Prophet of Dune

I'll be gone for a fortnight, so to occupy any readers (hah!), here's a lengthy revival of what Frank Herbert had to say about environmental concerns and global warming over 35 years ago... still tragically pertinent today. (Al Gore? double hah!) I conducted this interview long before Herbert's world renown, the multiple Dune sequels, his journeys to Mexico and finally Hawaii (partly due to success and movies, partly seeking possible cures for his wife Bev's diagnosed cancer). The old intro first:

The two most influential science fiction writers are, more than likely, Robert Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke. Just a notch below them in terms of recognition and acceptance among the current audience is Frank Herbert, who in Dune and Dune Messiah has given us a book-world of scope and event. Both are episodic semi-Biblical narratives of exciting incident and intriguing possibility. Herbert's world, in and out of books, has much the same feel.

"We haven't learned to live with our world yet--just on it. We tend to act before thinking out the whole chain of consequences. That's the real test of an ecologist--that he understands all the consequences."

The speaker is Frank Herbert. Newspaperman, photographer, family man, author of the renowned under/above-ground classic Dune (plus 15-20 other fiction novels as well), Herbert knows whereof he speaks: among a whole host of subjects, Dune is most of all a book about ecology--about survival in an alien environment; about man remaking the whole surface of a planet; about deep reverence for all the myriad forms of life. It may just be that Dune and planetary ecologist/sci-fi novelist Herbert can tell us something about our own beleaguered world of the Seventies.

America's trip may be conspicuous consumption and ridiculous waste, but on the planet Arrakis (Dune) the people use and re-use everything carefully and wisely and well. Italian filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni may visit Death Valley and come away empty-handed, but Frank Herbert invents a world of Death Valleys--of awesome deserts, sand-churning monster worms, and harsh Fremen existing in their midst--and in so doing creates one of the most splendidly imagined universes, and best novels, science fiction or otherwise, of this century.

For Dune, coupled with its recently published continuation, Dune Messiah, is an extraordinary piece of work. Multi-layered, multi-faceted, the novel simultaneously combines fantastic adventure, complex characterization, dense detail, literate style, metaphysical and psychic investigation, economic speculation, messianic psychology and, of course, ecological awareness and invention.

The novel's origins are deceptively simple. "The U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Forest Service were running a test station among the dunes on the Oregon coast," says Frank. "This was back in the mid-Fifties. They were developing ways to control sand dunes, and the program was so successful that people from Israel, Argentine, Chile, and other nations were all there to see how they did it.

"I went there to do a magazine article about the program--and in the course of the visit, I got this flaming idea in my head: what would it be like on an entire planet like the most severe of our deserts? What would go into the eco-systems on a planet like that?"

That was the beginning. But, Frank goes on, "Concurrently I'd been thinking about the origins of messiah myths in our society and others. I saw that as a motif to run through this non-existent novel, because a good story is more about people than things. Then I just began doing what I always do for a story--collecting folders of information, building the characters in my mind, and so on. It was probably six or seven years before I actually began putting words down on paper."

By 1963 when Herbert completed Dune, his novel had grown to more than 500 pages. One publisher rejected it as too long, but John W. Campbell at Analog knew a major property when he saw it; his magazine ran Dune in two three-part segments in 1964. Chilton's hardcover edition appeared that winter, and the Ace paperback in 1965.

There's been no looking back since. Winning both the Hugo and Nebula awards for best science fiction novel of the year, Dune gradually gained a word-of-mouth reputation among hip young people as well. Now, says the author, there are way over 300,000 copies in print, and many campus-area bookstores can't keep the book in stock.

"I pre-supposed a dialectic or a growth pattern," says the author, "birth, death, regeneration--and I deliberately wanted that poignancy of looking back on good times, in Dune Messiah. You see, the whole Dune sequence is written in layers--it's plotted in depth as well as in a linear direction. The action, the lyric poetry, the metaphysical, psychological and ecological, they're all deliberately layered in.

"In many respects," he goes on, "it was a gamble on my part. I didn't know if that sort of layering would make its point with the American reading public, because it's not seen much in science fiction. So I get a great deal of pleasure out of the fact that people are actually enjoying Dune. I'm happy to have done it. But it's like a pool shark who says, 'Six ball in the corner pocket.' To tell you the truth, I wasn't sure that the cue ball wouldn't go right in after it."

A longtime resident of the Bay Area, Herbert now lives in Seattle, on the top floor of an old mansion--presently subdivided into several apartments--on Queen Anne Hill, overlooking the ferryboats and the chilly waters of Puget Sound.

"I'm really a native of this area," he explains, "and I was missing it. There are things you can do here with a small expenditure of time that take a great expenditure down south. Up here I can be in the wilderness in an hour. In terms of relative degradation of the environment, Seattle's getting there--but it's as much better than San Francisco as San Francisco is than Los Angeles."

Seated in his living room, Frank talks about his life and his own vision; looming behind him are several ceiling-high bookcases, packed for the most part with non-fiction reading, including whole shelves devoted to desert ecology volumes with titles like Arabia Felix, The Land of Gilead, and Black Land, Black Land.

"I was born in Tacoma," he says, "and raised in and around Puget Sound. My father had several different businesses, but he lost a fortune in the Depression. In 1928, for example, in the heyday of dance halls, he built the Spanish Castle down in Highline." (Rock history footnote: during the Fifties and into the early Sixties, Spanish Castle--located about midway between Seattle and Tacoma on Highway 99--was the biggest local rock 'n' roll emporium; a young black man later known as Jimi Hendrix used to make it to Spanish Castle on Saturday nights to watch such outasight Northwest groups as the Wailers and Little Bill and the Blue Notes. Remember "Spanish Castle Magic" on Axis: Bold as Love?)

"I went to the University of Washington," says Frank. "I met my wife there at a writing class. But I dropped out of the U because they wouldn't let me do what I wanted, which was to cross department lines. To hell with requirements, I didn't want a degree--all I wanted was to pick and choose courses, like in a cafeteria line."

Like every other writer you've ever read about, Herbert's done the fascinating-ways-of-earning-a-living routine; his book-jacket bio lists "lay analyst" and "oyster diver" among several others. But for more than 30 years, most often he's been a newspaperman; nowadays for love rather than money. Herbert works as Higher Education Editor for Seattle's Hearst newspaper, the Post-Intelligencer.

"The successful-writer mystique carries over into this job. It gives me the leverage to say to the P-I, 'This is the kind of newspapering I want to do.' Newspaper work keeps you right on the edge of what's going on--it sensitizes you to current change. I do things as a newsman that I know damn well I wouldn't be doing at my typewriter."

There's a short break for strong, dark tea served by Frank's wife Bev...

******
((A perfect place for me to break this long interview article into two sections. Take a breath, take a walk, come back when ready...



And to resume:))

During the pause Bev also exhibits his major awards for Dune: the Hugo is a polished silver rocket; the Nebula, a crystal cube with a glittering, seemingly swirling galaxy floating within. Comments the author, "The Hugo is kind of a fan award, and it means more at the box office. But the Nebula represents a mail-poll of fellow craftsmen, the Science Fiction Writers of America."

At 49, Herbert looks considerably younger: short, stocky, barrel-chested, with crewcut fair hair and a greying, reddish beard; his mustache juts pugnaciously and his blue eyes twinkle just enough to make you think of an old fishing-boat skipper or a good-natured anarchist. He gestures a lot when he talks; and that continues now, as Frank warms to the tea and the subject:

"We science fictionists are pragmatic idealists," he says. "Our stories are usually anchored in something that's going on right now--given this, what if... We create whole worlds that are sort of caricatures of the existing thing, and we use them to throw the present thing into bas relief."

Surely Dune fits into that category?

"I'm damn hipped on this environment thing," answers Herbert. "I don't think we should ignore the legislative approach, but I don't really believe we can solve it legally. I'd feel better if something like the churches ((organized groups, that is; he didn't mean today's overheated fundamentalists)) were involved instead of some government agency; I try to get to those soft spots and apply leverage. That's one reason I accepted this P-I job: it puts me in direct contact with university level people. If we're going to solve all these environment problems, it's going to take strong action from that segment of the populace. That's what I mean about applying leverage to the system."

