Peter Case left home when he was 16, taught himself to play country blues on the streets of San Francisco, and was in a couple of signal L.A. rock bands: The Nerves and the Plimsouls . For the last 25 years Case has worked as a singer-songwriter, building a lauded catalog of songs and a reputation as a musician’s musician. Springsteen and Prine and Ely are fans. Sir George Martin tapped him to play Beatles songs at the Hollywood Bowl. He returned from open heart surgery with 2010′s Wig!, a pummeling collection of blues, punk, and garage rock. We talked after a house concert he played at Boston luthier Yukon Stubblebine’s home. Q: Before I turned my tape recorder on you were talking about arthritis. A: Yeah. One of the things you take for granted when you’re younger is how many aspects of your creativity are physical. My problem is in my thumb, and everything I do comes through my thumb. I play guitar, I play piano, I write, I drive, I type, and I experience a lot of pain. Lately I know that there’s a price to pay for sitting down and playing piano, and it does hang me up. I’ll
https://petercase.com/wp-content/uploads/03-Hanging-On-the-Telephone.m4a ‘Don’t leave me hangin’ on the telephone…’ I was living in San Francisco’s North Beach, and on my spot in front of the Swiss American Hotel one night in 1973, playing the 13th Floor Elevators song ‘You’re Gonna Miss Me, ‘ when I noticed this skinny white guy, about my age, leaning against the no parking sign, smoking a cigarette, watching me. He had short curly hair, wore old blue jeans, white deck sneakers, and a blue/green wooly sweater. At first look, he didn’t really fit in with the scruffy Broadway outlaw scene. I watched as he walked off, and I saw when he came back later, with a big German Shepherd on a short leash, and stopped to listen again. The next evening he passed by, walking, with a pretty, long haired woman, up a few doors to the Condor Club. She was wearing the full length type of overcoat that all the Condor dancers favored wearing to and from work, and after she pushed through the curtains and disappeared into the club, the guy came back, and listened to me play some more. He was definitely checking me out. I took a break, bummed a smoke,
https://petercase.com/wp-content/uploads/13-No-Sleep-Blues.m4a “Oh, will your magic Christmas tree be shining gently all around?” -Chinese White (Mike Heron) The String Band weren’t the inspiration, nor the Beatles. I lay the juggernaut straight to Madison Avenue’s Time Magazine. It was late Spring, 1969, the year I turned 15, and got out of the ninth grade. Time made the psychedelic world sound so beautiful, and a lot of us had become filled with anticipation and desire. My friend Jeff and I were feeling its power, for the first time, in the yard outside his parents split-level tract home, in the middle class Forest Glen housing development sub-division of Hamburg, New York. I was lying on the lawn along the side of the house, and my girlfriend, Mary Anne, came riding up the sidewalk on a purple Sting Ray bicycle with a white Banana seat. “The little long haired girl,” one of my pals used to smirk and call her, when she first transferred in from the Jesuit school in Buffalo. Now she was wearing cut-off mod
https://petercase.com/wp-content/uploads/02-Lets-Turn-This-Thing-Around.mp3
http://https://youtu.be/Vrs0XgnXsxk to David Ensminger, for Joe Carter: In response to your question: “What do I believe are the poetic qualities of Hendrix’s lyrics?” First of all, he created memorable, and dynamic original phrases of speech, blazing lines that stick in your head forever. I think he had more of these in three or four albums than the Beatles, for example, made in their whole run: “‘ ’scuse me while I kiss the sky!” (from purple haze) ” I know what I want but I just don’t know/ how to go about gettin’ it” (from manic depression) “will it burn me if I touch the sun?” (from love or confusion) ‘there ain’t no life nowhere!” and “”i don’t live today/ maybe tomorrow, I just can’t say” (from I don’t live today) ‘let me stand next to your fire’ and ‘move over, rover, and let Jimi take over!” (from fire) castles made of sand/ fall in the sea/ eventually (from castles made of sand) “aw shucks/ if my daddy could see me now’ (from up from the skies) ”if all the hippies cut off all their hair/ i don’t care/ I don’t care” and “if six turned out to
https://petercase.com/wp-content/uploads/01-Give-Me-One-More-Mile.mp3 Produced by Andrew Williams, at Mike Meltzer’s TMOP Studio in Van Nuys, CA, sometime in the mid-90’s. With Sandy Chila on Drums, David Jackson on Fender Bass, and Peter Case on 12 string, harmonica, and vocals. This is the opening track on the Case Files compilation, on Alive/Naturalsound Records, available from their site: http://www.bompstore.com/case-peter-the-case-files-plimsouls-nerves-breakaways-cd/ The Case Files (2011)
https://petercase.com/wp-content/uploads/01-Playing-With-Jack.mp3 Kool Trash (1998) Davido, Eddie and I, with Clem Burke going crazy on drums. The Williams Brothers, Andrew and David, sing backups, the way they did on the original A Million Miles Away. Ethan Johns, (son of Glyn) engineered this, and Andrew Williams produced it. Ethan brought in a Gretsch that was once David Crosby’s, and I played it throughout, one of the greatest guitars I’ve ever had my hands on, it just had a river of electric musical power running through it, amazing. The lyrics spin a cautionary tale, but it’s all with a rock n roll sense of humor. This track was pretty much ignored at the time by radio etc. I thought they’d be all over it. What did I know? But its still a good listen… By the way,shows coming up: July 13 Burbank, July 14, Long Beach, July 15, Santa Barbara, July 26, San Francisco check “gigs” on the menu for complete info and tickets.
