Latest / Booked On Rock with Eric Senich / Duane Allman, Muddy Waters, Nick Drake & More: 20th Century's Most Fascinating Musicians [Episode 334]

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Duane Allman, Muddy Waters, Nick Drake & More: 20th Century's Most Fascinating Musicians [Episode 334] · Booked On Rock with Eric Senich

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Speaker 1: There's some of the twentieth centuries most innovative, fascinating, and
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Speaker 1: influential musicians. A deep dive into the famous, the forgotten,
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Speaker 1: and the barely known with author Ray Robertson. Next on
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Speaker 1: Booked on Rock.
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Speaker 2: We're totally rock and roll. I mean gott to leave you.
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Speaker 2: You're reading. Little Hands says it's time to rock and roll.
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Speaker 1: Roll up, I totally booked. Welcome back to book Don Rock,
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Speaker 1: the podcast for those about to read and rock Americ Senach.
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Speaker 1: Ray Robertson returns to the podcast his brand new book
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Speaker 1: titled dust More Lives of the Poets with Guitars. How
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Speaker 1: you doing right, hey man?
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Speaker 2: Thanks for having me.
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Speaker 1: Twelve artists in this book Alex Chilton, James Booker, Nico,
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Speaker 1: the Staple Singers, Captain Beefhart, Handsome, Ned Duyne, Allman, Lee
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Speaker 1: Maversduster Bennett, Danny Kerwin, Nick Drake, and Muddy Waters. So
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Speaker 1: let's talk about these choices that you're making. You write quote,
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Speaker 1: every one of the artists in this book has been
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Speaker 1: and continues to be important to me, and not just musically.
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Speaker 1: The music is where the fascination began, but it's not
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Speaker 1: where it ended. So what were you looking for beyond
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Speaker 1: the music when you come up with this list?
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Speaker 3: Well, you know, it was really easy because there was
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Speaker 3: no work involved. There were people that I had to
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Speaker 3: write about because I wanted to further explore.
1:22
Speaker 2: You know, they always say if you want to know
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Speaker 2: what subject, teach it.
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Speaker 3: It's the same thing with a book, if you really
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Speaker 3: want me I loved all the people in this book,
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Speaker 3: but I wanted to go deeper into their music, which
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Speaker 3: was always the number one criteria. I wasn't just going
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Speaker 3: to tell a cool story because oh, nobody's heard of
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Speaker 3: this guy.
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Speaker 2: You know.
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Speaker 3: You know, I know I have to love the music.
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Speaker 3: I have to howne the music, and it has to
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Speaker 3: be a lot to me. But also I found that
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Speaker 3: the stories, although you know they're full of the usual
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Speaker 3: rock and roll drugs and death and all the sex
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Speaker 3: and all that stuff, but I found that each of
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Speaker 3: the stories kind of had significance even outside the musical context.
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Speaker 3: Like for Alex Chilton, it was about the ongoing battle
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Speaker 3: between doing the music you want versus being able to
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Speaker 3: pay the rent. James Booker, it was the tension between
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Speaker 3: mental illness and how it's a spur sometimes for creativity.
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Speaker 3: So there was always these tensions in there. Beef Art,
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Speaker 3: how he made his music exactly how he wanted, but
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Speaker 3: at the expense of treating everyone else like his servants,
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Speaker 3: and he was sort of a dictator.
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Speaker 2: So I just found that each of them.
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Speaker 3: You know, when I read something, you know, ideally you
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Speaker 3: want to be able to stay Okay, I read an
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Speaker 3: essay about beef Art, but hopefully it's more than just
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Speaker 3: you know, a Wikipedia deal where you're getting facts.
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Speaker 2: You're sort of talking about the music.
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Speaker 3: What works, what does, and what's interesting, what isn't, but
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Speaker 3: also what the story means, sort of not transcending music,
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Speaker 3: but about life. I mean, these are these are individuals,
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Speaker 3: they're human beings. And I'm not writing biographies, but the
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Speaker 3: biographical when it's important to the music, you know, it's
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Speaker 3: very important. So I bring it up so that that
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Speaker 3: was the criteria. I had to be fascinated with the
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Speaker 3: music and with the lives and continue to find the
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Speaker 3: lives and the music.
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Speaker 2: Sustaining. You know, really they're a big part of my life.
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Speaker 1: Chill and you say there's cool, and then there's cool.
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Speaker 1: There's cool before I ask about the price he had
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Speaker 1: to pay for being cool. Talk a little bit more
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Speaker 1: about what drew you to his story.
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Speaker 3: Well, you know, it's a good question because it's like
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Speaker 3: a lot of the people in the book, what drew
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Speaker 3: me to him was his unsparing conicalism. He just sort
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Speaker 3: of did what he wanted to do. So Big Star,
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Speaker 3: which is the big band that everyone talks about, they're
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Speaker 3: making music very Anglo, very power. Well you're kind of
3:26
Speaker 3: inventing power pop, helping event power pop really the anti zeitgeist.
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Speaker 3: Everything's heavy metal getting to be heavy metal singer songwriters.
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Speaker 3: But and then later on, when he sort of suffers
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Speaker 3: this anonymity et cetera, when he starts being name dropped
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Speaker 3: as you know, the precursor of power pop and indie
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Speaker 3: rock on stuff, he decides, no, I'm going to not
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Speaker 3: capitalize on I'm gonna play jazz music and old R
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Speaker 3: and B. He just completely followed his own bliss, you know,
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Speaker 3: irrespective of whether that made sense in terms of the industry,
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Speaker 3: in terms of his career, in terms of friendships. So
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Speaker 3: a lot of the people in here, beef Heart's another
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Speaker 3: one that they really are individualists, and I found that
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Speaker 3: there's a lot there's a kind of.
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Speaker 2: A lack of that in our world.
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Speaker 3: So I'm really attracted to people who sort of follow
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Speaker 3: their own beliefs and sometimes suffer for it greatly. Nko
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Speaker 3: the same deal. I mean, she sort of killed herself
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Speaker 3: creating her own identity, and there's something very existential about that,
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Speaker 3: you know, the sense that you know, she was defined
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Speaker 3: as this beautiful person stand in the corner and she's like, no,
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Speaker 3: I want to be Bob Dylan, and I'm going to
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Speaker 3: do it with a metronome and was not metromelotrone and
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Speaker 3: I'm gonna you know, And I just find that very encouraging. Again,
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Speaker 3: you don't have to be a musician. I think just
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Speaker 3: living your everyday life. The courage that these people showed
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Speaker 3: in the face of the kind of things that make
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Speaker 3: a lot of people sort of fold up shop like, well,
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Speaker 3: I would make my own music, but I won't sell
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Speaker 3: as many records, or I won't get a record dealer,
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Speaker 3: I won't be able to tour in big places, I
4:54
Speaker 3: won't be a tour in small places. And I think
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Speaker 3: that's a great, great lesson.
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Speaker 1: I think about that all the time with these artists
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Speaker 1: just in general life in general, like following your passion,
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Speaker 1: but at the same time, you got to cover your
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Speaker 1: ass financially and to get older, right, especially as you
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Speaker 1: get older. You see these artists take these risks and
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Speaker 1: they basically say it's either this or nothing else, which
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Speaker 1: is really admirable, you know.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, And we usually hear about the ones we're at work,
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Speaker 2: the Bruce Brimstein's you know, right, but we don't hear about,
5:24
Speaker 2: you know, some of the people, like say Dust Bennett
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Speaker 2: in the book, he was a pretty pretty obscure British
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Speaker 2: blues musician, sort of a one man band guy from
5:32
Speaker 2: the late sixties, and he sort of comes he sort
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Speaker 2: of comes into his greatest fame at the height.
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Speaker 3: Of the blues boom in Britain in the late sixties.
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Speaker 3: But by the early seven he's not an old man.
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Speaker 3: He's like, you know, he's thirty and that's over and
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Speaker 3: now it's a.
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Speaker 2: Whole different world.
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Speaker 3: Well, I've got three kids, and I like, you know,
5:49
Speaker 3: and I find that stuff interesting because again, it's not
5:52
Speaker 3: just a you know, a classic rock story of right,
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Speaker 3: it's about real people trying to have integrity, trying to
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Speaker 3: make the music that they hear in their heads that
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Speaker 3: they want other people to hear. And again, I find
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Speaker 3: that entirely inspiring no matter what you do in life,
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Speaker 3: because it's really hard to be yourself. The world doesn't
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Speaker 3: want you to be. The world wants you to do
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Speaker 3: your job, shut up by the product you're supposed to buy,
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Speaker 3: and then we'll all get along fine. And so these
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Speaker 3: people are.
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Speaker 2: Kind of you know, they're they're kind of class they
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Speaker 2: kind of and I think that's that's the appeal.