Herbert doesn't really belong to any citizens' environmental groups, but he is one of about a thousand steam-engine car owners in the country. He explains, "There's no name to our organization, no by-laws, no dues. Every member is a bishop and can swear in as many new members as he likes. All you have to do is raise your right hand and swear, 'Never again will I buy a new internal combustion engine.' If we put enough of this kind of pressure on Detroit, they'll solve the auto pollution problem for us.

"Same thing with gasoline. We've got to stop burning tetra-ethyl lead in our gasoline. But for now the Ethyl Corporation's got us by the balls--while the sky becomes more and more of a sewer."

Frank picks up an orange and holds it out dramatically. "If you take this and paint it with shellac, that thin coat of shellac is the equivalent of our atmosphere. And there's no cleansing process built into it...

"Our ecologists say we're only about twenty years away from irreversible effects on the environment. But it could happen a lot sooner than that. Wreck just one tanker carrying defoliants to Vietnam and you destroy seventy per cent of the bio-systems on the surface of the ocean--and most of our oxygen renewal depends on the oceans. If one jerk in the Pentagon can put the whole population of the earth in peril, that means the government's power is all askew. It clearly shouldn't be in the hands of those who've demonstrated they keep making the same mistakes again and again.

"Or take those Rhine River time bombs of DDT. We've really got time bombs like that all around us--if one of them finally rusts through, we've got a biological disaster."

Herbert frowns, then adds, "Underlying all these things we're talking about is the idea that we can invent a better world." Think of the ecological and philosophical texture of Dune and you'll understand that Frank Herbert is talking to himself too when he concludes, glumly, "That could be a fiction..."

So far, there's not much in the environment of the Seventies to be optimistic about. But perhaps the world will muddle through. Merely by its existence--but especially as its number of readers grows--the science fiction masterpiece Dune suggests the small but hopeful possibility that man can learn from his ecological mistakes. I'd rather believe the author of Dune when he writes, in that rich, exciting, wondrously beautiful novel, "Life--all life--is in the service of life."

******
Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose. Bev and Frank both died in the Eighties (I think), and their son Brian in the new century continues to write more sequels to his father's towering work. The world goes on, coughing and fretting and sweltering more and more as the earth continues to heat up. Al Gore and the scientists who believe continue to press for action, but nothing gets done. Who will save us?

William Stout, Artist

The caricature of the Stones that introduced the previous blog chapter (below) and the illustration next to this paragraph are both the work of my pal William Stout, highly regarded illustrator, comics artist, movie production designer, and fine artist specializing in paintings of dinosaurs, animals of the Antarctic, and just about anything else he can research first. Right now, for example, Bill is working feverishly to complete a dozen large-scale murals for the San Diego Natural History Museum.

Bill and I met a third of a century ago (yikes!) at a major comics convention in New York City devoted to the great Fifties landmark called E.C.Comics--Weird Science, Two-Fisted Tales, Shock SuspenStories, Tales from the Crypt, and Mad (comic book and then magazine) were just a few of the titles published by William Gaines and produced by his stable of comics art geniuses: Harvey Kurtzman, Al Williamson, Wally Wood, Johnny Craig, Jack Davis, Frank Frazetta, John Severin, on and on and on, the creme de la creme of Fifties comics.

Anyway, back then Bill was helping Kurtzman and Bill Elder finish on-going chapters in the saga of "Little Annie Fanny" for Playboy (prior to that he had been assistant to Russ Manning on the renowned Tarzan comic strip), and he came to the convention as a guest artist lugging his portfolio of previous work, maybe looking to score some other jobs. I was there simply as a fan, and met Bill casually in some brief gabfest. But when he left, he forgot his portfolio, which I quickly scooped up, and then tracked him down to return. He was grateful much beyond my small assistance, and we struck up an acquaintanceship that became real friendship over the next few years as I visited Bill down in L.A. or at subsequent San Diego Comicons.

A busy, hustling comics guy then, Bill made several treks north too as a featured guest at Seattle science fiction events, And he pursued his interest in film, producing major posters or significant graphic design work (weapons, costumes, storyboards, what-have-you) for dozens of films over the years including Wizards, First Blood, The Life of Brian, both Conan movies (Bill has lots of stories about those films!), Invaders from Mars, Masters of the Universe, and so on, right up to The Prestige and Pan's Labyrinth.

Things have a way of coming 'round again... Bill started out, while still a student at Chouinard, working part-time as a sidewalk caricature artist at Disneyland (hiding his longhair under a shorthair wig!), then years later worked first as an Disney Imagineer designing the branch Disneyworlds around the globe, and then as a major production designer for the 2000 Disney feature Dinosaur.

Bill's connection to dinosaurs must stem from childhood, but by now he is an expert known internationally--and probably still has his giant Triceratops head sculpture in the house too. He has published at least three different dinosaur books, the best-known a beautiful text-and-illustrations book from Bantam--as well as art portfolios, oil paintings, comic convention sketches, and more, all drawing on his dinosaur expertise, sometimes coupled with his wicked sense of humor.

And speaking of humor, in connection with Disney I must mention his two volumes devoted to a slovenly, drink-sodden, depressed-but-uproariously-funny character called "Mickey at 60" (taking the mickey of a certain mouse!), entire bookfuls of daily-newspaper-styled comic strips that were notorious around the Disney organization.

What else? Well, he's done major work for George Lucas and helped design the first three GameWorks gaming parlors for Steven Spielberg/Seaga; and as I mentioned in an earlier blog chapter about Rainier Beer, he painted a brilliant Frank Frazetta-styled Sasquatch poster and also provided designs for a TV commercial depicting a giant pinball machine.

Music... Bill plays rock guitar and occasionally sings or writes songs, and he sorta "made his bones" as a music industry artist producing scores of covers for the great Trademark of Quality rock music bootlegs of the early to mid Seventies (as in the Stones drawing), then creating many industry-legitimate covers for Varese Sarabande LPs and CDs. Plus he is a fanatical collector--of records, CDs, laserdiscs, DVDs, comic books, art books... Bill has amassed what may be the single best and biggest collection of 19th and 20th Century illustrated books in the world; hard to know of any measurable rivals, anyway!

He still visits comic conventions regularly, a very popular guest artist willing to produce quick sketches for fans (generating a dozen books filled with his sketches that he sells privately), yet he has also become renowned as a painter of animal life, with several exhibitions and travelling shows, most devoted to "The Wildlife of Antarctica"--and he is now completing his major, several-years-in-the-painting San Diego murals assignment. (To read more about Bill and see his varied and amazing art, you can simply click on the shortcut provided at the foot of this page.)

Bill and I have a 35-year history, encompassing marriages and children and changing times. I own several of his sketches and a few watercolor originals, not to mention almost everything he ever produced in the comics world. We've visited each other on many vacations (I even managed to get to his 50th Birthday party) and still stay in touch thanks to emails, but see each other less frequently now, sadly. I'm just travelling less, and his business jaunts to Seattle are fewer.

But I remember many a fine evening of the kind shown in the funny, friendly watercolor I've reproduced. I hope there are more to come.

Let 'Em Bleed... (Part 2)

((First: another serendipitous moment. Two nights after I posted the Monterey Pop chapter previous to this one, what should show up on Public Television but Pennebaker's film about the festival, which I'd read about but never seen. The festive scenes and people were nostalgic fun, and I was pleased that my memories weren't too scrambled, yet the film offers a confusing chronology not faithful to the event, if anyone cares. But there were so many acts I'd missed and was happy to be reminded of--most importantly Otis Redding backed by the Stax MGs; I should have thought to mention Redding, since he was another performer who exploded onto the scene at Monterey but was then soon killed, in a plane crash.

Now: back to the continuing saga...))

I had hoped to find my essay/review about the Altamont Festival, written right afterward for Fusion, but no such luck. Memory will have to suffice.

When the Rolling Stones' big outdoor concert event was announced as an end-of-tour gesture to American fans, I decided to fly to the Bay Area, and worked it out with rock critic Greil Marcus for a place to stay and a lift to the event. There followed some scrambling by promoters and the Stones, but then the venue was set: a day-long free festival at Altamont Raceway, atop a high hill somewhere to the east of Oakland.

I flew down on the Thursday before, hooked up with Greil (then still the reviews editor for Rolling Stone, I think) and proceeded to my other assignment for the weekend, an interview with John Fogerty and the rest of the red-hot singles band Creedence Clearwater Revival, at the band's Oakland warehouse. That interview eventually became another article (also missing from my files!), but what I recall most was the friendliness of Tom Fogerty and the others versus the grouchy near-silence of brother John, who was the creative force every journalist sought to meet and figure out!

