of a new park on the banks of the Hudson, at the end of Canal Street.
He admits that the city has changed; it’s no longer the “Dirty Boulevard” of “Street Hassle.” On the other hand, Lou’s changed
a lot, too. <o:p></o:p></div>
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"Now I have different interests," he says.
"It is no longer what it once was. I am a different person. I'm not
interested in what interested me once. As we age, my field of vision has expanded,
encompassing many other things that New York offers. It is a city for everyone.
I am most interested—always have been—in what concerns New York that you cannot
find in a small town. Martial arts instructors, Chinese herbalists, swords and
weapons to be bought and all the raw theater…"<o:p></o:p></div>
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Speaking of what you can find in New York, he says, for
example, that the venerable singer-songwriter Dion (of the doo wop Fifties group
Dion & The Belmonts) held one of his rare concerts at Joe's Pub. Allen
Toussaint, who has no home in New Orleans due to Hurricane Katrina, makes
numerous appearances around the city, to the delight of New Orleans aficionados.
"And if a movie comes out,” says Lou with evident pride, “it comes out
here first. We're not in Kansas anymore.” He added that his favorite movie of
the moment is Peter Jackson's “King Kong.” <o:p></o:p></div>
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Apropos of Manhattan’s skyline, Lou says he witnessed the
collapse on September 11, 2001, of the World Trade Center. He watched it go
down in flames from his downtown loft. That moved me to mention the impact of
the Velvet Underground on cities other than New York, cities such as Prague.
That’s where the "Velvet Revolution" of 1989 took the former Soviet
territory on a new path, led by dissident playwright and activist Vaclav Havel
and contributing to the disintegration of the Soviet Union. The former Czech
President professed admiration for Lou Reed’s music and maintains friendships
with several rock musicians. Reed and Havel, an Odd Couple, appeared on stage
last year in Prague for a public seminar. When a reporter asked about his
influence on the events that contributed to the end of the Cold War, Lou said,
"I haven’t got a clue." Now I asked the same questions.<o:p></o:p></div>
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"I do not know," he says. "I have no idea if
the Velvet Revolution means something. What is it that really makes sense? It
is named for the Velvet Underground because you consider velvet in the sense
that no one was actually hurt?" <o:p></o:p></div>
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We reflected on that for a moment. "When I was in
Prague, President Havel, in his office, he introduced me to many dissidents and
I gave him a book with my lyrics. At the time, he said, you could go to jail if
you had that in your possession. Can you imagine? They told me that my words
were a source of inspiration. I always wondered why. I asked them why, and I
guess it was the anti-authoritarian stance—for lack of a better expression.
Maybe that was the reason, since that’s Havel says. And Havel is an
intellectual." <o:p></o:p></div>
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Will he and Havel get together again? "I sure hope so. He
is a great friend," says Lou. The contrast is stark and ironic:
Reed’s ballads of deviant sex and illegal
substance abuse such as “Heroin” ("Beware of the text,” he says, “but it
is a beautiful piece") was rewarded with cheers instead of imprisonment. He reflects on Havel’s very different
experience. "I was lamenting with him," he continues, "because I
had done a show with Bob Wilson and I was not able to hear it in English since they
staged it in Germany and it had been translated into German. So I have not
heard even in English. And I was surprised when I said that to Havel and he
told me that because he was in prison, he has never been able to hear his works
brought to the stage in Czech—in his own language. It is almost inconceivable,
right?"<o:p></o:p></div>
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And speaking of the great power of music in social change, I
say - bringing the conversation closer to my only really important question—that
rock music is heard everywhere today in commercials. (“Lust for Life” by Iggy
Pop sells Holiday cruises). "The kids today think it's cool to have a song
in a commercial," Lou interrupted. "Warhol was always into that sort
of thing and it was fun. And I thought, 'Well, if it's okay for Andy ...' But
people got really angry with me because I did it, although personally I thought
it was funny. But the fans did not think the same way. So then I stopped. Even
today, there are certain things that others do that I cannot do because I think
the fans would feel betrayed. Now, if I had serious financial problems, I would
not think twice about it. It is easy to have ethics long as you have enough
money. God forbid that a loved one is in trouble and that you need something—hey,
here's the Cadillac. So do not begrudge anyone anything."<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Speaking with his typical New York accent, with his
assistant smiling uneasily to signal the end of the interview, Lou continues:
"As we age and understanding more about the world, I think that we cannot
speak for others outside of our own circumstances. I do not give a damn about a
rapper covered with jewelry who makes a commercial for whatever.” <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Lou shakes his head. "This is not for me. If I can
avoid it, I avoid it. They say, 'Hey, the kids like it, and in the end what
does it matter?' And, you know, what do I care? Do I care? But there is a
certain—I don’t know—call it a certain <i>patina</i>
on some rock songs that would not be there if it was just another jingle selling
something for the business world. In this country, no matter what you do, you are
absorbed. If you're around for a long time you soak up the alternative. So now
you're part of the alternative part of the whole thing. No matter how far off
you are, you will be the <i>alternative</i>
alternative. Whichever way you put it—Christian alternative devil alternative,
heavy metal, speed metal, death metal—you become <i>absorbed</i>.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Okay, at this point I pull out The Question: Is it still
possible for rock and roll—as Lou claims in “Sweet Jane”—to save people’s Lives?
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
"Absolutely," says Lou. "Rock and roll speaks
of the spirit of the heart. Music is strange—it's just a sound. Sound waves.
Words. Movement. Sound. I'll give you a perfect example, okay? There is an
album that was released just now, called ‘Our New Orleans.’ There is a piece by
Buckwheat Zydeco with Ry Cooder on guitar called ‘The Streets Are Cryin. ' I
listened and it was devastating. I was listening to it on a <i>fucking iPod</i>. It's a miracle. This means
that you can carry the church around in your pocket." <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Lou laughs at his notion: the church in his pocket. He’s
going to tuck that one away for future use. "There is nothing else that
can do such a thing," he insists. "Anyone can listen to Buckwheat
Zydeco. It requires no preparation. It is music, that’s all it is. Music made
with the heart. What more could you want? It is one of the great lessons of
life. Wow. "<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We’ve used up our hour and now the assistant and the PR girl
drag Lou firmly to the dentist while I go for a walk on a chilly New York street
to a record store, buy the CD “Our New Orleans” (Nonesuch), and listen to “The
Streets Are Cryin’ “by Buckwheat Zydeco. It's a beautiful piece, sure enough,
and I could never say that Lou is mistaken about the fact that this music saves
lives, because the money made from sales of the CD go to finance the
construction of new homes for victims of Hurricane Katrina. <o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But when you replay Lou’s intro to the live version of “Sweet
Jane…” Wow, indeed. This music has, and always will, save lives, Lou. Starting with yours
and mine.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
* * *</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In Italian: <a href="http://www.rollingstonemagazine.it/musica/news-musica/eccoci-arrivati-buoni-70-lou/">http://www.rollingstonemagazine.it/musica/news-musica/eccoci-arrivati-buoni-70-lou/</a></div>
Rex Weinerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12550540824346578426noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5728624508004581347.post-81613525923984454802013-07-29T19:53:00.000-07:002013-07-29T19:53:50.927-07:00BLACK SABBATH GET ITS ACT TOGETHER (AGAIN) - JUNE 2013<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>By Rex Weiner</b></div>
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I’m not supposed to tell you where the lead singer of Black
Sabbath lives, the guy reputed to have bitten the head of a bat tossed onstage
during a concert. I will tell you only this: even with the address in hand, his
residence in a well-hidden corner of Los Angeles is nearly impossible to find.
It takes me an hour, even with GPS. Circling and re-circling the surrounding
countryside, though it is only a short distance from one of L.A.’s busiest
freeways. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When I finally discover the entrance to the gated community, a security
guard checks my name against a list before lifting the barrier. The guard
doesn’t say, “Oh, you’re looking for the home of the guy who bites the heads
off bats.” The guard doesn’t say anything. This is L.A., after all.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Carved from dusty arroyos, chaparral flats and Miocene
outcroppings by developers in the 1950s and manicured into serene estate
parcels, the community is a maze of streets with Old West names. They wind past
verdant landscapes surrounding mansions erected in various decades and a
grab-bag of styles. I arrive at last at the address marking a steep, curving
driveway leading skyward. At the very end, secure as any Tuscan castle
commanding its hilltop, stands a large two-story manor house with a grand portico
and a Ferrari parked out front. It is
the kind of mid-1980’s Greek Revival-meets-California-Ranch-style home favored
by coke-dealers, refugee ministers escaping the Shah’s Iran with bags of gold,
and heavy metal musicians.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Immediately inside the foyer I know I’m in the right place
because alongside car keys casually tossed on the marble side table beneath an gilt-framed
oval mirror sit a pair of spectacles, the round-lensed blue-tinted wire frames that
can only belong to Ozzy Osbourne. <o:p></o:p></div>
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I am warned by the publicist, as I’m led down a couple of
steps off the foyer into a sunken bookshelf-lined den, not to take any pictures
or request any autographs. For my part, I’ve quietly resolved not to confess: Heavy
metal is my least favorite music, after polka. I fully appreciate that, once an
electrified audio pickup was grafted onto a blues guitar and made commercially
available by the Rickenbacker Electro Stringed Instrument Company in 1934, heavy
metal was the logical and inevitable musical conclusion, just as re-processed
plutonium leads to a nuclear bomb. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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And it’s not academic that, drawing upon the brilliant innovations
of sound bombasts like Howlin’ Wolf, Lightning Hopkins, Jimi Hendrix, Eric
Clapton, Led Zeppelin, and even Beethoven and Wagner, the quartet of Ozzy
Osbourne, Terry “Geezer” Butler, Bill Ward, and Tony Iommi was the first to
establish heavy metal as a hugely successful musical genre. Black Sabbath’s musical
accomplishment is a phenomenon that has sold 70 million records worldwide and
spawned legions of imitators. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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In any case, there’s a new album—“13,” produced by super-producer
Rick Rubin, and a global tour—and here comes Ozzy.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Descending with a feline sideways motion, one arm held delicately
waist-high, John Michael Osbourne at 65 years old is slim and trim. The vocalist,
survivor of decades of alcohol and drug abuse, and eponymous headliner for the
long-running Ozzfest heavy metal concert series, is entirely dressed in black,
except for bright pink socks tucked into delicate slippers. A necklace of
crosses dangles across his chest. His right hand is bandaged. No, he says, he
was not injured in the house fire reported the previous week on newscasts,
gossip columns and websites. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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“Not the first time we’ve had fires,” he says, speaking in
the crumbly Birmingham accent recognizable from the Emmy Award-winning MTV reality
show The Osbournes, and numerous TV commercials. He describes several fire
emergencies that have occurred in their home. The most recent conflagration resulted
from a candle that was a gift from friend and TV talk show host Howard Stern.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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“Sharon’s always lighting damn candles around the house,”
Ozzy says, blaming his TV star wife in the style of the ongoing sitcom reality show
that is their life. ”I tell her ‘That’s why they invented fucking electricity.’”
Recent tabloid reports say the couple, after thirty years of marriage, are separating
but nothing has been confirmed.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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In fact, his right hand is bandaged following arthritis
surgery the day before. None of us is getting any younger. That includes Geezer,
the band’s bassist. The longhaired, ruddy-cheeked stocky man with a reddish
graying moustache and goatee comes in and sits down. Rumpled and comfortably
paunchy in an un-tucked shirt and jeans, he admits to looking forward to the
band’s upcoming world tour.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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“Very much, yes” he says, soft-voiced and British polite. He
is 63, lives in Beverly Hills and has two sons, 28 and 30. One is receiving his
master’s degree at Oxford, the other works as a film editor. “Sent them to
school in England,” says Geezer, with a dig at America’s spate of gun violence,
“so they wouldn’t get shot.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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When not playing bass with Black Sabbath, he says his
favorite activity is watching the “soccer channel,” using the American term
instead of “football.” He follows his hometown club Aston Villa, but also likes
the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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“Terry’s into sports,” says Ozzy, “I’m not into sports at
all.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Ozzy calls him Terry. “Tony always calls me Geezer,” the
bass player explains. So do millions of Black Sabbath fans.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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We are looking ahead, and looking back, too, and I want to
know which of all their seventeen albums, since their 1970 hit Paranoid, they might
want to re-record with the benefit of today's digital technology?<o:p></o:p></div>
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“Nah,” says Ozzy without hesitation. “Wouldn’t re-record any
of them.” It’s not so much an issue of modern technological wizardry as
matching the band’s performance to the original, he says. “It’s like capturing
a dream.” <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Aside from recording technology, what’s the biggest
difference in the music industry now, from when they began making music and
appearing on concert stages in 1969?<o:p></o:p></div>
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“It’s completely different,” says Geezer. “You can get books
in bookshops now that tell you all you need to know about how to be in a rock
band. We didn’t know any of that. We were just four kids. It’s much more of a
business now. When we started, you expected to do it for about three or four
years and then get a proper job.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Ozzy laughs. “My mother used to say, when are you going stop
this and get a real job?”<o:p></o:p></div>
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Geezer recalls when Ringo Starr used to say that when the
Beatles were finished he was going to be a hairdresser. “We all thought that
when the Rolling Stones were about twenty-eight they would be too old and
they’d get proper jobs.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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“I used to say I’d never live past forty,” says Ozzy, “but
when I got to be thirty-nine, well…” His years of drinking and drugging are a
recurring motif of his bestselling 2009 autobiography “I Am Ozzy.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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“People want to
establish careers,” says Geezer, “rather for the fun of just playing music.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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“We used to jam all the time,” says Ozzy. “People don’t know
how to jam anymore. You just play, you know.” <o:p></o:p></div>
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They still jam, Geezer says. “That’s how this whole album
came about. That’s how you get your ideas. Do an hour of jamming every day,
loosen up, see what sparks come out. Then we record one of the written songs.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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I am promised a preview of their new album. Then Ozzy’s
talking about how the newest digital technology affects sound. “Our new album,”
he says, “we recorded it the way we would have done on analog. On analog you
couldn’t bend notes and match things up perfectly, the way they do now. That’s
not the way music is. It’s supposed to sound like people are playing it. Not so
clean, you know?”<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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But Ozzy and Geezer are not so eager to put down the music
being played today. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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“I think pop music is really good at the moment,” Geezer
says. “Lots of good stuff. Back in the Sixties and Seventies among all the good
stuff you used to get all the horrible crap stuff, too, especially in England,
all those novelty records. There’s better standards now.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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Ozzy nearly spits with disgust at the memory of English
Sixties Top of the Pops. “One-Horse-Jimmy, or something.” He starts singing “My
Boy Lollipop” in a voice you could wrap fish in. “Drove me fuckin’ nuts!”<o:p></o:p></div>
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Well, then, I ask, who do you listen to?<o:p></o:p></div>
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“Charles Mingus, Thelonious Monk,” says Geezer, a solid jazz
fanatic. “Loved Amy Winehouse. I like
Adele. I like people who actually have good talent.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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Ozzy shakes his head.
