Peter Case

As Far As You Can Get Without A Passport

Have You Ever Been In Trouble?

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Jail

When the door clanks shut that’s jail—in the dark body boiling heart beating fast—trapped in anxiety—the bench is a bed there’s no one through the bars—nowhere to go—waiting is all—the concrete—hard & cold—the door is solid wood with a little window that slides back to reveal eyes the sink & toilet unused five feet to pace in the vibrating memory of all who’ve stood here in guilt and fear—my frail flesh contained by steel—anger directed by dead eyes—my voice surprises me & no one hears it—I’m a mystery to myself—and there’s no one else in sight—listening waiting & reading the nothing scratched on the wall—talk outside approaching steps echo in the hall key in the back with a hollow ring.

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Many Roads To Follow–The Nerves–San Francisco–’70’s

• As Far As You Can Get Without A Passport, Notebook • 2 Comments

a beat up building on Folsom Street
cars rush by late for the freeway
late for the bridge
trash in the street cracks in the window
& every player in the band
lives on a separate floor
aligned by the window well
A bass amp on the floor
pressed into service as a coffee table
linoleum asbestos & an old junk tv
tuned to the all night movies (movies ’til dawn)
a beat up record player & speakers
& kitty cats torment the puppy
(who howls when they slap him
with their claws out stretched)
someone upstairs is yelling again fighting again
round & round shouts down the well
I had an onion Paul had a spud
& we fried ‘em up in oil
with catsup borrowed from Clown Alley
San Francisco—the ’70’s—a city of outlaws
the West—drifters & outsiders
rents are cheap & we’re passing the days
in a basement
hours of rehearsal while
the clock tower on a downtown bank
ticking the hours by ten or sixteen
nothing in the fridge nothing in the cupboard
no books on the shelf
no money but time
dreaming up songs that somehow limp back
we laugh together it works sometimes
working hard for hours but it’s a lonely group
something out of nothing that’s how to write songs
it’s always amazing when something happens
& I hear them laughing.

 

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Tales of Three Favorite Tracks: Dangerous Book by the Plimsouls, Many Roads to Follow by the Nerves, Small Town Spree by PC

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The Plimsouls, Dangerous Book, 1995

(This was my first post for a while. Like all of us, I’d been laying very low. I’m reprising it now as we move forward into the next act.  At the time I was discovering the songs for Dr Moan.)

We’ve been quarantined for four months now. The country’s going through paroxysms. I’ve been trying to stay in touch with people. But in here it’s like living on a submarine during a transglobal cruise. What have you been doing? I’ve been playing the piano like crazy. Started playing guitar again last week, though I never really lost my calluses. I’m coughing all the time, which is worrying these days, but the doc says it’s allergies. Writing songs is a kick, and hopefully I’m going in to record another album in a few months. There’s one album, The Midnight Broadcast, already in the can, and it’s going to mastering, hopefully to be released by September, on a new label called Bandaloop Music. The timing of it all has  been thrown off by circumstances, but we’ll see.  I’ve been reading whatever’s around. That includes a couple of novels by Charles Portis, and some poetry by street poet visionary Ariana Reines, including her latest, A Sand Book. After Dylan dropped Murder Most Foul, I was turned onto a novel by the late David Bowman, called The Big Bang. I’ve been listening to the new Dylan album, which led me back, for some reason to John Trudell’s Blue Indians album, which still really moves me. And this summer, I’ve been digging KPOO radio, especially the Tuesday afternoon “Uplift Broadcast” (John Coltrane related music) and the Wednesday afternoon Reggae program “Wake This Town.”  They’re both online, both come on at 2 pm on their respective days, and you can hear a ton of great music, for free and for fun, as they say.

I re-read Roberto Belano’s Savage Detectives, sort of studying it in slow motion. It might qualify as a “dangerous book.”

In 1985 I was down in Fort Worth, Texas, sharing a two bedroom flat with T-Bone Burnett at the Taj Mahal Apartments, near the Oak Cliff section of town. I’d get up every morning and work on songs, while T would get up and leave, going out on the town doing business I knew nothing about. I wrote Ice Water, Small Town Spree, Horse and Crow, and a number of other songs, there, in that living room, sitting on the couch with my guitar and notebook. In the morning I’d make a pot of coffee, and after that was gone I’d drink Budweiser the rest of the day. T-Bone would come back at night and I’d play him what I was working on, and we’d talk about it, then he’d show me things about songwriting that he’d learned from Bob Dylan, and others, and tell stories. I’d tell some too. Somedays I’d go out at noon, for long walks down the main drag, braced against the cold winter air, ruminating about my songs,and my hopes and fears. I really felt like a “fish out of water” in that neighborhood, and never really knew where I was going, never talked to anyone, never really found a place to hang out. But I was getting some writing done.

I was reading Chaucer at the time, in Old English. I’d heard that it would be good for my songwriting, and maybe it was.

And frankly, I was on an emotional edge, so every night, and sometimes during the day, I’d get down on my knees by my bed, and pray, even though I wasn’t sure what I was praying to. I felt like I was falling apart.