Anyway, Saturday was the main day. Greil drove, and I was just one of the passengers; memory says the others were Lester Bangs, a wild-man critic soon to be even more (in)famous, and Sandy Paton, musician head of Folk Legacy Records. We all had press credentials including backstage passes and planned just to split up and do the day, each getting his own perspective on the performances.

Backstage at the site, I tried to mingle and take notes, hooking up briefly with a drug-dumbed Gram Parsons, then Edgar Winter and his manager (wearing a bathrobe as I recall), and one or two others. Mostly I just tried to observe, planning to head out front for all the music. The stage was a platform on scaffolding, and it was easy for anyone backstage to crawl under and then out into the front-of-stage area, which was not some separate press pit but instead simply the ranks of packed-tight fans--patrolled by the "security" the Stones had enlisted (thanks to the Grateful Dead I think), members of the Hell's Angels.

Out front, things were unpleasant from the start. The closest rows of fans seemed particularly stoned (so to speak) and many of them surly, maybe fueled more by amphetamines than pot. I don't remember the order of groups that played the long afternoon, but Santana, The Flying Burrito Brothers, and Jefferson Airplane all had early-on sets.

The tension kept mounting. Every time the audience got to its collective feet, the fans further away pushed in closer, making it harder and harder for anyone in front then to sit down again. The Angels started pushing back, and soon there were actual fistfights, and then bikers swinging pool cues! I remember Marty Balin (or was it Paul Kantner?) recklessly leaping off the stage to try to break up one fight, and I think he got decked. At another moment some raging Angel got knocked into my lap. I started to help him up, then jerked my hands back, fearful I'd get clobbered too. I only lasted a few minutes more, then gave up and crawled back under the stage while the Airplane was still playing.

The rest of the day was a bit of a slog and a blur. I saw the Stones arrive and take refuge in their trailer. And later in the afternoon, I witnessed this unforgettable moment: one fan, a fat and stark-naked Mexican-American (I'd seen him earlier in the crowd out front) had been smashed in the head by someone and brought backstage for treatment. While he was standing there with blood streaming down his face and torso, Mick Jagger happened to stick his head out of the trailer just for a look 'round. He saw this bloody naked guy, stared at him for a good 15 seconds, then shrugged and closed the door.

The sound and the views of the stage were passable, and I watched the Stones' own set that night with interest--I mean, hell, it was the Stones right in front of me, playing for free! I couldn't see much beyond the spotlights, so all the continuing violence and the actual stabbing death of one fan was outside my limited field of vision. The band finished up and made for their waiting helicopter, and I reconnected with the other guys, and we all headed back to the car, surrounded by thousands of other exiting fans.

Comparing notes back in the car, we were all bummed out by a day which had become more of a battle zone than a music fest. The others had not been out front, but had observed some of the violence. Listening to the radio coverage then as we drove back to Berkeley, we learned that the rumor was true: someone had been killed (and there were a couple of births announced as well).

The aftermath (another bit of Stones prescience?) of Altamont's grim events is well-known. The Stones scooted and tried to distance themselves by blaming it all on the Dead and the bikers--no sympathy for any of those devils. Someone was arrested eventually, but I don't remember the outcome of any later trial.

I flew home to Seattle and wrote my review, which detailed the Angels-inspired fights I'd witnessed. And here's the dumbest part: I was so paranoid about that far-ranging gang of bikers and my own possible vulnerability that I asked the Fusion editor to publish my piece under the pseudonym of "Glenn Howard," which is how it appeared.

No one cared much; it soon dis-appeared into the used-to-wrap-fish heap of journalistic refuse--though later Sandy Paton published a book collecting some of his writings, and he talked about my experiences at the festival as well as his own.

As the cliches go, you get what you pay for, there's no such thing as a free lunch, a rolling stone gathers no... 'mont? The band steel-wheels on, 36 years later, Keith the poster-child for drug survival, Mick maybe still whipping the stage with his belt. Mostly the Rolling Stones today just make me yawn; some old geezers really should retire.

So I was present at both the birth and the sort-of death of massive American rock festivals. Missed the biggest one of all but didn't really miss it, if you catch my drift. Haven't gone to any large outdoor concert any time since, until the Fairport Cropredy this year (full of families and good friends rather than stoners). Mostly I just wish the world of rock hadn't evolved as it has. I'm one of the old geezers now too.

Rock Festivals Back Then (Part 1)

I didn't make it to Woodstock. I was a laid-back West Coaster not interested enough to travel cross-country for some big rock festival weekend--shows what I knew back then!

But I was lucky enough to hit three other historically significant ones: Monterey Pop, Seattle Pop, and Altamont. My memories of each may be worth recording here...

My first wife and I had planned to go to San Francisco for our long-delayed honeymoon about the time of the Summer of Love ("if you're going to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair" indeed). We weren't hippies by any stretch of the imagination, but SF was beckoning us nonetheless. When I heard about the proposed Monterey Pop Festival, I decided we'd try to get tickets, to one day's concerts at least.

No luck on the major rock evenings, but we did manage tickets for Ravi Shankar's matinee performance. (Ragas in the afternoon rather than at sunrise or sunset, but what the hey.) And that would at least give us the chance to look around. On that Sunday we drove down to Monterey, and got to wander for a while before and after Shankar--who was terrific, I should note, him and Alla Rakha and some mysterious woman playing tamboura.

The grounds were sort of hippie heaven, I guess, looking like what would become known as Renaissance Fairs later--craft booths, jewelry, scarves, tie-dye everything, furry hats, fine and freaky people in amazing costumes. I remember we saw both Art Garfunkel and Brian Jones among the funseekers that afternoon, and the rumor circulating was that George Harrison would show up as well, but so far as I know he didn't.

But what did magically occur was some poor soul offered me two tickets for that evening's show, which I scooped up on the spot! My later-to-be-ex- (not really a rock fan) and I hung around, had dinner, and took our seats to see... wow! Janis Joplin and Big Brother, an at-that-time-unknown chick belting out the blues in a convincingly brassy voice, her nipples straining to burst her gold-colored top (I admit I had binoculars), then The Who, not much recognized yet in the U.S., with Roger Daltrey strutting and shouting and Keith Moon grinning maniacally, pounding the hell out of his drums, and Pete Townsend leaping and flailing and windmilling his guitar, and then finally smashing it and the mics to smithereens. Holy bejesus, Batman!

Who could follow that? Well, a flashily dressed black man named Jimi Hendrix sauntered out on stage, his backing guys maybe Experienced but unknown that night, and proceeded to burn down the house. Okay, I exaggerate. But he did play "Red House" and "Hey Joe" and the other tunes that made him famous, making his guitar squawk and scream--and he did finally act to out-do Townsend by kneeling down, squirting lighter fluid on his guitar, and setting it on fire!

To say that the audience went crazy is to be way too subtle. But after we all calmed down again, the rest of the evening was definitely an anticlimax--The Mamas and the Papas, Scott Hamilton, whoever else, if anyone, all basically forgotten in the rush to critical judgment. (Coverage back in those distant days was mostly by major newspapers and Esquire--the rock mag circuit hadn't been invented yet!) Several stars were born that night, and they blazed across the heavens for a few years, and then some of them burnt out way too early. Janis, Jimi, and Keith at least, all victims of their success.

I drove back north to our SF hotel pretty much on auto-pilot, totally blown away, as that relevant cliche goes. I can't remember anything else about our poor honeymoon stay, except that out on the streets I bought the second issue of a new tabloid magazine called Rolling Stone--which convinced me then and there that I had to write about rock.

And I proceeded to do just that, getting published slowly at first and then actually providing record reviews to Rolling Stone--which is how I came to cover the Seattle Pop Festival a year or so later. Seattle's version of the Fillmore was called Eagles Auditorium, run by a hustler entrepreneur named Boyd Grafmyre, who took his club success to the limit by arranging to produce a major outdoor festival weekend, to be held out in the rural countryside in a big cowpie field near Woodinville.