“To be honest with you,” he says, “I don’t listen to music much
anymore.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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Geezer smiles, knowing what Ozzy means. They’ve been to the
mountaintop—they don’t need to hear anything else. “I’d really rather listen to
audio books,” says Geezer. Currently, it seems he’s listening to Ian Fleming’s
whole James Bond series, “From Casino Royale, right along, in proper order. Not
the way the films came out.” He listens in his car, driving around L.A.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Ozzy goes into a tirade against driving, various
technologies, and the combination of the two, including the phenomenon of text
messaging while driving. He marvels at his young assistant who does that, but
acknowledges it’s a $150 ticket if you are caught in the act.<o:p></o:p></div>
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But getting back onto the subject of reading, Ozzy says he
recently read a biography of John Lennon but couldn’t finish it. “When it got
to the part where he got killed I couldn’t read anymore!” <o:p></o:p></div>
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Well, what about the Beatles—did Black Sabbath and the
Beatles ever get together? “Never met Lennon,” says Ozzy. Neither did
Geezer. But they both met George
Harrison and Ringo, and both like Paul McCartney. “Paul is a nice guy,” says
Ozzy.<o:p></o:p></div>
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But don’t they go to see other musicians play, or check out
new bands at Hollywood clubs?<o:p></o:p></div>
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“My wife always saying to me ‘Why don’t you want to go
out?’” Ozzy frowns, “But I tell Sharon, ‘My <i>job</i> is going out.’”<o:p></o:p></div>
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Ozzy has five children from two marriages, ranging in age
from 27 to 41, three of them with Sharon. He is a grandfather six times over.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I ask them what’s the biggest misconception about Black
Sabbath that they would like to correct, aside from the business of Ozzy biting
off the head of a bat tossed onstage during a concert (a much disputed
occurrence that has passed the fact-checking desk into legend)?<o:p></o:p></div>
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“The biggest misconception when we first started,” says
Geezer, “was that we were all Satanists. People were totally misinterpreting
the lyrics. They saw the name of the band and immediately put us on the dark
side.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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“It’s just a role we play,” says Ozzy.<o:p></o:p></div>
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"And the lyrics are all <i>against</i> Satanism,” Geezer insists, “if
they care to listen to them properly.” Both Black Sabbath members are eager to
dispel the notion that the band promotes Satanism or has anything do with the
dark arts or occult beliefs.<o:p></o:p></div>
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“We were in Philadelphia,” says Geezer, “Someone said, well,
you’re the Satan band, you’ve got to see this new film called ‘The Exorcist.’
Well, we were that fucking scared after seeing ‘The Exorcist,’ we all spent the
night in the same bedroom. We had to go see “The Sting” afterwards to calm
down, we were so out of our fuckin’ minds, that’s what fuckin’ Satanists we
were.” <o:p></o:p></div>
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“That’s always gotten
me,” Ozzy says. “It’s just a fucking stage role. It amazes me what people
believe.” In the beginning it was just a sort of literary experiment, according
to Ozzy. </div>
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“We said, wouldn’t it be good to write scary music, haunted music, like
Halloween. But we don’t burn virgins.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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“Too old for that now,” Geezer grins.<o:p></o:p></div>
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It seems that band reunions, such as the Rolling Stones currently
embarking on their 50<sup>th</sup> anniversary tour, is one of the few
challenges that remain for Rock n’ Roll Hall of Famers who can still mount a
stage. This is especially true of a band like Black Sabbath, torn asunder over
previous decades by conflicts, substitute lineups, deaths and hobbled by
addictions. It’s certainly not about the money.<o:p></o:p></div>
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“It’s not a job, this album,” says Ozzy, who with his wife
ranks as one the wealthiest rock stars, worth more than $145M according to the London
Sunday Times 2011 “Rich List.” </div>
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“We’ve all grown up, there’s nobody better than
anybody. We don’t drink much. We don’t smoke cigarettes. I’ve never been so
fucking healthy in my life.” <o:p></o:p></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
In one of those ironies that are almost cliché among rockers
(Alice Cooper’s devotion to golf, for example), Ozzy says he prefers a bit of quiet
these days, and enjoys a solitary hobby. </div>
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“I just sit in my own room,” he says.
“I like to paint.” Paint what? “”Things,” he says. “Just things.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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But being in the band still gets them up in the morning. “I
love playing music,” says Geezer, “more than ever. At my age now, to still be
able to play bass and write lyrics, it’s like a blessing, and I’m really
grateful for it. I don’t take it for granted.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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Ozzy says similar feelings among their contemporaries is not
uncommon. “I was in a restaurant one time,” he says, “with one of the guys from
the band Chicago, and he has a small apartment overlooking the 405 Freeway.
That’s it, right, because he tells me ‘That’s all I need. I’m always on the
road,’ and he went back home last week, and looking the window saw all that traffic
bumper to bumper, and he says ‘It got me thinking I’m so fucking lucky just for
the fact that I don’t have to do <i>that</i>
every fucking day.’ That alone is so fucking worth it. And I don’t want the
green M&Ms either.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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Guitar slasher Tony Iommi isn’t present because he’s
undergoing chemotherapy treatments for lymphoma in the UK. “It’s been a long
road in terms of Tony battling cancer,” says Ozzy, whose wife has had her own
battles with cancer. “I spoke to him this morning. He sounded tired. I’m
sixty-five, and I’m thinking—fuck, I look in the mirror and thinking my dada
died at sixty-five. And I remember thinking, well, he was an old guy. Time, as
you get older—time goes by so quickly. Sharon said to me, we only have ten
years. I said, what are you talking about? She says, it’s not that long before
we go under.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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Ozzy is clearly worried about the aging process. “My short
term memory is gone. I go up and down the fucking stairs and go what did I come
up here for? Drives me nuts. I can remember what I was wearing on the stage
twenty years ago but I can’t remember five minutes ago.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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He continues to complain. “I’m deaf as a fucking plank.
Hearing aids!” He takes one out. I ask
if it’s just one ear that’s a problem and Ozzy says, “No! One in each ear. In
me arse, as well!”<o:p></o:p></div>
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Ozzy gets up from the sofa to point his posterior at me. “Eh?
What’d you say?” <o:p></o:p></div>
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I stand up, point my own arse towards Ozzy’s, asking if I might
listen to the new Black Sabbath album now?<o:p></o:p></div>
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They play it for me, the rough mix. </div>
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Even I can testify: Black
Sabbath fans will not be disappointed.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Rex Weinerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12550540824346578426noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5728624508004581347.post-88342852694274859552012-11-12T09:06:00.002-08:002012-11-12T09:10:43.340-08:00NO DOUBT - OF A CERTAIN AGE (Sept. 2012 #107)By Rex Weiner<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCvl6KhjeJhshOXM6WDgVVHOSxE_l9AEyYZ2YthjX6-Na935wId2bxgqzSXrm4CwIjHKDToLrm62s3DHovoDnj9Ws_DNB0502H6mR9Q0CVWUQFlLJQQSRjiUfS5VkprIwFYECYG0bXUkQ/s1600/REX+WITH+NO+DOUBT'S+GWEN+STEFANI+AND+TONY+KANAL.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCvl6KhjeJhshOXM6WDgVVHOSxE_l9AEyYZ2YthjX6-Na935wId2bxgqzSXrm4CwIjHKDToLrm62s3DHovoDnj9Ws_DNB0502H6mR9Q0CVWUQFlLJQQSRjiUfS5VkprIwFYECYG0bXUkQ/s320/REX+WITH+NO+DOUBT'S+GWEN+STEFANI+AND+TONY+KANAL.JPG" width="238" /></a></div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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When you grow older, does rock and roll die? <o:p></o:p></div>
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Not for No Doubt, the band born in 1986 in an Anaheim garage
a few miles south of Los Angeles. What happens when you get older is, your record
company puts out a new album and the tour bus hits the road, just like in the
beginning—only this time with nine children that all four members, Gwen
Stefani, Adrian Young, Tom Dumont and Tony Kanal have spawned in the eleven
years since the last album. And don’t forget Adrian’s golf clubs.<o:p></o:p></div>
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“Talking about it is <i>super-weird</i>,”
Gwen Stefani tells me, in the high-pitched voice known to millions of her fans and
phrased in the kooky dialect peculiar to Orange County, home of Mickey Mouse
and the Magic Kingdom of Disneyland. “It’s <i>rad</i>
to share it.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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We’re sitting in Ocean Way Studios, a legendary recording
house in Hollywood. Autographed pictures on the wall show everyone who has cut
tracks here from Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles, The Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton,
and Michael Jackson, to Green Day, Dr. Dre, Radiohead, Kanye West, and The Red
Hot Chili Peppers. The studio is responsible for multi-platinum recordings and
more than one billion record sales, including No Doubt’s last album, “Rock
Steady,” and now add the new one, their sixth: “Push and Shove.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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“I’m not bragging,” says Stefani, “but this is the best
record we’ve ever made.” That’s a big claim, coming from the band that recorded
“Tragic Kingdom,” one of the best-selling rock albums of all time.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Looking as blonde and vivacious as ever at 43 years old in
plaid pants, black silk jacket, and signature red lipstick, she’s accompanied
by Adrian in blond Mohawk, pink shirt, Edwardian gray jacket and dark trousers,
Tom in a conservative cap and black and white checked shirt, and Tony also
sporting a blond Mohawk, in a casual jacket and t-shirt. The group, known for
its fashion sense, stood fashionably cool in the back of the studio fiddling
with their iPhones as the sound camp up big over the speakers.<o:p></o:p></div>
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“Push and Shove,” the album’s title song is a dense collaboration
with Major Lazer (DJ Diplo) that also includes beats by Busy Signal, the
Jamaican dancehall artist arrested in Kingston last May, extradited to the US
where he faces charges on a 10-year old drug bust. The track features Stefani’s
buttery, mellifluous, hiccupping voice and a flood of cascading musical hooks.
It’s sure to be rocking dance clubs around the world.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The next track is “Looking Hot”… “Take good look at me,” Stefani
sings, “You think I’m looking hot, you think this is the spot…” Horns blow, the
beat chug-chugs. It’s hot. It’s a big, thick, rich mix with smoothly balanced
sound and sharp effects. The album is produced by Mark "Spike" Stent,
the man who engineered multi-platinum albums for Madonna, Lady Gaga, U2, and
Beyonce, and who steered “No Doubt’s 2001 effort, “Rock Steady.” <o:p></o:p></div>
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It’s a long way from playing pizza parties.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The band started out in the late, post-punk 1980s playing
ska and reggae-tinged rock. The band’s name was coined by John Spence who was
playing with Stefani’s brother Eric on keyboards with Gwen singing backup. Her
biggest influence was Julie Andrews in the Sound of Music.<o:p></o:p></div>
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No Doubt played a gig with The Untouchables headlining at Fender's
Ballroom in Long Beach, California, along with fourteen other bands one night
when UK-born Tony Kanal was in the audience. Kanal liked what he saw, and the
bass player decided he wanted join the group, which he did. He also became Stefani’s
boyfriend.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The suicide of John Spence in December, 10987 nearly broke
up the band, but a few days after Spence’s tragic death, No Doubt played the
Roxy on the Sunset Strip for a record industry audience and got a good
response. They decided to continue onward.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Leaving behind a heavy metal band, Tom Dumont joined No
Doubt in early 1988, adding his hard-driving guitar to the mix. The band began
building a following in the Southern California ska and reggae scene while
playing with bands like The Untouchables and Fishbone. Ska-enthusiast Adrian Young
signed on as drummer and the group began opening shows for the Red Hot Chili
Peppers and Ziggy Marley, gaining a mailing list of thousand fans along the
way. The list was used to promote parties where the band played and pizza was
served.<o:p></o:p></div>
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No Doubt signed with Interscope Records in 1991, while band
members kept their day jobs and attended school. Gwen, an art student and Tony,
studying psychology, both worked in a department store. Adrian, also studying psychology,
waited tables at a restaurant, and music school student Tom ran a music
equipment rental business. <o:p></o:p></div>
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That year the band recorded their 14-song first album for less
than $13,000, with Interscope president Jimmy Iovine betting that in five years
they would be stars. But in 1992, the Seattle grunge sound was big, and No
Doubt, the band’s self-title album, sold only 30,000 copies. They shot a video
that was never played on MTV. They set out on a tough, two-and-a-half-month
cross-country tour in cramped vans playing small clubs opening for Public Enemy
and </div>
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The Special Beat.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Over the next two and a half years their break-through
album, “Tragic Kingdom,” with song lyrics fueled by Gwen and Tony’s breakup,
was recorded at eleven different studios. Kanal has referred to its difficult creation
as a “battleground.” One of the casualties was Stefani’s brother Eric, who quit
the band to join The Simpsons TV show as an animator.<o:p></o:p></div>
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By the end of 1995, with “Just a Girl” getting airplay on
local L.A. radio stations, the band began to attract national attention,
especially Stefani’s bindi and bare sexy midriff. By the summer of 1996, with “Don’t
Speak” a hit song and sales of “Tragic Kingdom” earning certified platinum
status, No Doubt was touring the world and Stefani appearing on newsstands on
fashion magazine and teen fanzine covers as the reigning Queen of Pop.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The Decade of No Doubt followed, with the band seemingly
everywhere and “Tragic Kingdom” selling more than 15 million copies worldwide. The
new millennium dawned, and with technology moving into the World Wide Web, No
Doubt became one of the last MTV bands to reach the world mainly through the
medium of rock video, and one of the last bands to deliver global sales of
music via CDs, before Napster and downloads changed the music industry game.<o:p></o:p></div>
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They have good memories of touring, especially in Italy
before the band had reach the height if its fame. Tom remembers playing a big
festival in Milan during their “Tragic Kingdom” tour when Rage Against the
Machine playing on an adjacent stage stole away their audience (the band
members are friends). But no sightseeing for Adrian, who recalls being attacked
by mosquitos during the Milano concert. They laugh about it now, but he says he
jumped on a train to Germany, getting there early before their next date to
recover from huge Italian mosquito bites on his skin.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Tom and Adrian also remember an historic concert in Tel Aviv
in 1997 when the audience brought together Jewish and Arab Israelis and
everyone got along, happily rocking to No Doubt’s music.<o:p></o:p></div>
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They’ve been busy in the eleven years since “Rock Steady,”
says Adrian. “It was really healthy to take time for the kids.” On their 2009
tour the band had six kids to look after who have now grown up together.
