Читать книгу Everyone Loves You When You're Dead - Neil Strauss - Страница 15

It was the opportunity of a lifetime. I’d just started working at the New York Times, and my editor asked me to interview Robert Plant and Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin. According to their publicist, it would be the pair’s first in-depth interview together since the band broke up fourteen years earlier.

As I timidly entered Plant’s hotel room two weeks later, he lit a stick of White Light Pentacles incense as Page took a seat on the couch next to him, both flaunting leather pants and long billowing manes. I sat across from them and asked my naïve questions about their lives and career, and they responded flippantly but honestly. I knew the story was going to turn out great. But then, forty minutes into the interview, I looked down at my tape deck and noticed I’d accidentally plugged the microphone into the headphone jack, which meant that all I had was forty minutes of blank tape. I reached for the microphone and surreptitiously tried to rectify the problem—and was instantly caught.

ROBERT PLANT: Gosh, what’s that you have on top of the microphone?

Oh, it just had a protective covering, which was scraping off.

JIMMY PAGE: Microphones have protective coverings these days?

PLANT: Have you been getting any of this?

I think it’s fine.

PAGE: Where were we?

PLANT: God knows. It doesn’t really matter, because it’s gone.

We were talking about, if John Bonham hadn’t died, would you have continued making music as Led Zeppelin into the eighties?

PLANT: I don’t know. Was when John died the right time to stop? Maybe 1980 was already a bit late to stop. Maybe we should have stopped before.

PAGE: But anyway, we couldn’t have carried on without John. We had been working as a four-piece in such an integral, combined unit for so long that to get somebody in to learn those areas of improvisation just wouldn’t have been honest to any of us, and certainly not to his name.

PLANT: That’s where the Who went wrong, really. And they went wrong with a hell of a thump, because they got a drummer who was so inanimate.

There have been a lot of books written about your backstage antics, but is there one story that’s your favorite?

PLANT: Oh, who knows? You can’t be specific about anything so far back. You should ask maybe some of the cast who aren’t in this room. Maybe some of the housewives from Des Moines. Why don’t you go to Schenectady and see if you can find the girl who stood by the Coke machine when [Jeff] Beck stuck his Telecaster through it?²³ I mean, there’s loads of people who’ve got stories to tell just waiting to be on the Letterman show.

Does it bother you that your crew has divulged so many of these stories?

PLANT: I don’t think we really ever saw the crew. In fact, I don’t even know whether we had one. Who knows? Maybe whatever was in those books was written about somebody else completely. If you’re not there to refute it, it just rolls on and becomes some kind of legend, and I don’t know whether that’s good or bad.

PAGE: (Groans.)

PLANT: I really spent a lot of time personally, while Jimmy was doing all this damage, reading books on Celtic literature and the Welsh Triads. I was the youngest guy in the group. I was a Catholic.

PAGE: Any other excuse?

PLANT: My arms are folded because I’m insecure.

I’m sure a lot of the carnage started just due to the newness of the situation of being on the road.

PLANT: The carnage?

PAGE: Rape and pillage?

PLANT: No, it started, I think, in Norway and Sweden in about the year 620. The only thing we did was we didn’t bring the same hats. And also you got really shitty record deals in 600 AD.

PAGE: That’s why there were horns on their hats then.

PLANT: That’s right. Well, they never got any fucking royalties. But I think the thing is that Ahmet Ertegun²⁴ was still telling lies back then. As the horde came ashore in Northumbria, cutting the throats of the holy men of the cloth, Ahmet was going, “I’m going to give you twelve percent.” (Refills his tea.) You want a cup of tea?

I’m good.

PLANT: So who have you interviewed lately that made you go, “Wow!”

Most recently, it was probably Carl Perkins. He’s in his sixties and the coolest guy I’ve ever met. He doesn’t even have to try.

PLANT: I think that’s another thing you learn as you get older. Sometimes people try so fucking hard to be somebody else in an attempt to be cool and be loved. But there’s not an original shape for any of us, really. Not you as a journalist nor me as a singer nor him as a guitar player.

Did you ever meet Elvis?

PLANT: We met Elvis in LA. I suppose we were with him for about three hours, weren’t we?

PAGE: Something like that.

PLANT: We were there longer than anybody had been known to in living history. He wanted to know who these people were who sold more tickets than he did quicker. He’d met Elton John and he thought all English people were like him, so we got around it. We had a good time, didn’t we?

PAGE: He was very funny.

PLANT: He was very sharp, too. Forget the legends and all that crap. He was as bright as you like. Although I loathed that period when he came out of the army. I felt he’d betrayed us, like when your heroes get old and you don’t like them anymore because they’re not hip.

Is there anyone you’ve ever been scared to meet?

PLANT: Jerry Lee Lewis, and maybe—what’s that bloke that sings in Guns N’ Roses?

PAGE: (Laughs.)

There’s a knock at the door.

PLANT: Who’s that at the door? Is it the fifty-year-old middle-aged hooker I ordered?

[Continued . . .]