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Speaker 3: But that's also sort of why things don't always go
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Speaker 3: so smoothly, and.
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Speaker 2: That's what makes it interesting.
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Speaker 1: Sure.
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Speaker 2: You know, as a novelist, you always when you write
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Speaker 2: a novel, you always want conflict because otherwise it kind
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Speaker 2: of rights. Why. Well, there's lots of conflict here, and
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Speaker 2: it's usually on the internal level, you know, like my
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Speaker 2: conscience versus my bank account, et cetera.
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Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, Alex Chilton had a career with the Box Stops.
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Speaker 1: He was known as the lead singer of the Box
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Speaker 1: Stops and then the power pop band Big Star. And
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Speaker 1: Big Star is an interesting story. They had the documentary.
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Speaker 2: On them, great documentary.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, that put them into the spotlight a little bit more.
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Speaker 1: But man, you talk about a band that deserved to
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Speaker 1: be much more popular than they were. You call their
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Speaker 1: song September Girls the greatest pop one of the greatest
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Speaker 1: pop songs ever written post nineteen seventy, So why were
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Speaker 1: they not as big as they really should have been?
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Speaker 2: You know, I kind of I hear what you're saying,
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Speaker 2: but after writing this is I guess that's why you write.
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Speaker 2: So that's kind of what I thought after writing the essay.
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Speaker 2: They shouldn't have been popular because their music was too
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Speaker 2: good and too out of time, like they.
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Speaker 1: Just I was gonna say, are they two ahead of
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Speaker 1: their time? Was that the deal?
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Speaker 2: They are? And and but two ahead of their time?
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Speaker 2: How do you know that? Because they seem so much
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Speaker 2: behind their time past or ten of the time, because
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Speaker 2: people were saying, you're playing music that's influenced by who
7:35
Speaker 2: the Beatles, you know, British rock, clean songs with you know,
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Speaker 2: smart lyrics, a solo real whereas this nineteen seventy you
7:47
Speaker 2: had Zeppelin and Black Sabbath and the metal comes in.
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Speaker 2: The singer songwriters Carol King, this kind of music wasn't
7:52
Speaker 2: on the radio anymore. So you think, how are these
7:54
Speaker 2: songs on the radio? Well they were, They're on college
7:56
Speaker 2: radio and so a while. But the radio wasn't playing
7:58
Speaker 2: this just because you make great art. It doesn't mean
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Speaker 2: the world is to pay attention. You know, he has
8:02
Speaker 2: to a lot of his timing.
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Speaker 3: You know, I have a friend who's a filmmaker, and
8:05
Speaker 3: he's like, you know, you get ready to make a film,
8:08
Speaker 3: and you do everything you can possibly do because somebody
8:11
Speaker 3: told him once, I guess an older guy who was
8:13
Speaker 3: a producer. He said, you know, you've done everything you
8:14
Speaker 3: can do, but really you have no control over whether.
8:17
Speaker 2: This movie is going to be successful. It could be
8:19
Speaker 2: that you could open on a weekend where you know,
8:21
Speaker 2: you don't know. You do what everything you can but
8:23
Speaker 2: but but really there's so many things. It's so capricious.
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Speaker 2: There's so many things that can go wrong or go
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Speaker 2: different ways.
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Speaker 1: He didn't care about his audience. Was that the problem?
8:31
Speaker 2: I mean is that, well that's interesting, Yeah, that's and
8:35
Speaker 2: again this this is why you're right, because he certainly
8:38
Speaker 2: had an additude. He liked to disappoint his audience. Right, right, again,
8:42
Speaker 2: not the kind of thing when you go to Rockscar School.
8:44
Speaker 2: It's like, you know, you want to fly to your right.
8:46
Speaker 3: It's like being a writer, you want to people buy
8:47
Speaker 3: your book, make them feel that they're really smart, make
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Speaker 3: them feel that they're on the good side.
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Speaker 2: So what Chilton does is, oh you like that real
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Speaker 2: kind of harmonic, smooth, beautiful. Well, I'm gonna make something
8:59
Speaker 2: that really makes your you know, stand up on end,
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Speaker 2: because that's what I want to do. But the question becomes, yeah,
9:04
Speaker 2: that's quite admirable. But there were people listening, and maybe
9:07
Speaker 2: sometimes you know, give them the finger to the audience.
9:11
Speaker 2: You're giving the fingers some people who are there? Who
9:13
Speaker 2: are you know?
9:14
Speaker 3: There might only be fourteen people at your gig, but
9:16
Speaker 3: six of them may be people whose lives you's changed.
9:18
Speaker 3: And I think that was kind of the After a while,
9:21
Speaker 3: it became sort of self fulfilling prophecy with children in
9:24
Speaker 3: the sense that well, no one cares, well, how could
9:26
Speaker 3: that you know, you're recording volare you know in eighty
9:30
Speaker 3: five or whatever? It's like your childlex children. But I
9:32
Speaker 3: but again, in the end, I just love the fact
9:34
Speaker 3: that he even went back and tour with the box
9:36
Speaker 3: tops at the end. How uncool is that? But how
9:39
Speaker 3: cool is that?
9:39
Speaker 1: Well that I was gonna ask about the ending his
9:42
Speaker 1: life post Big Star, he seemed to be in a
9:44
Speaker 1: pretty good place when he died in twenty ten.
9:47
Speaker 3: Well, no, not for a long time. No, a long time.
9:50
Speaker 3: There's a lot of alcoholism. There was a suicide attempt.
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Speaker 3: By the time he stopped drinking, he quit music for
9:56
Speaker 3: a while. He was a treat he was an arborius,
9:58
Speaker 3: amateur arborist because he didn't really have any royalties until
10:03
Speaker 3: the Bengals recorded September Girls. He got a little bit
10:06
Speaker 3: of money there, and then of course the soundtrack to
10:09
Speaker 3: seventy Show in the Street, which the song you wrote
10:12
Speaker 3: with Chris Bull. There was there's some mon bell that
10:13
Speaker 3: came some money. He came through that. But no, by
10:15
Speaker 3: the end of us, like, yeah, he's sober. He's touring
10:18
Speaker 3: with a sort of a revitalized well partial big Star
10:24
Speaker 3: and the Box Tops playing his solo gig. Seems like
10:27
Speaker 3: he's a very happy guy.
10:28
Speaker 2: Yeah. So of course you call only get your life
10:29
Speaker 2: together and you die of our heart attacking.
10:31
Speaker 1: Yeah, so heart attacks, you know.
10:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, But see, you know, the thing.
10:35
Speaker 1: Is, Bob Dylan never was a guy that was going
10:38
Speaker 1: to make music. That not not that he didn't care
10:42
Speaker 1: about his audience, but the same kind of thing.
10:44
Speaker 2: But you're exactly right, You're exactly right. And that's one
10:47
Speaker 2: of the things I just talked about. Actually, maybe it was.
10:49
Speaker 1: That though, when we when we bought a Bob Dylan
10:52
Speaker 1: album where we went to see Bob Dylan, we knew
10:54
Speaker 1: what we were gonna get. We were gonna get Bob Dylan.
10:56
Speaker 1: Was it that maybe Chilton was.
10:57
Speaker 2: He's also famous already.
10:59
Speaker 3: You know, I talked about this in the essay in
11:01
Speaker 3: the sense that you know, Miles Davis could do this,
11:03
Speaker 3: Miles David could say I used to play this kind
11:05
Speaker 3: of music, I'm playing this kind of music, but he
11:06
Speaker 3: was still Miles Davis.
11:08
Speaker 2: These guys this is their first record. I mean, I
11:10
Speaker 2: think a lot of the problem had to do with
11:12
Speaker 2: Chris Bell especially was a huge Beatles fan, and the Beatles.
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Speaker 3: It's hard to fathom this now from the perspective we
11:18
Speaker 3: are in twenty twenty five. They not on were the
11:21
Speaker 3: most popular band in the world. They were the most innovative.
11:24
Speaker 3: Every album was like, let's see what music sounds like. Now,
11:27
Speaker 3: those two usually don't go together. Usually don't get you.
11:30
Speaker 2: Know, you get it with Shakespeare or the sopranos, or
11:34
Speaker 2: like popular art that's truly lasting.
11:36
Speaker 3: And I think for Bell, for a degree, for childman.
11:39
Speaker 3: He's a little more cynical's little more world waring and weary.
11:44
Speaker 3: I think bell that, well, if the Beatles can do it, well,
11:46
Speaker 3: that's the template will be really successful, and we'll also
11:49
Speaker 3: be making the art we want to make. That doesn't
11:52
Speaker 3: happen a whole lot. It doesn't happen a lot, and
11:55
Speaker 3: it's really rare what it does.