Instead of looking for clubs in the various cities they visited and bands to
jam with, they had other concerns. “We’d be looking for fun things for the kids
to do,” he says.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Adrian is a “scratch” golfer playing competitively with a
zero handicap and often plays in charity tournaments. Both Adrian and Tom live
in Long Beach, but Tom is a surfer who loves the ocean. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Tony Kanal is the late-comer to parenting. He and his wife
had trouble conceiving, and Stefani says “We would come to the studio asking
Tony, ‘Did you get pregnant yet?’” Now Tony’s daughter Coco is just over a year
old. “Kids take your life to the next level,” he says.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Stefani, who married Bush rocker Gavin Rossdale in
September, 2002, now has two young boys, Kingston and Zuma, to look after. She
confesses that the rock and roll lifestyle often conflicts with her parenting
role. “I feel the mommy pie gets divided up,” she says, between time with the
children and time away, time in the recording studio, doing photo shoots,
rehearsing, tending to her career. “Being without my children…,” she says with
a frown, “Guilt!”<o:p></o:p></div>
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Stefani was four and a half months pregnant on tour with her
first child. Then, once her first boy was born, she was on tour for six months,
doing 106 shows while nursing. “When I got home I was pregnant again!” <o:p></o:p></div>
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“It was a super-hard, crazy journey, being a mom,” Stefani
said, “but we had to fight and didn’t give up.” She says that at one point,
overwhelmed, she pictured herself in a wheelchair being taken away to a rest
home.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The demands of being a mother have curtailed her other
career as the head of her L.A.M.B fashion line. “I missed Fashion Week in New
York because the kids were starting school,” she says. But she is “super
passionate” about her clothing line and the fashions business, which she calls
“A lot less emotional than singing.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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But from the beginning she’s had to learn the basics about
what people in the garment industry call “the rag trade.” She says, “I was late
to the fashion world. I was from the OC,” meaning Orange County, a place not
known for its devotion to style. <o:p></o:p></div>
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It wasn’t until she reached the age of 30 that Stefani
attended her first fashion show. It was for Vivienne Westwood, the British
design icon who is Stefani’s design idol. Stefani wore a Westwood corset in an
early video. Meeting Westwood was “like meeting the queen,” Stefani told a
fashion magazine at the time, and was also widely quoted as saying “I cried”
when she was invited to a Christian Dior show and saw fashion bad boy John
Galliano’s creations on the runway. Stefani has hailed Galliano, since
disgraced and dismissed by Dior for anti-Semitic remarks, as a genius.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Last year she donated her pink silk faille wedding dress, designed
by Galliano, to the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. “But it’s a work of
art, it needed to be seen,” she told Elle UK. Stefani and Gavin whose 2002
wedding in an Anglican ceremony at St. Paul’s Church Covent Garden in was
widely covered in the media. Now she is a L’Oreal icon, using her sponsor’s products
and chooses blue-red lipstick “but I’m exploring the orange.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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From the Beverly Hills house she shares with Gavin, she
travels to the Hollywood studio three days a week, and works until four in the
afternoon. Often the group meets at Tony’s house in Los Feliz, which is not far
from the studio. And touring now, with all families on board, has a different
feel, she says. “Definitely tribal!” It’s all about the kids now, “from the
minute they wake up.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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We’re listening now to the album single, “Settle Down” which
begins with Indian strings, a sitar sound with tablas lending a percussive
beat. Was this due to Tony’s South Asian background? <o:p></o:p></div>
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“It was actually Sophie Muller’s idea,” says Kanal, speaking
of the director who has shot nearly all of the band’s official videos. The
visuals and the music show a Bollywood influence<o:p></o:p></div>
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Stefani says the band is definitely together again, and after
two solo albums </div>
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("Love.Angel.Music.Baby." and "The Sweet
Escape") the “Hollaback Girl” does not contemplate anymore solo recording or
touring. “My solo albums were not meant to be a solo career,” she says, “but an
80’s dance record I just wanted to make. When I finished that last solo tour, I
said, ‘I’m ready now for No Doubt.’”<o:p></o:p></div>
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Stefani’s solo concert concluded in 2007 at Irvine Meadows
stadium which is on No Doubt’s Orange County home turf. That night the group came
onstage for an encore. They played “Just a Girl and “It’s My Life.” It was an
emotional moment for the audience and for the group, Kanal says, and watching
it captured live on YouTube, “I still get goose bumps.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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Stefani was looking forward to hosting a “Family Day”
fundraiser August 12 at her Beverly Hills home with First Lady Michelle Obama
for the President’s re-election campaign. Active in philanthropy, the singer
has already donated $1 million to help children affected by the 2011 earthquake
and tsunami in Japan.<o:p></o:p></div>
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We’re listening to the track called “Gravity” and the lyrics
say “I don’t know where all the time went, so many close calls, everybody
falls.” It seems to be a song about survival, which No Doubt does well. But the
best song, for at least one listener, is called “One More Summer.” <o:p></o:p></div>
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<i>Been wasting all this time but I can’t let go<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i>Getting used to all your mistakes</i></div>
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<i><o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i>I could be right I could be wrong…</i><o:p></o:p></div>
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Stefani sings in a sparing voice to a strong rolling beat. The
lyrics seem to be about holding onto the past while moving into the future.
It’s a different sound from No Doubt’s previous work. The band is certain that
their new album will take fans in new musical directions. </div>
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“We’ve never been
stuck in one genre,” says Adrian, “and we’re always doing something new.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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Which is one sure way No Doubt never gets old.<o:p></o:p></div>
Rex Weinerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12550540824346578426noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5728624508004581347.post-50081253890322835602011-12-21T11:49:00.000-08:002011-12-21T12:00:22.891-08:00R.E.M’S PETER BUCK LAUNCHES MUSIC FEST IN MEXICO La Stampa, Dec. 19, 2011<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBivacTr5h74z-53augEwvPrD_uV6JXZKM58Ru0StfDvD6KwaJ-OReF0Pn6mwBEpyEEQW2BBlcJGX4vY3XiHRD6vzzpkF7SdHxH3pf_mgu8puyFFfoPVqr3OMAvw66ZY4vKpIo9cmnAUk/s1600/PETER+BUCK+ONSTAGE.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 210px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBivacTr5h74z-53augEwvPrD_uV6JXZKM58Ru0StfDvD6KwaJ-OReF0Pn6mwBEpyEEQW2BBlcJGX4vY3XiHRD6vzzpkF7SdHxH3pf_mgu8puyFFfoPVqr3OMAvw66ZY4vKpIo9cmnAUk/s320/PETER+BUCK+ONSTAGE.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5688672986088792514" /></a><br />By Rex Weiner <br /><br />LOS ANGELES: On September 21, the day that R.E.M. shook the rock world by officially announcing its breakup after 31 years and one last album, guitarist Peter Buck was already gone, beginning the rest of his life south of the border, “with my sombrero and a margarita by the pool,” he told La Stampa in an exclusive interview.<br /><br />With bassist Mike Mills and frontman Michael Stipe, Buck recorded 15 albums with the Grammy-award winning alternative rock group, starting in 1979 in Athens, Georgia, and toured the world. But with that part of his career over, Buck recently purchased a house in a small Mexican town called Todos Santos on the Baja California coast, about 45 miles north of Cabo San Lucas, where he and his fiancé are busy launching a three-week music festival January 5 through January 21 featuring Buck and some of the most influential players in the independent music scene.<br /><br />Buck has not taken the farewell spotlight alongside his two more outspoken R.E.M comrades, other than to issue a statement saying, “we walk away as great friends.” But in his first interview since the breakup announcement, he says he is speaking to La Stampa because “Italian fans are the most enthusiastic on earth,” and also because he wants the world to come to Baja for the festival which he hopes will become an annual event.<br /><br />Singer/songwriter Robyn Hitchcock and ex-Dream Syndicate leader Steve Wynn are two of the many musicians flying in to the picturesque colonial town at tip of the Baja peninsula to join Buck at the Todos Santos Music Festival, presented by the Hotel California, the legendary local hostelry. All proceeds from the festival will benefit The Palapa Society, a local non-profit organization that provides educational services and scholarship for young Todos Santos students. <br /><br />To organize the festival, Buck has partnered with the colorful Hotel California (www.hotelcaliforniabaja.com), originally built in 1948 and renovated in 2001, winning numerous awards for design and décor. The original 16 rooms were transformed into the eclectic 11-suite hotel on the town’s main street that in the past, according to local lore, may (or may not) have inspired the Eagles’ song. Along with several of the town’s boutique hotels, the Hotel California is offering special rates to guests coming for the festival, and several resorts in Cabo San Lucas and nearby Pescadero will run shuttles to the shows.<br /><br />The music starts at 8PM each evening. “We’ll play two sets each night four nights a week, for three weeks,” said Buck, “a total of twenty-three performances.” That includes a final free concert at the end of the last week in the town plaza. “We will rehearse at my house during the afternoons,” Buck said. He’s doing it because “my social life is playing music people. I’ve been doing this since I was thirteen years old.” <br /><br />Buck also believes in the charitable cause. “I feel if you’re part of the community, you have to contribute something,” he said, pointing to the many benefit concerts and community support that R.E.M performed during their days in Athens, Georgia. In this case, Buck says he has written a personal check for $10,000 to the Palapa Society in Todos Santos and is paying most of the expenses for the festival. While all of the shows are free, a certain number of reserved seats may be had for a donation. He hopes to raise another $10,000 through sales of posters and t-shirts (you can find the event on Facebook at “Todos Santos Music Festival 2012”).<br /><br />Buck last toured Italy with R.E.M in 2008. The group was one of the few American alternative rock bands to play in Sicily, doing a concert at Catania Stadium in August, 1995 during their Monster Tour, thanks to their friendship with Francesco Virlinzi, Catania-born music producer, and R.E.M fan. Buck owns an Italian-made bowl-back mandolin—a gift from Virlinzi, who died in 2000—which he plays mostly at home or in his recording studio.<br /><br />Buck is looking forward to living in Todos Santos, a laid-back spot for surfers and artists. But he admits that the day of the breakup announcement was “a sad day. But it was also a relief.” He said the group had decided on the breakup two years earlier. “We wanted to go out on a high note,” he said. “It was all amicable, and just time to move on.”<br /><br />But more than that, it’s clear that the business of being R.E.M was going stale for him. “Do I really want to go out on stage and play ‘Losing My Religion” once more time?” he said. “I don’t want to be in an oldies band.” Inducted with the group into the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame in 2007, Rolling Stone counts Buck as one of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time and their last studio album, Collapse Into Now, one of the top 50 albums of 2011.<br /><br />Other groups, of course, are continuing on the rock n roll road even longer than R.E.M. “I love seeing the Stones,” said Buck, “and I will go on seeing them play. But what they do is not something I want to do. A lot of bands out there should have shut the door long ago.”<br /><br />In fact, Buck says, he is not the rock n roll party animal type. “I enjoy playing the music,” he said, “it’s a lot of the other stuff I don’t like. I don’t enjoy having my picture taken, I don’t like being interviewed, and I don’t go out to parties.” When the breakup announcement was being planned by the group and its management, Buck opted out.<br /><br />From now on, for Peter Buck it’s a sombrero and margarita, playing his guitar with friends down in old Mexico.Rex Weinerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12550540824346578426noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5728624508004581347.post-16626624889085669992011-05-07T19:52:00.000-07:002011-05-07T20:09:08.233-07:00ROBBIE ROBERTSON - "THIS IS WHERE I GET OFF" Rolling Stone Italia, April 2011:<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQ50mxtvQDRNnHC8jgOu6FbRV5hDvYWTE90RpsxY2Um-HLlzUz1c3UfM7gpaNxeZwMcjcY43OrxaxkbXBNJHgihuUciL55-KyLfMXwxE4DlUPzeBgCtzWtMcB6Vd-VwG4WFRyJYMjNA-g/s1600/ROBBIE+ROBERTSON.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 276px; height: 183px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQ50mxtvQDRNnHC8jgOu6FbRV5hDvYWTE90RpsxY2Um-HLlzUz1c3UfM7gpaNxeZwMcjcY43OrxaxkbXBNJHgihuUciL55-KyLfMXwxE4DlUPzeBgCtzWtMcB6Vd-VwG4WFRyJYMjNA-g/s320/ROBBIE+ROBERTSON.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5604174718642965266" /></a><br /><p class="MsoNormal">He wrote “The Weight,” ranked #41 on Rolling Stone’s Greatest Songs of All Time list. With its maddeningly ambiguous lyrics, from the opening line—“I pulled into Nazareth, I was feeling about half-past dead….”—to its harmonized refrain—“A-a-a-and you put the load right on me”—it remains one of the most enigmatic popular songs ever written. And here was the songwriter himself, Robbie Robertson, seated across from me in this restaurant all dressed in black. He was laughing with the waitress, a slim blonde named Stacy.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">Far from Nazareth, we were in a place called Craft, a restaurant in Los Angeles where the 22 ounce sirloin steak is $54.00 and the New Jersey pheasant will set you back $32.00. We were surrounded by men in business suits drinking after work, mostly Hollywood agents from the big talent agencies in the nearby office towers. They were accompanied by the kind of well-dressed women who marry men who go to work every day in business suits, but maybe not the ones they were with here tonight. The restaurant owner was Robbie’s friend, which was why he chose this place to meet. <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">We were here to talk about “How To Become Clairvoyant,” Robbie’s first album in more than ten years, his fifth solo work since leaving The Band in 1976, and the fourteenth album he’s played on since “The Weight” was released on The Band’s “Music From Big Pink” in 1968. It’s a good album with some very good songs and contributions from Robbie’s old friends Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood, some new friends like Trent Reznor, and how all that came together is what we were here discuss, but Robbie was hungry.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“I haven’t eaten all day,” Robbie told Stacy. “Bring us some snacks.” From the sommelier he ordered a glass of wine, requesting the El Capitan, a Santa Barbara Syrah, 2008 vintage. Make that two glasses, said I.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Expecting someone mysterious and elusive, I was ready for the singer/songwriter and lead guitarist from The Band to be a difficult artiste, like Bob Dylan, with whom Robertson and The Band toured in the early days, or Van Morrison, a close pal of Robertson’s. Anticipating a tight-lipped man, reluctant to reveal himself, jealously guarding his hidden soul, I was going to ask him something challenging right away, a deep question like: What the hell does “The Weight” mean, particularly the part about “Crazy Chester followed me and he caught me at the bar…”?<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">But a few minutes into the conversation, and after a few sips of the excellent El Capitan, it became clear that Robbie was no mystery man. Smiling, loquacious, with a genuine curiosity and sharp intelligence, he was ready to get personal, which was good because “How To Become Clairvoyant” is a collection of twelve deeply personal songs. He was open to talking about anything at all—even drugs, which was my fault because I brought up the subject. Wild behavior, and the price you pay, is part of the confessional Robbie delivers with this album. So it was understood, without saying, that each of us had done his share of misbehavior and illegal substances. <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Robbie described how when he first joined Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks in Toronto in the early 1960s when he was in his teens, a lot of musicians on the scene were popping Benzedrine pills—“Bennies.” We talked about the varieties of amphetamine: Dexedrine, Dexamyl, Black Beauties… the green-and-whites were my favorite.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“So what happened,” Robbie asked me, looking me in the eye. “You don’t like speed anymore?”<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“No,” I lied. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>My editors wanted this article done in just couple of days. Damn, how else was I going to get this done without the usual chemical assistance?<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Makes you smoke a lot, doesn’t it?” Robbie reminisced. “Cigarettes tasted so good.” Shaking his head sadly, he said, “You know, there are a few things in my lifetime that I regret. One is all the cigarettes that smoked. Because it really beat me up. I did great damage to my respiratory system.”<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">But if he had not smoked all those cigarettes he wouldn’t have his very cool and unique raspy singing voice either, I was thinking of saying, but instead asked Robbie if he had a cigarette. If he did, we might have stepped outside for a smoke, because I was dying for a cigarette. But no, Robbie and I agreed, we don’t smoke anymore. So we just sat and drank wine and ate from a parade of appetizers Stacy brought out—oysters, sausage, lamb—and plunged into the past.