After much hemming, hawing, and postponing, Jerry Lee Lewis—not just one of the originators of rock and roll but perhaps its first real punk—agreed to get on the phone just before traveling to New York for his first show there in a decade. It was an odd interview, however, either because he was wary of the press (which had bashed him after his 1957 marriage to his thirteen-year-old cousin, the deaths of two of his wives and two children, and his arrest for being drunk and brandishing a pistol outside Graceland) or because he had a hearing problem—or, most likely, for both reasons.

When I read your interviews, you seem to talk as if rock and Christianity are opposed to each other. Do you feel that way?

JERRY LEE LEWIS: I don’t quite understand what you mean.

Often, you talk about rock as if it’s a darker side to your persona.

LEWIS: Oh yeah, well I understand where you’re coming from. That still remains to be seen. I don’t want to lead kids in the wrong direction. I’m just trying to get it straightened out the best way I can. I believe that God will show me the way when the time is right. If he don’t, I’m a loser. And I don’t like losing.

Did you ever think of becoming a minister like Al Green or Little Richard?

LEWIS: Yes, I have. I think about it quite often.

And what do you think about it?

LEWIS: Well, I think that I either should do it or shut up about it.

So I guess you’re shutting up about it?

LEWIS: It’s something you don’t play around with. If I go in that direction, I’ll stay in that direction.

When you hear modern rock bands, do you feel you have a connection to the music?

LEWIS: These kids and these people are so hungry for the truth.

But when you listen to it, do you still hear your sound in it or do you feel like it’s gone off on its own tangent?

LEWIS: I started it. You know, it was Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, Little Richard. We kinda kicked it off. And I would imagine we’d be held responsible for how it sounds today.

Did your Killer! book come out in the United States?

LEWIS: I think God gives us enough sense to work our own problems out (laughs).

Did your Killer! book come out in the United States?

LEWIS: Pardon?

You did an autobiography, right?

LEWIS: Yeah.

Did that come out in the United States?

LEWIS: It was written in Ireland. I went over to Ireland. The biography, is that what you’re talking about? It’s a good book and it will be released in the United States here in the next couple of months.

What publisher?

LEWIS: It’s the only book that’s the truth. I finally got the truth down for the first time. All these other books just distorted everything and wrote things that ain’t even true at all. Not even true at all.

Do you know who published it?

LEWIS: No, I really don’t. People in England.

The so-called scandal that people say hurt your career when you announced your marriage in England . . .

LEWIS: Yeah.

Do you think that same thing would hurt a musician’s career today?

LEWIS: No. Well, it’s just one of those things. I really don’t know how to explain that. That would be hard to explain. It did happen.

I don’t know if you’ve heard of R. Kelly—the big R&B star. He married his fifteen-year-old protégée and his career keeps going fine.

LEWIS: Yeah, well, I’ll tell ya. It would be . . . Excuse me, my wife’s trying to get me off the phone. Come to the show. We’ll finish the discussion then. They’re coming in the door on me. Would you like to say a word to her?²⁵

Sure.

LEWIS: Well, it was nice talking with ya, and I’ll turn you over to her. God bless ya! See you in New York.

KERRIE LEWIS: Hello?

So are you coming to New York with Jerry?

KERRIE: Oh yeah, I’ll be there. What did you ask? He’s making faces and things. I’m fixing to knock him out. That’s what I’m fixing to do. (To Jerry: ) You’re not bothering me. Sit down! . . . I’m not going over there. . . . Okay, I love you too. I’m coming to the house in a minute. . . . I’m still mad at you, and you’re gonna get it. (To me:) Sorry.

Are there any new things going on in Jerry Lee’s career that I should mention in the article?

KERRIE: Well, there’s hundreds of things. But do y’all really write about good things?

We write about good things.

KERRIE: Nobody cares that I’m sixty years old, that I work out on a HealthRider every day, that I’m the best I’ve ever been. But, you know, they taped a video at the Ryman [Auditorium] in Nashville where he did four encores and he probably moved from his head to his toes every limb and muscle, so they knew he didn’t have arthritis—or whatever the disease is with the hands or the shaking. He was perfect! The kids are taking music lessons. We got Lee learning on his daddy’s piano and Derek learning on a James Burton signature guitar, so the kids are rolling right along.

I think at this point it would be more of a surprise to read all these good things.

KERRIE: Jerry, number one, does not grant interviews. Okay, he doesn’t do them. Unless they want to pay him some stupid ridiculous amount of money. Only because he says they all start the same: “You were born in 1930.²⁶ You started playing piano at nine. Your daddy sold thirty-nine dozen eggs to get you to Memphis. Uh-huh. And they bought you a piano by mortgaging the house. Uh-huh. They lost their house so you could keep the piano. Uh-huh.” He’s basically kind of gotten an interview written. It’s about a hundred pages. “Here it is. You write it. It’s the only thing you’re gonna ask me. You’re not gonna ask me anything good and if you do, you’re not gonna print it.” So he just doesn’t do them.

The fans probably wonder what he’s been doing now anyway. They know the past.