11:57
Speaker 1: All right, Captain Beefheart, he's on maybe my favorite Frank
12:00
Speaker 1: Zappa song, will E the Pimp.
12:02
Speaker 3: Will in the Pamp the beef Art thing in here
12:05
Speaker 3: with Zappa. There is that kind of again tension there.
12:09
Speaker 3: You know, beef Art always bit the hand, that fantom everything.
12:11
Speaker 1: I didn't realize that, yeah, you said he he saved
12:14
Speaker 1: the blues by weirding things up.
12:17
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, because the blues are the best, I mean,
12:19
Speaker 3: but the blues get boring, you know.
12:21
Speaker 2: So what Beefart was he wanted again, there's that tension again.
12:24
Speaker 3: He wanted like the real stuff, like Sunhouse and like.
12:28
Speaker 2: The real deep Delta blues. But he also loved free jazz.
12:33
Speaker 2: You live on that Coleman and col Drane. So he
12:35
Speaker 2: thought how he was really I love the expression. He
12:38
Speaker 2: was really wary of what he called the Mama heartbeat,
12:40
Speaker 2: you know, the doom, which we all kind of do that,
12:43
Speaker 2: that's the the manipulative for baseball, you do do do
12:46
Speaker 2: But he said, you know you get your get, you're
12:47
Speaker 2: getting manipultive. You got we got to do, you know,
12:52
Speaker 2: change it up somehow, which doesn't always work, but when
12:55
Speaker 2: it works, it feels so refreshed and revitalized. Again A
12:58
Speaker 2: real hero of mine because it doesn't always work.
13:02
Speaker 3: But the idea, I love this music. How can I
13:04
Speaker 3: make it? How can I make it? How can I
13:06
Speaker 3: make it blues that applies to me and the people
13:08
Speaker 3: that I know as opposed to going out there and
13:11
Speaker 3: my baby left me, you know, leave that to Sunhouse.
13:13
Speaker 3: You know, what's the new blues sound like? Well, you know,
13:17
Speaker 3: it's these weird data ask surrealistic lyrics. He would tell
13:22
Speaker 3: his guitar player, you know, when the note you're supposed
13:25
Speaker 3: to play afterwards, play the opposite note, you know, and
13:27
Speaker 3: and it really does sort of shake things up. It
13:30
Speaker 3: makes you think about what the blues is. But then
13:32
Speaker 3: you come to tromp mass replica or is that dividing line?
13:35
Speaker 3: Like is it even what's listenable? But how far do
13:38
Speaker 3: you go before you, it's like Coltrane, you know, how
13:42
Speaker 3: far do you go outside before it's just a blizzard
13:45
Speaker 3: of sound?
13:45
Speaker 2: How much do you have to reptate that? And again I.
13:47
Speaker 3: Don't know the answer to it, but I enjoyed writing
13:49
Speaker 3: about and thinking about, you know, like how far you
13:53
Speaker 3: can go and still keep your audience or are you
13:55
Speaker 3: still making music?
13:56
Speaker 2: Really? You know what we call music? You know is
14:00
Speaker 2: he's so difficult because he was a dictator.
14:02
Speaker 3: You know, everything had to be done his way, everything
14:06
Speaker 3: had to be about him, which is one way to
14:09
Speaker 3: lead a band. Miles Davis is the opposite he he
14:12
Speaker 3: you know, when we think about jazz rock, we think
14:15
Speaker 3: of in a silent way and Bitch's brew and all
14:18
Speaker 3: that stuff Jack Johnson.
14:19
Speaker 2: But in sixty five or so, Miles was sort of
14:22
Speaker 2: in this period where he's still playing.
14:24
Speaker 3: The old stuff and with the younger guys in his
14:26
Speaker 3: band like Tony Williams, the drummer, Herbie Hamcock and Wayne Shorter,
14:30
Speaker 3: who uh who say you know, let's let's let's let's
14:33
Speaker 3: let's loosen this up and Miles, Miles would be open
14:36
Speaker 3: to that.
14:37
Speaker 2: Were beef art, you know, he claimed, probably facetiously, but
14:40
Speaker 2: you know he taught. He taught the.
14:41
Speaker 3: Band every song, every lick, every A guy who doesn't
14:45
Speaker 3: play any instrument except harmonica, he drums, even telling the
14:48
Speaker 3: drum well, play it like this kind of deal. So
14:50
Speaker 3: that's the way he had to work, which is a
14:52
Speaker 3: great way. He got to forge his identity and his
14:55
Speaker 3: sense of beef heart. And it's honest, there's nothing else
14:57
Speaker 3: like it. The downside is there's not a lot of
14:59
Speaker 3: other eyes ideas coming in. There's not a lot of
15:01
Speaker 3: fresh air coming in. Sometimes that's good. So you've got
15:05
Speaker 3: the positive, you've got the negative. I don't think any
15:07
Speaker 3: piece of writing, any piece of art, is any good
15:09
Speaker 3: if it's one side or the other, you know, good
15:11
Speaker 3: or bad. It's got to be sort of that messy
15:13
Speaker 3: mixture that makes things interesting.
15:15
Speaker 2: You know.
15:16
Speaker 1: Ultimately he was painting. That became his main art later
15:19
Speaker 1: in life.
15:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Well he started to actually get some of
15:23
Speaker 2: that quote unquote mainstream success that everybody wants breaking through.
15:27
Speaker 3: You know, he was on a lettermane a couple of times.
15:28
Speaker 3: The last the last few albums are not really to
15:30
Speaker 3: my taste. They're little more new way beef art. But
15:33
Speaker 3: that was the point where it was getting a you know,
15:34
Speaker 3: he was starting to get that kind of mainstream thing,
15:37
Speaker 3: and he went home to the desert.
15:38
Speaker 2: Now he did.
15:39
Speaker 3: He was suffering, perhaps from the beginning of the ms
15:41
Speaker 3: that eventually claimed his life, but for many years. Yeah,
15:44
Speaker 3: he went back to the desert and painted, which was
15:47
Speaker 3: his first love. And I thought, how cool is that?
15:49
Speaker 2: I mean, we don't need any more eighty year old
15:51
Speaker 2: rock stars, you know, God love them, but have a
15:53
Speaker 2: little dignity, you know, like I think, asked Gray Slick.
15:58
Speaker 1: I was just about to mention her. Yeah. Yeah, she's
16:01
Speaker 1: the only example of one who says I'm retiring and
16:04
Speaker 1: really meant it, like I'm retiring.
16:06
Speaker 2: Someone like, well, like, wouldn't you like to? You know?
16:09
Speaker 2: But she said she looks at the guy. She's like,
16:12
Speaker 2: she said, we wouldn't we look a little silly? How
16:15
Speaker 2: cool is that? Wouldn't we look a little silly? You know?
16:18
Speaker 2: But but you know it's not it's a certain man.
16:20
Speaker 2: You can play the blues to your age, you can
16:21
Speaker 2: play country, but when you're talking about rock and roll,
16:23
Speaker 2: you're talking about energy, sex, anger, aggression, not not not
16:27
Speaker 2: real becoming for eighty year olds. You know, it's just
16:30
Speaker 2: completely nostalgia.
16:31
Speaker 3: So I love the fact that Beefert sort of said
16:33
Speaker 3: this is this is all I can do. This is
16:34
Speaker 3: as far as I can go. I'm not gonna, you know,
16:36
Speaker 3: curl up in a corner. I'm going to do something else.
16:39
Speaker 3: You know, he was he.
16:40
Speaker 2: Was big into well the ecology back then, but you know,
16:44
Speaker 2: the environment and painting. And I think that's that's so cool,
16:48
Speaker 2: that's so cool and again brave to sort of have
16:51
Speaker 2: this identity your whole life and then, uh, you know,
16:54
Speaker 2: whether how much you identify, whether or not it's your identity,
16:57
Speaker 2: and say no, I'm not that anymore. That takes a
16:59
Speaker 2: lot of inner strength, you know, to say I'm not
17:02
Speaker 2: that now on this now you know.
17:06
Speaker 1: Ray Robertson is the author of dust More Lives of
17:08
Speaker 1: the Poets with Guitars, Dwayne Almond. That's what's interesting about
17:12
Speaker 1: this book. There there are artists in this book that
17:15
Speaker 1: people will say, I've never heard of this person or
17:17
Speaker 1: maybe heard of him here. But then you got some
17:19
Speaker 1: of these bigger names like Dwayne Almond. Look, I mean,
17:22
Speaker 1: Dwayne Almond's legendary. Just twenty four when he died, but
17:25
Speaker 1: he made such an impact and you say Dwayne and
17:27
Speaker 1: the Almond Brothers band were more than what they were
17:30
Speaker 1: labeled as, which was a southern rock band. That's not
17:32
Speaker 1: what they were. Yeah, I know jazz.