Small Town Spree, (with Van Dyke Parks’ string quartet)

Live in Paris, 1990

Holy Ghost

The heat was on in the auditorium when the pastor called to “lock the doors!”—the Holy Ghost was on the move like flame in tinder—the women in the pew behind were laying hands on me—but it was that time in Texas when I was desperate and prayed with my friend and the Holy Ghost floated down from above through the roof and ceiling—dropping down on me—a ball of blue and white holy fire—I felt loved—and that Holy Ghost followed me——it’s been years now since that troubled day—when I got down on my knees—“How do I know God is real?”—“because he’s out to get me”— later my life turned a corner and in a terrible way I was on my own—the Ghost is a ghost—A spirit—of flames?—not exactly—of an emotional and spiritual power and force on the essence of my being—unpredictable but very powerful—frightening?—awe inspiring—And when the Holy Ghost tells you to do—always something good—you better do it!—you can’t elude it without losing the precious connection—O Baby you don’t have to go—I feel it again—I’m so much older now but it doesn’t really matter—except to make life and time more precious and the Holy Ghost.

(A few negatives. Don’t mistake what I’m saying here for what’s known today as “evangelism.” I don’t believe in “spiritual materialism” as practiced by many of the political right wing in the States. And it’s not about judging anyone. That’s not it AT ALL.)

Take 2

They said there was no such thing, no window that the light poured through on a rainy day, or a black midnight—we figured we were fooling ourselves—about synchronicity—astral communication—levitation and telepathy—hell, even aromatherapy—the location of wonder begged the question, it wasn’t walking through walls tho’ the grandparents claimed to have seen the ghosts do just that—it was the magic of anima—the beloved transformed—the beauty—over a table in the colors of love—“the way she accents the color of her hair” magic, breathtaking, the music that got us up and out riding its charge—the lone guitar player who stopped time—then it happened—arrival—an answer to prayer–how could I ever forget that? the magic worked in my life—over YEARS–I quit doing the things that were killing me—began to get over my self a little—and the songs came on dreams or in moments of openness–anticipation–desire–hope? And the power of ask and ye shall receive—but don’t confuse the priests for prophets.

Take 3

Dangerous Books. Let’s see, there’s Kerouac’s On The Road. I was never the same after I read that at 14. Lennon Remembers was pretty influential, the part about his teenage years. I read it when I was 17 or so. I didn’t give a fuck about anything, and that story seconded the emotion. Poetry? Ginsberg’s Howl, Kaddish, and Planet Waves. Ferlinghetti’s Coney Island Of The Mind was a biggie, maybe the first one that hit me, when I was 12 or 13. Cannery Row and Tortilla Flats. Lord Jim. 0rwell’s 1984. Songs of Innocence and Experience. Catch 22, I’ll never forget that.

Later, in 1984, the old and new testaments of the Bible. I used to read it when I was drunk.It was a calming and pure door to another, that is, ancient world that is actually chaotic, terrible and fraught with violence, just like today’s— an allegory huge and filled with mystery—parables, histories and tales—visions of angels climbing up and down on a ladder to the stars, Cain slew his brother Abel, there’s a serpent in the edenic grass, Ham’s nakedness in a tent, always a million reasons to stop reading, but once you’re in you’re drawn on. I like the parts about the Holy Ghost—Exodus and travails upon the desert escaping from babylonic captivity in Egypt—the tower of Babel. A symbol for our time when no two can speak and agree. Wisdom, Ecclesiastes, a book painfully, obviously true, the vanity of human wishes, the Book of Job, God and the Accuser playing games—I could never really penetrate the laws and kings—loved  the Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew, the Book of Revelations and Prophet Ezekiel—horrendous monsters of vision with four faces & wheels within wheels and wings that sound like thunder—the indictment of the world, and— Crucifixion, prophecies, diverging versions of events—or Lot and his wife—she turned to salt for looking back. Angels. Justice. So that book took me over a cliff for real too. Good thing.

 

Take 4

The Nerves, Many Roads To Follow, demo, 1976

And don’t forget  John Coltrane!

A Love Supreme, that’s a book, too.

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About Jokerman by Bob Dylan.

• As Far As You Can Get Without A Passport, Notebook, On Songwriting • 21 Comments

Let’s see, it was October 1983 and I was still in the Plimsouls, but we had come in from the road, and  had wound down, and I was just knocking about, living alone in a tiny pad up in Laurel Canyon (in the same cottage the Melvins eventually moved into, after I split). I  was writing songs for what was gonna be my first solo LP, and felt like I was on the moon, ’cause I was living at night, isolated, kinda living in my dreams & musical ideas, and I didn’t have to show up anywhere or for anything, it was woodshed time.

It was a good time, I was 29 years old, freed up for the first time from a lot of things that had been bugging me.

So I picked up the new Dylan LP at Tower on Sunset, and took it straight back home, and threw it on, and was completely transfixed by “Jokerman.”

The first thing that got me about it was the Sly and Robbie groove, unlike anything I’d heard before: it’s not rock or reggae either, but something new, very open. As usual with a Dylan record you hear every word. He delivers that very clearly.

On first listen the song hits you with a strong sense of life, of what it’s like to be alive in the world at that moment, a sense of NOW. The complexity, color, seductive sensual lure, sense of danger, of freedom, of possibility that one feels in the world, call it the Modern World, is all communicated so vividly, that the flash of recognition I felt upon hearing it, EVEN THOUGH I HAD NO REASONABLE IDEA WHAT HE WAS ON ABOUT, gave me a rush of Companionship. So that’s the first thing about the art of his songwriting, he wins you with the representation of what it’s really like to be alive. And you feel that before you understand it.