KERRIE: Exactly. His manager, Jerry Schilling, you can thank for this. He said, “It’s the New York Times. They’ve been around for a hundred years.” Jerry basically says to me, “You know, I would do interviews every day all day long if people would treat me nice and write good things rather than going back to when my son died or a wife OD’d or I married my third cousin.” I mean, that was thirty years ago. Here he is with a family of twelve years, a brand new career, not a thing wrong with his health. He’s got life insurance for the first time in his career. He’s paid off his debt to the IRS. I mean, you know, things are going his way more than you could possibly ever imagine.

I’m glad I talked to you to get all this.

KERRIE: Jerry probably wouldn’t even offer it. He says, “Well, they don’t want to know anyway. They should be asking me if they want to know.”

Jerry Lee and Kerrie Lewis divorced in 2005. According to the Memphis Commercial Appeal newspaper, he accused her of sleeping with a bodyguard and a Pentecostal minister, and she accused him of being an abusive “washed-up rock and roll singer who was past his prime.”

Every time I’ve interviewed Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, he’s grown a little more coherent. This, heartbreakingly, was him at his best. It took place in Chicago, where the notoriously reclusive Wilson had moved with his wife of three years, Melinda, in order to record a new album, continue recovering from his lost years of drug abuse and mental illness, and escape the control of his former therapist, Eugene Landy. The previous day, Wilson had performed a show billed as the first solo concert of his life.

Are you used to working as hard as you did yesterday?

BRIAN WILSON: Yeah, I was a little bit shook up.

MELINDA WILSON: No. You’re not used to it.

BRIAN: I mean, what am I talking about? It was pretty scary.

Were you happy with the new documentary about you?

BRIAN: Yeah. I thought once in a while my face will have a twist of emotional pain coming out of it, but not too obvious. It’s not like I’m really suffering.

MELINDA: But that was still partially a painful time. It was getting out of those really horrible [Eugene Landy] years. It was just on the tail end of that, you know.

BRIAN: Actually—

MELINDA: I think sometimes it’s easier to talk about it once you’ve been through it and you see the light at the end of the tunnel. But when you’re going through it, it’s kind of rough.

What do you attribute your recent productivity to?

BRIAN: I long to make music. I love music. That’s what it really is. I love music (laughs). I like making it, too. I like making music.

MELINDA: With Brian, it’s totally in his soul. It’s part of his existence.

Several people told me they communicate best with you not in speech but musically. Why do you think that is?

BRIAN: I think I put it off. I put off the vibration, and people can pick it up.

MELINDA: And basically—don’t you think, too, Bri?—in life he’s kind of shy. With music, he can write a song and get the point across and not have to deal with the actual conversation.

BRIAN: Yeah, she’s right, you know. She knows me.

[Continued . . .]

When people watch a film, questions often come to mind that they’d be curious to ask the director if given the opportunity. After watching director Judd Apatow’s Funny People, which stars his wife, Leslie Mann, and his best friend, Adam Sandler, as lovers, that opportunity arose.

What was it like directing your wife in a sex scene with your best friend?

JUDD APATOW: You know, oddly enough, I was giddy that whole afternoon. I don’t know why, but it just cracked me up.

So it didn’t feel weird to watch that?

APATOW: It didn’t feel weird at all. I loved the idea that their sex went straight to cunnilingus.

Hmm.

APATOW: Really, I found it funny. It made me laugh. I’ve watched Leslie have kissing scenes with other people where I wanted to kill myself or vomit. But maybe I have so much affection for both of them that I was happy to watch them play a really intimate, funny scene.

I guess if it was awkward for anybody, it would be Adam.

APATOW: They were both okay, mainly because I was amused. If you notice, though, I didn’t write a full ten-minute scene of lovemaking. And (smiles) I didn’t do a ton of takes.

Jimmy Page answered the door. Standing there was the band’s publicist, who had been walking the hallway for the last hour to break in Page’s new shoes for him. Page then sent him on his next mission: to buy CDs of new bands.

JIMMY PAGE: We want to stay in touch with the underground, but we don’t have time to go to record stores.

ROBERT PLANT: I don’t know. I don’t trust them to buy music for me. These record labels are useless. If I want to have Technicolor sex in an underground club, they won’t know where to take me.

So how has your playing changed since you last performed with Robert?

PAGE: I used chords in the past and tunings, but now I just put my fingers anywhere. So whatever technique I used to have, I try to destroy. The more atonal it is, the better.

What’s a good example of that?

PAGE: The triple-neck guitar? That’s a mandolin, a twelve-string, and a six-string. But I need two pairs of arms for it really. Now I have to make a decision as to what neck to play at what point in time. It gets rather confusing for an old man.

PLANT: Making decisions and playing music is tough, especially when you’ve got a very small pyramid descending over you as you’re playing. Get it?²⁷ I think you can put it down to a sense of humor, actually, the whole thing.

The whole thing?

PLANT: The triple neck! You should have a rubber hand come up and start playing it.