17:36
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is about six seven years ago in Toronto's
17:39
Speaker 3: coming home in the street car and I ran into
17:40
Speaker 3: him body and he goes, hey, man, what do you
17:41
Speaker 3: what do you listening to these days?
17:42
Speaker 2: And I was listening to a lot of Dwayne and
17:45
Speaker 2: the Almbrush. Oh, that's really interesting southern rock, you know Skinner,
17:48
Speaker 2: And I said, no, let's just not have that conversation. Yeah,
17:51
Speaker 2: actually it was. It was it was Garcia, but it
17:55
Speaker 2: was Dwayne, a little bit of Richard Thompson that sort
17:57
Speaker 2: of allowed me to sort of gingerly move into jazz
18:01
Speaker 2: a little bit because listening to those those solos and
18:04
Speaker 2: those those long songs of the Allmands played, where like
18:07
Speaker 2: a jazz ben, they would inroduce the head and then
18:10
Speaker 2: you know, Duane would exhaust it, then Dickey would exhaust it,
18:12
Speaker 2: and the driver exhausted, and you're like, oh, okay, the
18:14
Speaker 2: jazz always seemed kind of scary and and and and Dwyane.
18:19
Speaker 2: There's even a bootleg one of bootle you can find
18:21
Speaker 2: it on YouTube, just with the last sessions. They weren't sessions.
18:23
Speaker 2: They were kind of recording demos and stuff. They even
18:26
Speaker 2: take a shot at my favorite things, the Coltrane song
18:28
Speaker 2: with guitars, So it was it was That's what I
18:31
Speaker 2: found so intoxicating, and also that idea that they were
18:34
Speaker 2: not who I thought they were. I mean, I knew
18:35
Speaker 2: the hits, but now it's the point where I need
18:38
Speaker 2: to know, I need, I need to have everything that
18:40
Speaker 2: Duane did, and it wasn't that much, unfortunately, because he
18:44
Speaker 2: died at twenty four years.
18:45
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, man, it's you know, so young. But we
18:48
Speaker 1: know that they did succeed without Duane, but there's still
18:51
Speaker 1: there's something there. Yeah, when Duane is part of that band,
18:55
Speaker 1: which I want to I want to ask you that,
18:57
Speaker 1: what do you think is what what is that element
19:00
Speaker 1: that he brought because he's at the film Maurice Show,
19:03
Speaker 1: is it's like throughout a near telepathic level of musical communication.
19:07
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's some scary, scary stuff. You know, he's a genius.
19:11
Speaker 2: The album Brothers, I own, Brothers and Sisters. It's a
19:14
Speaker 2: great album. Chuck Lebell's a great, great piano player, but
19:16
Speaker 2: there's nothing I own after that. It's a good band,
19:20
Speaker 2: Dicky Bett's a good song. I mean this good.
19:21
Speaker 3: It's a really good band. But with Dwayne you're talking
19:24
Speaker 3: about a Coltrane, Garcia, Miles Davis, like somebody who is
19:29
Speaker 3: in touch with things that you and I aren't, no
19:31
Speaker 3: matter how Like he's touching the garment a little bit,
19:34
Speaker 3: like he's got some kind of connection to something.
19:37
Speaker 1: Well, he's like Michael Jordan elevating the level of all
19:40
Speaker 1: the players around him kind of thing.
19:42
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And I one of the
19:45
Speaker 3: favorite performances I mentioned in the book was a version
19:48
Speaker 3: of Greg's song Dreams on September I think it's nineteenth.
19:54
Speaker 3: He died October twenty eighth or something, so just about
19:57
Speaker 3: five or six weeks before he died at at Suny
20:00
Speaker 3: dony Brook. And it's a version of Dreams that is uh.
20:03
Speaker 3: I play that for anybody who's like, Okay, you know,
20:05
Speaker 3: I'm kind of interested.
20:06
Speaker 2: I play if they don't, if that doesn't do it
20:07
Speaker 2: for them, because it's truly it's truly jazz or I
20:11
Speaker 2: don't know what you'd call. He's he's definitely talking with
20:13
Speaker 2: the gods. He's definitely and then you know he's really
20:16
Speaker 2: like he's really and it is. It isn't rock and roll,
20:19
Speaker 2: it isn't jazz. It's like this guy is having a communication.
20:21
Speaker 2: It's religious, right, I think it's religious. You know. I
20:24
Speaker 2: have a few live albums post Rain, and I have
20:26
Speaker 2: the first gig they played in making making Drudgie where
20:29
Speaker 2: they were post Wayne and you know they they're they're
20:33
Speaker 2: playing their hearts out and and Dicky's great, he's playing
20:35
Speaker 2: his ass office before Chuck joined the band. And there's
20:39
Speaker 2: this this aching place that isn't there's an aching hole,
20:43
Speaker 2: you know, It's like, where's that thing? Even though Dicky
20:46
Speaker 2: starts playing slide and stuff and you just can't replace that.
20:49
Speaker 2: It's like, I don't know who said it.
20:51
Speaker 3: I think Bill Kritzmrom, the drummer of the Dead said
20:53
Speaker 3: he said, you know, the Dead without Jerry Garcia is
20:55
Speaker 3: like the John Coltrane Quartete without John Goldtran. It's great musicians,
20:59
Speaker 3: wonderful and they are McCoy tyner, you know, Tony well O.
21:03
Speaker 2: They're great.
21:04
Speaker 3: But there's there's that thing missing, the vision. I guess
21:08
Speaker 3: if you don't want to use something nebulous like genius,
21:10
Speaker 3: I think it's the vision. He had a vision, like
21:12
Speaker 3: just before he died too.
21:13
Speaker 2: You know, they start moving beyond the street because they
21:15
Speaker 2: start using Dickey songs like Blue Sky, and then they
21:20
Speaker 2: ler Jessica. He could have gotten in so many different
21:22
Speaker 2: directions because as a session guy, he had a whole
21:25
Speaker 2: That's how he made his money. He didn't make any
21:27
Speaker 2: money while he was alive. The film More hit, but
21:30
Speaker 2: you don't get relative payments for six months, and so
21:32
Speaker 2: he didn't. He was still playing sessions at the end
21:35
Speaker 2: for you know, one hundred fifty bucks, and he played
21:37
Speaker 2: doughbro in a lot of productions. He's just all sorts
21:40
Speaker 2: of acoustic instruments. There were so many different.
21:42
Speaker 3: Colors that weren't explored, the places he didn't go that
21:46
Speaker 3: that that makes it all the more like geez, you know,
21:49
Speaker 3: like so many, so many different sounds that he was
21:52
Speaker 3: just constantly curious too, which is always a sign of
21:55
Speaker 3: of an emotional genius. You know, they're they're really hungry.
21:58
Speaker 2: You know. Someone asked Miles Davis, what what he what
22:00
Speaker 2: you know about the old days? You know, what was
22:03
Speaker 2: Charlie Parker like? Expecting him to Oh, Charlie, he said,
22:06
Speaker 2: Charlie Parker was a hog. He had to eat everything
22:08
Speaker 2: fuck everything, play everything. That's what geniuses due. Yeah, not
22:13
Speaker 2: polite people. You know. It's like and and Dange was
22:16
Speaker 2: like that.
22:17
Speaker 1: I love the story that Duayanne Allmond sleeping outside of
22:20
Speaker 1: the studio when he was a younger session musician, just
22:23
Speaker 1: waiting for the door to open. Where was that at sun?
22:25
Speaker 2: Uh?
22:26
Speaker 1: Was that it?
22:27
Speaker 2: No, that's at uh Fame studios, okay, and Fame Studios. Yeah,
22:31
Speaker 2: And there's there's a lesson to young musicians. Don't wait
22:33
Speaker 2: for your break, go and say can I play your
22:35
Speaker 2: record note? Can I put my tent? Sure? Okay?
22:38
Speaker 3: Right after a while, Phil Hall just felt guilty, like
22:41
Speaker 3: the poor kids sleeping out there.
22:43
Speaker 2: But and then of course when he plays with that slide.
22:47
Speaker 1: Yeah, hello, all right. So Danny Kerwin is maybe the
22:52
Speaker 1: most interesting musician to make this book. He has kind
22:54
Speaker 1: of lost that.
22:56
Speaker 2: That's so cool to hear you say that, because he's
22:58
Speaker 2: very unknown.
22:59
Speaker 1: This the guy you can make a movie out of.
23:01
Speaker 1: It's a tragic story, but it's a it's a fascinating story,
23:04
Speaker 1: and it's one of those men if he just maybe
23:07
Speaker 1: got some help and things could have turned out differently.