I think “Like A Rolling Stone” did that for it’s time. And the song “Dignity” hit me with that kind of force, when I first heard it on the radio, and had to pull the car over. And it’s a hugely exciting thing.

I’m not sure to this day that I could say I understand the song really. But I find it really moving.

The lines about ships, mist, snakes, glowing eyes, all were like kindling and I went up in flames when he hit “freedom just around the corner for you — but with the truth so far off what good will it do?”

That’s what I mean about him reflecting the true complexity of being alive, instead of the party line, which would be something like,  ‘”Gotta get free!” or ‘”I’m free — but with freedom comes responsiblility.” You know, “freedom good!”

I was in a period of my life when I felt a bit of freedom, but the nagging thoughts about the validity of what I was doing were unexpressed, kinda murkily swimming about in my mind, then PRESTO! Dylan’s said it, and I’m pushed into a new dimension of thought. All of this I just felt though on that first listen.

“So swiftly the sun sets in the sky…” yeah especially if like me you’re getting up in the afternoon and turning night into day, “You rise up and say goodbye to no one.” Check.

“Shedding off one more layer of skin, staying one step ahead of the persecutor within.” He does it again with this one, shedding off skin, sounds good, that’s what I was trying to do, reinvent myself, renew my musical vision, evade the weights and mistakes of my past. “One step ahead of the persecutor.” It was like he was reading my mind, I’d been guilty for my impulse to ditch the band and go solo, though it seemed necessary from a purely artistic point of view. So, those lines hit me too, and grilled me. As they would anybody I think, who was actively going through the kind of changes life threw on individuals at that time, which is still THIS TIME, by the way. The struggle of freedom, guilt, knowledge, power, foolishness that we all experience.

It’s a good song; there’s just so much in it. It seems alive, almost.

The chorus is so stripped down, it’s more tricky. “Jokerman,” that’s him singing about himself, and maybe about Jesus in verse three, and maybe about the silence of God at the end. But it’s also anybody, the Fool, jokers, trying to get serious, by that I mean, living with their eyes open, not “asleep neath the stars with a small dog licking your face” an image of a childish, maybe foolish sort, but also attractive in a way, hmm. The nightingale’s tune, it’s been pointed out that that’s like Keat’s Nightingale, the muse, or Imagination, flying high by the moon, that is, almost in the dark, moony, lunar, almost lunatic inspiration, like the subconscious, or unconscious (I mix them up!) which it always seems like Dylan relies on. For example, he always used to insist the songs come “through him” and the creation of his early work had to do with “power and dominion over the spirits.”

Is that clear at all? It does seem like he is singing, at least in part about himself. And it’s relevant to you and me, to the degree you want to apply it.

There’s a great difference between his best work and his other stuff. “Jokerman” is one of his great songs, right in there with the best of the early work, and the best of the ’70s. “Neighborhood Bully” doesn’t have this kind of impact, whatever you think of its message. “Man Of Peace,” likewise. I think “Union Sundown” is a great piece of work, but as a song lyric, though it’s good, maybe someone else could have written it, he merely covers the subject. Another song like that, from a later album, is “Everything’s Broken” from O Mercy. It’s strong, complete, but not necessarily “Dylan-esque,” in that it’s not communicating that super-vivid and 360 degree sense of life, of what it’s like to be alive at that moment. And when you hear the songs that have that quality, it’s like a mirror, or a trick window, you almost feel as if you’re looking through reality, getting a glimpse “behind the screen” and that’s what makes it so valuable.

So some of it is cold, detached, etc. but people need to hear his great stuff. His Greatest Hits, Vol 3 is pretty powerful, for that reason.

If you don’t get Bob Dylan, you don’t get much, in my opinion. Complaints about his voice are a sure sign of ignorance of music and history. It’s not really a matter of taste. It’s a matter of mind or not. I know as time goes on it may be harder for younger people to get in on. But it’s worth trying to find the door in, a whole universe opens up.

A lot of it is down to words. Can you relate to another mind, as related in language. Beyond the either/ors of binary choice. Dem or Republican? Hot/Not? Young/Old? Yes/No on this or that.

Bob Dylan uses roots music to tell his story, his way. That’s what I try to do as well. But you have to know your limits. Dylan is the best at that, he’s got that “bullshit- detector” that lots of people talk about. It better be real or forget about it.

I grew up in a house when blues and jazz and early rock and roll were just coming out, and the records were comstantly being played on our record player, and my sister and her friends (who were all about the same age as Dylan) were attempting to play the music,too, on piano and other instruments. And that ’50s music was all blues-based, or country. And then there was Elvis, who I experienced as a three year old. And he had the feeling on the Sun Records, and the early RCA, and I just soaked it up, but also the Everly Brothers, Chuck Berry, Link Wray (the first HEAVY guitar) Richie Valens, Fats Domino, the great Little Richard and Jerry Lee on TV shows like Bandstand, and all of that is blues.

Then Dylan and the Stones, Beatles too, and I followed the streams and first heard Muddy Waters, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Carl Perkins, and Buddy Holly.  I just loved all of that so much. And it got deeper from there, Howlin’ Wolf, and Robert Johnson, McTell, Gary Davis, etc.  I just loved it and listened endlessly. And kept TRYING to play and sing it, and I HATED what I sounded like at 17, 18 years old, so young and white and reedy. It was EMBARRASSING.