PAGE: If I get enough necks, I can put in a wheel and fit a rim around it, and literally just hold onto it and do cartwheels down the stage.

PLANT: In Emerson, Lake & Palmer—or was it Tower of Power?—they used to spin the drummer. The drummer used to go in a gyroscope and be spun around during his solo. That was the carefree seventies. Not a trick in sight.

Out of curiosity, how do you feel about “Stairway to Heaven” becoming this masterpiece that every aspiring rock guitarist must learn?

PLANT: I think we’re in a disposable world, really, and “Stairway to Heaven” is one of the things that hasn’t quite been thrown away yet. But it’s been mistreated. I think all radio stations should be asked not to play it for ten years, just to leave it alone for a bit so we can tell whether it’s any good or not.

PAGE (laughing): Maybe they don’t play it anymore, I don’t know.

PLANT: I can’t believe we wrote so many words in that song.

I found it strange that you were an opening act for Lenny Kravitz.

PLANT: I will always do stuff like that. Opening for Lenny Kravitz was a huge facetious show of anti-ego because he was using so many shapes of ours anyway.

PAGE: Shapes is a nice way of putting it.

PLANT: And he knew that! And I knew that. And everybody in the crew, the band, and the audience knew that. He used to sit enthralled if I wanted to tell him a tale. Or he’d ask if I could get him a pair of my Landlubbers, which were these old jeans with the slit pockets and flares. He’s playing the music he really likes to play and he does a great job, too, you know, but the originality is a little questionable.

Do you mind if I refer to my list of questions?

PLANT: You’ve been doing very well so far without them.

I’ve been using them, but I just don’t like to ask random questions out of context.

PLANT: When they’re out of context, are you embarrassed by them?

Well, the interviews are better when they’re more conversational. But to be perfectly honest, I’m worried that the first half of the interview didn’t record, so I want to make sure I didn’t miss anything.

PLANT: I knew it!

[Continued . . .]

During a weekend with Lenny Kravitz in New Orleans for a Rolling Stone cover story, he seemed to constantly evade questions about his musical influences. Finally, as we sat in his living room after a concert at the House of Blues by the funk band Zapp, I decided to try one more time.

This might piss you off, but . . .

LENNY KRAVITZ: Go for it.

That song “Rock and Roll Is Dead” begins with this riff that sounds exactly like Led Zeppelin’s “Living Loving Maid (She’s Just a Woman).”

KRAVITZ: You mean the first line in the song?

No, the guitar part and then that Robert Plant yowl you do. I was wondering whether you were making a joke by singing, “Rock and roll is dead,” in a song based on a Led Zeppelin riff that everybody still steals.

KRAVITZ: No, it’s just a riff that I came up with.

You came up with it on your own?

KRAVITZ: Yeah. I mean, you know.

I suppose people are always thinking your riffs came from elsewhere.

KRAVITZ: That’s all right. How many riffs are there? Every riff you could say sounds like something else.

I suppose, but some riffs sound more like past riffs than others.

KRAVITZ: It’s just the blues, really.

So you don’t think the introduction to that song sounds anything like “Living Loving Maid”?

KRAVITZ: No. I mean, I think it has a Zeppelin-type quality. Oh, I don’t know. Let’s not talk about it.

With over nineteen million copies sold, Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours ranks among the top ten best-selling albums of all time. Yet despite this success, drummer Mick Fleetwood, the band’s de facto leader since 1967, not only struggled with the usual drug and alcohol excesses, but also ended up declaring personal bankruptcy. Some thirty years after forming the band, however, he finally seemed to be getting his act together.

I heard that you were booked to play the Woodstock anniversary concert, which is strange because you weren’t at the first one, were you?

MICK FLEETWOOD: The original Woodstock we turned down years and years ago. We didn’t even know what it was. We were doing something in Detroit or somewhere. Of course, it turned out to be a wildly historic event that we didn’t take part in. One often wonders what would have happened to the early incarnation of Fleetwood Mac had we done that. We might have been the new Led Zeppelin, who knows?²⁸

So what made you decide to do the new one?

FLEETWOOD: Quite honestly, they were prepared to pay us very handsomely for doing it.

How does it feel to be touring sober?

FLEETWOOD: It’s a whole new ball game. I’m clean and sober and enjoying life. I have a lot more energy. I would have still been up in the old days. I would have been raging. I would have been busy faking my way through this interview, praying that I wasn’t going to start stuttering.

What do you think encouraged your excesses in the first place?

FLEETWOOD: I think touring is a perfect surrounding for this. What happens in any performance situation is that you get very professional at monitoring yourself, and you’re able for the most part to perform very adequately under the influence.

But after the show, that’s when it starts. Because you got such a high off the show, plus you’re high anyhow. So where do you go from there? You don’t want to go down, so that’s when you start your socializing. You go to the bar and you have a hotel suite, so you invite people back to the room. And you get your women in there, and wouldn’t it be fun to do this or that? Before you know it, you’re looking at eight in the morning and you’re supposed to be getting on a plane and going to the next show and you feel like shit.