23:09
Speaker 2: Different times, you know.
23:10
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, he was with Fleetwood Mac from sixty eight
23:13
Speaker 1: to seventy two. Bear Trees from seventy two is one
23:15
Speaker 1: of my favorite mactoons.
23:17
Speaker 2: Oh really yeah, Oh that's so cool.
23:20
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're right. Quote For a former member of a
23:22
Speaker 1: world famous rock and roll band, Danny Kerwin is remarkably
23:25
Speaker 1: little known, both in terms of the biographical details of
23:28
Speaker 1: his life and the wonderful music he created. He is
23:31
Speaker 1: not a legend. He is a mystery. The mystery part
23:33
Speaker 1: of his life is regarding his post Fleetwood Mac years. Right,
23:37
Speaker 1: That's that's when things get.
23:39
Speaker 3: And I actually say the same thing that what you
23:40
Speaker 3: just said. I said, you know, he deserves a biographer
23:43
Speaker 3: or a documentary.
23:44
Speaker 2: I tried to interest a couple of people when they
23:46
Speaker 2: they're like, oh, but I say, look, man, he was
23:48
Speaker 2: in Fleetwood Mac. It wouldn't be you know, he's not
23:50
Speaker 2: like he's unknown. He's unknown. But it's that that period
23:53
Speaker 2: of Fleetwood Mac, that know.
23:54
Speaker 3: And you talk about the Peter Green years and then
23:56
Speaker 3: the the Lindsey Buckingham's even nixt years, there's this period
24:01
Speaker 3: in between, and for me, some of the music that
24:04
Speaker 3: Danny made and the fact that he joined the band
24:06
Speaker 3: when he was eighteen years and three months old, not
24:09
Speaker 3: even a legal drinking age, and four months later they
24:13
Speaker 3: have a top you know, a number one song with Albatross,
24:17
Speaker 3: with his song on the flip side. I mean, it's
24:19
Speaker 3: just too much, too quick. He's living with his mother
24:21
Speaker 3: in a basement apartment in Brixton. The next thing is
24:23
Speaker 3: he's traveling the world with this rock band and he
24:26
Speaker 3: turned he never really was a big drinker. He turns
24:28
Speaker 3: to drinking as it waited for stress.
24:30
Speaker 2: And then Green leaves the band and he's pushed out front,
24:34
Speaker 2: you know. And if you see the pictures of him,
24:36
Speaker 2: I try to describe him as best I can, he looks,
24:38
Speaker 2: you know, he's got like the jug ears, the bowl haircut,
24:41
Speaker 2: the big blue eyes. He doesn't look like a grizzled
24:43
Speaker 2: blue rock guy, you know. And they're like stick And
24:45
Speaker 2: if you listen to the bootlegs which I have of
24:48
Speaker 2: him playing live, you know, he's the stage announcements. He
24:51
Speaker 2: sounds like he's apologized this nick songs are quiet number
24:53
Speaker 2: what we're gonna do now? You know, it's like he's
24:56
Speaker 2: not that guy. He also wasn't a jammer, you know.
24:59
Speaker 2: He liked to write prea little, perfect little songs. So
25:02
Speaker 2: again anesthetical to the time. But when he gets kicked
25:04
Speaker 2: out of the band in seventy two at twenty two
25:09
Speaker 2: years old, it's kind of over. You know.
25:12
Speaker 3: He spends three years hanging around, and then he gets
25:15
Speaker 3: a record contract in seventy five. The first one has
25:18
Speaker 3: some really nice stuff on if you'd strip away all
25:20
Speaker 3: the strings and horns and all the bullshit. The next
25:23
Speaker 3: tour are abomination and he basically ends up in a
25:26
Speaker 3: homeless shelter by the time he's thirty and he's not
25:29
Speaker 3: sleeping outside.
25:30
Speaker 2: Sad yeah, yeah, yeahs. So there's some quotes in there
25:33
Speaker 2: that from Mick.
25:34
Speaker 3: Fleetwood wrote two autobiographies, so he talks about the last
25:39
Speaker 3: time that he saw him.
25:39
Speaker 2: Because when they're touring Tuss, you know, Rumor sells twenty
25:43
Speaker 2: million copies and Tufts only sells eight million. But they're
25:45
Speaker 2: in England, and Fleetwood seems like a really nice guy.
25:47
Speaker 2: He lets to look after people. So somehow or another
25:50
Speaker 2: he used his money and power to sort of get
25:53
Speaker 2: Danny's information and call him up and invite him over
25:55
Speaker 2: to the hotel because that's Fleetwood Max playing Wimberley that night,
26:00
Speaker 2: and uh, he said, you know, Danny said he had
26:02
Speaker 2: slept on a bench late before and that he had worms.
26:05
Speaker 2: Pleywood went to hug him. He's like, don't touch me.
26:08
Speaker 2: Do you want to come to gig No, never sees
26:10
Speaker 2: him again. He lived in pubs in his room and
26:14
Speaker 2: didn't play any more music. And I just find suddenly
26:17
Speaker 2: And that's for the title of the book.
26:18
Speaker 3: I'm so pleased that you're a fan, because obviously Dust
26:21
Speaker 3: is a song off the last album, the last Danny
26:24
Speaker 3: Kerwin song that he made with Mac, the second last
26:26
Speaker 3: song on the album, and it's taken from a Rupert
26:28
Speaker 3: Brooke poem.
26:29
Speaker 2: He's a World War two, World War One poet, British poet,
26:32
Speaker 2: and he sort of chisels off the first two lines
26:35
Speaker 2: and it's one of the most haunting, hauntingly beautiful invocations
26:39
Speaker 2: of the ephemerality of life and and and fatality and
26:43
Speaker 2: and and he was just so again, just so young.
26:45
Speaker 2: You know, we're not talking about painters or writers. You
26:48
Speaker 2: sometimes get better as they get older. This stuff is
26:51
Speaker 2: often like lyric poets. It's it's when you're young, with
26:54
Speaker 2: all that energy and passion and openness that closes up.
26:59
Speaker 2: You know, the the Dylan's of the world who keep
27:01
Speaker 2: making interesting music, or the Neil Young's or the Joni
27:04
Speaker 2: Mitchells like I listened to like I think Neil is
27:07
Speaker 2: right at the top until Russ never sleeps. And that's
27:11
Speaker 2: that's a long time, a long time to be making,
27:14
Speaker 2: you know, popular music and still connecting that way. Where Danny,
27:18
Speaker 2: I think, is that that kind of flame out that's.
27:21
Speaker 3: More typical of that brilliant flash in the sky that disappears.
27:25
Speaker 2: I just feel it's important that people need to know
27:27
Speaker 2: about Danny's music, and I think that they'll get they'll
27:30
Speaker 2: they'll have a better life.
27:32
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it reminds me of said Barrett, what
27:35
Speaker 1: happened on the night that they did fire Danny Kerwin,
27:37
Speaker 1: and that was in August of seventy two. There's we
27:39
Speaker 1: finally got to because he just he bailed right before
27:42
Speaker 1: a show.
27:42
Speaker 2: He bailed before a show. Apparently he not only was
27:45
Speaker 2: he drinking a lot, he didn't like his nerves are
27:48
Speaker 2: really bad, so he didn't eat. So that compounds the drinking.
27:51
Speaker 2: He's really really really really really thin, really nervous, not sleeping,
27:55
Speaker 2: not eating, drinking and apparently by the end it wasn't
28:00
Speaker 2: one incident. Fleetwood was the only one who sort of
28:03
Speaker 2: was the intermediary everyone else was. He said, asking Jenny
28:06
Speaker 2: for a cigarette at that point was like asking for
28:08
Speaker 2: a fight. He would isolate himself self isolate, and apparently
28:13
Speaker 2: Bob Welsh, he was in the band by then. He
28:15
Speaker 2: had problems with Bob Welsh and he the night.
28:18
Speaker 3: Before the gig, they were not the night of the gig,
28:20
Speaker 3: they were backstage getting ready to go on and he
28:22
Speaker 3: smashed up his famous less Paul and smashed his head
28:25
Speaker 3: against the wall instead, I'm not going on stage. And
28:29
Speaker 3: you can do a lot of things to your bandmates,
28:31
Speaker 3: but you can't bail on them, you know you can.
28:33
Speaker 3: You can't not play. And so they limped out there
28:36
Speaker 3: and finished the gig. But they're missing their league guitar player.
28:39
Speaker 3: They're missing the guy who sings a lot of their songs.
28:41
Speaker 3: And and the skin of.
28:43
Speaker 2: The saddest thing that I found was that when Fleetwood
28:45
Speaker 2: told them that night at the hotel, he said, and
28:48
Speaker 2: that Danny didn't really know that there was a problem.