Rolling Stone said okay, so I got press accreditation, enabling me to wander the backstage area all weekend, tapedeck in hand. I had brief and sometimes longer interviews with Jim Morrison of The Doors (one of my first blog posts talks about that peculiar event), Gram Parsons and other Flying Burrito Brothers, Jesse Colin Young of The Youngbloods, Bo Diddley and Albert Collins and others. An amazing stretch was listening to Bo and Collins and a couple of other blues guys shoot the shit for an hour, playing the dozens on each other, and me the fly on the wall! (Man, I'd give a few months of my dwindling life to get back the long-lost, likely recorded-over-later tapes I made that weekend.)

Performing as well though not approached by me were Led Zeppelin, who came and went by helicopter, and Ike and Tina Turner. (Could Ike have been one of the other cats during that talk-fest? Could be; maybe I just didn't recognize him at the time.) The Turner show was outstanding, which is where i was--out standing in the press pit, just below stage front, gawking like a fool at the lonnng legs, and more, of Tina and the Ikettes! Whew! The view was inspirational. Tina and her gals were definitely the hottest act of the weekend...

The Doors played well but Morrison seemed less involved that I'd seen him at Eagles some months earlier. The other acts were fine and worked the stage and the crowd to their advantage, but now, 40 years later, not much of their performances have stayed in my mind. A successful weekend for all us fans anyway, even though Grafmyre later claimed that he lost money on the event.

I did write things up for Rolling Stone, and my review ran alongside some other concert coverage in one long-ago issue--and then I moved on, to generating more and more longer pieces for East Coast rival Fusion. And it was for Fusion that I covered the Altamont Festival a year later... more next time.

John Keats Solo

Back in the late Eighties when I was struggling to become a playwright, one good idea I had and worked on for a time was a one-man show based on the writings of Romantic poet John Keats, surely one of the greatest of all those to have written in English, and a tragic figure as well for his having died so young.

Selecting chunks of poems and whole brief ones, and interspersing these with excerpts from his letters and journals, I attempted to shape a largely chronological telling of his life and works for my on-stage Keats to recite. The arc of that assemblage actually seemed fairly sound, just too long. All I had to do was cut and paste a bit more, edit the material intelligently, and...

But then, for no reason but lethargy, I abandoned the project at that mid point...

Digging in a box recently, I came across all the notecards and paste-up pieces, still rubber-banded together in numerical order. Maybe thinking and writing even this brief mention will inspire me yet to complete a Keats one-man show.

In the meantime, I want to present the decent poem I wrote after reading about him and trying to think a bit like him. The title and epigraph should explain all, except that the scene of the actual historical reference was Edinburgh--which may be of interest to those who love Scotland and that great city. (Never a Rebus around when you need one!)

Resurrection Man

“The subjects were stolen from nearby graveyards,
doubled up stark naked in sacks, and smuggled in at
the dead of night by body snatchers—‘resurrection
men,’ as they were called…”
--Aileen Ward, John Keats: The Making of a Poet

I hoist one up, bend him over double,
Stuff him in the sack, in his skin.
I always leave the clothes down the hole—
I’m no grave robber—though some women
Get to be a bother stripped stark
Like that, lank hair full dangling,
Short curls a thicket in the dark…
But I choose not to get entangled.

They pay me four quid each body
And ask no questions. Nor do I,
What they do after. Cut the loins apart,
Peel back the sullied flesh—hell,
Let all of life’s putrefaction out.
Dead’s dead. The animate’s gone; the soul,
Whatever that is, leaked out, escaped;
And burial, the placebo of fools.

Better these grubs of Med-men
Get what’s left than the maggots below.
I can even bear the merry japes:
“Hi-ho, the Resurrection Man!”;
“Here’s another one risen, then”;
“A grave truth, friend Horatio”;
“Found your ghoul in life, have you?”
Let them scoff. Oh, I know them well:

Whistling past the graveyard, that's all.
Sod them; they’ll be under it soon enough,
And some other digger in their turf.
I am content to body-snatch, in sum.
Still, it’s working the nights, sleeping
In the daylight, gives me this dream…
The tumult has died, and the tumulus
Waits unguarded. I bend to it alone.

Lord’s luck, but the stone rolls hard!
And inside, a-shimmer in the blackness,
Blood dried brown and wounds gaping,
Lies this man, the corpus of us all;
But only dead, bound to the dust.
I lift him up, strip off the blooded shroud--
So light; how could he bear the weight
They pressed on him--and stuff him in.

Hoisting the body up on my back, then,
Swaddled in its corpse-snatcher sack,
I stagger out from that cave of night
And carry him forth to the harsh light
Of the world’s theater of dissection…
The rest I’m blind to. Full sweat-sore
I waken drenched, unable to forswear
The mystery, for man’s or God’s sake.

Some Days the Magic Works... (Part 2)

Around 1971-72, I had an idea for a Native American film, a dramatic short meant to join King Screen's group of educational films intended to introduce other cultures and ways of thinking to middle-class, mostly white schoolkids. The core plot was this: a tribal elder, a grandfather figure raised in the old ways, hauls his urban grandson, a clueless teen rebel, off to the wilderness to discover and possibly embrace his Indian heritage.

Though a couple of other people appeared at the beginning of the story, it was really a two-character plot, starting in the city (Seattle) and then moving out to the Olympic Rain Forest on Washington's Olympic Peninsula and then finally to the actual Pacific coast. The script I wrote, titled Our Totem Is the Raven, would lead to a 20-plus minute work if all went well during filming.

Casting was the primary concern. The teenager could probably be found at some local school, but who could credibly play the grandfather?

Shortly before writing the script, I had seen a wonderful actor named Chief Dan George featured in Arthur Penn's movie Little Big Man (starring then young Dustin Hoffman). Remember the magical, twinkle-in-his-eye delivery of that tribal chief with the flowing white mane of hair when he says things like "My heart soars" and "Some days the magic works, some days it doesn't"? Well, that was Chief Dan George, whom I assumed was a newly discovered Hollywood star, because he was also appearing memorably about then in Clint Eastwood's excellent film The Outlaw Josey Wales.

I thought to myself, Now, that's the actor we need... But of course I also figured we had no chance of hiring him. So where could we find our man?

Then one night not long after, Chief Dan appeared on the Johnny Carson Show and revealed that he actually lived near Vancouver, B.C.--he was a chief of one of the Coast Salish tribes up there--only 150-some miles from us in Seattle! I decided that trying to reach him was now imperative; chances of his saying yes were likely slim to none, but it was worth a shot just to find out, if nothing else, how much the services of a major actor would cost us.

Through Vancouver friends, we were able to learn that his agent/manager was a producer with the Canadian Broadcasting System right there in Vancouver (where, it turned out, Dan routinely appeared in television productions). We reached the manager, he agreed to look at the script to see if it was suitable for Dan, and off it went. I paced the halls of King Screen and gnawed my fingernails waiting to hear back.

Then the word came: Dan actually liked the script, and he was available during March, just a month or two ahead. Moreover, the manager informed us, Dan's beloved wife had recently died, and he needed to be working to take his mind away from grieving...

I gulped and went to work, now as line producer, organizing things for a two-week shoot in Seattle and out on the Peninsula, near Kalaloch. The King Screen director assigned was named Paul Preuss (who later went on to a solid career as science fiction novelist). We found some native carvers and got special Northwest Coast tribal props made--a raven-topped staff, a salmon sort-of-plaque, and a special wood-carving knife with shaped handle. We searched the Greater Seattle area and found a surly, slightly chubby 14-year-old Native American teen to play the grandson, then rehearsed him a lot since he was not an actor. We also squeezed in a preliminary whirlwind visit north to Vancouver, but only for Paul and I to get acquainted briefly with our 70-year-old lead.

Then Chief Dan arrived in Seattle. What a wonderful, kindly gentleman he was too! Not as bubbly or cheerful as the roles he'd played had made us imagine, but of course he was still grieving too. (And as we soon learned, drinking somewhat more than he normally would...)

No need to revisit the entire film shoot, but after some rough first days getting the grandson up to speed and comfortable with Dan as we were shooting the early urban scenes, we headed out to the Pacific coast. And then came the Olympic Rain Forest's spring rains! Not just light showers but water "pissing down" (as the Brits say). For several days, we had nothing to do but sit at the lodge playing cards and waiting for the sun to shine again. It quickly became the main task for Paul and me to keep Dan busy and surrounded by cheerful people. The whole crew of eight or so wrapped the grand old man in a blanket of friendship, becoming his students, listening to his stories and his quietly offered wisdom (some of those thoughts can be found in My Heart Soars and two other books that appeared over his name later in the Seventies)... and working to keep him from drinking too.