The story of all this is in my book, As Far As You Can Get Without A Passport, which I’ve been posting bit by bit for the last few months.

Somewhere in there it all opened up to me, but you still gotta keep a sense of humor, and the bulllshit detector trained on yourself, so look out!

And then you gotta work to be YOURSELF,  to sing through the influences.

I think I need to write a part two of this!

 

(all rights reserved peter case 2005)

 

2019 tour dates: https://petercase.com/gigs/

 

see also: https://petercase.com/dionysius-invocation-for-the-show/

 

 

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prophecy

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definition:  “the inspired declaration of divine will & purpose”“an inspired utterance of a prophet”

always heard a lot about prophecy, but never really understood what it meant—seeing the future, crystal balls, dreams, voices & lights, all figure in, but it seems that prophecy is also having the clear use of your senses & mind in the present, able to see the obvious—cars rolling down the highways by the millions: I predict—the day of the automobile will soon be over! insane irrational buffoons in power: I predict—disease, death, & sorrow will ensue—Blake was a prophet—he saw the disaster of a materialist world Was Ford a prophet? He saw how to manufacture that world.

Visionaries? —distraction does not lead to prophecy—heat up your oven, your fire, stay engaged, ask—always ask & you will receive—was Dylan a prophet on par with Ezekial? compelling imagery—the art of art is getting anybody to listen & care—

Same may go for prophecy—it’s so easy for me to lose track —the prophetic that now needs to be brought—stay tuned—attentive—seek higher direction—don’t be afraid to see & speak—don’t waste yourself on games & distractions.

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Sugar Sweet

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so white & dry & innocent but evil—the sweetness that creates a sucking sound—a light in every dark heart—candy lives that go down easy  attention spans that spin at the sour—the dirty truth you have to get down on your hands & knees to ride—the faint trail in the dust that leads out through the lines—white footsteps in the green wet grass straight to—SUGAR ISLAND where the deal goes down—kill for a mouthful to bury this turpentine taste—the big size drinks at the asphalt corner stand—in a big plastic sweating cup—each sip leads unbearably to the next ’til yr teeth fall out, your waist is dragging like a swollen hula hoop—yr breath is shorter than a fullback’s book report. Sugar has its spot at the very top of the pyramid, like King Tut or the Sphinx—sugar the universal solvent—more potent than alcohol? A brighter name in the Poison Hall Of Fame—oh we all love to lick the pan—let our tongue lead the way through wisps & crisps of alleys & chiffon floating sweetness—her voice was thin & pinched everybody called HER sugar & she gave them something very sweet that soon rotted their resolve—it’s a ballast without it I fall sooner than later like learning to walk on Saturn or Jupiter where my weight is doubled but no float is for free—you pay more by the pound—it’s an aphrodisiac—or not? A replacement.

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There used to be this thing called movies ’til dawn

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After a long day worn out with the guys, rehearsing, yelling, working angles on each other and watching them develop, ducking figurative (and sometimes literal) punches, conforming and rebelling in equally stressed measure to the group think, my head doesn’t ache but my scalp is tight, my face hurts, I’m ready to go back to the second floor motel room I call home—a block and a half from the Capital Records tower—I go in and turn on the black & white—white plastic magnavox TV with the green tube & wobbly knobs—the tube flickers up to life growing from a dot, and reveals, Abbott & Costello fighting the mob, black & white & shades of grey, the actors   beat looking adults, they’ll always seem older than me, slicked back hair and pugnacious expressions with vaudeville timing, my mother told me once she’d seen them go by in Buffalo, a sighting she took seriously, wonder—stars—but—the safety, the comfort, of the late night movies—the plot creeps between used car ads—“come see Cal and his dog Spot!”—and Spot was a lion—a dream link—daydreams at night—relief—a dark room flickered and ghosted by Boston Blackie, the Mob, Detectives, Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Natalie Wood, feet up, life suspended, the ache peels off like onion skin.

 

I’ve been gone from this blog from a while folks, busy, and on the road, which made it a lot harder to post. Lotsa gigs coming up in the new year, click on gigs, check it out, hope to see you out there! Putting songs together for a record too, but I want ’em to be great for you, so…. soon as possible!

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Don’t Leave Me Hanging On The Telephone

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‘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, and started talking to him. He loved Roky Erikson’s wild harp on the end of ‘Miss Me.’ I was surprised he knew Roky’s name. Me & Johnny had been the worlds prime interpreters of the Elevator’s music, we played their songs every night, and talked about them endlessly. Anyhow, the guy said his name was Jack, that he was a songwriter, came from Alaska, and dug the music I was doing. He was putting a band together. I went back and picked up my guitar and played ‘Friday On My Mind,’ ‘Secret Weapon’ and ‘Sunnyland Moan,” and made a couple bucks.

He asked me ‘How much, on the average, do you make out here a night?’ and I lied and said ‘ fifty bucks.’ He lied and said ‘I’ll pay you double that if you join my band,’ and that was the beginning of it.

He invited me up the street with him, to share a joint.

Sure. I packed up my Yamaki and we headed up Broadway past the strip clubs, to Stockton Street. We took a right and walked another half block, up to where a white Ford Country Squire wagon was parked on the curb. He unlocked it, we got in, he lit up and we smoked.