28:51
Speaker 2: Oh really, I've been a hamp. I thought. That's not
28:53
Speaker 2: gonna bode well for the rest of his life. Like,
28:55
Speaker 2: you don't think there's a problem, you.
28:57
Speaker 1: Know, No, that was just that was just another day
29:00
Speaker 1: for him.
29:00
Speaker 2: Yeah, It's like, yeah, and you're twenty two years old.
29:06
Speaker 2: I mean, I mean me, at twenty one, I couldn't
29:09
Speaker 2: slap my ass with both hands. At twenty two, it's
29:11
Speaker 2: like you're already now a has been I mean that
29:14
Speaker 2: must just do your nut in entirely. The first album
29:17
Speaker 2: second chapter has some things I write in the book
29:19
Speaker 2: about how someone released a compilation in two thousand that
29:23
Speaker 2: sort of strips away some of the extraneous instrumentation, that
29:26
Speaker 2: there's some beautiful songs in there, but you can already
29:28
Speaker 2: see he's sort of regressing back to the kind of music.
29:33
Speaker 2: That interesting thame what Danny is in that generation of
29:36
Speaker 2: rockers is their record collection isn't just filled with rock music.
29:40
Speaker 2: He grew up on his mother's record collection, so a
29:43
Speaker 2: lot of.
29:45
Speaker 3: Jazz music, hall music, top top top ten, top thirty
29:51
Speaker 3: music in nineteen twenty, all these sorts of antiquarian musical forms.
29:55
Speaker 2: So it really enriches his style.
29:58
Speaker 3: You know, if you just listen to rock your music,
30:01
Speaker 3: your sound is gonna be, you know, fairly limited that way.
30:04
Speaker 3: And what's interesting about him is that later on when
30:07
Speaker 3: he does those solo albums. They almost returned to this
30:10
Speaker 3: sort of Annavellian kind of it sounds like he's trying
30:16
Speaker 3: to make music for a different era, almost like he's
30:18
Speaker 3: willing himself to go back to his youth or his
30:21
Speaker 3: mother's youth.
30:21
Speaker 2: It's it's very painful stuff.
30:23
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've never I've never heard it. I've never heard
30:25
Speaker 1: the solo stuff, so I'm gonna give it a listen.
30:28
Speaker 2: There's four songs off the second second chapter, including the
30:32
Speaker 2: title track. But yeah, they need they threw everything. Danny
30:35
Speaker 2: wasn't a major player on this. His produce. His manager
30:38
Speaker 2: was there, and so you know, when in doubt, put violins,
30:41
Speaker 2: when in doubt put horns, put things, and.
30:44
Speaker 1: And then the next two after that most mostly cover
30:47
Speaker 1: songs because he really wasn't writing all that much.
30:49
Speaker 2: Songs that he had written ten years before, new songs,
30:52
Speaker 2: songs by people on the band. His manager wrote a song.
30:56
Speaker 2: You know, someone probably said, hey, he's in Fleetwood Mac.
30:59
Speaker 2: He's good. He used to be looking anyway, he's a
31:00
Speaker 2: good looking young man. Sure, we're not gonna throw a
31:03
Speaker 2: huge amount amount of money at him or anything. But
31:05
Speaker 2: the irony is that his first solo album atter two
31:07
Speaker 2: years out of Mac is in seventy five, the year
31:09
Speaker 2: that the first MAC album comes out, you know, the
31:11
Speaker 2: first one with Stevie Nix and the one just before
31:15
Speaker 2: Rumors and it sells, you know, only three million or
31:17
Speaker 2: something and then rumors. Yeah, and the last the last
31:21
Speaker 2: couple are they're hard to listen to. He's clearly not
31:24
Speaker 2: the uh, he's not He's not powering this. Someone else
31:27
Speaker 2: is sort of, you know, building a record around so
31:30
Speaker 2: they can get a check.
31:33
Speaker 1: Hey, guys, we'll get back to the show, but first
31:35
Speaker 1: I want to tell you about an exclusive deal for
31:37
Speaker 1: Booked on Rock. Listeners get fifteen percent off any purchase
31:40
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Speaker 1: code Booked on Rock. Also find a link in this
32:00
Speaker 1: episode show notes, or just go to Booked on Rock
32:03
Speaker 1: dot com and click on my Deals. Well, Nick Drake,
32:06
Speaker 1: here's another fascinating story. You're right quote he is the
32:09
Speaker 1: John Keats of contemporary popular music, brilliant, ignored and dead
32:13
Speaker 1: at twenty six, virtually unknown and underappreciated. His songs are
32:17
Speaker 1: more famous now than when he was alive.
32:20
Speaker 2: Yeah, and he wrote about this a bit, you know,
32:22
Speaker 2: a song called fruit Tree, you know, song called Time
32:26
Speaker 2: of No Reply. But you know the thing about Nick was,
32:31
Speaker 2: you know, the standard line is oh, misunderstood genius. The
32:33
Speaker 2: world is cruel, you.
32:34
Speaker 3: Know, writing the story and writing in the ass, you
32:37
Speaker 3: realize Nick had a little bit to do with this.
32:39
Speaker 2: You know, he wouldn't show up for things like this.
32:42
Speaker 2: He'd be like, he wouldn't.
32:43
Speaker 1: Promote, right, He wouldn't do the promotion thing. He wouldn't
32:46
Speaker 1: get out there do interviews.
32:48
Speaker 3: He wouldn't tour. He wouldn't tour because he didn't find
32:50
Speaker 3: it pleasant. I mean, not everybody finds their job pleasant.
32:53
Speaker 3: Sometimes you gotta get out. The Ramones didn't find it
32:55
Speaker 3: pleasant to go to some town with the other three
32:57
Speaker 3: maniaction the band in a frigging van and then show
33:00
Speaker 3: up and there's fourteen people there.
33:02
Speaker 2: But you do it.
33:03
Speaker 3: You make one devote that night and you just go
33:05
Speaker 3: to the next place. Well, you know, I don't want
33:07
Speaker 3: to say privileged, but you know, Nick was a rich
33:09
Speaker 3: kid and he didn't.
33:10
Speaker 2: Want to have to do things that weren't difficult. And
33:13
Speaker 2: it has nothing to do with the music. The music
33:15
Speaker 2: is I mean just brilliant. I mean, Pink Moon is
33:20
Speaker 2: one of those albums that you just have to have
33:22
Speaker 2: if you're going to have a contemporary you know, and
33:24
Speaker 2: the fact that he did it when he was so depressed,
33:26
Speaker 2: I have all the admiration in the world. But again
33:28
Speaker 2: that kind of tension between you know what made his
33:32
Speaker 2: song so great and they're so insular. It's like, you
33:34
Speaker 2: listen to me, you think only Nick and I know this.
33:36
Speaker 2: I've never told anyone this. He really got that poetic thing.
33:39
Speaker 2: But on the other hand, what a voice too. Yeah,
33:42
Speaker 2: and that insular in that isolation though, means that he
33:45
Speaker 2: didn't participate in the worldly stuff you have to do
33:48
Speaker 2: if you want people to hear your stuff. So you know,
33:51
Speaker 2: it's but you're right, Ultimately, he is famous, you know,
33:56
Speaker 2: he's you know, if you're gonna hip, you gotta know
33:58
Speaker 2: who Nick Dick is.
33:59
Speaker 3: So there's to be justified in that. But he just
34:01
Speaker 3: wished the guy had had a happier life. But then
34:03
Speaker 3: if he did we're not listening to Pink Moon. Are
34:06
Speaker 3: those last four five songs that he recorded after that,
34:08
Speaker 3: which are even more heroin, sure, including Black Dog, you know,
34:11
Speaker 3: the one about depression that's like it's like if Robert
34:15
Speaker 3: Johnson had gone to gone to Cambridge.
34:17
Speaker 2: You know, like this is this is what, this is
34:19
Speaker 2: what it would sound like, this is this is as
34:21
Speaker 2: blue as it gets, but without any of the you know,
34:24
Speaker 2: the blues and know.
34:25
Speaker 1: His ending was somewhat Howard Hughes like, is it safe
34:29
Speaker 1: to say he died in November of seventy four an overdose?
34:33
Speaker 2: Absolutely, he said. His mother said at one point.
34:36
Speaker 1: That prescription pills for depression he overdosed on.
34:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, and maybe maybe maybe by mistake, maybe just casualless.
34:44
Speaker 2: But his mother said that he said to her at
34:46
Speaker 2: once that I don't like it here at home, but
34:48
Speaker 2: I can't live anywhere else. So he was unable to
34:52
Speaker 2: take care of himself anymore. Yet he you know, he
34:55
Speaker 2: he was who living with their parents at you know,
34:58
Speaker 2: twenty five years old.