When the rain let up, it became a classic rugged shoot: fewer days available (meaning longer hours), lots of scenes filmed along forest trails, in icy-cold streams, on the rocky beach, and so on, as the grandfather talked and showed his reluctant protege what was what. I particularly remember the sequence where Dan had to stand waist deep in a river to catch a salmon with his bare hands. Washington's rivers are cold all year but truly frigid in the early, glacial-melt springtime. To protect Dan we had him encased from the waist down in a black wet suit; we then shot carefully to hide it. And to prove that we were "with" him, literally, both the director and I stood in the freezing water as well for several hours! (Yes, we had on wet suits too.)

The last quarter of the film has the grandson finally catching his own salmon a few hungry days later (using his shirt as a net), which grandfather then shows him how to cook on an alder-woven grill over an open fire on the ocean beach. He bids a ceremonious thanks to the fish for sharing its flesh, they eat, the exhausted teen nods off, and grandfather--in the smoke from the fire--then seems to wade out into the ocean and disappear.

When grandson awakens next morning, he is alone. The implication is that he must find his own way in the world--back to the city, or never returning to it, who can say? (Since I haven't seen this script or film in 30 years, my memory is a bit hazy about the ending.)

At any rate, Chief Dan George went back north, and we went to work on post production. It was a breeze! Excellent visuals; a great, firm-but-loving performance by grandfather Dan, and okay work by the kid; footage that came together well in the editing room. Our Totem Is the Raven was soon a fait accompli.

Copies of it sold fairly well, and in fact are still to be found three decades later in collections around the U.S. (and maybe elsewhere) devoted to Native Americans on film. Chief Dan lived another ten years, a much-honored "First Nations" leader, and he continued to act, mostly in television (including a role in the major series Centennial), right up until his death.

And I moved on to a new life as freelance writer trying to sell feature scripts, and when that didn't work out, reluctantly settled in as a writer-producer in television advertising. But that's another story.

(Here's the amazing P.S.: right after writing all of the above yesterday, I Googled the Raven title for fun and actually found a copy being sold at auction! Which I immediately bought. Now if I can just find a 16mm. projector...)

Open-Ended Films (Part 1)

In the late Sixties I was a writer/editor at Seattle Magazine, one of several divisions in the wealthy, liberal Bullitt family's King Broadcasting empire--a small empire, actually, not much more than a couple of television and radio stations, Seattle Mag, and a prizewinning but struggling documentary film arm called King Screen. Bored with the magazine world, I moved laterally to become a staff writer at the newly reconfigured King Screen, which was edging into educational films and away from the non-lucrative world of (pre-Ken Burns) documentaries.

My film assignments and original script ideas allowed for much variety, and I must have written a dozen short films, produced or not, over the next year or two. Back then, in the pre-computer world, schoolkids actually watched movies in the classrooms--you know, 16 mm. films projected by noisy machines onto the classroom wall or some collapsible screen the teacher or student volunteer had to wrestle up or down.

I got to write some pretty bizarre stuff, including one science fiction short about a future world in which humans actually lived in their cars, driving the endless autobahns of Earth, fighting real wars over gas stations and the like. Sounds maybe dumb now (Car Wars?), but I was looking for an environmental angle that might be different from the straight films we produced to tout recycling, cleaning up San Francisco Bay, and tracing an LP record all the way back to its source as oil in the ground. (That last was actually a lot of fun--a crew of four of us, cruising the West, filming at record plants, refineries, oil fields and more; I was the line producer on that job and did sound recording too.)

But instead I'd like to discuss the handful of films I was proudest of--two on race relations, a series of three devoted to the Lively Arts for kids and, my small claim to educational film fame, Our Totem Is the Raven, starring great Native American actor Chief Dan George (subject of the blog chapter next time around).

Black Thumb was my overt, 8-minute, quick glancing blow at racism. In the film, a white insurance salesman is having a hot and unsuccessful day, and when he knocks on the door of one more house, he gets no response, but hears sounds from the garden, where he finds a black man weeding and replanting. Assuming the obvious (this is the Sixties, remember), he asks if the owner of the house is somewhere around, and the black man stands up and says he'll go get said owner and send him to meet the salesman back at the front door. So... probably obvious by this point... when that front door opens, there stands the black man himself, facing the now-chagrined salesman. Film ends there, leaving the class to discuss whatever seems appropriate.

A better idea and more successful film was my 20-minute work called The Two-Twenty Blues. Summarizing quickly, the plot involved a middle-class black teenager, his family living well in the suburbs, and him a successful track star at the mostly white high school where his best friend is a white runner, both of them on the 220-yards relay team. Over the arc of the film, a more militant black teen appears at the school and latches onto the lead kid, trying to convince him (a la the Panthers and activist black athletes of the Sixties) that he is being exploited by the white school and he must stand up for his own people, taking some sort of action, making some major gesture to display Black Pride.

So: many scenes of track practice, relay team passing the baton, black students discussing, white friend remonstrating, etc. The film climaxes at a major track meet, where the Black Power advocate wants hero to make the raised fist salute if he gets to the winner's stand. The race goes perfectly, and there stands the team, black runner looking back and forth from his white teammate to the activist, wondering whether he should raise his fist... Again the film ends suddenly, leaving time for discussion of any ideas.

Both films got some praise and sold adequately to school districts around the country (once the films were picked up for distribution by McGraw-Hill), thanks to credible performances by local actors and a couple of excellent teenage non-actors we found by casting calls and auditions at the schools. But the King Screen bosses wanted more variety, of course, so I next dreamed up a series of three films meant to connect young kids to real, relatable, appealing figures in the Arts.

The first (Art) was a short documentary showing kids' artworks, which were then visually compared to the somewhat child-like paintings and drawings of Paul Klee. Klee's journal entries about simplicity and children's art were read voiceover, these interspersed with comments by real kids about their drawings and about Klee's pictures too. All in all, it became a fairly effective montage mixing all four visual and verbal elements.

So we got to do the second (Music), this time a dramatized short titled Erik Satie and the King of the Beans. Pianist-composer Satie had a wry sense of humor, reflected in the strange titles he gave his piano works; and I imagined a runaway boy, escaping his mother who wanted to force him to eat dreaded green beans, who bumps into Satie as he flees. The black-bearded composer takes the kid under his wing, shows him sights of Paris, plays some piano for him, and then persuades him to return home to Mom, but first composing in the boy's honor a short piece with that Beans title. Fine music, happy ending, lots of quiet amusement throughout.

To fake early Twentieth Century Paris we shot in alleyways and brick areas of Seattle's Pioneer Square and interspersed those scenes with b&w stills of Paris back then (by Eugene Atget and others, I think); we also had a nice under-the-roofs-of-Paris set built to represent Satie's flat as well as the nearby home of the fleeing kid. A young concert pianist provided the excellent piano music throughout, and Satie himself was played by rather well-known actor/director Arne Zaslove, head of a local repertory theatre company. Yet the film still lacked some of the zing it needed to be really successful; maybe my original idea just wasn't that strong.

The third film (Poetry) was meant to visualize a few of the somewhat childlike, wonderfully playful poems of lower-case poet e.e. cummings. I wrote a script using three of his poems (centered on the one beginning "in just-Spring the little lame balloon-man whistles far & whee..."), and we storyboarded what visuals would accompany the voiceover readings of the three. So far so good. But the tentative approval we had gotten from the cummings estate suddenly was yanked away from us, with the lawyers informing us that all rights were now embroiled in some legal battle back East.

I then tried to promote a sort-of alternate plan for the poetry segment, to do a documentary film (no longer for kids really) about honored anti-Vietnam War, deep imagist poet Robert Bly. I flew back to Minnesota, spent a day or so with Bly on his family farm, came back and wrote a quasi-script to suggest a shape for the documentary filming, actually got approval to proceed... but then the whole thing collapsed as higher-level bosses in the King Broadcasting chain of command decided against the somewhat controversial poet.

Oh well, two outta three ain't bad, I guess. And after those "turnarounds" (educational films stalled just like the features in Hollywood) came a major success, thanks to Chief Dan George... which (and whom) I'll write about next time.