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">WHEN THE NIGHT WAS YOUNG<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Robertson was born in Toronto, Canada. His father was Jewish, his mother a Native American of the Mohawk tribe. He grew up learning, guitar on summer vacations at the Six Nations Reservation, where his mother was born and raised. His Indian roots would later lead to working with The Red Road Ensemble on the soundtrack to the 1994 television miniseries, “The Native Americans,” with a selection of songs issued as an album. Tribal spirits also inspired his 1998 album, The Underworld Of Redboy, which led to a one-hour TV documentary “Robbie Robertson: Making A Noise.”<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">He joined a touring bar band led by Ronnie Hawkins that became known as Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks, which included the players who would later form the nucleus of The Band. Leaving Canada, they toured the southern states on what was known as the “Chitlin Circuit,” a tough series of one-night stands in bars and honky tonks that polished the young guitar player’s riffs and shaped Robertson’s profound repertoire of American music.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Robertson captures the feeling of coming of age on the North American road in the Fifties and Sixties in a track on the new album called When the Night Was Young:<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">We headed straight south in a sundown light<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">On highway 61 through the delta night<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">We shared the backroads with cardsharks and grifters<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Tent show evangelists and Luke the Drifter<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The backup vocals of Angela McCluskey on this track ring out behind Robertson like a doo wop angel. McCluskey has earned a cult following since her days with the Wild Colonials. In music circles, she is known as a singer’s singer.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“She has a great sound,” agreed Robbie, pleased to have chosen her to sing on his album. “It just shows you I know what I’m doing.”<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">That may true, but for Robbie, knowing what he’s doing seems to come only after a bit of exploration. How to Become Clairvoyant began with a trip to London in 2008. Robertson spent three weeks in a studio with Eric Clapton, bassist Pino Palladino and drummer Ian Thomas. <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Eric and I are old friends,” he recounted, and they had been talking about doing something together for years. “We didn’t know what we were doing. We had nothing specific in mind yet. We said, let’s just do something and see what happens. So we recorded some tracks. And Eric said to me, this is really your record. I would love to be supportive—sing, play—whatever you want.”<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">But then director Martin Scorsese called. Robertson had collaborated with Scorsese over the years on many films including Raging Bull, King Of Comedy and The Color Of Money. Scorsese, of course, directed The Band’s epic farewell concert film, The Last Waltz. This time, Scorsese had a new project, Shutter Island, a thriller starring Leonardo DiCaprio.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“I had to switch gears,” said Robertson, who jumped off his own project into a totally new realm of music for Scorsese’s project. “I said to Marty—I think in this movie we should use all modern classical composers like John Cage. I was talking about going deep into the well. I went completely into that world and when I came back to the album, I had a particular cinematic vision of what should be done to finish it.”<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">As if casting people in parts for a movie, Robertson brought in McCluskey for backup vocals, guitar hero Tom Morello from Rage Against the Machine, pedal steel wizard Robert Randolph, and Trent Reznor from Nine Inch Nails, along with Winwood and Clapton. His aim: “To complete a collaborative vision. There was a lot left to do, because some of these songs were just a germ of an idea.”<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Unlike his other albums, which were recorded in a single long stretch, this album benefitted from the long interruption. “Having that break was something I’d never experienced before – to go away and come back with some clarity instead of exhaustion – it made this album what it is.”<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">HE DON’T LIVE HERE NO MORE<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">During the making of “The Last Waltz,” Robertson and director Scorsese spent a lot of time together. In fact, they were housemates. The hard-rocking track “He Don’t Live Here No More” is about that time, “a song about excess,” according to Robbie. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>“It was a lifestyle of the time that most of my friends went through, some came out the other side, and for some, the train ran off the tracks.” The song features Clapton on harmony vocal and electric and slide guitars alongside Robertson playing a soulful solo on his 1928 Martin 00045 “gut string” guitar.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Got a ticket on the mainline<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">I was stranded on the fault line<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">I got wasted on the moonshine<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Too far gone<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“The Martin 00045 is an exquisite instrument,” Robbie told me. ”Martin has a new version, they’re going to start making them again. And on this album Eric is playing it or I’m playing it. Eric gave up his own classical guitar made in Spain,” because Clapton liked the sound of Robbie’s gut string better.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“It’s a thread through the whole project,” Robbie said. <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">AXMAN<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Clairvoyant is a guitar album for guitar aficionados, for anyone who appreciates the whole history of the guitar virtuoso, or “axman” as such as player is known, which is the title of one of the album’s best tracks. <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">They say the axman’s coming<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">In a long black car<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">They said the axman’s coming<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">He plays a mean guitar<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Robbie’s song calls out the names of rock and blues guitar heroes, including Duane Allman and Stevie Ray Vaughn, T Bone Walker and Link Wray, Elmore James and even gypsy jazzman Django Rinehart. He sings of Delta Blues master Robert Johnson and “Jimi James,” the name Jimi Hendrix used when Robertson first met him, all “Brothers of the blade,” as the song celebrates them.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The song is a hymn to the six-string instrument with which Robertson won a place as Rolling Stone’s 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time, as did Clapton, whose friendship Robbie also celebrates. <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“It’s as if our guitars are talking to each other,” Robertson said.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>“And it’s always been that way--natural and comfortable. It’s like in The Last Waltz when Eric’s guitar strap fell off and I picked it up. We had each other’s back.”<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Another track called “Straight Down the Line” explores the history of rock from its origins in blues, gospel, rockabilly and pop, “From the Chitlin’ Circuit to the Peppermint Lounge,” as the song goes, and recalls a meeting between Robertson and classic bluesman Sonny Boy Williamson.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Been run off more than once for goin’ underground<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Where I met an old bluesman with a walking cane<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">In the days before they became Dylan’s backup band, Robertson and his bandmates were proposing collaboration with Williamson, but the elder statesman of the blues was a purist. He thought over the idea and according to the song:<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Then he took a little drink<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">And I heard him say<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">I do not play no rock and roll<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Would not be moved to sell my soul<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“I loved that about him,” recalled Robbie. Williamson died a short while later, a bluesman to the end. It was a similar case with the great gospel singer Mahalia Jackson, whose influence was felt by Robertson and endless numbers of rock, pop, and soul singers. As a Rock n Roll Hall of Famer (and inducted this year into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame ) Robertson suggested to the induction committee that they honor Jackson.<i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"><o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“They got in touch with her family after she’d passed away,” Roberson recalled, “and they said no thank you. Mahalia Jackson does not play no rock and roll.”<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Robertson pointed out that Frank Sinatra also stood apart from the music that became the sound of the last half the 20<sup>th</sup> Century. “Those were three characters,” Robertson said, with the admiration due to practitioners of pure art, “who do not play no rock and roll.”<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="text-transform:uppercase">this is where I get off<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The breakup of The Band, one of rock’s greatest ensembles, has always been the subject of much conjecture. The genius of each member—Rick Danko, Garth Hudson, Richard Manuel, Levon Helm, and Robertson—contributed to an enduring sound from a band that recorded seven classic albums (before he split from the group), played a memorable set at the Woodstock Festival, and toured for 16 years. What went wrong? <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Robertson sighed, looking thoughtful as he sipped his El Capitan. “Some groups have been together forever and are still productive and inspiring one another. Others—it does go stale,” said Robbie. “In our situation we hit a wall. We were called The Band. All the individuals played an extraordinary part. When one of those wheels goes flat, the others can’t drive as fast. When two wheels go flat you’re limping over to the side of the road. Three wheels go flat and you need to shuffle the deck, re-group.”<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Robertson has been reluctant to talk about it all these years, but he relates the story of his departure from The Band poetically on the track titled This Is Where I Get Off <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Walking out on the boys<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Was never the plan<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">We just drifted off course<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Couldn’t strike up the band<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Robertson blames the breakup on the nature of the era. “It was the late 70s when there was such an indulgent drug-ridden culture. You would say hey, this worked very good Tuesday but Wednesday and Thursday were fucked. Like somebody you had great sex with last week but now when you see them it doesn’t work anymore. It was that kind of situation—addictions were ruling the creativity. I didn’t know how to communicate through the fog. You try and keep trying and keep trying until you get to a point where you say, you know what? I’m falling apart trying to figure this out. For my own sanity and my own survival I need to step aside, even if I’m just as bad as everybody else.”<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The breakup led to a bitter dispute with Levon Helm over song copyrights that has since been settled. “It is so long ago, so in the past and life is so short,” Robbie said.” I have such great love and respect for Levon, so many amazing experiences that I’ve had with him, and that’s where I keep that.”<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Backup vocals on “This is Where I Get Off” are performed by Rocco DeLuca, a rising young artist who specializes in open-string Dobro and often opens shows for Daniel Lanois. DeLuca will be joining Robertson’s backup band on upcoming TV show appearances promoting the album. <o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Describing DeLuca’s high falsetto, Robbie says the singer’s voice is “like Richard Manuel,” his old Band-mate who died in 1986. Rick Danko is also gone, dying in 1999.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Do you miss those guys?” I asked him.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Robbie took a deep breath and looked down at the table. “Of course I do. Yeah. They’re like brothers. It’s not like you forget or get used to the idea that they’re not here anymore. I often catch myself thinking—What would Richard think about that? I’ll be working on a song and this is when I would ask Richard—What do <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>you think about this? He would always have something progressive for me in his observation of what I was doing. And we co-wrote things together. So it was it was that habit just being extended. He would write something on his own and he would say to me, Hey do you think we should go to a bridge here? We grew up doing that. And yes,” said Robbie. “ I miss him dearly.”<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">So just pull over<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">To the side of the road<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">This is where I get off<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">This is where I move on<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">I know where I went wrong<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">‘Long the way<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">As we left the restaurant, an old blues song was playing on the sound system. I suddenly recalled that Nazareth is the hometown of the guitar manufacturer C. F. Martin & Company. I wanted to ask Robbie about something but we were shaking hands on the sidewalk and we both had places to go and people expecting us. I remembered something he had said earlier in the evening.<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">“Sometimes it’s easy to find a good opening but it’s hard to find a good finish.” He was talking about writing a song, but he laughed and added, “In life, too…:”<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Robbie stepped into his car and was gone like Luke the Drifter, only in a Mercedes and with song lyrics hanging in the air….<o:p></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">How to become clairvoyant<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">That’s what I want to know<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Just tell me where to sign<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">And point me where to go…<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p>Rex Weinerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12550540824346578426noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5728624508004581347.post-79030845900258834122010-10-01T17:40:00.001-07:002010-10-01T17:53:55.210-07:00MICKEY ROURKE IS NEVER EXPENDABLE --- GQ OCT 2010<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQ3MelIBAN5-T1rZ18-a42TOss3XkgrUMH9hstWrx38sKR3Xa5zkYU0B4w4Qn_Yim4UA_TkZ4ak-AFxZoG9D8REk7kgNuCAQ9XMO2KCJ2CUcu7w7YDa8mmVICFoWQnRVOTIyZPyKlwsN4/s1600/GQ+OTTOBRE.jpg"><img style="MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 200px; FLOAT: left; HEIGHT: 270px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5523242783679733266" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQ3MelIBAN5-T1rZ18-a42TOss3XkgrUMH9hstWrx38sKR3Xa5zkYU0B4w4Qn_Yim4UA_TkZ4ak-AFxZoG9D8REk7kgNuCAQ9XMO2KCJ2CUcu7w7YDa8mmVICFoWQnRVOTIyZPyKlwsN4/s320/GQ+OTTOBRE.jpg" /></a> In “The Expendables,” Mickey Rourke plays a tattoo artist named Tool, a man trying to forget his past. It’s a role Mickey’s been working on all his life, and he’s good at it. Real good. Even his face—sabotaged by years of alcohol, cigarettes and substance abuse, taken apart by beatings in the boxing ring, stitched together by cosmetic surgeries like a stuffed chicken breast—has forgotten what it used to be, what he looked like in his first big movie “Body Heat.” back in 1981, when he was one of the hottest actors in Hollywood. Boyishly American, handsome and so full of promise.<br /><br />Well, some of the promise is still there. What kind of promise? You can see it in Mickey’s eyes when he’s with his boys onscreen in “The Expendables” —Sylvester Stallone, Jet Li, Jason Statham, Dolph Lundgren. They hang out in Tool’s tattoo shop, a bunch of tough, dangerous professionals in a world that doesn’t need them anymore, looking for just one more chance… characters played by a bunch of actors who used to be tough and dangerous, now looking for one more shot in a Hollywood that doesn’t need them anymore either. “I’ll be back,” promised Schwarzenegger a while ago, and here he is—onscreen for less than a minute before walking away, as he will soon walk away from his disastrous role as governor of California. The promise they all offer is that despite spectacular failure, there will be a triumphant comeback, and some crazy kind of redemption.<br /><br />It’s the kind of promise Mickey fulfilled last year in “The Wrestler.” Many said it was an impossible feat to pull off, that Mickey had burned too many bridges, used up all of the goodwill that may have been stored away when he was successful, having screwed himself once too many times along with anyone who might have trusted him. But he promised to leave that all behind and just do the job—if only they’d give him one. He kicked his worst addictions, cleaned up his act, shook hands with the Hollywood Establishment, making peace with his own demons. But now where is he going, this quintessentially American actor?<br /><br />You might as well ask where America is going, as the weary nation stumbles into a depression as confused and emotional as it is economic. With nearly ten percent unemployment and very few signs of improvement, all anyone wants is a job and a chance to make good on the promise that was always just over the rainbow at the heart of the American Dream. There will be a comeback someday, most Americans believe, and still a chance to get together with friends from the old days, the good old days before the bad times of 9/11 and the long wars that have dragged on, and on, dragging America down.<br /><br />How did that happen? Might as well trace the trajectory of Mickey’s life.