34:59
Speaker 3: He's always you know, his happy, but you're you're supposed
35:00
Speaker 3: to be an adult. His friends were out in the world,
35:02
Speaker 3: having relationships and children and jobs and careers and musicians.
35:07
Speaker 3: And here he is living living, not just living at home,
35:09
Speaker 3: but living in his old bedroom, like the bedroom that
35:11
Speaker 3: he had as a child.
35:12
Speaker 2: I mean, there's got to do your head in a
35:13
Speaker 2: little bit.
35:13
Speaker 1: Sure, sure, you know.
35:15
Speaker 3: And the last time his mother saw him the night
35:19
Speaker 3: they found him. The next day, you know, better get
35:20
Speaker 3: nick up, it's noon and he was dead from the medication.
35:24
Speaker 2: Was that. The last time she saw him was that
35:26
Speaker 2: night she heard him get up. She always got up
35:28
Speaker 2: if he got up, and he'd gotten up because he
35:30
Speaker 2: couldn't sleep, and she said all right, and he said, yeah,
35:33
Speaker 2: I'm just having some corn flakes to help me sleep.
35:35
Speaker 2: So that's the last time she saw him.
35:37
Speaker 1: You know.
35:38
Speaker 3: But here he is more famous than he ever was.
35:40
Speaker 3: So that's the beauty of art too. You know, art
35:42
Speaker 3: doesn't care about our lives. It just matters that the song,
35:45
Speaker 3: the book, the movie, you know. And there's something very
35:48
Speaker 3: consoling about that to a degree.
35:49
Speaker 1: You know, how did his music eventually get out because
35:52
Speaker 1: I remember Pink Moon was in a television commercial Wizard.
35:55
Speaker 3: Yeah, well that was kind of at the beginning. So
35:58
Speaker 3: he dies in seventy four and seventy eight. There's sort
36:00
Speaker 3: of a box set which was kind of relatively rare
36:03
Speaker 3: back then that had his three albums and a few
36:06
Speaker 3: sort of outtakes, and because after Pink Moon he did
36:09
Speaker 3: go back in the studio and record five more songs.
36:12
Speaker 3: Now his health was such that he couldn't play and
36:14
Speaker 3: sing at the same time. He recorded the guitar and
36:17
Speaker 3: then then overdub his voice. But it's some of the
36:19
Speaker 3: most chilling stuff, like I say, black Dog, hang In
36:23
Speaker 3: some other stuff, and then seventy eight there was that
36:27
Speaker 3: and then you know, word of mouth or again, you know,
36:29
Speaker 3: the hipsters started talking about it. But really I think
36:31
Speaker 3: it was that VW ad that used Pink Moon. Which
36:34
Speaker 3: is it, you know, and which is so iron you know,
36:38
Speaker 3: it's a song about impending annihilation Andy and it's like
36:43
Speaker 3: bio vw But it's a pretty song, you know, it's
36:46
Speaker 3: a pretty It's got a great liok.
36:47
Speaker 1: To somebody whoever owned the rights to his music, they
36:50
Speaker 1: were making the decisions that he should have made when
36:53
Speaker 1: he was alive, Like let's.
36:54
Speaker 2: Yeah, no that music, right. I mean, that's really interesting
36:58
Speaker 2: because I don't know because I know now his sister,
37:01
Speaker 2: who was a pretty well known British stage actor and
37:05
Speaker 2: television actor. She's so his parents are dead, her parents
37:08
Speaker 2: are she's in chargement now, and she's meticulous and scrupulous
37:11
Speaker 2: about allying his names. Now.
37:13
Speaker 3: A box set has just come out a couple of
37:15
Speaker 3: months ago on the first record, and she didn't. She
37:18
Speaker 3: made sure there's nothing included on there that isn't that
37:20
Speaker 3: would embarrass him. So I'm thinking that she wasn't the
37:23
Speaker 3: one who made the call about the about the v
37:27
Speaker 3: W add or whatever it was. But you know, why
37:30
Speaker 3: be a snob? And maybe it got some people into
37:34
Speaker 3: the music, and you know.
37:35
Speaker 1: So, yeah, that's good Muddy Waters. He makes the book
37:40
Speaker 1: Where's rock and Roll? If not for Muddy Waters? Talk
37:43
Speaker 1: about his importance.
37:44
Speaker 2: That's why I ended it. Yeah, And like you said that,
37:46
Speaker 2: there are some people in the book.
37:47
Speaker 3: That aren't very well known, but that one obviously everybody
37:50
Speaker 3: knows money worse.
37:50
Speaker 2: I wanted to end it with somebody who had the
37:52
Speaker 2: same kind of value. Is very independent. You know, when
37:56
Speaker 2: he comes to uh, when he comes to Chicago, it's
37:59
Speaker 2: not to play all that blues. There wasn't such a
38:01
Speaker 2: thing really in his world. He's acoustic blues.
38:03
Speaker 3: And then you go play and no one could hear
38:06
Speaker 3: you because everyone's dancing and drinking, so he changes his style,
38:09
Speaker 3: but he does it in his own way. The reason
38:11
Speaker 3: I wanted Muddy last too is because the book's called
38:13
Speaker 3: Dust because the Danny Kermin song. But it's also called
38:15
Speaker 3: dust because this music is over to a great degree.
38:18
Speaker 2: The kids aren't playing it anymore, and Muddy Waters is
38:21
Speaker 2: somebody who was like Muddy Waters to me was the blues.
38:24
Speaker 2: And then when he dies, even before he dies, really
38:28
Speaker 2: that kind of music is over and I felt that way,
38:31
Speaker 2: but I also feel like the end of the book,
38:33
Speaker 2: I also say, Okay, it's over, but you know, prove
38:35
Speaker 2: me wrong. Put some Muddy Waters on and turn it out,
38:37
Speaker 2: because it's not dead if we talk about it or
38:39
Speaker 2: if we listen to it, if we read about it.
38:41
Speaker 2: So yeah, the big world doesn't care. The big world
38:44
Speaker 2: cares about Taylor Swift.
38:45
Speaker 3: But if enough people like us talk about this music
38:48
Speaker 3: and listen to it, you know, it's kind of like
38:52
Speaker 3: a religious cult keeps it going that way. And Muddy
38:55
Speaker 3: So Muddy's essay is really about how the form is over,
39:00
Speaker 3: but maybe you recreated a new form. You know, it
39:03
Speaker 3: goes on. The blues doesn't end. Good music doesn't end,
39:05
Speaker 3: it just eclipses, like Big Star. They just eclipsed and
39:08
Speaker 3: then came back.
39:09
Speaker 1: Well, but I think that's why it's important the job
39:11
Speaker 1: that you do and your fellow authors, to just keep
39:14
Speaker 1: these names out there and remind people of these artists,
39:17
Speaker 1: and as the generations of fans keep coming up, introduce
39:21
Speaker 1: them to this music. Now, he lived long enough to
39:23
Speaker 1: where he did get the credit that he deserved. He
39:26
Speaker 1: passed the nineteen eighty three You also say he recorded
39:29
Speaker 1: what you say is his greatest LP at the age
39:31
Speaker 1: of sixty three.
39:32
Speaker 2: Hard again, How does that? How often does that happens?
39:35
Speaker 2: This someone records?
39:36
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, don't forget Muddy Waters, Mandy singles before
39:39
Speaker 3: he didn't make albums like he did later. But the
39:41
Speaker 3: really great stuff is singles but an album. And how
39:45
Speaker 3: further Irony, Well, who's the instigation Johnny Winner not only
39:48
Speaker 3: white but albino.
39:49
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, tell me about that. Yeah, share with the
39:53
Speaker 1: listeners that that's an interesting story.
39:54
Speaker 2: Johnny Johnny Winter seventies. You know, he was kind of
39:58
Speaker 2: a rock star, so rockstar money back then, so they
40:00
Speaker 2: gave him their his own imprint, which I think is
40:03
Speaker 2: called Blue Sky, sort of like you can you can
40:06
Speaker 2: sign artists. You know, we can't give much money, but
40:08
Speaker 2: they can be released with this major label. And he's like,
40:10
Speaker 2: I know what I want to do. I want to
40:12
Speaker 2: make an album with Muddy, but like they used to do,
40:14
Speaker 2: that sounded dirty and.
40:17
Speaker 3: He recorded not like you know, sixteen tracks and like
40:21
Speaker 3: everybodys singing on one microphone. And so the album has
40:25
Speaker 3: the blues as Muddy Muddy's blues, mostly older songs, a
40:29
Speaker 3: couple okay, new ones, but it's goosed up with this
40:32
Speaker 3: rock and roll spirit you could if you listen to
40:34
Speaker 3: with headphones. It's one of the best things because between
40:37
Speaker 3: songs are after songs, you can hear them laughing but
40:40
Speaker 3: not laughing, and they're kind of like laughing.