Telephone Woes

(Ironic note first. This posting was delayed for days by my fershluginer computer which kept sending error messages and shutting me down every time I tried to use the damned Internet for anything! Now, please, read on.)

During that recent whirlwind trip to England, I tried to call back to the States on several occasions, but had trouble connecting--a hidden flaw in our cell-phone, caller-i.d. society.

The nine-hour time differential was awkward enough, but not the root problem. First off, the so-called international phone card I'd purchased didn't work for some unknown reason. Next, all my attempts at calling collect were shortcircuited by cell-phone rejections and answering-machine messages that were (of course) unable to accept calls. Moreover, my grudging follow-up calls attempting to pay by credit card all fetched up against a different frustration--connections that were going through but only to answering machines rather than actual persons!

Would I have been better off using some cell I'd carried across the Atlantic? Advance costs quoted for those seemed exorbitant to my (Luddite) thinking, so I ignored the idea, but as it was, I still wound up paying outrageous amounts (partly due to the painful dollars-to-pounds exchange rate, it's true) for poor results with almost no aural satisfaction.

The whole experience made me wish for the bad old days of recipient phones that simply were answered or not, and phone booths that commonly could be found inside post offices around the world--where you could pay by stacks of coins that were actually returned to you if the calls didn't go through.

Maybe if I'd persevered at a callbox... But just as the number of U.S. phone booths is dwindling, England's fine old red callboxes are also disappearing, albeit more slowly. They are still a thing of almost architectural beauty seen from without, but the insides suffer all sorts of abuse. What is it about phone booths that brings out the worst in people?

Well, donkey's years ago, back when Margaret Thatcher ruled Britannia's waves, I wrote my own fractured ode to a callbox, and here it is, still pertinent in 2007:

Man in the Glass Booth

I close the door
abandoning, for the moment, lorries’ roar,
thick skin-
head posturing, and nearby takeaway den
din. In here, I
can almost hear my
self think.
Not that it does,
much. Britannia’s
on the brink
as usual—or so the tabloids say.
Moi aussi…

but soldiering on, of course,
both of us;
old news. Having carried
no news from Aix to Ghent,
I now curry
none in London. Nothing fit to print,
anyway: a sign
of the Times. As if by design,
among the invitations to leather
or massage, and the cruder
callbox-Byrons’ rhymes, I see
“For a good time, don’t call Maggie…

back.” Small chance of that;
the phone’s been rendered hors de combat.
What’s more, someone’s
put the boot in through two panes,
had a spo’ o’ bovver wiv a yellowed parchment
directory, and taken
greater pains
to scratch out all dialing instructions.
Even the cord has the mange.
Slightly squiffed, like Clark Kent
I have come in
to change…

my luck, if not my shirt.
Quite absurd,
really. The grimed glass displays
some misplaced Man of Clay,
out of pence
and pluck, who couldn’t
stay in touch
with anyone tonight. I’ll just reach
out and douse
the callbox light, and drowse
a while in
silence.

Newland of Animation

Time to say a few words about my good friend Marv Newland, animator extraordinaire, known around the world for his quirky cartoon works and illustrations and his production company International Rocketship. The U.S. pathetically remembers Marv best only for his student-days phenomenon, Bambi Meets Godzilla, but he has created or produced a host of others in the decades since.

Marv is California-born--a used-to-be surfer dude who still catches a few waves every year (even as he turns 60)--but due to his total opposition to the Vietnam War and our government policies back then, he left the U.S. for Canada way back in the Sixties, stopping off first in Toronto but then settling out West again in Vancouver, where he eventually became a landed immigrant. (About the only thing American he says he still misses is our craze for basketball, both College and Pro, but Marv and a small group of other ex-pat Yanks do gather regularly to play and occasionally to watch televised games.)

He has been loosely affiliated with some National Film Board of Canada projects over the years, and from time to time he takes on an animation job for some another company (or country!), but Marv and Rocketship mostly have gone their own way, creating internationally sought shorts like Sing Beast Sing, the amazing worldwide collaboration known as Anijam, Black Hula, and the very adult Pink Komkommer (Marv's own works), plus Lupo the Butcher, Dog Brain, and My Friend Max (among those produced by Marv but directed by other animators).

Marv and I can't quite remember how or where we met back in the early Seventies, but the proximity of Vancouver and Seattle has allowed us to become friends over the many years since, hanging out at each other's houses whenever some job or vacation takes one of us North or South (I used to commute to Vancouver regularly to do work for Eaton's Department Stores, for example). And I was able to hire him for at least one Rainier Beer project, when the company I worked for used Marv to create a TV commercial resembling several mock videogames squashed together. The nice irony was that back then he did all animation by hand rather than computer (think handdrawn video games), and this in the very city where fellow ex-pat William Gibson was inventing future-of-computers science fiction novels in the new genre he named cyberpunk!

We also discovered that we share a mutual craving for Mexican food and for hardboiled fiction (he collects books by Charles Willeford and Donald Westlake/Richard Stark, for example) as well as the great detective novels of Hammett, Chandler, and Macdonald. I've turned him onto some newer authors (Michael Connelly maybe?), he got me into the Aubrey-Maturin novels by Patrick O'Brian, and we regularly compete to see who can be first to find and read the latest Paul Christopher spy novel by Charles McCarry .

These days Marv does some teaching, travels the world as an honored guest or judge at several animation festivals, and still cranks out a new short every few years; the current project underway had (may still have) the name of Scratchy. And--this may be a separate venture--he has an intriguing, on-going conceptual piece involving handdrawn postcards that are dispersed by Marv to spots around the globe, then returned to him by mail, with each set of stamps being of some interest too. (I don't ask much more about these things than "How are the latest projects going?"; we are both old enough to be a bit cranky about, and protective of, any works-in-progress!)

I just wish we both got across that damn U.S./Canada border more often, but Homeland Security has made a mockery of "give us your tired, your weary... and your own returning citizens" as a precept of democracy--even as our shameful Fundamentalist/Right Wing administration on too many occasions has made me contemplate moving North!

But enough. I commend to all... Marvelous Marv, adamant animator in an admirable New Land.

Bumper Cropredy (The Sequel)

And so we resume...

Back from England's green and pleasant land, my head buzzing with folk-rock and my wallet rendered ultra-light by the pound-versus-dollar fiasco. Fifteen or so current and ex- Fairporters showed up, as did some 23,000 friends, the first-ever sellout for the ever-more-popular, three-day festival held near Banbury at Cropredy (officially declared "Fairport's Cropredy Convention" these days).

Simon Nicol was gracious and jovial, as ever. Dave Swarbrick seemed smaller but healthier, and playing with more pizazz than he has for years. And Richard Thompson?... songmeister and guitar god, and the secret passion of males and females alike, it would seem, from the number of swooning and swanning fans clamoring after him everywhere.

We enjoyed two rehearsal-night sessions of Fairport (with guests); a major, over-two-hours club concert by RT and his Band touring to support the powerful Sweet Warrior album (anchored by "'Dad's Gonna Kill Me," his anti-Iraq ditty); Richard again for a shorter but still-potent set hard on the heels of the much-bruited, on-stage play-through of Liege and Lief by the original band (minus one); and a final-night FOUR-hour set by the variant Fairports.

Plus supporting-act oldsters Jools Holland, Richard Digance, Wishbone Ash, and The Strawbs; folk stalwarts Billy Mitchell and Bob Fox, Show of Hands, and The Bucket Boys; and young-turk hopefuls like Kerfuffle, Seth Lakeman, Last Orders, Give Way, and my personal fave, The Demon Barbers Roadshow. A grand time was had by all.

But I do want to pay special tribute to the woman who filled in for long-deceased Sandy Denny, singing all the Liege and Lief female vocals... Chris While, known to me only as a sometime associate of Ashley Hutching's current bands. Ms. While was pure and clear and powerful and--dare I whisper it--maybe even better that night than were Sandy Denny's own beautiful and slightly wistful vocals recorded nearly 40 years ago. Chris soared head and shoulders over previous Sandy fill-ins like Vicky Clayton and Cathy LeSurf (fine vocalists not quite suited to the part).

The weather was amazing. After weeks of will-it-rain-and-flood-still-more anxiety, instead we sweltered through 10 days of eighty-degree sun, allowing us to bake and fry on the fields of Cropredy. Side jaunts when not musicking included zipping around London, strolling around Stratford-upon-Avon, scouring both Banbury town and Cropredy village for any CDs or beers left unclaimed, and touristing through Cambridge and its aged but undreaming spires. Historically major colleges and brilliant bookstores were the order of that last day.