I got real high. Maybe ’cause I hadn’t eaten all day, but as we were sitting there watching the traffic on the street, I felt like an alien, the SF street so foreign, the light, the sky, the pigeons, all seemed so chaotic. Life is so strange.

‘How you gonna make it?’ he asked me.

A deep question. I felt like I was in the bottom of a hole the size of  the Grand Canyon, and Jack had leaned over and yelled it down to me from a great height.

‘Huh? What do you mean, make it? I am making it’ I answered.

‘No, how are you going to make it in music? You know, make records, get famous and rich… play concerts around the world? You know what I mean. How are you going to make it?’

I’d never thought of that before, it had never even occurred to me as a serious subject. I was playing music for a living already, wasn’t I? I mean, vaguely, as something that could happen in the distant future, a big career in rock and roll? Maybe. Derek and I had talked about it, but had never got anywhere. Johnny was running from the law, so he wasn’t interested. I had kinda figured I wanted to be like my heroes, a nomadic blues singer, or some kind of wandering minstrel.

I had nothing to say for myself.

Jack asked if he could borrow the guitar so I got it out and passed it to him, and he started to sing, sitting right there, all cramped behind the steering wheel, turned my way. It was a loud fast one, that he’d written himself, and his face turned crimson as he sang. ‘Don’t leave me hangin’ on the telephone! Don’t leave me hangin’ on the telephone!.’

Impressive. But I wasn’t really moved. So he played another one, and turned an even brighter shade of red. This one was ‘I’m a new man living in wide world! I’m a new man, living in a wide world.’ It had a driving beat and a great melody. I got caught on the hook. This one got me. A wide world, that was my dream. Starting a new life, a million miles away from my past. Yes.

I told him I’d think about it.

He split, and I walked the streets of North Beach. Man, I had better get busy.

By the next time we ran into each other on Broadway, Jack had worked up a secret plan to make it to the top. His ideas and enthusiasm were charismatic. At least I thought so. Soon I began to see a lot people weren’t so taken with him. He talked fast, with a sort of Northwestern twang, and it was obvious to me, he was going to make a dent in the wall of the worlds indifference. He was a couple years older than me, and though he seemed to have come up on the outside of life like I did, he was ahead of me in a lot of ways. He was his own Lennon, McCartney, and Brian Epstein all boiled into one dreaming loudmouth!

‘We’ll make it right off the street! San Francisco is our Liverpool. This street music scene will be our cavern club. We’ll use amps, man, battrey operated. Pat’s got one, a Mike Matthews Freedom Amp! We can take the whole band out to where the people are. Play outside on the Wharf during lunch hours. School kids  and secretaries will come out, it’ll be a sensation, we’ll cause riots. Herb Caen will have to cover it. But the whole thing has to be undeniable! The songs, the guitars, the clothes, it all has to be right, powerful.’

There was a big street music thing going on in San Francisco. And if the songs were great, when you really thought about it, with a little imagination, it did seem possible.

He wanted the band to wear short hair, long hair was hippie, old style. He said the electric guitar should sound like a saxophone, he was tired of all the guitar noodling that was in vogue in 70’s ‘progressive’ rock. He hated hard rock, heavy metal, and progressive, and he mocked it all.

‘Music’s been dead since the 60’s, but it comes back again every ten years,’ he said.

I wasn’t so sure. He challenged me.

“What’s any good. then?”

“The Stone’s Exile” I answered. “The Band, Bob Dylan, blues.”

‘The Stones were great when they had Brian Jones, man, and when Jagger and Richards were still writing great songs. They’re past it! That blues stuff is tired, man, it’s been done.”

He wouldn’t discuss those other guys, still, there was something about what he was saying. I was intrigued, this was the invitation to an adventure. And he was by far the most talented songwriter I’d met in California so far. There was some real magic in those tunes, something I knew was hard to come by.

The first Nerves rehearsal was a gas, more like a party. It was in someone’s  apartment on Sutter Street. Pat Speed, the rush freak, was there to blow harp,  and Sitka Pat, the street musician that frequently played out in front of the Swiss, played lead guitar. It turned out he had grown up with Jack in Alaska. An old black blues singer named Koko made the scene. He always played a harmonica taped to the broomhandle  neck of a washtub bass that he thumped in crazy rockin’ jump time. Koko was a big drinker, had lost all his teeth, and sounded like Sonny Boy Williamson. I think Rush invited him, Guitar Pat invited Rush. Jack invited me, though it wasn’t clear what my role was supposed to be. i didn’t have an electric guitar or amp, just my Yamaki. Jack wanted me there, so I went, ’cause I was curious, drawn… this band thing was fascinating in it’s possibilities. I pulled it out and rocked along in another dimension.

Jack and Sitka Pat got their arrangement of Hanging On The Telephone down, while Pat Speed vibrated, twitched, commented through his high velocity mustache, and generally irritated Jack, every so often even blowing a little harp. Koko rocked, drank wine, and his speech got more and more unintelligible, his patois was so thick in the first place, and after awhile no one could understand a word he said but Pat Speed, who held great lively  conversations with him.