<br /><br />Born Philip Andre Rourke, Jr. in 1952 in the city of Schenectady, located in the chillier reaches of New York State, Mickey’s parents divorced when he was six years old. A year later, Mickey’s mother left the cold north for the warm shores of South Florida and married a Miami policeman. Young Mickey was good at sports. He played baseball and also got involved with boxing, winning his first fight at the age of twelve as a 118-pound bantamweight. Into his teens, training at Miami’s top gyms with some of the best fight coaches in the business, he put on more pounds and muscle and moved up to welterweight class. From 1964 to 1972 his amateur boxing record of 20 wins (17 by knockout) and 6 defeats heralded a career in the ring.<br /><br />But the boxing ring has always been a close cousin to the stage and Mickey found himself drawn to acting after a role in Miami Beach High School play. He was coached by legendary South Florida drama teacher Jay Jensen, known as the “Teacher to the Stars,” whose students included Andy Garcia. After a role in a friend’s theatrical production at Miami University, Rourke moved to New York City to study acting and take a shot at the thespian life. He landed his first small movie role in the Steven Spielberg film, “1941” and his career took off after appearing with Darryl Hannah and Eric Roberts in “The Pope of Greenwich Village” (1984).<br /><br />He went on to rack up credits in more than 60 movies, including Diner, Rumble Fish, Nine ½ Weeks, Angel Heart, Barfly, and punched up his reputation as a Hollywood bad boy. He burned through two marriages, the last one to his “Wild Orchid” co-star, Carrie Otis. After turning down too many juicy roles in too many movies, and behaving badly on the sets of the movies he worked on, the jobs stopped coming. He was the kind of trouble no movie studio wanted to have, no director wanted to deal with, so the jobs stopped coming.<br /><br />Mickey decided to go back to the ring. He hired a top trainer, put on more muscle and made a good showing, slugging though a short parade of opponents in pursuit of a top-dollar title bout. But he was taking a lot of hits to the head and doctors warned him that any more fighting would finish him forever. Even if he won the title, with all the cumulative punishment to the brain, he wouldn’t even be able to count the money.<br /><br />The movie business had counted him out for good. Mickey was lost for a while, with only his dog Loki for company, weekly visits to a shrink, and some very dark thoughts—close to suicidal, he has confessed. His friends pulled him back from the brink. When he couldn’t afford a bowl of spaghetti in Hollywood ten years ago, he once told an interviewer, Stallone gave him a part in his movie, “Get Carter.” “That paid my rent for eight months,” said Mickey.<br /><br />Mickey repaid the debt by appearing in “The Expendables,” which Stallone wrote and directed. Now Mickey’s having a good time with his buddies, and maybe this movie is a joke—an old-fashioned rock’em, sock’em, blow-‘em-all-to-hell action picture that makes all the “Rambo” movies look like video games.<br /><br />But the joke is on Mickey, and that’s okay. He’s proven himself a serious actor as the Oscar-worthy, Golden Globe-winning Randy the Ram in “The Wrestler.” So Mickey can take it easy for awhile. Now that The Big Comeback has been accomplished, he’s taking roles in movies that are either guaranteed to pull down loads of money at the box office, like the recent “Iron Man 2,” or roles that don’t stretch his talents too far.<br /><br />In “Passion Play,” a new $14 million independent movie, Mickey is “Nate,” a Chet Baker-ish jazz trumpet player down on his luck who tries to rob a car whose owner turns out to be a gangster who takes him out to the desert to kill him, according to the movie’s description in the Toronto Film Festival program: “and we are at the beginning of a delightful fable about romance and dreams… he meets a beautiful woman who works as the Bird Woman in a circus, he falls madly in love and persuades her to run away with him only to find that life is a little more complicated than simply living one's fantasies.”<br />That’s a good description of Mickey.<br /><br />“Passion Play” also stars Bill Murray in yet another strange toupee as a nasty mobster, and sex bomb Megan Fox, who was "probably the best young actress I've ever worked with," Mickey told Entertainment Weekly. Once again, friendship played a role in getting the job. The film’s director Mitch Glazer was Mickey’s high school classmate. Unfortunately, there was not much passion for “Passion Play” at its recent Toronto premiere. According to the Los Angeles Times, the “expressionistic fable was received as something of a spectacular folly.”<br /><br />Upcoming for Mickey is a starring role as King Hyperion in “Immortals,” a $100M mythological costume drama directed by Tarsem Singhe, and he is rumored to be cast as 1930’s bank robber Baby Face Nelson in a Tony Scott-directed film about Depression Era outlaws, another action movie about doomed American anti-heroes.<br /><br />Nevertheless, you get the sense from Mickey’s portrayal of Tool in “The Expendables” that despite the comeback and the tributes to heroism, comradeship, ideals and lofty goals, everyone knows it won’t be the same—it can’t be same. Not for Mickey and not for America either. Too many sins committed, too many shameful acts performed, like the fictional murder that the Tool weepily confesses he witnessed and did nothing to prevent, like the non-fictional images of torture at Abu Ghraib that US General Petraeus declared “un-biodegradable.” And just as there will probably be sequels of “The Expendables.” because it earned more than $100M at the US box office despite horrible reviews, there are probably worse times ahead for America.<br /><br />That’s why Mickey’s role as Tool in “The Expendables” is a little sad, but a little funny, too, and so true to life. Mickey can’t help but see the humor in it and that’s what saves him. It’s what sets him apart from the rest, not only onscreen but in the real world. It’s the promise of redemption for the Irish catholic soul within him.<br /><br />“I was walking down Wilshire Boulevard and I saw a big smoke signal, it said ‘Mickey, we’re looking for you,’ ” was how he explained to me five years ago his first comeback role in “Sin City.” Again, it was with a little help from his friends—in that case Robert Rodriguez, the director whom he’d worked with on “Once Upon A Time In Mexico.” Rodriguez had steered him toward Frank Miller, who was directing “Sin City” based on his graphic novel.<br /><br />Just before “Sin City” was released, Mickey and I were talking in his suite at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. He had his chihuahua-terrier mutt Loki with him. I haven’t seen Mickey since then, and poor Loki has gone to canine heaven. But five years ago I said maybe, just maybe, if you gave Mickey half an Irishman’s chance he’d be back with something great. He did that with “The Wrestler.” Now he’s having a good time, and he deserves to let the bad times go. Like all of America, he is trying to forget the past and promising to hold steady for the future.<br /><br />But from the haunted look in Mickey’s eyes it’s plain that he knows the past is never really dead, and as William Faulkner once wrote… it isn’t even past.Rex Weinerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12550540824346578426noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5728624508004581347.post-32856666819112501642009-01-26T08:46:00.000-08:002010-10-01T17:51:42.957-07:00TOM WAITS - Rolling Stone Italia - Dec 2006<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzom8Pk3eYHOAgmuvcbplJTvPDTsxCb3BbppEWPvxp81NAZV6nnDbWo5lP72WRyQMxcCszCqcNInwclHcaoP2KfWeQPqCaPUoIkoXkNI589vOysWxYEJfeB0F1d04sE-Rucz97yEGxJnE/s1600-h/WAITS.jpg"><img style="MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 109px; FLOAT: left; HEIGHT: 135px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5295647016177252514" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzom8Pk3eYHOAgmuvcbplJTvPDTsxCb3BbppEWPvxp81NAZV6nnDbWo5lP72WRyQMxcCszCqcNInwclHcaoP2KfWeQPqCaPUoIkoXkNI589vOysWxYEJfeB0F1d04sE-Rucz97yEGxJnE/s320/WAITS.jpg" /></a> A few miles inland from the fog-bound tide pools of Bodega Bay where Alfred Hitchcock filmed his creepy masterpiece “The Birds,” the motionless blades of a fake windmill point toward the Little Amsterdam. The dilapidated eatery, ominously decorated with For Sale signs, occupies a sullen stretch of highway an hour north of San Francisco. Deep into the rolling Sonoma County farmland, the place has the feel of submerged violence, like a murder about to happen – if it hasn’t already been committed.<br /><br /><br />“I live a ways from here,” Tom Waits mutters, a grudging explanation more than an apology for the rat hole we’re sitting in. “This is just the closest roadhouse to me so, y’know, it’s a good place to meet.”<br /><br />It’s just past noon. Tom and I are sitting outside the Little Amsterdam by the kitchen door next to discarded appliances and mops solidified by unidentifiable and probably toxic substances into corroded buckets. An old piano stands by, played too long, too hard and too well by that old trio of sun, wind and rain to ever play another note again. The Little Amsterdam’s owner, a Dutch ex-sailor, was forced into bankruptcy after the county slapped him with a $100,000 fine for the trailer park he used to run without a proper license behind his restaurant. Mexican farm workers living there once filled the roadhouse with mariachi music and the rough merriment of men and women who work the land with their hands.<br /><br />“It used to be wild, the old days,” says Tom, squinting into the ghost-like shadows. “Yeah, like Christmas Eve every night in there.”<br /><br />Now the Little Amsterdam is history for sale and so is “Orphans,” Waits’ new limited edition, three-disc collection of fifty-six songs and spoken word pieces, including thirty brand new tracks and, as the publicity handout says, a “94-page handmade booklet of lyrics and rare photos.” The ambitious effort, which took Waits and his close collaborator Kathleen Brennan (who is also his wife) three years to assemble, is not quite a retrospective or a clearing out of the attic. Some old, some new, some borrowed, some rocking, some blue, the song selection organized by genre as Brawlers, Bawlers and Bastards is perhaps the definitive Tom Waits statement, offering his unique three-wheeled view of life: Tragic, Hopeful, and… just plain Weird.<br /><br />And if the Little Amsterdam has seen better days, Waits himself isn’t in such great shape today, either. He doesn’t drink, smoke or do drugs anymore, so maybe he just crawled out of bed which is why he’s clutching that paper cup of coffee, and why his eyes peer out so painfully, red around the rims, often looking away, either down at his shoes, or off into the distance, and occasionally with frank hostility at me. His skin is pasty and raw, his curly hair a faded shade of dead trout, thinning and greasy against his skull. What he’s wearing is so nondescript that it almost renders the thin, wiry 57-year old singer-songwriter-film-actor invisible. Like the Cheshire Cat, what will remain of him in my mind twenty minutes after saying goodbye and heading down the road, will be only his death’s head grin and the signature foghorn moan of his voice.<br /><br />“Well, we’re all trying to fertilize the egg of commerce,” he says with just the barest civility in regards to what he and I are attempting to do here as I get out my pen and notepad and switch on my recorder. I’m only one of a parade of journalists ushered by his publicists through the greasy kitchen to this filthy and uncomfortable spot behind the Little Amsterdam. I’d be insulted if it weren’t for the somewhat amusing experience of finding Tom Waits presenting himself in almost a cartoon-like version of what his fans probably think he’s like.<br /><br />The Laureate of the Low Life has bellowed his ballads of Losers and Life’s Lower Depths on countless tour dates and nineteen albums including his 1973 debut, the widely admired “Closing Time.” Since 1980, however, he has settled down to a more bourgeois life as a married man with three kids and a career. Professionally, he has attained both commercial and critical success in several media. He has appeared in films directed by Francis Ford Coppola (Rumble Fish, Cotton Club, Bram Stoker’s Dracula) and won two Grammys (Bone Machine, Mule Variations). He has collaborated on High Art stage productions with Robert Wilson (The Black Rider, Woyzeck) and his songs have been covered by Bruce Springsteen, The Eagles, Rod Stewart and Nora Jones.<br /><br />Yet here he is, looking like fifteen miles of bad road and receiving journalists on hard, straight-backed chairs in this scullery-maid’s shit-bin. Why not one of the plush red booths inside the restaurant where we could at least have the pleasure of watching the Dutchman’s obese albino catfish prowling its tank in the bar? Nah, it’s Tom Waits staying true to character. Keeping down appearances, you might say.<br /><br />For his part, Tom probably wouldn’t be here talking to me if it weren’t for the fact that he has to sell records to support his family and satisfy his record label. “Everybody does something,” he sighs. “It’s just part of what I do. Making people aware you got something our there.” And he stares at me unnervingly from behind his peculiar persona with pained eyes. I ask him about the publicity handout that describes him as “peculiar by nature.” Does he see himself as peculiar?<br /><br />“I don’t know. Yeah, I have aspects of me that are peculiar, sure. But so do we all, y’know? That which makes you peculiar…” He examines my face for clues, gives up and shrugs. “…and what makes me peculiar, those are different things. But I guess they were talking about the third disc [Bastards]. There’s a lot more spoken word. It’s got that insect number and more oddball arcane stuff, more unusual than on my popular records.”<br /><br />I mention a quote from an interview where he explained his recent tour of the Southern states this way: “I went to Tennessee to buy fireworks and somebody in Kentucky owed me money.” He listens, looks at the ground and scowls. “Ah, I just tore that outa my ass. People ask you why are you touring and it’s kind of a rhetorical question.”<br /><br />I ask a less rhetorical question about what he’s listening to when he’s in the more sentimental mood expressed by the ballads on the Bawlers disc. “I don’t usually match up what I’m listening to with what I’m feeling,” he confesses. “I usually put something on to change the way things are in the room, y’know. I put on Shuggie Taylor or Sister Rosetta Tharpe or Frank Sinatra or Bill Hicks…”<br /><br />While he’s talking, I’m thinking to myself that Tom means Shuggie Otis, the guitar genius who replaced Mick Taylor in the Rolling Stones after Taylor quit, and I’m also thinking how cool to mention the sadly forgotten Sister Rosetta Tharpe, the first Gospel star to make Billboard’s “Race Records” Top Ten, and even cooler to mention the late comedian Bill Hicks, a misanthrope who once defined humanity as “a virus with shoes.” But I’m also wondering if Tom really meant Dan Hicks, the San Francisco swing-jazz player—Dan Hicks and Hot Licks. Ah, but what the hell, Tom’s on a roll.<br /><br />“I might put on Little Willie John,” he’s saying, “or Little Stevie Wonder or Little Milton – all the Littles. Then I go to all the Bigs. Big Joe Turner, Big Mama Thornton. The Bigs and the Littles.” Now he’s chuckling and so am I, for the moment. I ask him about his scratchy voice which someone once described as sounding like “Bruce Springsteen with throat cancer.” On his own Orphans artist statement he says “My voice is my instrument.”<br /><br />“It’s what I’ve developed,” he explains haltingly. “It’s what I’ve worked on more. More than I worked on my piano technique. It’s what I watered more and it grew taller. I was searching for my identity when I started out. I didn’t have an identity and then burst on the scene. You make a record and then look around and realize, Oh, so what. Now you’re one of millions of people who’ve made a record. How are you going to distinguish yourself from there? Shave your head, start wearing a wetsuit? Start singing light opera? Learn how to juggle? You continue to grow, evolve and change. I just realized that my voice was where I was going to expand. I’ve always liked spoken word.”<br /><br />He thinks about it a little more. Tom Waits is nothing if not a thoughtful man. “I don’t have a lot range,” he says finally, “but I have a lot of dimension. I can sound like a cherry bomb and I can sound like a clarinet. So that’s what I work on. Finding the right character for a song. It all comes down to choices—what does this song need? Does this song need to be whispered? Does this song need to be barked—falsetto?”<br /><br />I run down a list of a few songs that I think are standouts in the new collection. “King Kong” is one of them. Composed by bi-polar Texas songwriter Daniel Johnston, the song also appears on “The Late Great Daniel Johnston: Discovered Uncovered,” a tribute album of covers by Beck, Sparklehorse, and Mercury Rev that was one of the most critically acclaimed albums of 2004.<br /><br />“I tried to stay true to the original,” says Tom. “First time I heard that it was a really moving experience, bro. I didn’t think he could get anything more out of King Kong. Culturally it’s just been picked clean. There’s three cinematic versions of it. It’s a character that we all know. Johnston did it like a biblical story, like a psalm. It just nailed me.”<br /><br />“Poor Little Lamb” is a song that Waits co-wrote with William Kennedy, the novelist and chronicler of the city Albany, New York. Kennedy’s novel Ironweed became a movie in which Waits played a small role.<br /><br />“Kennedy read it on a water tower and wrote it down. Poor Little Lamb. It was in the book. So when we trying to write a song he said I’d like to work around this. We hung out for an afternoon. He’s a real gentleman. We’re still in touch. He really knows Albany, he knows every brick. He lives in the same apartment where Legs Diamond was murdered. Still bullet holes in the wall.”<br /><br />“Long Way Home” is also one of the ballads on the Bawlers disc. Tom says he’s happy with the version that Nora Jones recently released. “Somebody does your song,” he frowns, shifting around his chair, getting antsy, “it’s a good thing.”<br /><br />How about “Road to Peace,” I ask. Waits suddenly erupts. “Now what are you gonna do, ask me about every damn song? I feel like I’m on Meet The Press. Can’t we have a <em>conversation</em>?”<br /><br />Cranky motherfucker. I’m thinking we’re about to come to blows here. What happened to fertilizing that ol’ egg of commerce? I feel like taking a shot, smacking him upside the head. But that would be the end of the interview, and my payday.<br /><br />“Hey, there’s one song left to talk about, Tom, okay?” Okay, sure, he says, backing down sullenly.<br /><br />“On the Road to Peace” describes in a very matter-of-fact way an Israeli family getting blown up by a terrorist bomb and a Palestinian family getting blown up by an Israeli rocket… all “On the Road to Peace.” It almost sounds like a news report. It turns out that is exactly what it is.<br /><br />“It was an article I saw in the New York Times and adapted it,” he grumbles. “Put it in song form. That’s all.”<br /><br />Does Waits have a position statement on the Middle East conflict, I’m wondering? Maybe even a solution to the ages-old conflict! But nah, he’s staring at his shoes again, and I’m thinking, shit man, this ain’t Abu Ghraib. Let’s lighten up, okay? Let’s talk about family. I have an 18-year old son who plays the drums in a band. “Oh yeah?” he says, expressing mild interest, but not pursuing the conversation until I point out that Waits’ son Casey also plays drums and backs up his dad on a cut on Orphans called “Low Down.” Tom shrugs.