So to wrap up this Festive report, I think I'll tack on one of my life-of-tourist poems from earlier times in Merrie Olde E...

Country Ways

So on we go jigging her country ways,
Lightly skimming the groins of the braes,
The post-roads humping vales and downs,
Past tangled weirs into gnarly towns,
Mulch and Dreath hamlets, where iron-wrought
Villagers stare and spare no thought
For why, or who is come—hurdling the dells,
Dashing from Mousehole, splash into Wells,
Up Mendip Hills, out across Dartmoor,
Staggered by Glastonbury’s misty Tor,
The Abbey stones reiterating loss
Near a thorn-tree rimed with blossom-frost.

“Running well late,” this sodden spring;
Or so the folk say, blithely imagining
The sun out bright in this steel-wool grey
Drenching gorse and heath, coil-wound hay;
Daydreaming sunlight chipping chalk and flint,
Heat baking Bog Queen and Green Man skin
To ceramic perfection—hedgerows forming,
Starlings exploding, mayflies swarming,
Rife with the old heart-lurching ease
Of Albion’s seasonal epiphanies,
That sap of being, from loin to part,
Never gleaned in the sum of Descartes.

Loosed like the land’s replenishment,
This streaking commotion shields no pent-
Up magic, no ceremonious mystery,
No legends of Arthur, no lords of history,
Neither kingfisher lore nor Fisher King,
No, not Christ cup, not Saxon hoarding…
Merely a bug-flecked French sedan’s
Quarrel of blear-eyed Americans—
Cramped and gawking, time-lost tourists
Pummeled by each day’s ticking lists,
Routed by dale and glen and this late-spring
Gameboard arrayed for castling and mating.

Fair Port, Crop Ready (The Prequel)

The flood waters in England are receding, and the proper British getting on with it, shoveling out the damaged homes and inns. The sun has reappeared, however reluctantly, over weirs and moors. And the show will go on! Fairport and its thousands of friends will soon occupy the drying-out grounds of Cropredy once more...

I fly out on August 3rd, so I get to send this bloggin' stuff on leave too for a couple of weeks, lazy sod that I am. But first here's just one more bit of old Fusion writing, since it relates to some of the music that lies ahead in England:

By 1970 or so, the great Fairport Convention line-up including Sandy Denny, Ashley Hutchings, and Richard Thompson had splintered, and the other, and newer, guys had rallied behind fancy folk fiddler Dave Swarbrick. So, from June 1972, my review of A&M 4333, Fairport's then-new album "Babbacombe" Lee (and my opinion of the discs cited here would still hold today, except that Angel Delight yielded many Fairport old favorites as the years went on)...

********

Hard on the heels of Fairport's recent Angel Delight--a somewhat lackluster jumble of jigs and clogs rumored to have been released without the group's consent (and certainly advertised in a slipshod manner with even the song titles confused)--comes this odd accumulation of programmatic folky-rock called "Babbacombe" Lee. (Arriving almost to the day with the announcement of Simon Nicol's departure from the group, the drafty jacket even has a drawing of the boys with Simon standing apart--shades of Last Time Around!) I say "programmatic" because the songs all concern one John Lee, evidently a real man who was arrested for a murder he didn't commit. Convicted posthaste on circumstantial evidence and condemned to death, Lee was later unexpectedly reprieved when, on the morning of his execution, the gallows failed three times to function. Lee then lived on behind bars for twenty-odd years more (consignment to a worse tomb, he commented afterwards) until his final parole.

A bizarre tale indeed, and a curious choice for a "concept" album. Or is it? An 1880's setting, existential angst, a "terrible ordeal" (as the notes proclaim), an implicit message calling for prison and juridical reform--"Babbacombe" Lee has them all and more. The "more" fortunately being a disc-load of good, varied, invigorating music--plenty of mandolin and fiddle, vocals from all four Fairporters (for a welcome change), a multitude of intriguing and melodic, if untitled, songs.

The guys have clearly put in many long hours shaping these story-songs, polishing the lyric content to a glossy, yet feeling and intelligent gleam, especially the second side's Death Row ballads ("Dying's very easy, waiting's very hard"). I was prepared at first to be bored, since concept albums have become such a goddamned glut and drag. But now I'm most glad I listened and really heard. A distinguished, and enjoyable, piece of work from a group still to be reckoned with, split or no. So don't let the bland packaging put you off--don't pass "Babbacombe" Lee carelessly by.

(And if you can find it, get the English import called No Roses, by Shirley Collins and the Albion Country Band--which is Miss Collins and, mostly, the old Fairport crew reunited for a folk-rocking good time that harkens back to watershed albums like Unhalfbricking and Liege and Lief.)

*********

Back to the present. As fans of Fairport know, Sandy died after a fall, Richard built a great career as songwriter and guitarist extraordinaire, restless Ashley became a one-man force for preserving English music of all eras, and Swarb led a version of Fairport for several more years, until the band sort of petered out... except that it didn't.

A new/old Fairport reconstituted itself with Simon back, and Dave Pegg, and Dave Mattacks, and various front men on guitar or fiddle or whatever, and the boys gathered for a nice Weekend in the Country, which became a yearly event, which grew to be three days of Fairporters old and new and their many musical friends and friendly rivals, and new albums appeared every year or so, and the band rolled on!

Forty years young this May, and up to nearly 30 years of Festivals, mostly called Cropredy. And all survivors are back this year for a special on-stage playthrough of Liege and Lief (the single most influential English rocking folk album of all time), as well as the usual all-hands-on-deck Saturday night with Fairport.

And I'll be there.

I'm Tore Down (Part 3)

Bluesman John Hammond briefly had Jimi Hendrix as his lead guitar player, but then Jimi headed for England (see most recent post below)...

"That summer of 1967 I went to Atlantic and told them about the stuff we'd cut earlier for Red Bird. They were interested and bought the tunes and my contract, and used them on the album I Can Tell in the fall. We also cut Sooner or Later then, but it wasn't released till the next year."

From 1967 until last year ((article dates from 1970)), Hammond was just playing anywhere he could, Chicago, both coasts, some festivals--sometimes alone, sometimes as John Hammond and His Screamin' Nighthawks, though the only other mainstay in that time was drummer Charles Otis.

"Let me tell you about him," says Hammond. "Charles Otis is a legend in his own time. He began playing at sixteen in New Orleans with Professor Longhair. Then he went on the road with Lloyd Price--he's on 'Lawdy Miss Clawdy.' He also played with Fats Domino, Little Richard, Huey Piano Smith, Charles Brown, Lowell Fulson, Otis Redding, The Coasters, The Dixie Cups, Alvin Robinson--in other words, everybody in r&b. In The Girl Can't Help It, Charles is the cat drumming behind Little Richard. He's 37 now, but he's ageless. He's had numerous offers from cats like James Brown, But Charles won't go out on the road anymore with anyone but me," concludes Hammond with obvious pride.

Atlantic made no further moves with Hammond, Otis, and whoever else, however, until last fall. "They sent me down to Muscle Shoals, and I think we made a monster--a meat package, no fat on it anywhere. This new guy Duane Allman's on guitar on four cuts, lead and slide. Now I've heard The Allman Brothers album and I don't like it much, but he played his ass off for this one." The new album, called Southern Fried, has just now appeared.

What are Hammond's future plans? "Well," he muses, "right now I could have an eight-piece band of the baddest cats in the land--all these New Orleans cats that are tight with Charles. But I still can't afford to keep a band like that together. But if I could, man, we'd make a shot heard 'round the world.

"If I can't get big money and big concerts," he goes on, "I don't know what will happen. I can't keep going on the road ten months of the year much longer. I've got a wife and kid now. She's a woman, she knows I'm a musician and she's strong; but this year starts my ninth year. I've played everywhere, I've worked hard, I've got all the credentials--now I've got to get into the concert scene."

Hammond listens in silence for a moment to Little Walter blowing blue and lonely in the background, then says, "I've never been in a strong bargaining positions with the record companies. I've never got any front money at all, so they were never forced to put any promotional hype on my albums. Even this new one--Atlantic says they'll push it, but it's all on faith at this point.