https://petercase.com/wp-content/uploads/01-Echo-Wars.mp3 “If this record doesn’t sell a million copies I quit the business.” T-Bone Burnett was addressing the visitors to the control room of studio B at Sunset Sound in Los Angeles, on a distorted radio shack bullhorn. It was early Spring 1986, and we were listening to a playback of my first, self-titled solo album, a collection of songs and music that was considered a big departure. The material had begun the journey to vinyl two years before and run into a gauntlet of trouble and interference. Though I’d spent the previous ten years playing in some “perfectly good rock n roll bands,” I was hearing music in a whole new way. It was a personal, musical, and spiritual upheaval. “Unraveling the mysteries of music.” That’s how I expressed it— “the quest for musical fire,“ after a popular caveman movie that was exhibiting around then. I’d travelled back and forth across the country a lot by this point touring in the bands. More recently I’d been delivering some cars for an agency in LA, making the fast and vast transcontinental drives, and the songs were coming during those jaunts. And I was praying on my knees a
https://petercase.com/wp-content/uploads/06-Whos-Gonna-Break-the-Ice_.mp3 This is from a live album, Beachtown Confidential, recorded at the Golden Bear, in Huntington Beach, one of our favorite clubs, in 1983, and released on Alive/Naturalsound Records. This and the other two Plimsouls Live recordings I believe are the best recordings we did, and surpass the studio versions for sound and excitement. We were a live band! Below is a link to the record at the Alive store. There’s another one available there, Live! Beg, Borrow and Steal, from The Whiskey a Go Go Halloween 1982. There was talk at the time that this tune would be the next single… Both of these are available at iTunes and Apple Music: https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/beach-town-confidential-live/id492812876 For the vinyl or CD: http://www.bompstore.com/plimsouls-beachtown-confidential-custom-mixed-yellow-marble-vinyl-ltd-ed-of-100-lp/ Beach Town Confidential (1983)
Jimmy and I worked it out so we didn’t have to go home. He told his parents he was staying at my house, and my folks were under the impression I was over at his, so everything was cool, we both got out for the night. We made straight for Jon and Mike’s garage apartment on Pleasant Avenue, all ready to go psychedelic. The cast that night, besides Jimmy and I, included Dennis Bicknell, his girlfriend Donna, and Jon, and they were all older and more experienced in everything than me and Jimmy, who had just taken our final exams for the ninth grade. Bicknell was probably twenty-one or two, Donna, maybe twenty. Jon, I think was eighteen. Dennis was a good cat, kind of a car-guy gone psychedelic, and had just got out of the Navy. He was half-crazy, liked to laugh hysterically and pull outrageous stunts. He’d grown a mustache while he was gone, but his hair hadn’t grown long yet. He smoked a lot of weed, was also big on pills, and enjoyed drinking a bottle of Robitussin every now and again, digging the codeine high. Donna was a tall thin brunette, a hairdresser, quiet,
31 comments
Thanks for a good read!
Great talk. I sincerely regard Peter as the Kurt Cobain of the late 70s/early 80s scene…well before MTV sucked the heart and soul out of music, of course. Pisses me off when I mention his name or projects and people go totally blank.
kinda gets to me sometimes too, Kenny, LOL, but it’s whats happening, anonymous to the general pub…has its points.
Cobain’s story broke my heart. Case’s storygives me heart.
I am impressed by your powers of observation , retention and ability to communicate. This music thing is like a big old barrel that we all rattle around in . Wish I had run into you more – but it’s great to read you, as well.
Up in the Bay Area now… where you? Wish we woulda finished that song we started, I was going through some weird changes at home, couldn’t concentrate. That’s my excuse, anyhow! Maybe we should do a gig or something…?