So what was the low point that made you realize you needed help?

FLEETWOOD: I took my abuse to the bottom of the ladder. I was in bad, bad shape two and a half years ago, and not many people knew it because I was able to function. People said, “Well, Mick’s okay. He drinks and he does a certain amount of cocaine, but he’s not that bad.”

The fact of the matter is that it was that bad, and no one knew it. I would have to go walk on a stage or do an interview, and I’d literally be dying inside, sweating and twitching. So I bottomed out and simply said, “I’ve had enough. I’m forty-five years old, end of that chapter.” And it’s been that way ever since, and with no inkling to relapse.

Does it feel strange to be touring without [singer and keyboardist] Christine McVie?

FLEETWOOD: After the amount of time we’ve all been doing this, she’s earned the right to do what she wants to do. And she doesn’t want to leave the band, but she doesn’t want to go on the road. When we first looked at it, it was a little scary and disappointing. But Brian Wilson does a similar sort of thing with the Beach Boys.

How much of your past do you remember? Are there periods that are clear and periods that are darker?

BRIAN WILSON: My darkest memories are from Malibu. I was in a program, a doctor’s program.

MELINDA WILSON: Honey, that’s something we don’t need to go into. And I’ll tell you why: We’ve got a lot of legal issues.

BRIAN: Forget it. Skip the question and go to another question.

MELINDA: Just skip the Landy time, Brian.

BRIAN: Okay.

Are there other parts of your background you remember very well?

BRIAN: When the Beach Boys and I used to record in my house in Bel Air, that was a good vibe. I had a good time then.

MELINDA: I’m curious, what do you mean by dark periods or cloudy periods?

Of memory.

MELINDA: You mean because of the drug thing? Why not address it? Yeah, Brian did drugs, but I don’t think he did anywhere near the amount of drugs that people think he did. We know people in the music industry who did far more than he ever did. The parts that you’re talking about are probably the medical problems that he had instead of drug or alcohol problems.

BRIAN: Yeah, drug-related problems. Yeah, I think she’s right. Yeah.

MELINDA (sighing): But people kind of get all that mixed together.

Everybody experiments. Especially in LA.

BRIAN: Do you live in LA?

I just moved out there—to West Hollywood.

BRIAN: What street do you live on in West Hollywood?

I actually live off Gardner.

BRIAN: You live on Gardner. What address?

Right around Beverly.

BRIAN: I lived down toward Santa Monica. I’ll be darned. I used to live on that same street. In an apartment?

A Spanish-style apartment.

MELINDA: Knowing him, I can’t even imagine him living there. I can’t imagine him in that Hollywood scene.

BRIAN: What’s your address?

It’s 366 North Sierra Bonita, actually.

BRIAN: I was on 1047 North Gardner. Near—not Clinton, Santa Monica.

It’s amazing you remember that. That was over thirty years ago.

MELINDA: See, now do you think he remembers the past? We’ve had so many lawsuits, and he’s constantly going through depositions and these attorneys come in thinking he probably won’t remember anything, and he just blows them away. What was your batting average in high school, Brian?

BRIAN: About .169.

MELINDA: How do you remember some of that stuff? It’s amazing.

[ Continued . . .]

A marriage between two people is difficult enough, but a band, where four or five people are in a relationship, can be a minefield of ego, miscommunication, resentment, and control issues—especially when the artistic, financial, and personal stakes are so high. Though time supposedly heals all wounds, in the case of the Who, that didn’t seem to be the case when singer Roger Daltrey, unable to get a Who reunion going, tried another approach—and paid the price for it.

In a rehearsal studio a week before his sold-out Daltrey Sings Townshend concerts at Carnegie Hall, Daltrey had put together a sixty-five-piece orchestra from Juilliard and a hundred-person crew to help him pay tribute to the songs he’d sung by Who guitarist and songwriter Pete Townshend. But his tributee didn’t appear to be as honored and grateful as he’d hoped. Shaking his curly blond hair in disbelief, Daltrey complained about Townshend to orchestra conductor Michael Kamen.

ROGER DALTREY: Has Pete decided what he’s doing yet? I think he may be a very big down point in the show.

MICHAEL KAMEN: He’s giving me another song called “The Shout.” Do you know that song?

DALTREY: What do you mean he’s decided to perform “The Shout”? I don’t even know that song. I just think that to do something that obscure at that point in the show is suicide.

KAMEN: I tried very hard to get him to do something else.

DALTREY: I should show you the letter he wrote: “I’ll do anything you want.” He doesn’t even want to play with the orchestra now. He changes his mind every day.

KAMEN: It’ll be all right on the night of the show.

DALTREY: Yeah, I know, but you just don’t do that to friends, do you? He’s mad, isn’t he? The man’s obscene. I’m really up to here in it. (Flushed, Daltrey walks with his manager to a dressing room, where there’s a couch with a large white sheet over it, and says to him:) Was she that bad you had to put a sheet over her?

He sits on the sheet.

So what made you decide to do this tribute?