The next session was across the bay, in a black residential neighborhood on the  Oakland/ Berkeley line. WE met in the garage  behind the house of the drummer Bobby Freeman’s Condor Club band. he was a great drummer, but he’d never played anything like ‘Hangin’ On the Telephone.’  This was the first day of  the new dispensation, the first blast of the new music that would be coming from everywhere in a few years. Something new was being born that day in that garage.

We were all smoked up to the moon. Jack was on bass, Sitka Pat played loud electric lead through the Matthews amp. Pat Speed was nowhere to be seen, guess he hadn’t made the cut. I banged on the acoustic, and played percussion, and as the day went on, the session got more intense.

Jack sat in a chair facing the drummer and shouting at him, trying to get this guy who was used to 50’s R&B and strip house  show band rock grooves, to play a fast and driving straight  eighth note groove, without fills, or anything fancy. Everytime the guy tried to tart it up, Jack yelled over the electric blare. It was ‘yeah… yeah…. YEAH! … NO!  on and on. Jack turned red and the whole thing kept going.

It was the assault of the new: loud, driving, a catchy song, but intense and screaming. Nothing had ever sounded like this.

I knew it was great, that I was the witness at a birth, and I  was bored at the same time. I saw it was Jack’s scene, he didn’t care what anyone else did or thought. I got restless and went outside, looking around the area for something to do, while I waited for a ride back to the city with Pat and Jack. I played my guitar. I was still looking for it.

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Don’t Let Me Down

• As Far As You Can Get Without A Passport • 2 Comments

 

 

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, a good kid going outlaw, friendly, good natured. I always felt comfortable around her, we all liked her a lot. She had short cropped hair, was still very fresh-faced and pretty, and wore a beautiful fringe suede jacket that she got from some biker she knew out at the lake, sized way too big for her, giving her kind of a waifish look, in a rough hewn way.

Jon was my friend, a local character already, a dark eyed, denim-clad, gentle but rebellious soul, stubborn to the core. His hair was short because he’d just got it clipped, while serving a week in jail, a few hundred miles away, in Albany. He’d mouthed off to a State Trooper who was shaking him down at the roadside for hitch-hiking. Everybody in town knew he’d run away from home to San Francisco in 1967,  and was there for the big Be-In,  and it’s aftermath. He’d lived in a California commune for months before coming back, hopping freights across the country to Buffalo, intent on getting in his last year of High School, but then he’d dropped out again to go traveling,  in June one week before graduating, and never got the diploma. The teachers just shook their heads. He had his own way of doing things, and though he was only a few years older than me, Jon was someone I looked up to in a big way. We were writing songs together, and starting to play a few gigs.

Everybody there dropped orange sunshine at about 8:30 in the evening, the whole gang except Jon.  I told him what I was doing, and he seemed amused, and said “man you better get some cigarettes!” Jimmy, Jon and I cut through by the old grade school, and walked up to Main Street, to the neighborhood market, as the sun set and the little town revved up in it’s cozy way for another beautiful summer evening. Couples rode by on bicycles, little children played hide and seek in a yard, dodging in and out from behind the giant elm trees that lined the streets. Dogs were running free, playing, too, and some one with a window open was banging out a hymn on an out of tune piano, bright chords floating on the faintly refreshing breeze.

At the store we waited in line behind a crowd of little boys and girls in shorts and t-shirts, buying rainbow taffy, popsicles, jawbreakers and gum. They kept laughing and changing their selections, running all around the store, getting items, and putting them back. I got to the front and asked for a pack of Camel filters and some matches. I was starting to feel strange, a sense of energy was building. I was nervous, filled with anticipation, and a teeny bit of fear. It was like the quiet moments as you climbed to the top of a roller coaster.

On the walk home the sun was nearly gone, painting the houses red, and along the way curtains were still open, the windows and doors giving off the warm and golden living room glows I knew so well, and we could look right into homes and see the family life, people watching their televisions, gathered at dining room tables, or a man sitting alone, in his favorite chair, with a newspaper, under a lamp, smoking a pipe.

Birds settled in their nests, katydids called, some last children were still out yelling, trying to finish one more inning of kickball in the fading light, and soon all I could see was the white stripes of their shirts, floating on the dark air in the vacant lot. A lone dog barked, cars drove slowly by, and the streetlights came on.

Everything was starting to vibrate and shimmer, and a pressure was slowly growing inside of me, like a case of the butterflies but a lot more intense, and I was surprised, as I didn’t think it would happen so soon.

By the time we got back to the apartment I was really feeling it. The others were too. Jimmy was saying goofy things and making stupid faces for Dennis and Donna’s amusement, but I wasn’t talking, I was checking out my walking, starting to feel very strange, preoccupied. They were all talking ’bout something but I wasn’t involved, I didn’t know what they were going on about. I was beginning to feel a very powerful sensation, like being inside my own personal blizzard. The haze cleared up for a second and I saw the others were were gone, except Jon.

‘They went out for awhile, man, we can just stay here and do what ever you want. You ok?’

He was smiling at my gestures, as I tried to talk. I couldn’t seem to put anything into words,’cause the words just wouldn’t hold still.

‘Are you alright, man?’ he asked with a laugh.

‘Let’s go for a walk.’ I managed to get that out. My knees were weak. I felt like I was caught in a wind tunnel. Streaks of light poured down, but the energy was rising up into my head. I was blinded, brightly colored snow was swirling around me.