Thanks for a great interview, Peter….your shows at the old Watercolor Cafe were among the best that we ever had!
Hope to see you again someday!
Bruce Carroll
Thanks Bruce…
Wonderfully articulate. A boost for those of us still at it, here in the land of relative obscurity. The song’s the thing. Ambition for the song, and for the gig.
Yeah, man, best wishes…
I love your attitude especially in that you don’t project bitterness in the interview about still wondering where the money will come from etc. I’ll be 64 in July and I worked as a teacher for many years because I felt I couldn’t live without security. I think now that I am retired and devoting myself to writing full time that I am actually glad to be anonymous. Your voice is so refreshing really at every Wild Honey show I attend. Your songs are fresh and truthful. There’s a lot of truth in this interview and I appreciate that you still hold the artist in yourself dear.
Thanks Terry, yes anonymity is a gift, but who’s gonna tell you that in this culture? And as long as folks keep coming to the gigs, picking up the records etc, it’s all gonna be ok. Though you never know, I might not sneeze at a hit about now, but gee, maybe I left it too late! I’m over-committed LOL!
great interview, thanks for your music over the years too
My pleasure, Kevin…
And of course, PC reminds us elsewhere that it’s called the Quality Inn … not the Quantity Inn!
This is a great interview. PC has such insightful (and funny!) things to say when asked the right questions. The interviewer here knows the history, understands music etc. This is not usually the case with journalists! Ensminger excepted of course.
Thanks for the Bloomfield tips somewhere below here, PC. I found a collection put together by Al Kooper that seems to cover the bases. I haven’t gotten into the Ed Ward book yet but I’ll give you the word when I do. I picked it up ’cause his stuff on Hwy 61 is so incredible.
On that right/left thing that T-Bone was talking about and which I think relates, in part, to what Nietzsche is saying in the Birth of Tragedy (framed there as the Dionysian vs. the Apollinian (sic?), I think it has to do with the ability to create something profound, yet instantly familiar. To pull from the deepest well but use the left brain to put together what you draw. It’s in lines like: Ain’t it just like the night to play tricks on your mind when you’re trying to be so quiet.” or “It was a powerful day and there were black crows in the road, but I kept my strong opinions to my chest.” or “The word for him was ‘nevertheless'”. But it’s in the music too … the way the line is sung, the melody. I dunno. I heard this philosopher called Daniel Dennett speak recently. His favorite expression is “sort of” … I guess that’s what I mean here: sort of!
One of Joyce’s favorite words was ineluctably.
We should get a Birth of Tragedy reading group started out here on the PC blog. A chapter a week or something.
“Chapter one … we didn’t really get along … ” Hah!
Ineluctably,
Ackles
Ah yes, the old Quantity Inn, kinda miss that place, it’s been a while. And yes Joan Anderman really does a great job over at Middle Mojo, a fascinating site, a great interviewer. And maybe editor? She took the best for the story.
Left and right, T-Bone, I like that, profound, yet familiar. Birth of Tragedy reading group? I’m into it, let me know.
The ineluctable modality of the visible. Stephen on the beach…me on Geary Boulevard.
take care Dave…
I’m game for a reading group.
Give me a second and I’ll retrieve my Birth of Tragedy from my mom’s house this weekend.
Maybe you could start the reading group as an entry on the PC Blog. We’ll agree on how much we’ll read each week and then anyone can weigh in.
Art: Good to hear from you! Hope you’re well!
Nietzsche reading group on the PC Blog: We could be breaking ground here.
They go low, we go high!
I can create a category and leave a short post, then the comments can be underneath…the group will simply be The Birth Of Tragedy…ok?
Brilliant! Coincidentally, I’m headed to the library right now.
And we’ll all just have to try to keep up with the right honorable Dr. David Ackles, Esq.
yea, but it should include, i think, weekly reading assignments … with you commenting each week on monday on the previous weeks portion … you can deputise me or art or anyone else if you’re not available etc … no rules … anything that comes to mind about that week’s selection … call each other out on bullshit (i’m of the king of that) … etc … sort of … pc comments then anyone can respond, amend, ridicule (hah!), agree, contest, and on and on …
that’s just my idea, anyway …
PC and Art (and whoever else would like to join the BOT reading group):
I retrieved my Birth of Tragedy from my mom’s house. I’ve got the version translated by Walter Kaufmann that also includes The Case of Wagner.
Re-reading the Kaufmann intro, I started to have some doubts. As Kaufmann points out, BOT was Nietzsche’s first book which he later renounced (Nietzsche even wrote an “Attempt at a Self-Criticism) which was used as a preface to the second and subsequent editions (including mine). Furthermore, BOT ain’t classic Nietzsche (a period which, most agree, begins around 1880). It doesn’t include what he is best known and, in some circles, admired for: his perspectivism, the eternal recurrence, the Supermensch, and Anti-Christ jazz.