DALTREY: Quite simply, I wanted to do it for my fiftieth birthday. I know this is going to sound clichéd, but it is the truth: I was the guy who sang, “I hope I die before I get old.” And I’ve survived, much to my surprise—with a lot of luck, too, I should add. I wanted to celebrate my fiftieth birthday in a grand way with music, because without rock and roll in particular, I would have been a factory worker. I was an uneducated yob. Still am in some ways.

Was it hard to get Pete to agree to do the show?

DALTREY: Initially, no (laughs heartily). He’s still changing his mind as usual. But Pete’s Pete and he’ll never change.

How do you feel now when you perform material from over thirty years ago?

DALTREY: I can’t sing the early songs like “Pictures of Lily” and “I Can’t Explain.” I mean, I can sing them, but I can’t get the sound right. There was something about the way I used to sing them because I was squeezing myself into them—putting a suit on if you like—that I can’t re-create now. I’ve worn the suit for too long.

Do you find it funny to be paying tribute to someone who has frustrated you in so many ways on this project?

DALTREY: I used to get incredibly angry because I didn’t know you can’t out-articulate Pete. Pete by his own admission is a compulsive liar, and a lot of those lies have been aimed at me in the past and they still are. But to answer those lies would be just joining the same camp. I try to do it sarcastically sometimes, but I try not to be bitchy because I don’t feel bitchy about it. I get incredibly angry sometimes because it makes me feel like everybody . . . But take Pete’s interviews and look at what he says about everybody, because he changes his mind so many times it really is like Peter and the Wolf.²⁹ Unfortunately, that’s where our relationship is at the moment. I don’t know where I stand (laughs). I think that’s being really honest.

Are you planning to do anything for the thirtieth anniversary of the Who this year?

DALTREY: I refer all Who questions now to Pete.

[Continued . . .]

Oasis guitarist and songwriter Noel Gallagher sat in a hotel bar in Manhattan, wearing a loud paisley shirt and drinking a beer. From a side door, his manager appeared. “I just got off the phone from England,” he announced. “Your album’s sold more in one week than Blur’s did in a month.”

“Pigs!” Noel yelled triumphantly, pumping his fist into the air.

You guys are the top British band right now. If you were playing back in the sixties, do you think you could compete with the Beatles?

NOEL GALLAGHER: In the sixties? What year is it now, 1995? If it was 1965, and we’d just put out our second album, we’d be absolutely the pop kings of the world. It would’ve been the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Oasis, and then the Who. No one else. I firmly believe that. If we were out in 1975, it would have been the Sex Pistols and Oasis. And if it were 1985, it would have been the Smiths and Oasis. I feel we could chance it in any decade. I could say to any band member from any era, “Pick your best song. Give me the best song you think you’ve written, and I’ll pick mine.” And I think the best of ours would be above the best of theirs.

[Continued . . .]

In which Pete Townshend very thoughtfully undermines the fiftieth birthday celebration Roger Daltrey has been working so hard on . . .

What made you decide to take part in Roger Daltrey’s show, since you had the option of saying no?

PETE TOWNSHEND: Do you think so?

I would think so. Maybe I’m wrong.

TOWNSHEND: Maybe you’re wrong.

When I asked Roger about a Who reunion, he said, “Ask Pete.” So do you have the power to just snap your fingers and make that happen?

TOWNSHEND: I really don’t think that’s accurate. I think it’s not about when to perform, it’s about the need to perform. I don’t think people expose themselves to all the rigors of performing for fun. They do it because they really, really have a need to do that. And I just feel that if the Who thing needs to happen, it will happen. And if it doesn’t, it doesn’t.

That’s probably the attitude that perplexes Roger.

TOWNSHEND: I think Roger likes to think this is all about my intransigence, but I don’t think that’s right. I just won’t initiate anything and I won’t say yes to anything without thinking about it very, very hard. I’ve always been very conservative in that respect.

That makes sense, but when everyone else wants to play and you don’t—

TOWNSHEND: I did for many, many years honor the Who democracy. We would sit around and vote before deciding to do something, and I went along with that. But in the end, I started to lobby the other members of the band to get the kind of results that I wanted. So I effectively took the Who off the road between ’75 and ’76 because I just felt that I had had enough and Moon seemed to have had enough, even though he didn’t know he’d had enough.³⁰ And eventually when I left the group, one of the senses of relief I had was not so much that I didn’t have to work with the guys in the band again, but I didn’t have to lobby them all the time and fight the democratic functioning of a group.

But what’s the point of having a democracy if you can’t accept the majority decision?

TOWNSHEND: That’s one of the things that makes all groups time limited: Democracy itself requires a change of government every now and again. And what happens in groups is that you end up with many dictatorships, which are not very creative. And if not dictatorships, terrible collusive relationships in which everybody does what everybody else wants in order to get a quiet life. It just doesn’t work for the creative life at all, sadly. And it does mean that we’re all very nostalgic for those early days of relationships when it did seem to work.

I suppose it’s like a marriage where people grow apart.