40:42
Speaker 2: Like you see this sometimes it's really good musicians. They'll
40:44
Speaker 2: look they'll be in this trance and they're all done
40:47
Speaker 2: and they started look at you our laughs like where
40:48
Speaker 2: were we? How did that happen? Kind of deal. It's
40:50
Speaker 2: almost mystical. And there's one point where and this is
40:53
Speaker 2: where the title of the album comes from, you can
40:55
Speaker 2: hear Muddy say, oh my peep's hard again. It's like
40:58
Speaker 2: I probably got it up again after all the because
41:00
Speaker 2: he played a lot of you know, but you know,
41:03
Speaker 2: go to the club see Muddy Waters south of This
41:05
Speaker 2: is some nasty music. I mean, this is filthy and
41:09
Speaker 2: the best possible way, you know, and it's the whole
41:11
Speaker 2: albu And that version of a managed sport to start
41:14
Speaker 2: things off is just it's uh to me. That is
41:18
Speaker 2: Muddy Waters. And yeah, he's sixty three years old, so
41:21
Speaker 2: that's rare. It doesn't happen very often. Maybe Yates, maybe
41:23
Speaker 2: Shakespeare got better. Most artists don't get better as they
41:26
Speaker 2: get older. And it was so nice that Muddy had
41:29
Speaker 2: that the end of his career, because he died not
41:30
Speaker 2: too long afterwards, you know, so it's nice to have that.
41:35
Speaker 1: Find the bookdown Rock website at bookedown rock dot com.
41:39
Speaker 1: There you can find all the back episodes of the show,
41:42
Speaker 1: the latest episode in video and audio, links to all
41:44
Speaker 1: of the platforms where you can listen to the podcast,
41:47
Speaker 1: plus all the social media platforms were on Blue Sky, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok,
41:52
Speaker 1: and x. Also check out the booked on Rock blog.
41:55
Speaker 1: Find your local independent bookstore, find out all the latest
41:58
Speaker 1: hot rock book releases, and before you go, check out
42:01
Speaker 1: the booked on Rock online store. Pick up some booked
42:04
Speaker 1: on Rock Merch. It's all at booked on rock dot com.
42:08
Speaker 1: Those are just a few of the artists and yeah,
42:11
Speaker 1: there's twelve of them all together. Dust more lives of
42:13
Speaker 1: the poets with guitars out now you can find out
42:15
Speaker 1: wherever books are sold. I should say out now. If
42:18
Speaker 1: this is November the eleventh.
42:19
Speaker 2: Yes, it will be I think, okay, yeah, I think
42:24
Speaker 2: your store should have it.
42:25
Speaker 1: All right, We'll recording this on November third, but it
42:27
Speaker 1: should be up around the time over the release date,
42:30
Speaker 1: So look for it Amazon, all the usual places. At
42:33
Speaker 1: your independent bookstore, ask them to stock a copy there
42:37
Speaker 1: if they don't have one. You can find your nearest
42:38
Speaker 1: independent book store at bookdo on rock dot com and
42:41
Speaker 1: Ray are you online? Do you have a social media presence?
42:44
Speaker 2: Sort of? Sort of? I've made a concession. I do
42:47
Speaker 2: have Instagram and Facebook, but I have a buddy of
42:49
Speaker 2: my runs them, so i'd use them for social I
42:52
Speaker 2: use them for work. So if someone wanted to contact me, sure,
42:55
Speaker 2: my website's the easiest to because I'm kind of any
42:57
Speaker 2: email guys, you can always email the website.
42:59
Speaker 1: There's this Ray rob Okay, Ray Robinson dot com Okay,
43:03
Speaker 1: and the other ones.
43:04
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're they're good.
43:04
Speaker 3: It's just that I just sort of like, like, I
43:06
Speaker 3: got a bunch of launches for this book coming out,
43:08
Speaker 3: so there'll be information about that, but there's not so much like,
43:10
Speaker 3: you know, here, here's what I eat for breakfast or
43:11
Speaker 3: anything like that.
43:12
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, I know, I'm with you too. I use
43:16
Speaker 1: it just really to get the word out about episodes.
43:18
Speaker 2: I'm really and you have to, you know, I.
43:21
Speaker 1: Just don't think people will give two shits about what
43:24
Speaker 1: I'm doing, you know, like.
43:25
Speaker 2: An important thing is the I think the important thing
43:27
Speaker 2: is the people who post it give a shit exactly.
43:31
Speaker 1: And hey, I had a pizza today.
43:35
Speaker 2: Yeah.
43:37
Speaker 1: Oh man, Well Grat's on another great book. So is
43:41
Speaker 1: this the last of the Is this the last?
43:44
Speaker 2: Yeah? Of this? Yeah? I think there are thirteen people
43:47
Speaker 2: in the first one, twelve in this one, so I
43:49
Speaker 2: kind of like the fact they're twenty five. The next book,
43:53
Speaker 2: which is not music, so I won't be talking to
43:55
Speaker 2: you about it, but it's in February. It's called The
43:56
Speaker 2: Right to Be Wrong. It's a book about well that's
43:58
Speaker 2: kind of we're talking about independent thinking in a world
44:00
Speaker 2: of you know, good and bad left, right, I just
44:04
Speaker 2: hate that ship. So there's a book about that.
44:06
Speaker 3: So but actually now, yes, i'll sell you the press
44:10
Speaker 3: least you won't be talking about it.
44:11
Speaker 2: But it's it's a it's a little book too. It's
44:13
Speaker 2: just it's a book that I started writing during COVID
44:16
Speaker 2: because the world was so much us in them and
44:18
Speaker 2: I just don't think that's reality. But the book I'm
44:21
Speaker 2: working on now is a book about Jerry Garcia called
44:23
Speaker 2: American Beauty Jerry Garcia twenty five shows and five LP
44:27
Speaker 2: so kind of like the Dead Book, but doing I
44:29
Speaker 2: think Garcia there's enough there as a solo artist to
44:31
Speaker 2: also discuss that.
44:33
Speaker 1: So yeah, I keep outstanding. So well, you know you're
44:37
Speaker 1: coming on to talk about that one when that's if.
44:39
Speaker 2: We're all still around, Man, if we're all still around.
44:41
Speaker 1: We're all still yeah, exactly. Well, I you know, not
44:44
Speaker 1: not not to put you on spot embarrass you, but
44:46
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean, I've talked to a lot of
44:47
Speaker 1: great writers on this on this podcast. You know you
44:50
Speaker 1: are right at the top. Man. I just I love
44:52
Speaker 1: your style of the way you write. That's so great,
44:54
Speaker 1: And so you could you could write about an artist
44:57
Speaker 1: that I don't know anything about and I'm in.
44:59
Speaker 3: That's a greatest compliment. That's the greatest compliment. Because I
45:02
Speaker 3: had a friend. I have a friend actually my friend
45:04
Speaker 3: who runs the uh there's my Instagram and Facebook, who
45:07
Speaker 3: also proofs my book, proofs my books. And he's not
45:11
Speaker 3: he's not a regular reader. He's a smart guy, he's
45:13
Speaker 3: not a regular reader. And so he read Dust and
45:16
Speaker 3: did the proofs, you know, find typos, and then because
45:18
Speaker 3: the other book's right to be wrong with me on February,
45:20
Speaker 3: he did that one as well, and he said to me, uh,
45:23
Speaker 3: he doesn't offer a lot of them. He just finds.
45:26
Speaker 3: He doesn't offer a lot of critical analysis. But he said,
45:28
Speaker 3: you know what's kind of cool. He's like, you wrote
45:30
Speaker 3: about very different things, but it still sounded like you.
45:32
Speaker 3: I thought, that's that's what every writer wants to hear,
45:34
Speaker 3: Like there's a there's an actual person writing a book
45:36
Speaker 3: and not a an author.
45:38
Speaker 2: You know, it's actual person. And so I appreciate that.
45:40
Speaker 1: I appreciate a lot man the creativity, but it's also
45:43
Speaker 1: sincere and it's from the heart. So that's that's what
45:47
Speaker 1: all right, Ray Robertson, thanks so much, and hey, we'll
45:49
Speaker 1: have it on for that Jerry book. You know you
45:51
Speaker 1: got an open invite for that one.
45:53
Speaker 2: Just just keep our health invite would be and exercise.
45:56
Speaker 2: That's right off the heroin.
45:58
Speaker 1: All right, well, I don't know, try I'll try.
46:02
Speaker 2: Thanks a lot man. M m. That's it. It's in
46:13
Speaker 2: the books.