<br /><br />“Casey’s been playing with me since he was twelve. He’s twenty now. He’s in the band. We did a tour. It went really well. I loved having him in the band. He was the youngest guy in the band. It was good for the old timers and it was good for him too. Is he going to continue doing that? I don’t know. If he has the time. If he’s not doing other things. When you’re twenty your life doesn’t center around playing in your dad’s band. He’s an artist. He’s a skater. He does a million things. His taste in music is mostly hip hop and all that stuff. He does beat-boxing, mouth rhythms. He’s very gifted and has a lot of range. My daughter’s a painter, my other son plays the clarinet.”<br /><br />Still trying to have that <em>conversation</em>, while fertilizing the goddamn egg of commerce (there’s money in this for both of us), I talk about how my own son discovered my collection of LPs and we’ve bonded over those ancient scratched vinyl platters of Beatles, Howlin’ Wolf, The Doors. “Yeah, well, my wife had a better record collection than I did,” he says. “Better preserved. My records had hair oil and spaghetti sauce and gouges in them.”<br /><br />I’ve heard that before—read it, actually. He’s used the same line about his old records in dozens of interviews, and now I’m getting irritated. The dude’s running on automatic.<br /><br />We lapse into a long silence. I’m looking around and thinking: It’s actually nice out here, if you ignore the garbage. The late summer sun is slinking overhead towards the brown hills. Insect buzz fills the air and birds flutter about. Life’s not bad, it seems. What’s life like for Tom these days? I muse out loud.<br /><br />“Like air traffic control,” Tom says, heaving a sigh like a body tossed from a parked car. “Moments of boredom broken up by sheer terror. Some days you’re going down the creek on a lily pad and other days the wind is tearing your skin off. Kids and life and life goes on.”<br /><br />Sheer terror, eh? For instance, what scares him? “TV,” snaps Tom. “Mine’s at the bottom of the pool so we haven’t been able to get a picture. When we moved out here we said we’re not bringing the TV. The kids don’t watch TV. But if you have five minutes at a hotel, they sure get caught up.”<br /><br />But putting together Orphans must have been a fun, involving, rewarding project, no?<br /><br />“A lot of fits and starts because there were a lot of things happening that pulled me off the tractor,” he says. “So I had to stop and start again. I didn’t realize what it was going to require. You start responding to the stuff you listen to you, that you found. Then you start writing new stuff and rearranging and remixing and rewriting. So it was kind of a Pandora’s Box.”<br /><br />Was it his original intention to organize the songs in categories of Brawlers, Bawlers and Bastards?<br /><br />“The categories came later. Every song fits into one of those categories. It was just a way of breaking it all down. I’d lost a lot of stuff. It was a big megilla. It was time consuming, an octopus. I found a great engineer named Karl Derfler works out at Bayside studios. That was a big turning point, finding him. Sometimes the tapes were older or I just had it on cassette. He did a lot restoration work as well as recording all the new stuff.”<br /><br />I remind him that this interview will appear in an Italian magazine. With a bit of coaxing he admits to visiting Italy a few times, but doesn’t know when he’s going back. Waits says he stays in touch with Roberto Begnini, his co-star in the Jim Jarmusch film Down By Law, and warms to the thought.<br /><br />“Oh yeah, we talk. We did Tiger in the Snow [La Tigre e la Neve, directed by Benigni in 2005]. Tremendous amount of enthusiasm and energy for life. All the time. It’s inspiring to be around him. I wouldn’t be able to last day in his life. But we all have a different row to hoe, but he’s really a warm and generous man. Him and Nicoletta we’ve known for a long time now, ever since Down By Law. They’re great people. Visited them over there and they here.”<br /><br />He remains in close touch with Jarmusch who appeared at one of Waits’ shows in Akron on the recent southern tour. “It’s always nice to see him,” says Waits but there are no film projects on the boards with Jarmusch or anybody. “Get all kinds of offers,” he says. “Some are good, some are weird and some are unthinkable. Some are ridiculous, somewhere between the ridiculous and the sublime. But I’m not really a film actor. I do some acting but I don’t really consider myself an actor.”<br /><br />The <em>conversation </em>limps on a few more minutes as we discuss a couple of his musician neighbors, veteran folkie Rambling Jack Elliot and legendary harmonic player Charley Musselwhite, who plays extensively on Orphans. He doesn’t see much of Rambling Jack, the subject of a recent documentary filmed by the daughter he neglected all here life (“Disturbing,” Waits says of it). But Tom and Charlie are buddies. “Yeah, he’s a great guy, lives nearby. Played on the record.”<br /><br />I ask if there’s a tension between going out on the road playing concerts and staying at home with Kathleen and the kids. He ponders his shoes. “It’s what I do. It’s what I love. Everybody’s got something…..” he lapses into a long silence punctuated by low growls, wheezy breathing… a kind of death rattle for this interview.<br /><br />“Well-l-l,” I say, leaning back in my chair, more than ready to pack up and hit the road.<br /><br />“Well-l-l,” he croaks, leaning back in his. It’s still daylight and night seems far off, but closing time has sure as hell come early at the Little Amsterdam.<br /><br /><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 240px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5295647438368370962" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEit4j23EwNBmdJBfETyUH7_rbB0Dv-TvS1F3pyH8IIH4Vwhj7QlDsQaHG3k7k-237u3NXzRpnkXO_GWd2tubh3daS54_cEr6jO2O2YUPfsFl-nq-L6nTGZNQgJJln7NMW9dligGGbq8C9U/s320/LITTLE+AMSTERDAM.jpg" />Rex Weinerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12550540824346578426noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5728624508004581347.post-72512289290224610802009-01-19T08:43:00.000-08:002010-10-01T17:52:33.043-07:00INTERVIEW WITH MOTOWN FOUNDER BERRY GORDY Jr. - Rolling Stone Italia JAN 09<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglXLmi9LFo4L9stL7j-Izomw7aeLOArCDfR0aQM23bFR_3GH1VBK7vUuqJtBm7aRr5byHbgttOZLhesjNTOxgUDqs76kriHjdSNUqWLgiZuzi7Y23GATPyNK6HwTrCyHZrWELBkx7LduM/s1600-h/images.jpg"><img style="MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 84px; FLOAT: left; HEIGHT: 126px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5293048452646604290" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglXLmi9LFo4L9stL7j-Izomw7aeLOArCDfR0aQM23bFR_3GH1VBK7vUuqJtBm7aRr5byHbgttOZLhesjNTOxgUDqs76kriHjdSNUqWLgiZuzi7Y23GATPyNK6HwTrCyHZrWELBkx7LduM/s320/images.jpg" /></a><br /><div>“I just came out of retirement to handle a singer,” Berry Gordy. Jr. starts to tell me, leaning forward confidentially with a twinkle in his eye.<br /></div><br /><div>“Stop!” one of his female handlers interrupts. “That’s all you can say, Mr. Gordy. Don’t say anymore!”<br /></div><br /><div>The legendary founder of Motown, still dapper at 80 in a sharp gray suit, tries to argue. Fifty years after discovering the Supremes and Mary Wells, Jackie Wilson and Smokey Robinson, The Jackson Five and Marvin Gaye, creating one of the most unique and universally popular catalogues in American musical history, Mr. Gordy wants the world to know that he can still pick the hits, dammit.<br /></div><br /><div>But the phalanx of five women in the penthouse suite at the Century City Hyatt Regency Hotel is tough. Publicists from Universal Music and others from who-knows-where, they’re making sure the octogenarian sticks to the script and it’s all about Motown’s 50th Anniversary: a 10-CD boxed set of Motown Number One singles, a TV documentary and even a Broadway musical. So the first African-American to own a major record label, the man who guided black music out of the ghetto and into the mainstream, is overruled when it comes to talking about his latest discovery and for a moment Gordy’s remarkably youthful face wrinkles into a frown. Women have always ruled his life.<br /></div><br /><div>“Is she really cute?” I ask.<br /></div><br /><div>“Uh, yes!” He breaks into a broad smile. The old rake has been married and divorced three times, producing seven children including a daughter with Diana Ross and a son with an ex-girlfriend, and along the way from Detroit to Hollywood has probably had more liaisons with more fabulous chicks than any man has a right to claim. So, he laughs and we laugh together – this new young singer he’s chosen to produce, whoever she is, has got to be good looking! But the women in the room aren’t laughing.<br /></div><br /><div>“Yes! Uh, not for me,” he hastens to add. “I mean, I have a granddaughter almost her age.”<br />Gordy was 29 years old when he started his record business on January 12, 1959 with an $800 loan from his family. The seventh of eight children from an upwardly mobile family, he had been a boxer, spent two years in the army, tried running a record store specializing in jazz, worked in the foundry at Ford's Mercury plant, earning $85 a week. Nothing clicked. “I was failure at everything else I did until I started Motown,” says Gordy. It was the women in his life who put him the right track. “My mother and my sisters, they ran the family. They were responsible for me getting my first writer’s contract with their boss, a guy named Al Green who ran the Flame Show Bar.”<br /></div><br /><div>He’d tried to enter the music business as a songwriter, achieving modest success with Reet Petite, a song he’d co-written with his sister for Jackie Wilson. Gwen Gordy ran a photo concession at the Flame Show Bar, a popular nightclub in Detroit’s Black Bottom section where Wilson was a budding star. Seven nights a week you could find top acts like Billie Holiday, T-Bone Walker, Wynonie Harris and Sarah Vaughan onstage, backed by Detroit’s finest musicians. Lonely Teardrops, another song penned by Gordy, was a breakout hit for Wilson in 1958 on the Chicago-based Brunswick label. The family loan and the hit song co-penned with his sister provided Gordy with the cash he needed to start his own label, and he wanted to do it in Detroit.<br /></div><br /><div>“Detroit was difficult,” Gordy says, describing the Motor City music scene in the late 1950s. It was a city dominated by the auto industry, its population swelling with black émigrés from the poverty-stricken South. They came to work on the assembly lines of Ford, Chrysler and General Motors in the post-war years when the world’s biggest car companies built more and bigger factories to meet America’s insatiable demand for transportation. The new immigrants, schooled in Delta Blues, New Orleans jazz and African-American gospel, brought a rich supply of musical talent to Detroit, but the center of the music business was elsewhere. “The big studios were in Chicago and New York. I felt that Detroit was my home and I could figure out how to make it work in Detroit.”<br /></div><br /><div>He bought a drafty two-family home at 2648 West Grand Boulevard previously owned by a photographer. Gordy moved into the upstairs apartment with his girlfriend and three children. Gordy’s father “Pops,” a contractor, helped convert the downstairs rooms into offices for Gordy’s newly hatched Jobete Publishing and the basement photography studio into a recording space labeled Studio A. The new sign out front declared "Hitsville USA, The Sound of Young America," and Gordy was in business.<br /></div><br /><div>He was controversial from the start. “People didn’t know how I made it,” says Gordy, shaking his head at the memory of the struggle he went through. “They thought I was in the Mafia – they couldn’t believe a black kid from Detroit could create one of the biggest record companies in the world with very little money. In those days people would say you can’t do that, it was impossible then to do that because no one had ever done that before. I say that’s no reason not to do it. That’s the reason more likely you should do it, because no one has ever done it before. So why not do it and be special.”<br /></div><br /><div>The eager young hopefuls who knocked on the doors of The Motown Record Corporation in the early years were schoolgirls and sons of autoworkers, ex-church choir members and former gang members with police records. Under Gordy’s tutelage they became Smokey Robinson & The Miracles, Diana Ross & The Supremes, Mary Wells, The Temptations, Marvin Gaye, Little Stevie Wonder, The Four Tops, The Jackson Five, The Marvelettes, and Martha and The Vandellas.<br /></div><br /><div>The stars were polished by "Motown U pros," mainly Gordy’s sisters who taught the young performers how to dress, stand, wear makeup, and do their choreographed motions onstage with style, poise and grace.<br /></div><br /><div>Gordy’s in-house staff of songwriters and producers included Smokey Robinson, Norman Whitfield, the Holland-Dozier-Holland team and Gordy himself, assembling the basic architecture of the distinctive Motown Sound. Artists were assigned to a specific team of producers, and each artist’s team worked on every recording by that particular artist. Some of the producers were also recording artists: Smokey Robinson produced Mary Wells, the Temptations produced the Miracles, and it all added up to a product consistency not unlike the automobiles rolling out of Detroit’s factories.<br /></div><br /><div>“It’s so simple,” Gordy says about The Motown Sound, “that it seems complicated. It’s a combination of everything I heard in my life that makes you feel good. Whether it be gospel, blues, jazz, whatever. I don’t like labels. When people ask me, I just say it’s pop. That means it is popular – it sells over a million records. That’s what it was.”<br />Underneath the smooth surface of Motown’s million-sellers, pop songs so perfect they sound today like something eternal, lay innovative techniques that evolved in the making of every track: two drummers instead of one, sometimes overdubbed or playing in unison, and three or four guitar lines as well; charted string and horn sections; meticulously arranged harmonies. A new marketing approach sprang organically from the talent on hand; Motown was first to introduce girl groups such as The Supremes, Martha & the Vandellas and The Marvelettes as marquee attractions.<br /></div><br /><div>From 1964 to 1967, Motown scored fourteen Number One pop singles, twenty Number One singles on the R&B charts, forty-six Top Fifteen singles on the pop charts and seventy-five other Top Fifteen R&B singles. In 1966, three out of every four Motown releases made the charts, a huge success for black culture at a time when African-Americans were struggling for their lives in the Land of the Free.<br />Although the Motown Sound brought white and black together on the dance floor, the company was not immune to the turmoil of the times, even if Gordy might have preferred to hide from the storm brewing in the streets. Marvin Gaye ushered the storm into Studio A with his groundbreaking album What’s Going On.<br /></div><br /><div>“What’s Going On was a turning point,” Gordy admits. “I didn’t want him to release the record at first until I realized how passionate he was about it. He wanted to awaken the minds of men He was the truest artist I’ve ever known but I didn’t want him ruin his career because he was a sex symbol. He was a beautiful, great singer – all the women really liked him, and I didn’t want him to do protest records at that time. Motown was not about Vietnam and all the protest stuff at that time. Because he was just at the peak of his career at that time, my number one male artist. But when he told me how passionate he was, well, then I had to let him do it.”<br /></div><br /><div>Unlike many people who regard What’s Going On as one the era’s most eloquent rallying cries against poverty, war, and racial discrimination, Gordy doesn’t see Gaye’s work as a political statement.<br /></div><br /><div>“I don’t know that it’s political,” he says thoughtfully. “It’s a meaningful record because it opened up the minds of so many people. That was Marvin’s goal. And he succeeded at that. He had a divided soul, himself, but he was the purest artist. He believed he was spiritual.”<br />Gordy wants to make sure he’s not misunderstood about his political activism. “Hey, I made a political record with the Temptations called Power. It’s an incredible record about greed, power and stuff like that. It was never a hit because every time they played it there would be such uproar. It was too powerful. It was a long way from My Girl, But so was Ball of Confusion, Cloud Nine, Psychedelic Shack.”<br /></div><br /><div>He grins, recalling the heady times of the 1960s. Somehow, he survived and now here he was, the Elder Statesman of Soul. How the hell did he do it?<br /></div><br /><div>Looking back and trying to analyze the reasons for his success, Gordy says, “You have to have a vision. That’s what we had. We had a vision. We wanted to make music for all people. Not just black people. We knew that they would like our music. But this music was for people all over the world. Black, white, blue, green. We wanted to spread music that had a lot of love in it. It was built on truth. We knew we were successful when our first big international record Baby Love hit the charts in 1964 – people around the world loved Motown music.”<br /></div><br /><div>Sure, but day to day life at Motown, handling a roster of tempestuous talents like Gaye, Diana Ross, Martha Reeves and all the Jackson brothers, must have been a constant trial for the man at the top.<br /></div><br /><div>“All the artists were tough to deal with because they were so pure in their determination,” says Gordy. “I always believed that competition breeds champions. I always believed that if I made logic the boss I would win. I was in charge but logic was the boss.”<br /></div><br /><div>Sometimes, apparently logic didn’t always work at Motown, such as when Gordy resisted the release of Gaye’s version of “I Heard It On The Grapevine,” no matter how much producer Norman Whitefield argued. It eventually became one of Motown’s biggest hits and remains the iconic Motown recording.<br /></div><br /><div>“Anybody could argue with me,” Gordy says genially, a rosy view of the past painting over any painful facts. “I love people to argue with me, I love people to debate, as long as they know I can veto whatever I want to veto, which I never do because I know I can’t. But I love it when they have better ideas, because if they have the same ideas as me, then one of us is not necessary.”<br />Behind every song, and every battle over every song, was the superb musicianship that Gordy demanded. He recruited the best jazz musicians he could find to hunker down in “The Snakepit,” as Studio A became known, to play the simple tunes Gordy handed them.<br /></div><br /><div>“We didn’t have music written out,” he says. “We had chord charts in most cases. The producer would tell them what to play. If I was producing I’d always have to have Benny Benjamin on drums and James Jamerson on bass.”<br /></div><br /><div>Benny "Papa Zita" Benjamin and bassist Jamerson were part of the studio session band that became known as The Funk Brothers, including keyboardists Joe Hunter and Earl "Chunk of Funk" Van Dyke, Eddie "Bongo" Brown, Eddie "Chank" Willis. It was a collision of sensibilities that churned together, playing from 1959 to 1971 on more Number One singles than Elvis Presley, the Beatles, the Beach Boys and the Rolling Stones combined. They contributed enormously to Motown’s success even if Gordy never quite understood or truly appreciated what the hell it was these talented jazz players were doing in The Snakepit. That is still evident today from the way Gordy talks about the late James Jamerson, regarded as one of the most influential bassists in modern music history.