TOWNSHEND: And we lament that. But it’s like saying, “What a pity George Burns and Gracie Allen had to die at different times. They should have just lived forever.” And I think that’s what I feel about the future of the Who: It is just an attendance to its history. That’s it. People talk about what we can do in the future, and all that we can do in the future is look back.

That’s a good answer.

TOWNSHEND: It’s not an answer Roger would accept because . . . I shouldn’t really speak for him, but I think that he has a dream or a vision that he could do it again. He could get me out of bed again. He thinks this is about me lying in bed (laughs). But, you know, I’m not lying in bed.

So he got you to do this birthday thing instead?

TOWNSHEND: Looking back at the Who’s career, as wonderful as I’m sure this concert is going to be, all it’s really gonna do is make us remember, those of us that were there, the better concerts that we did.

When was the last time you actually sang with an orchestra?

TOWNSHEND: In public, I don’t know. I think the last time I attempted to do it was an orchestral version of Tommy where I was the narrator. I hated it. Absolutely hated it. I got drunk, and about halfway through I stopped and walked off.

What made you hate it so much?

TOWNSHEND: It just seemed like I’d spent my whole life trying to evolve rock and roll—in a way, advance it within its own terms—and somehow it was being co-opted and swamped by a much greater tradition, which was the tradition of the orchestra, classical music, and traditional opera. We had our own version of pomp and circumstance, and that was smashing a few guitars.

How did the band react when you first decided to start writing songs instead of doing covers?

TOWNSHEND: Well it was actually a reaction of relief. We went to Fontana [Records] with a very, very good version of a Slim Harpo song called “Got Love if You Want It” and a really good Bo Diddley song called “Here ’Tis,” both of which I think would have been ballroom hits for the R&B crowd. And we were told that they wouldn’t do. We had to have original material. This was kind of the Beatles fad era when everybody was expected to write their own material.

I’d written a couple of fairly sophomoric songs for the band to play really just for fun, and everybody was very encouraging about that, Roger included. But by the time it was released a bit later, Roger really felt that his power base in the band was being threatened somewhat by me writing, so we co-wrote “Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere” together. And he remembers contributing quite a lot and I remember him contributing very little. But we did it together in a sense to find out whether we could co-write, and I actually felt that we couldn’t. So I just stuck to my guns and proceeded to be the writer and the power base did shift.

What are some of the qualities you liked about Roger back then?

TOWNSHEND: When I look back to the very early years, a lot of the things that I used to regard as Roger’s negative points, I now view them in a kind of very positive way. Like he used to be quite dominating and threatening. I used to drink a bottle of whiskey and smoke forty joints at night listening to Jimmy Reed, and if he hadn’t come around and gotten me out of bed, I wouldn’t have done a gig or done anything. I think that in the early days, we needed that kind of discipline. He was a working man. He used to get up at 6:30 in the morning and go and do a job every day, and then at the end of the day, he’d come around and pick me up, pick Keith up, pick John [Entwistle, bassist] up and take us to the show.

When I talked to Roger, he said, “I don’t know where I stand with Pete,” which seemed like a strange comment.

TOWNSHEND: You know, I just hope nobody knows where they stand with me. That’s the way I like it.

Undiscouraged, Daltrey toured later that year playing Who songs with Simon Townshend—Pete’s brother—on guitar instead. After two more years, Pete Townshend relented and began touring with Daltrey again, eventually releasing the first new Who studio album in twenty-four years.

I asked your brother this same question: If your band was playing in the sixties, do you think you could compete with the Beatles?

LIAM GALLAGHER: I think we’d be the Beatles.

Then what would the Beatles be?

GALLAGHER: They’d be the Beatles, too. And if the Beatles were here now, they’d be Oasis.

[Continued . . .]

In the Los Angeles studio of producer Don Was, Ringo Starr didn’t sit down for an interview; he braced himself for one. Though he was affable and open, he also seemed tense, like a dog expecting at any minute to get hit by a stick. That stick is the Beatles. Everywhere Starr had gone that day, people treated him more like a museum piece in a Beatles exhibit than like a person. Modest by nature, he tended to brush off the attention and avoid the word Beatles, referring to the group simply as “we” whenever possible.

Add to this Starr’s desire to be taken as seriously as John Lennon but his inability to articulate and conceptualize as well, and you have an interview that, at every turn, grew increasingly awkward—especially when Starr was asked about his habit of flashing peace signs on both hands and saying, “Peace and love,” repeatedly.

What made you start using the “peace and love” catchphrase you always say?

RINGO STARR: Every record has some peace and love song on it.

I’m talking more about the way you say it.

STARR: Yeah, I say, “Peace and love. Hey, peace and love.” Well, I think it certainly came from the sixties and, you know, we³¹ were peace and love. You’ll find photos of us and it just became more and more, and I had this dream that one day everyone on the planet will go, “Peace and love,” and there will be a psychic shift.

For my birthday last year in Chicago, I had the twelve noon peace-and-love second. I told people, “Just stop wherever you are at noon and say, ‘Peace and love.’ ” And, you know, that’s a great vibe to put out. Really.