‘Ok, man’. It took a very longtime to get to the front door of the apartment, about four steps away.

Jon helped me navigate, keeping the humor up, leading me down the driveway. Jimmy, Dennis, and Donna were down the drive, and looked like they were saying something I could barely make out. They’re going somewhere, did I want to go?

‘

Me and Peter are going for a walk. Right, man? Do you want to go for a walk, or leave with Jimmy and those guys? It’s up to you’.

I couldn’t decide, and in a moments confusion, right there in front of the garage, I turned quickly and stepped completely out of my body for a moment, left it standing there as I turned left, towards Jon. Panicking, I jumped right back into it, that was too weird.

I paid no more attention to them as Jon and I walked down the driveway. We turned left on the sidewalk, walking along Pleasant Ave in the dark, and I looked down: we were walking in white flowers, on millions of daisies spread on the ground. I told Jon that my legs didn’t stop at the ground, but continued way down, deep into the earth.

I began laughing, and started running, turning around quickly to watch myself catching up, in a blurry trail, streaking behind me. I could’t stop laughing. It was fun.

Jon seemed a little worried. ‘You alright?’

I was fine, walking through the world of blossoms glowing in the dark, my head a little clearer, the earth breathing, the trees waving, headlights coming down the streets for so long it was like waiting for Christmas.

Back inside, the FM radio was on, tuned to the all night show on WPHD.

The DJ spun the Paul Butterfield Blues Band singing ‘One More Heartache’.

Jimmy, Dennis and Donna came back in. We were all talking at once, trying to tell each other about it. The tag of the Butterfield track came on and I was transfixed. I heard it so clearly I could see him, hear his soul, and I felt like I understood that word for the first time, the singer’s life, the feeling, and the way it came across. Soul. Got it.

The DJ played a Muddy Waters track and I was on my hands and knees, head jammed into the speakers. Then the Doors came on, ‘When The Music’s Over.’ The music got everyone else’s attention at this point. ‘The scream of the butterfly’. ‘We want the world and we want it ….now!.’

Dennis was very excited about this. We all crowded around.

Wow. We want it NOW.

Now.

I didn’t have any idea how much time passed. There was a bright light on, someone was filming. It was Bruce, where’d he come from?

‘Let’s go up to the Host’, suggested Dennis. The local all night diner, the Your Host Restaurant, up at the Village Shopping Center, only a few blocks away. Jon was into it, he wasn’t doing what we’re doing, and he felt hungry. Sounded great to me. Exciting.

We got it together, set out through the door, and started walking, the five of us, a little search party, the night patrol.

I felt like I was on my way to Times Square or something.

We stopped every few steps, to look or laugh at something. Halfway down Pleasant Ave. we noticed a huge old elm. I could see it stretch and breathe, and it felt very alive. A giant’s stalk growing up into the sky. We gathered round the tree, fingering it’s coarse and crumbling bark, smelling it’s musky scent, putting our arms around it’s girth and holding on. I felt the tree’s living presence,  and I sensed that it was aware of mine.

We all loved the tree. We stayed by it for awhile. Even hard guy Bicknell was hugging it, and laughing.

The town felt like a stage set, the houses and business all seemed like facades. All was quiet, no one else seemed to be out, and we could hear the clicking of the traffic lights, changing colors as we crossed.

The shopping center was a giant, empty, grey,  flat concrete field. The stores were dark, there were a few streetlights shining, off at the far end, where a handful of cars were parked outside of ‘The Host’. Slow, soft, and sleepy. We crossed the parking lot laughing and talking quietly.

A sharp squealing noise, then a roar, made us all look up. The world was exploding with light, and screaming with loud engine noise, headlights was bearing down on us, fast, from across the lot. I stood there frozen, as everybody scattered in different directions. I started to run, too, with Jon just a few feet ahead, yelling “Wow, man, someone is trying to run us down!”

The car turned around in the parking lot and came by for another pass, at high speed, gunning right for us.

We made it up to the sidewalk on the other side, as the car jammed by, just missing us. It was coming so fast, we almost got hit. I caught a glimpse of leering faces on the passenger side, hostile eyes watching back at us, a leather jacketed arm out the window, a hand shaking a fist, another face looming larger as they left, burning into my memory. It was a carload of motor heads and hoods, some local gang. Now they were turning around and coming back again.

Carloads of guys acting like this weren’t that unusual here, quite a drag though, and we were pretty shook up.

At the entrance to the Host we saw the green motif through the plate glass, the weary waitresses in their white aprons and hats, the drunken clientele, straight from the bars, trying to sober up on cheeseburgers, or a plate of eggs and bacon before going home to bed. We pushed in  through the glass front door and the whole place stopped eating and stared at us. A Gene Pitney song was playing from the shiny silver jukeboxes on the walls of each booth along the right, and spaced every few feet along the counter, on the left.

I loved those jukeboxes.

The five of us crowded into the third booth from the front. The lights were flashing on my eyes, vibrating. I felt very gritty, everything was moving, the walls were waving, and the waitresses looked like ponies. The carful of guys pulled up out front, and  I could see ’em through the window, their image mixed with our reflection,  as they piled out of their hot rod, and began coming in. They were gonna fuck with us, people were always getting stomped in the Your Host in the middle of the night, it was sort of a regular thing, we’d all heard the stories.