<br /></div><br /><div>“Jamerson was the hardest to handle because he was a jazz person,” Gordy explains, “and he looked down on the rhythm & blues music. He was so talented but he would always try to put jazz riffs in my stuff. I would say ‘James! Jimmy! Jamerson! You can’t do that! We are not doing a jazz record! We’re doing rhythm & blues and we want to get that feeling.’ And so he would say okay, and he kept slipping little notes in. Anybody else who defied me like that, they’d be gone. But Jamerson was so good I had to bear my embarrassment at him slipping in those notes. Everybody knew it and they would look at me to see what was going to happen. And I’d look at him and I would want to go in and say you’re fired. But I couldn’t.”<br /></div><br /><div>The only sideman bassist ever inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Jamerson died broke and bitter at the age of 47 a fate not unusual for Motown musicians. Un-credited on the recordings and paid a session fee instead of sharing in the millions of dollars of royalties earned by Motown hits, the musicians’ bitterness lingers on, as detailed in the recent documentary “Standing in the Shadows of Motown.”<br /></div><br /><div>By 1972 Berry Gordy was the richest black man in America with an annual income in excess of $10 Million. With an increasing interest in the movie business and dismayed at the deterioration of Detroit after the devastating 1967 riots, Gordy moved the company headquarters to Los Angeles in the mid-1970s, expanding into film and television production. Removed from its roots and a long way from the time and place when Gordy would say Motown’s music was based on “rats, roaches, soul, guts and love,” did Motown lose its touch?<br /></div><br /><div>“Well,” says Gordy, with the kind of ready answer that comes from hearing that question before. “If he were living you could ask Rick James.”<br /></div><br /><div>It’s true that Superfreak Rick James was a big star for Motown, working as a recording artist and producer (Teena Marie was one of his protégés) in the late 1970s and 80s. “We carried our music with us,” asserts Gordy. “We carried Detroit to the West Coast.”<br /></div><br /><div>Nevertheless, despite five Academy Award nominations for Lady Sings The Blues, the Gordy-produced feature film with Diana Ross starring as Billie Holliday, Motown’s movie and TV ventures faltered. Motown’s $100 million annual sales slipped to $20 million by 1989, with few stars left on the roster beyond Boyz II Men and Queen Latifah. By then, with the company hemorrhaging money, Gordy had sold his ownership in Motown to Music Corporation of America (MCA) and Boston Ventures for $61 million. The company went through various upheavals and management changes until it came to reside with its current owner, Universal Music. Gordy had already sold part of his ownership in Jobete Publishing to EMI. One of the most valuable catalogues in the music industry with 15,000 titles, Gordy sold the rest of his interest to EMI in 2004 for $80 million.<br /></div><br /><div>If he were a younger man, just starting out today, would he do it all over again?<br /></div><br /><div>Gordy thinks about it, but acknowledges the music business has changed radically. Downloading music is not the same as selling a stack of 45s and today’s sounds don’t excite him. He likes the late Tupac, he says, but confesses he doesn’t listen to a lot of hip hop.<br /></div><br /><div>“P. Diddy is one of my favorite producer-type people,” he says, mainly because Diddy is an admirer of Motown. “He’s not only looked at the music, he’s looked at the business model, too. He studied me. He told me the last time I saw him that everything that he’s done has been based on Motown in some way.”<br /></div><br /><div>With the failure of the American auto industry, the city Gordy left behind is in danger of becoming a ghost town, but that prospect just leaves him sounding philosophical.<br /></div><br /><div>“At one point Detroit was one of the top three cities in America,” he says. “But the whole thing fell apart. I left Detroit over thirty years ago but it will always be my home. It was a great place to grow up. It was warm and friendly and I worked hard. Worked for Ford in the foundry but it was the worst day in my life.”<br /></div><br /><div>The government bailout? A tough question. He’s thought about it. But saving Detroit is not foremost on his mind right. You see, Gordy has this new singer and maybe we’re all going to know her name someday. But whatever happens to her, the Motor City or even Berry Gordy Jr., nobody’s ever going to forget Motown. </div>Rex Weinerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12550540824346578426noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5728624508004581347.post-23374117700795715882009-01-12T11:51:00.000-08:002010-10-01T17:53:13.543-07:00INTERVIEW WITH MICKEY ROURKE - Rolling Stone Italia- July 2005<p align="right"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjmKTnuS62zi2FaYzVqhJRsKS3RFeEUaZLXD1mDMHhQZVQ-6pG_MtmeJ0FoObwZ3NI4wx6Mk7MyDDNyfYSkg7WE_4tBkLLomJdMBAhDcA5VgUHzscyLVKGoSq6khjiMK6l0WWuQ07NY5A/s1600-h/MICKEY+ROURKE+image.jpg"><img style="MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 146px; FLOAT: left; HEIGHT: 134px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5290518214687299666" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjmKTnuS62zi2FaYzVqhJRsKS3RFeEUaZLXD1mDMHhQZVQ-6pG_MtmeJ0FoObwZ3NI4wx6Mk7MyDDNyfYSkg7WE_4tBkLLomJdMBAhDcA5VgUHzscyLVKGoSq6khjiMK6l0WWuQ07NY5A/s320/MICKEY+ROURKE+image.jpg" /></a></p><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-size:180%;">I </span>used to see him sitting on the patio at the Café Mediterranean up on SunsetPlaza. Sitting there in the middle of a pale LA afternoon over a barely touched plate of pasta with a little sausage of a dog cradled in his arm… </span><br /><br />Yeah, it was Mickey Rourke, the tough guy pain-in-the-ass movie star who’d given up acting to be a boxer, or something. You could see tourists going by on the sidewalk pointing at him, whispering to each other. “<em>Isn’t that –</em>?” But the locals didn’t give him a second look. Mickey Rourke, the washed-up actor, was yesterday’s story.<br /><br />Sure, a lot of Hollywood people had written him off. Just one look at that once sharply handsome face, now bruised and misshapen as an overripe cantaloupe, told you why. He was a man who had pursued his obsessions down a dark path and lost his way. It wasn’t the first time a bright light had doused his own flame in this town, and while the tabloids pissed on the ashes, was there anybody to blame but he? And what did it matter, anyway? The time for blame was over. The world spun around a few times and Hollywood moved on.<br /><br />Now here he is, sitting on the sofa across from me in a fancy suite in the Regent Beverly Wilshire, ready to talk about his new movie, “Sin City.” You know Mickey’s back in the ring because he got a corner man – a short balding guy tucked silently in a chair by the window. He must be some kind of assistant, the kind of flunky that stars keep around to fetch the coffee and make sure the limo’s on time. Yes, it is comeback time for Mickey Rourke, and even Loki – that little sausage of a canine padding across the carpet to nuzzle my hand – wants me to know it.<br /><br />“Hey, you know the dog’s name,” Mickey chuckles in a voice thickened with nicotine. “You get an extra fifteen minutes.”<br /><br />Hell, I got the mutt’s name from the publicist in the hallway, figuring it might work in my favor.<br /><br />“Pat Connolly says hello,” I say, playing another card.<br /><br />“Pat, you mean Pat the ref?” Mickey says, eyes widening at the mention of Pat Connolly, the legendary boxing referee, ex-IRA man, and one of my oldest friends in this town. “Haven’t seen Pat since we went to the fights at the Olympic. That was a long time ago, jeez. How is the guy?”<br /><br />Pat’s getting a heart operation, I tell him. Before he went into the hospital Pat told me that on “A Prayer For The Dying,” he set Mickey up with a dialog coach to get his character’s Belfast accent right. The guy he set Mickey up with had also served a stint with the IRA and was later busted by the Feds in New York.<br /><br />“Oh, and the Tattooed Man says hello, too,” I add, giving him all my news.<br /><br />“Oh, yeah? He’s in Iraq now, I hear.” “Give him my best,” says Mickey.<br /><br />The Tattooed Man is Stanley White, legendary Sheriff’s homicide detective. I spent a few nights on the murder beat with Stanley when I was doing research for my movie, “The Adventures of Ford Fairlane.” The first five or six cadavers bothered me… after that, well, just pour me another drink. I’d always wanted Mickey to play Ford. What’d I get? Andrew Dice Clay. Okay, back to “Sin City,” directed by Robert Rodriguez.<br /><br />“We stayed very true to the pages of the comic book,” Mickey explains. “It’s a testament to Robert as a filmmaker. He really made it come alive. I think the younger generation will like this. It’s got a lot of energy. People go ‘Oh, it’s bloody’ but it’s not just blood. It’s got a little kick in the ass, a sense of humor to it. It’s not just blood or something vicious. You can laugh at it.”<br /><br />How did he get involved in “Sin City”?<br /><br />“I was walking down Wilshire Boulevard and I saw big smoke signal, it said ‘Mickey, we’re looking for you.’”<br /><br />He pronounces it “Wil-SHYER.” But now he decides to get real with me, sorta. “I’d worked with Robert previously on ‘Once Upon a Time in Mexico.’ Had a good relationship with him. He called my agent and said he said he and Frank [Miller – creator of the graphic novel on which the movie is based] would like to meet with me. Because Frank had yes or no over everything. We met at the Four Seasons and the meeting went well. We took it from there.”<br /><br />Mickey gives Loki a stroke beneath the chin, then continues.<br /><br />“They were still playing with Marv, my character in the movie. There were still variations on how Marv was going to look. They wanted Mickey to come through and keep Marv,” he says, speaking of the special live-action/animation look of the film. “They did a lot of tests. So they finally got the look they wanted. Just using the three pieces—the chin, the nose and the hair.<br /><br />Was there a big challenge involved (…and I’m thinking: staying sober? Making the morning call on time?).<br /><br />“Biggest challenge?” he think a moment, then smiles. “Eating lunch with the makeup on. It was hot in Texas. My forehead would start to sweat. But it was fun. It wasn’t that serious a film. Didn’t have to dig too deep.”<br /><br />In fact, Mickey didn’t have to interact with the rest of the cast at all. Everything was done on a green screen and cut together with the digital visual effects in the editing room. His only scene was in the opening shot with the girl in the bed. Most of his scenes were working with Robert reading the lines. He didn’t meet any of the other cast members (Bruce Willis, Jessica Alba, Clive Owen, Rosario Dawson, etc.) until the looping sessions when they added their voices to the film.<br /><br />The critics called Sin City an homage to film noir. That’s ironic because it’s where Rourke got his start, the film noir-ish Larry Kasdan picture “Body Heat.” Mickey’s whole life and career, through “Barfly” and “Wild Orchid” and everything else, has been in the film noir mode. He seems to understand that, and alsom come to understand his limitations as an actor. But he’s carved himself a niche and maybe that’s marketable, because he also knows how hard it is for filmmakers today to capture that particular dark mood authentically.<br /><br />“Most film noir is a little piece here and there,” he says “Maybe they get the fucking words, the dialog, the cigarettes and the good-looking broad. But they don’t get the whole thing. I think Robert captured the whole thing. You see the old Robert Mitchum movies, but I think Robert transcended all that.”<br /><br />I mention “Body Heat.” “Hell, I was just glad to have a job,” Mickey says, rubbing Loki’s absently hairless belly. Another world, another time. “Everything changes from day to day,” he muses, and gets to talking about boxing. “I used to see myself as a guy in the ring. That was very comfortable. A more honest role. But I’m okay with this one.”<br /><br />Silence follows the remark—a silence not exactly like the grave, but a few steps away holding flowers and peeing in the shrubbery. I’m thinking: Boxers are always having comebacks. His role in “Sin City” is potentially Mickey’s comeback. Aloud, I venture that it must have taken some doing to resurrect his career.<br /><br />“There must have been some little agent guy,” I say, drawing on a bit of Hollywood wisdom earned from near a quarter century in The Business, “some little agent dork running around Hollywood dropping your name in clubs and at dinner parties.”<br /><br />“Yeah, a little agent guy named David Unger,” Mickey chuckles. “Before he was engaged, he used to get laid doing that, dropping my name at parties.”<br /><br />The dorky little guy sitting in the corner seems to sneeze and cough at the same time, a choking noise emitting from his throat and his face flushes the color of a baboon’s ass.<br /><br />“Isn’t that right David?” Mickey deadpans, nodding at him. “He always says he puts up with a lot. I like to see him turn red.”<br /><br />“And boy do I turn red,” says David Unger, Mickey Rourke’s agent, loyally putting up with this, and probably a lot more shit to come.<br /><br />Mickey’s eyelids droop and he looks away for a long moment, signaling the interview is over. But somewhere deep within those sleepy eyes a spark still smolders. I spotted it up on Sunset Plaza, something elfin and wild. It was the Irish in him, and you could see the crazy Mick still had some fight left. They hadn’t counted him out just yet. The kid still had legs to stand up on, still had a few punches in him, and maybe, if you gave him half an Irishman’s chance he’d knock your head off with his famous left hook from outa nowhere. Yeah, just maybe.Rex Weinerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12550540824346578426noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5728624508004581347.post-14405079364685293392006-04-30T12:46:00.000-07:002013-07-30T13:03:52.815-07:00ADVENTURES IN THE SUBZONE: A PORTRAIT OF DOMINIC (GQ - 2006)<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="line-height: 150%;">By Rex Weiner</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<o:p> </o:p><span style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: 0.5in;">“I forgot my
rubbing alcohol.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
Dominic’s 14—inch
mauve mohawk rakes the top of the metal doorframe as he spins around and trots back
up the carpeted corridor to his room on the 7<sup>th</sup> floor of the
Venetian Hotel. What does he need rubbing alcohol for? <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
“To set a girl on
fire.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
Of course! It’s fucking
obvious. Why didn’t I think of that? Hashish dulls the brain immediately, but absinthe
dementia so soon? Maybe I’m just stupid to begin with, coming to <st1:city w:st="on">Las Vegas</st1:city>, the World
Capital of Stupid, to attend a pornography convention with a guy who ties up
naked women, whips them and sets them on fire. The awful truth: I am beginning
to fear less for my mind than for my soul. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
“You are going to Hell,”
my Irish Catholic girlfriend said. She thought Dominic was “horrible” when he
first showed up at the house with his magenta mohawk and punk tattoos to buy an
old car I’d advertised. I had to admit, he did look pretty weird as kicked the
tires, checked the oil, his mohawk catching on the car hood latch – but he knew
something about cars, for crissakes. Naturally, of course – his father is a
notorious <st1:place w:st="on">San Fernando Valley</st1:place> car dealer of
the Jewish persuasion. His mother is from south of the border. Further conversation
revealed that the soft-spoken 30-ish <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Jewish-Mexican</st1:placename>
<st1:placetype w:st="on">Valley</st1:placetype></st1:place> dude performs
onstage with thrash metal, punk and hip hop groups like the Red Hot Chili
Peppers and Cyprus Hill. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
But Dominic doesn’t
play in a band, as it turns out. He specializes in something called Shibari. “Sounds
like some kind of sushi,” says my girlfriend doubtfully, but I explain to her
that it’s actually the ancient art of Japanese Erotic Rope Tying. You see, Dominic
claims that his artful placement of knots on his intricately tied hemp ropes can
induce a girl to have an orgasm. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
She’s not
impressed, my girlfriend, but I am fascinated to learn that Shibari is the
subject of a new feature film that Dominic has directed and in which he and his
rope tricks play the starring role. It is premiering this weekend at the annual
AVN Adult Entertainment Expo in <st1:city w:st="on">Las
Vegas</st1:city> and while he’s making up his mind about the car Dominic
invites me to the premiere of his movie at the porn convention: <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
Well, why not? <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
“You are going to <i>Hell</i>,” warned my girlfriend as she
chauffered me to LAX. In her opinion pornography is produced by idiots for
idiots. Her only fetish involves wearing both the tops and bottoms of her pink flannel
pajamas to bed and paying extreme attention to her two dogs, Emma and Harriet.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
Now a little voice
in my head is whispering: She was right, you fool! <i>Abandon hope all ye who enter Las Vegas</i>. My room at the <st1:city w:st="on">Luxor</st1:city> has a window view
of the Sphinx’s stucco ass. And the Venetian Hotel with its blasphemous replicas
of San Marco and gondoliers plying indoor canals like so many desert-born Charons
ferrying tourist souls across Acheron, is more than Dante could have imagined. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
Sure, Dante was a
Florentine and Dominic is no Virgil as he leads me down plush pathways of the
Venetian Hotel. Even so, as we squeeze into the crowded elevator and <st1:city w:st="on">Mr. & Mrs. Small Town</st1:city> <st1:country-region w:st="on">America</st1:country-region>
and their two little kids stare at my tattooed friend with the mohawk, the wild
look in their eyes betrays the earliest glimmer of comprehension that this is
definitely not <st1:place w:st="on">Kansas</st1:place>
anymore.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
Beyond the <st1:street w:st="on">Ninth Circle</st1:street> of
slot machines, poker tables and endlessly suffering losers, their livers tortured
by roaming cocktail waitresses bearing free booze, we come to the cacophonous
center of the Venetian casino and the aptly-named Circle Bar. Here the drunks,
perverts, pornstars, dirty movie producers, dildo merchants and usual crew of <st1:city w:st="on">Las Vegas</st1:city> hookers stand five
bodies deep at the bar. Off to one side, by the Wheel of Fortune, Dominic’s
assistant and his slave are waiting for us. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
The slave is a flame-haired,
sulky-eyed girl in red and white striped stockings introduced as Arachnia Webb.