Do you know what a meme is? It’s an idea that spreads virally. Is that the point?

STARR: Well, I didn’t invent it, but I’m trying to spread it, like Maharishi and TM [transcendental meditation]. But I’ve been put down so badly for peace and loving. (Harshly:) “Oh, he’s peace and loving, you know what I mean.” Hey, I’m only saying “peace and love.” What’s there to be angry about?

You’ve gotten shit for it?

STARR: Yeah! People are like, “That’s all he does now.”

Well, you do say it a lot.

STARR: Yeah, some people can’t take it.

It’s better than saying “war and hate” all the time.

STARR: There’s a lot of that out there. And we have a track about that. Let’s get back to the record.

Okay. The last thing I was going to ask about, and this is such an asshole journalist question . . .

STARR: I hope you write it like that (laughs).

I will, because I wouldn’t know how to answer it. But what is love and how does one attain it?

STARR: Well, for me, love is to try and be kind and understanding. I mean, I am loved by many people and I love many people, but, you know . . .

In the case of fans, they say love, but they probably mean respect.32

STARR: Well, you cannot help but respect someone if you love them. But you can’t say, “Oh, there—that’s what it is.” It’s an emotion. It’s a feeling. It’s a state of being. Not a state of mind, because I don’t know about you, but there’s many states in my mind (laughs).

It’s easy for people to talk about love, but when it’s so vague like that, I think it’s hard for people to practice it because they don’t have the tools or know how to let go of ego and get there.

STARR: I think we all have the tools. I’d like to say I’ve looked at peace and love since I was born, but that’s not true. However, I’ve become more conscious of it and it’s become more and more part of my life. My grandchildren, as soon as they see me, they go, “Peace and love,” you know what I mean. It’s how they are.

Okay, let’s get back to the music. Your song “Peace Dream” has a lot of similarities to [John Lennon’s] “Imagine.” Was that something you were thinking consciously?

STARR: Well, I brought John into it, is that what you’re talking about? I brought John into it because, you know, you always try as a songwriter to express a moment, and I can always talk about John, Paul, and George. And just like John Lennon said in Amsterdam from his bed, and that was the first time he did that peace thing, so he was trying to move peace and love along, too. So it was a peace dream, you know. It was a natural thing to do. It would have been awkward if you’d have done it, you know what I’m saying. But it was easier for me because I knew the man and, you know, I did know that moment that he and Yoko were in Amsterdam.

And then you had Paul McCartney play bass on it?

STARR: Well, he was in for the Grammys, and we always hook up if we’re around. Of course I had to play him the track because of the John Lennon line, and he said “fine” and so he played bass on that.

When you say you had to play it for him, why is that?

STARR: Well, because it says “John.” Let’s not be silly.

You mention a lot of other people by name on the album that you probably didn’t check with anyone about.

STARR: I mean, you know, John was in the band, Paul and I were in the band. I just didn’t want it to be like we were Beatle-ing out, you know. So I played it to him for that reason. With respect.

One would think that when someone has been not just a Beatle but also knighted by the Queen of England, they wouldn’t worry so much about what other people think of them. But perhaps it just makes them worry more.

It’s been a while since you’ve released one of your own albums.

PAUL McCARTNEY: The record company said to me, “We don’t really need an album this year.” So I’ve just been making music for my own fun. It took the pressure off. It’s just a song album, a regular album, which is cool because there’s been so much Anthology [documentary and CD] stuff around the Beatles.

So you’re in just the early stages of recording?

McCARTNEY: Not even. My album probably won’t be out until next spring. There’s probably going to be another Anthology thing around Christmas, so I don’t want to go out in competition with that. It’s a dumb move, and also it doesn’t look right. It looks like I’m trying to upstage the Beatles. It looks like I’m trying to say, “Hey, I’m better than the Beatles.” No, it’s just not the thing to do.

You’ve also turned Linda’s photographs33 into a short movie about the Grateful Dead. Did you do that before Jerry Garcia died?

McCARTNEY: Yeah, the sad thing was that I was in touch with a couple of the guys. I spoke to Bob [Weir, Grateful Dead guitarist] and we had a good phone conversation. I said, “Hey, I’m putting this thing together, and I want to show it to you guys when it’s finished.” I finished it and I was just getting back in touch with them, then I went on holiday. When I reached America, I heard on the news that Jerry had died and I thought, “Oh shit, you know, I was just about to show the film to him.”

Were you both friends?

McCARTNEY: I’d been in correspondence with him, because he was a painter and I thought he’d like this. Unfortunately, I missed him and the bad thing then was I thought, “Oh shit, there’s going to be a lot of people out there who will think, oh, I’m cashing in on the fact that Jerry’s died.” So I immediately got out a press release and said, “Look, I’ve had this movie for a year now and it’s nothing to do with . . . What’s more than that, I’m not gonna release it now. You know, I’m going to wait for a little while.” So I suppose it has become a little bit of a tribute to Jerry because he’s died.