I don’t know about you guys but I’m not a classicist and BOT is somewhat premised on an understanding and familiarity with Greek tragedy. I can get around Plato and Homer for sure. But I don’t know jack about Greek drama. Do you?
With all that said, I say we go for it. I somehow remember when I read BOT in 1987 that it resonated. Think of it as a flawed but audacious first record! Great title too.
I suggest we break it down as follows. On each date, PC will weigh in on his thoughts on that week’s assignment. Then we’ll have it.
If not, no problem. This is only a suggestion. And, PC, if we do this publicly (i.e. on your blog) I’d imagine some folks will think us pretentious and that we have no business. Of course, I welcome those allegations.
Suggested syllabus:
May 8th: Attempt at a Self-Criticism, Preface to Richard Wagner, Sections 1
May 15th: Sections 2-6
May 22nd: Sections 7-10
May 29th: Sections 11-15
June 5th: Sections 16-20
June 12: Sections 21-25
Recommended Secondary Sources:
Nietzsche, Life as Literature by Alexander Nehemas (this is a very lucid account of what Nehemas takes to be Nietzsche’s central project — namely, the creation of self. It focuses on the work from 1880 forward i.e. it does not directly cover BOT).
Pasolini’s Medea, film, 1969. Or just read Euripides!
What say ye gentleman?
Tragically,
Herr Professor Doktor David Ackles, LLC, Esq. &tc.
Ackles, I’ll weigh in on this but it will take a minute…I need to find my edition(s) here in the stacks (lol.) I started trying to read FN at City Light’s Books in ’73…Beyond Good and Evil. Why was that so important to me? (!) I especially dug his aphorisms, though I truly had no idea what was up and may not even now! BTW I think I’ll publish a piece here I wrote for A’cappella Books in Atlanta, “My Bookstore Education.” Which probably sheds some light on my ignorance of all things lol! Talk to you soon, off to the hallway to sort through some tomes…PC
Hah! The PC stacks! Don’t get lost in there!
I somehow feel like I’ve read that Bookstore Education piece of yours but would love to see it again.
Nehemas talks about the different styles Nietzsche employs including most famously the aphorism. BOT is written in a scholarly style as befits the fact that FN was, at the time, trying (sort of!) to establish himself as a philologist at the time. This might be why I remember BOT fondly ’cause my own thinking was fairly scholarly at the time. I was in school! Still am!
Sort of, Ackles
I’m rereading it now…
I’ll admit to it not being obvious to me that the BOT discussion would officially begin here close to where it began (I’d been waiting for a new entry). As I put down my fork minutes ago, though, having just finished a plate of pasta and a kale side salad, and the combination of an appetite satiated with the ending of the task then at hand (dinner) having left my mind unoccupied and unburdened by the distractions of the everyday, it occurred to me (quite unexpectedly) that the discussion may have already started and may be back here. So, here I am. I am also unprepared to engage as of yet. I’ll await Peter’s first entry on the book, and then will try to keep up. And I hope others participate. This isn’t ultimately about a book or the author or his times or etc. To me, I hope this is about ideas. And anyone with a spirit inclined to listen to our host’s recordings or peruse his entries here is incontrovertibly, therefore, well equipped and explicitly invited to offer (and opine on) any ideas that arise. So, those who’ve bothered to read this far – please join in.
Hi Art,
It’s going to take me a little time to get going on a post regarding the Birth Of Tragedy. I’m rereading it right now, but due to the on going press of life, it may take a minute. That said, if either of you feel ready to do the heavy lifting to get it started, send me what you have and I’ll post it…
Looking forward to it but feeling like its a bit over my head!
best
Peter
Read a little this morning. Not ready to discuss, but I was taken with the discussion of dreams and art in the first couple pages. Did you already mention that, Ackles?
Hey Peter—-Good interview. I’ve been a fan for a long time. Great to hear and see you on the road again. Hope you’re feeling OK, also. I see your coming thru Chicago —-on Oct. 21 at fitzgerald’s in berwyn. I’ll try and make it. I met you and talked with you at the Empty Bottle about 10 years ago. So i hope all is going well for you. My name is Chris Ramsey –and I’ve been with the Jesus People USA in Chicago over 40 years. And worked with the poor and homeless for the past 25 years at Cornerstone Community Outreach . Just put out my first book —“Discovering Jesus in the Least” —Unveiling God’s Presence Among America’s Most Overlooked Souls.” Love for you to check it out. Take care, Chris
Sounds good Chris!