She belongs to Dominic’s assistant Master Liam, a stocky fellow with a flattop
mohawk topping a saturnine countenance.
He is clad in black pants, Dr. Martens thick-soled shoes and a black muscle
shirt and he looks familiar… then it comes back to me, dimly: Master Liam was
the one pouring shots from the un-labeled bottle of chartreuse liquid last
night that turned out to be homemade absinthe. Or was it this morning? In <st1:city w:st="on">Las Vegas</st1:city> time is a
Salvador Dali clock wound backwards.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
Purplish grains of
hashish go into one of Dominic’s hand-rolled American Spirit cigarettes while Master
Liam opens the leather case he’s been carrying. He extracts a leather collar
with a metal ring. With the casual efficiency of adjusting a carburetor or
dressing a mannequin in a shop window, he fastens the collar around Arachnia’s long,
swan-like neck. Her skin is as translucent as paper, the subcutaneous
latticework of fine blue veins visible on the rise of her smallish breasts above
the pinch of her tightly-laced vinyl corset. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
Master Liam hands
the leash over to Dominic. Off we go, striding across the casino floor past the
spinning roulette wheels and craps players tossing dice. Every head turns at
the sight of the guy with the 14-inch mohawk leading the hot-looking girl on a
leash. The whiff of hash and brimstone in our wake, Liam and Dominic are
chatting like two guys talking about last night’s football game. But it’s not
about football.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
“We were in the
hotel room last night and we were trying to roll some joints but we had no
rolling papers. So we find the hotel bible in the drawer by the bed and ripped
a page out to roll the joint… and the words on the piece of bible page just
happened to say…”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
“Shit, I forgot to
brush my teeth,” mutters Master Liam, and it is somehow rather touching to
think he’s worried that the slave girl he regularly whips, flogs and spanks
might complain about his oral hygiene.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
The tourists are snapping
pictures. The slave girl stares neither left nor right, walking perfectly erect
on her platform boots… then suddenly there are no tourists. We are in The Sands
Convention Center and approaching the entrance to the AVN Adult Entertainment
Expo.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
“Hey, Nina
Hartley!”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
“Jenna – Jenna
Jameson!”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
“Katsumi!”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
The stars of adult
cinema are everywhere. A Pornstar Parade, they come strutting up to the
convention center entrance in high heels, breasts like melons in a wheelbarrow
going to market and buttocks so animated that you’d swear left and right cheeks
were engaged in political debate. The famous ones – the “featured dancers” who
make smut films and travel the titty-bar circuit lap-dancing and twirling
around brass poles for big bucks – smile and wave, the fans calling out their
names. Pornstar coiffures vary in a wide range of styles from the just-raped-by-the-entire-football-team
look to my-pussy-is-worth-a-million-dollars-so-don’t-come-near-me. The fans, perspiring
guys with cameras and bad skin, are all over them like flies on raw meat.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
A gauntlet of guards
checks our official badges at the door. My badge says I’m the guest of Tightfit
Productions, the producers of Dominic’s movie. We follow the Pornstar Parade
inside and suddenly we are on the floor of a vast hall. The smell is of popcorn
mixed with sweat. Exhibition booths festooned with banners and gargantuan
photographs of naked women with enormous breasts tower over moving streams of
people pulled from one booth to the next, alternately magnetized and propelled by
aimless desire. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
Wicked Pictures,
Hustler, Pink Visual, Evil Angel Video featuring Belladonna, Tongue Joy, Hot
Wendy Productions, Kink.com, Naughty <st1:country-region w:st="on">America</st1:country-region>….<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
“Want to adopt a
clitoris?” <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
A bikini clad girl
stops me with a flyer that talks about Clitoraid, “a non-profit humanitarian
organization that raises funds for the victims of female genital mutilation in <st1:place w:st="on">Africa</st1:place> who are now able for the first time in history to
have their clitoris rebuilt, thanks to a new innovative surgical technique.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
The bikini girl says,
“We’re trying to raise money to complete construction of the very first <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Pleasure</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">Hospital</st1:placetype></st1:place> in Bobo Dioulasso. That’s a
place in <st1:country-region w:st="on">Burkina Faso</st1:country-region>.
Women can come and have their clitoris repaired for free!”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
I give her a
dollar to repair at least one clit, and continue wandering around the labyrinth
of booths… Pleasure Productions, Bang Brothers, Lurid Entertainment, Kock
Buster Productions, Porn For The Troops, Club Jenna… I’ve lost sight of Dominic
and the slave girl. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
At Kickass
Productions (“Young Brazilian Cuties 2: All Anal!” “Stop or I’ll Squirt,” “Dead
Man Cum Slam”) I run into Scott, the owner. He’s been running Kickass for nine
years and says he makes a lot of money. DVD sales were a little flat last year.
More people downloading on Internet. But he’s trying to stay ahead of the game.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
“The new trend is MILF’s.
I don’t know why. I guess you really can have too many cute young sexy girls.
MILFS fuck better and they really are grateful to be having sex with these
young studs. They would do it for free. They’re real moms, mid-30s to 50.
They’re a lot more appreciative. They say sex gets better over the years. And
it’s real – it comes through onscreen.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
At
another smut company I meet the managing director, a former British barrister.
“Now I’m in a less sleazy profession,” he laughs. He married a pornstar, now
retired. “She’s in the Porn Hall of Fame,” he boasts proudly of his wife.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
I
finally find my way to the Tightfit Productions booth and a tall blonde in hot
pants with her breasts spilling out of her shirt grabs my arm. She wants to be in
my movies, she says. She says she’s done about fifteen films so far, but on the
East Coast where she lives in <st1:state w:st="on">New
Jersey</st1:state>. Now she’s moving to LA and wants to work.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
“I
do boy-girl, girl-girl, threesomes, light bondage and some fetish but no
gangbangs.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
She
thinks I’m the owner of Tightfit and looks hopeful that I’ll put her in my
movies. I’m about to audition the ingenue, but Dominic comes over and
introduces the real owner, a punkishly tattooed young guy named Oren Cohen. The
Tightfit boss takes over the interview. The pornstar repeats her resume and
Cohen asks a few key questions: <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
“Are you over
twenty-one and can you prove it? <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
“Yes”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
“Do like anal or
do you just, y’know – do anal as a job?”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
“I’m working up to
it.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
“What do you really,
really like to do? What gets you excited?”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
She says fellatio
is her favorite thing in the world. Cohen gives her his card and tells her to
call him when she gets to LA.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
Meanwhile, a crowd
has gathered. Dominic is going into action. He ties concentric rings of ropes
around Arachnia Webb’s arms and legs, her wrists bound and pulled above her
head by a rope tied to the cross beam of the Tightfit booth. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
The hemp cords crisscrossing
her torso intersect in a delicate pattern, an intimate macramé pressing symmetrically
across the milky flesh, with a strand looped and knotted between her thighs,
tied insistently against the soft bulge of her crotch. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
She faces Dominic.
He tilts her neck back, reaches down to part her legs gently, and flings the
flail. He uses a rotating hand motion, at first merely brushing her chest and
legs, but then with increasing impact. He grabs the other flogger and commences
a two-handed lashing, the leather landing heavily on her groin. She jumps back
a little, her lips parted, and she says “Ouch.” <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
“Ouch” the crowd flinches,
watching raptly.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
He’s really
lashing her now, making her writhe and groan, “Aoww…”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
“Aowww,” responds the crowd. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
The faces of the
girls in the crowd betray a confused conflict. The spectacle of the slave
girl’s ordeal disgusts them. How can she endure such pain, such public
degradation? They want to look away, yet they cannot help but stare, secretly
relishing the idea – what would it feel like to be tied up and lashed like
that? How delicious to receive such extravagant physical attention. The
affections of well-meaning husbands and boyfriends are nothing but clumsy
bumbling compared to such ardor… such artistry!<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
Dominic re-positions
the slave girl, makes her bend over, smacks her ass to prime it. He holds her
down by the neck as he lashes her rump. She hops a little, like a bird. He
flails her until her buns shake, reddening like a tropical sunrise. Then he
pauses to tip the bottle of rubbing alcohol to his lips, gulps a mouthful and
holds it behind his bulging lips. A cigarette lighter in hand, he leans over
her rear end and spews a fine mist of the flammable liquid which, at the flick
of his Bic, envelopes the slave girl’s ass in a billowing ball of flame. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
Ahhh! The crowd
steps back in audible awe.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
Observing from the
sidelines, her master is grinning evilly. “As a top I get turned on,” says
Master Liam. “I get turned on when they get turned on. They get turned on by
submitting.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
Dominic resumes
the lashing and establishes a steady pace, using two floggers and over-and-under
handed strokes, a <i>terza rima</i> with the
slave girl’s cries echoed by the crowd’s guttural response.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
Ahhh! Ahhh! Ahhh!<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; text-indent: .5in;">
“Chemicals are releasing
in her head right now,” says Master Liam, his running commentary like a sports
announcer on the sidelines. “They’re called enkephelins which actually gets her
high. She’s gonna come… watch. Especially flogging. They’re custom made for me,
those floggers. My name is on the handle. It’s such as thuddy feeling, better
than spanking. That was good… see? Anybody can just hit somebody with something
but Dominic’s style is very Shibari. To change it into something erotic, there’s
this exchange that’s happening between the two of them. You never just know
what kind of people get into this whole thing.
She’s a college graduated psychotherapist from UCLA. Can’t tell you her
real name. When I first met her she was really normal looking. Lives in <st1:place w:st="on">Sherman</st1:place> Oaks. She came to
the clubs where we all perform at and she was watching. I just looked at her
and said: <i>Come here.</i> She didn’t know – I mean, she didn’t know she could
handle half the pain she takes. I took a
ten-inch heart syringe and sent it right through her breast the other day. From
one side straight through to the other side. I put shark hooks through her
chest and hung her up. The more I push her the better she gets.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
She
is trembling, quivering and with a nearly imperceptible cry she is overtaken by
a series of orgasmic tremors as she glances over at her master.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
“Ah,”
he says. “Even though she’s playing with him she’s always looking at me. It
keeps her focused. It’s the longest foreplay you can go through. Look at her
breathing. She’s in total ecstasy right now. It’s a trance-like state. Sound
gets very muffled, and time – they don’t know if they’re up there ten minutes
or ten days. She is in the sub zone. And afterwards they say, when are we going
to play again?”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
The
<i>sub zone! </i><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
Dominic
nods. Master Liam steps over and takes a Tightfit Productions T-shirt from
Tightfit’s owner and rubs it between his slave girl’s thighs to absorb her oozing
flavors, then tosses it to the crowd to fight over. Releasing her from the
ropes, knot by knot, he kisses the back of her head. He coaxes her follow him
with her eyes to make sure she’s still focused. She drops to the floor and
kisses his shoe, her arms still tied behind her back. He gently turns her
around, takes the leash from his bag, folds the floggers gently back into the
case. On her knees, head bent in submission, hands behind her head, she allows
him to attach the leash and show her off to the photographers, cameras
flashing.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
The
crowd applauds. The psychotherapist from Sherman Oaks smiles, her master
glad-handing friends and well-wishers. The owner of Tightfit is happy. He’s
showing the trailer from “Control,” which is the title of Dominic’s movie.
Dominic is trading jokes with his fans.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Somewhere beyond
the ringing slot machines and whirling roulette wheels, beyond the fake New
York of the New York New York Hotel, the ersatz medieval turrets of the
Excalibur Hotel, the illusion of the Treasure Island Hotel and the colonial
fantasy of the Mandalay Bay Hotel, real cities are burning. In secret prisons
and hidden horror houses of government-backed militia, real people are beaten
and flogged and burned alive. Here in Las Vegas we are in a cartoon annex of the
Global House of Pain, a doorway into the feverish nightmares of America, from
the trailer parks to the Beltway, in which the floggers and the flogged are the
same.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Yes, there is
actual Evil out there. We keep it at bay in Las Vegas, pretending to be evil,
entering America’s SubZone and losing sense of time, place, self… submitting to
the darkest sides of ourselves. And then we go home unscathed… almost.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
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And I am left with
just one hope: that Dominic buys my damned car.<o:p></o:p></div>
Rex Weinerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12550540824346578426noreply@blogger.com0