Stay cool. The bunch of ’em, five big tough guys, ugly looking in their mid-20’s maybe, blue jeans and t-shirts, hair slicked back, leather jackets, come straight up to our table and stand, glaring down, crowding over.

The leader looks down at Jon and starts in on ‘If I had a dog ugly as you…’ when Dennis looks up, and his face lights up.

“Big T! It’s me, Dennis…Dennis Bicknell!”

Big T stops, squints, then relaxes, smiles, and laughs. “Dennis, is that you? Shit man, how you doin,’? I didn’t recognize you. How’s your big brother? I haven’t seen him for awhile.”

Everybody cools it at this. Sorry man, didn’t know it was you! Ha ha ha…

I was bumming quarters from everyone as the situation mellowed out.  The jukebox had the Beatles’ new single, it’d just came out and the B-side was my favorite song in the world. I pumped in all my silver and pushed the buttons to play it five times in a row. I was diggin’ the soul, don’t let me down.

 

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Joey And Chris And A Million Miles Away

• As Far As You Can Get Without A Passport, On Songwriting, Rock 'n' Roll • 7 Comments

[above: Chris and Joey] [earliest version of A Million Miles Away, from 1981 tour]

 

 

I ‘d met Joey Alkes and Chris Fradkin at  just the right time, the same week the Plimsouls began playing in the Hollywood clubs. We’d hit it off immediately.

I ‘d always wanted to be a Brill Building songwriter,  like Otis Blackwell, Doc Pomus, or Carol King,  who were adept at composing three minute rock ’n roll symphonies on demand.  I felt Joey and Chris were my ticket to that dream, to that kind of fun. And we always had a blast writing songs.

I’d get up in the morning, get some coffee and head straight over to Joey’s. Chris would show up, and we’d get right into making up songs, trying anything and everything out, looking for a real idea.

Joey’s from Brooklyn, was a few years older than me and Chris, had been in the army, was a published poet, too, but  his specialty was great song hooks.

Chris had studied music, and played guitar and piano. He’d been music director for a wild band Joey had managed in Denver, and always had a lot to say about grooves and arrangements.

Chris and I would sing and play riffs or chords on our guitars, me still banging on the Yamaki deluxe, that same guitar I’d been banging’ on for years. We’d work for hours without stopping, sometimes making up several songs in a session. It was fun, a lot of laughs, tough sometimes if you thought you had something and the other guys gave it the thumbs down.

But the great thing about writing with Joey and Chris was the camaraderie, and that came through in the music. I wrote a different kind of song with them than I did alone.

Joey  lived in one of those Hollywood pads where the apartments circled a pool. Even on the sunniest day, we never sat by the pool, but we sort of looked at it through the windows as we gathered around his kitchen table and worked. Joey didn’t play an instrument, but he’d be singing choruses and horn parts—just making sounds, that added to the general feeling.

We knocked out a load of songs over there. “Now,” “Lost Time,” “Hush Hush,” were all on the first Plimsouls album. “Hypnotized,” the first song we wrote, was featured on our debut e.p.. Writing became nearly my favorite thing to do, and whenever the ‘souls were back from the road I’d go over. Sometimes it would be like a party; we’d buy beers and bottles of wine, or whiskey, get high, and keep writing. Sometimes we’d get too messed up and have to adjourn to the next day. But we just kept writing songs. It was so much fun, walking in with nothing and coming out with a song a few hours later. When we got one, we’d put it down on the boom box, making a cassette I could take with me. I’d go learn it with the band. And then, when everybody got to it, wow, that was the best feeling.

Meanwhile it seemed like every gig the band played was bigger than the one before it. The EP had been a hit on local radio, especially a song I’d written on my own, called “Zero Hour.”  Like Rodney Bingenheimer, KROQ’s great punk rock dj liked to say, “IT’S ALL HAPPENING!” And there was pressure to come up with a powerful song to lead off the next record.

One night Chris and I went out to see the Germs play a gig at the Starwood. The place was going nuts. Punks were climbing up the walls to the balcony and diving off head first, back into the crowd. We watched it from the back for a while, then decided to work on a song.

We drove to Barney’s Beanery, a horrible bar and restaurant a mile or so up the road. We sat in a booth in the back, and Chris ate dinner, while I drank a beer and scribbled lyrics on a scrap of paper. We talked about the words, and each kicked in some lines. I was remembering something from a long time back and the feeling was pouring into the song. I’d been having an affair with a girl I really thought a lot of, and that had just broken off. Something of my childhood was in it too. A lyric was taking shape based on all of this. We wrote the second verse and a bridge but still had no title or chorus.

We got out of the restaurant and drove the five minutes over to Joey’s. He rang us in the front door of his building and met us outside his door.  His wife Esther was asleep. I went in and grabbed the cheap acoustic 12 string I’d left behind the table and came back out playing. The whole song came to life as I sang the lyrics. I played the guitar riffs between the lines the way Chris and I had laid them out that afternoon, and the build up of the bridge. It was all coming together in a rush. But what’s the title, where’s the chorus? I told Joey I wasn’t sure, then somehow  Joey nailed the chorus, just like that. “I’m a million miles away” and I threw on the tag “and there’s nothing left to bring me back today,” and we had another one.

We taped it on cassette, adding it to the other two songs we’d done that day, and that was it. We forgot all about it for a while.

 

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