"It's hard not to be bitter, but I'm not. I've met and played with so many incredible artists--I've gotten to play with all my idols, John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf. Listen, I shared a bill with the Wolf one time, and he used to call me back out every night. He said, 'Damn, oh you got a lot of heart, John.' A black person can see that I feel what I'm doing--that I'm not just imitating. Because of my family, I've just known so many black musicians in my life. Like my middle name Paul--I'm named after Paul Robeson, my godfather. But it's never been, like, being part of a white group looking on a black culture. I've just been there, so I'm not ill-at-ease now wherever I go. I get hassled more by whites," he adds bitterly, "than I do by blacks."

And as a result, Hammond's manner seems a strange mixture of shyness and egotism--of courtly politeness on one hand and occasional nervousness on the other (evidenced possibly by the slight stutter that shows up in his speech, though never in his singing). So many of his friends and one-time back-up men have become astounding successes, and so many white critics have accused him disdainfully of something akin to "blackface" mimickry ((Greil Marcus is one over the many years who never cut John any slack)), that it should be no surprise to find Hammond somewhat defensive in his pride and confidence.

"People think I've had all these inroads in music because of my father," he says. "He's really a spectacular man, and I got to hear the music because of his position. But I've done it all myself. I wanted to be on my own, making my own living, making my own mistakes--and I have been since I was eighteen. In fact, there was a time when my father tried to discourage me from music.

"I began playing because I loved the blues, I loved all these black musicians who are truly great figures in American culture. And I wanted to help propagate, help continue the life of this stuff that was going out of style. I knew I could do it, and I have--I know I've turned a lot of people on to this pure art form, this roots thing of American culture. And a lot of black artists have benefited, so I feel good.

"The blues is comin' back," he says, " and comin' back pure--the basics, the truth. It's so real, it makes some people embarrassed. In today's age of super-technology when there's no feeling and very little thinking, the blues is a shot of pure energy."

He stops and gestures into the gathering waves of sound from Little Walter's harmonica. "That's so real, man. That's his heart you're listening to."

It's over. John Hammond, bluesman, heads back to the motel and then to his last night at the Medicine Show--still on the road, still paying his dues, still working and waiting.

*********

The irony of this 1970 article, of course, is that it could have been written yesterday or a year ago, because the language and ideas expressed (especially in this third part) are still pertinent over 35 years later. Though his hair is graying and he's recognized as a major founding figure of the post-Chicago blues scene, playing and singing for nearly 50 years now, John Hammond is still out there scuffling, shifting from label to label, cutting fine albums with tunes ranging from Robert Johnson to Howlin' Wolf, Chuck Berry to Tom Waits... and maybe still hoping to hit it big.

My Time After A While (Part 2)

Hammond's career took off when he got a rousing reception at the Newport Folk Festival. We resume there...

"I cut Big City Blues in the winter of '63. This guitar player named Billy Butler who'd played with Bill Doggett on 'Honky Tonk' got a band together for the date. After that, Vanguard booked me into the Village Gate. I had Eric Gale on guitar, Jimmy Lewis on bass, and Rob somebody on drums--we were the first electric band to play there other than jazz. This was January of 1964, when The Rolling Stones had first come over to this country. They came down to dig us at the Gate, and I got to know them, mainly Brian."

Hammond was gigging all over by then, including several jobs in Canada. "I met these guys called The Hawks," he goes on, "and sat in with them on a few jobs. I was playing with them as their group, only in a jamming capacity, but we got to be very good friends. The Hawks at that time looked super-straight--crewcuts, immaculate suits, all that. But they were actually totally wild, really far-out cats. Some of the things they used to do with girls at those ((early rockabilly singer Ronnie)) Hawkins parties I can't tell you!"

How do you feel about their different image and pre-eminent success as The Band? "I'm really happy for 'em," Hammond answers. "Those guys are so talented, they can play any kind of sound there is. What you hear on their two records is just one facet of what they can do. They're makin' real money now, and that's what they always wanted--to get into a position where they could call the shots. God knows they've earned it.

"Anyway, in the summer of 1964 I got together all these cats I'd known, including The Hawks. Bloomfield was on piano because Robbie was just so dynamic on guitar, and Michael was not playing like he is now. In fact, Michael learned some things from Robbie. I got them together--not too many people know that. But," he shrugs, "it's not important anyway.

"Vanguard got very uptight about the date because we looked so sloppy and they didn't know any of these guys, so we had to do it all in one session, and get it on the first or second take with no overdubbing. I really had to hustle to get Vanguard to release it at all ((his fine album So Many Roads))."

Hammond pauses to light another cigarette, then resumes: "I've really played with some fantastic cats--like, Johnny Littlejohn had a trio going in Chicago. Bloomfield introduced us in '64, and then we played some jobs together in the East for about two months. The whole problem was I had this duality thing going--I was soloing, but I was also trying to get a band together. I kept trying to make something happen between myself and The Hawks. So many near calls, but...

"Finally, I went over to England in the spring of '65. I played twenty dates or so over there with bands backing me up like Graham Bond's and then John Mayall in London. Listen, Clapton was playing, Spencer Davis, Winwood... I got to meet and play with all those cats. It was really fine."

When he returned to the U.S. in the summer, Hammond left Vanguard and signed with Leiber-Stoller and a label of theirs called Red Bird. "I got Robbie for the session and Jimmy Lewis; and Leiber-Stoller knew Charles Otis who'd been playing all over. Then I got Bill Wyman for a couple of numbers. Brian Jones was there too, begging me to let him play hamonica on the date, but I told him the harp was all mine. Dylan showed up at the session too--Bob and I had been friends since 1961, and I'd introduced him to The Hawks.

"We cut two singles and some other numbers. The deal supposedly was to be this unbelievable promotion by Red Bird--magazines, TV shows, the whole shot. But then the owner of Red Bird just decided it wasn't going to happen. Man, I was zapped. Just when were getting things together and everything looked so rosy, bang!

"That was it. I sold everything I owned and left the country. I said I was never going back." Hammond split for Europe and spent half of 1966 wandering across the continent, finally winding up in Turkey for some months. He underwent a particularly painful experience there--one which he refuses to talk about, but which persuaded him to return to the U.S. after all. "I came back at the end of summer with my tail between my legs," he says.

After a trip to the Orient with a friend, he wound up in San Francisco for a few days, where he went to see a flashy new band called Jefferson Airplane (in the pre-Grace era). "I looked up on stage and there was this cat on guitar I'd known at college, Jorma Kaukonen. He invited me up on stage to play with them. It was really strange--I was just off the plane and was completely straight. I was wearing a suit and tie, had this San Francisco Giants baseball cap on my head, and was smoking a cigar. But we did it, and the audience went wild."

The occasion convinced Hammond to go back to New York and get his own band together, this one called The Blue Flames. "I met this guy named Jimmy James who was playing stuff off my So Many Roads--he was playing Robbie's parts, but better! I said, 'Wow! I got to get him into the band.' And we also had Randy Wolfe, who calls himself Randy California now. ((of the band Spirit)) And Jimmy James, of course, was in reality Jimi Hendrix.

"We played the A Go-Go and had celebrities digging us every night. Again it was going to happen. But then Jimmy was offered this job in England behind The Animals. He asked me about it, and I told him it sounded like a good thing."

He adds somewhat ruefully, "The next thing I knew it was The Jimi Hendrix Experience!"

((A good place to pause again. Hammond was snakebit for luck way too many times. Next time, he reflects on that and tells us about drummer Charles Otis--oh yeah, and an obscure slide guitarist named Duane Allman.))

John Hammond, Bluesman (Part 1)

Once there was a fine Boston-based rock-and-politics magazine called Fusion. It survived for several years in the late Sixties and early Seventies as a solid rival to Rolling Stone. Among those writing for it were Robert Somma (Editor), Michael Lydon, Paul Williams, Robert Christgau, Lenny Kaye, Sandy Pearlman, Nick Tosches, Jonathan Demme, Robert Gordon, John Gabree, and William Kunstler. The magazine even published Peter Guralnick's first book.

As far as I know, Fusion has vanished into rock history now, but I published a few decent pieces in it, and I intend to resurrect a couple of them over the months ahead, starting with my portrait of white bluesman John Hammond, Jr. (not really Junior since his middle name Paul was not also his dad's, but usually identified that way)--still going strong today though not much more financially successful now than he was back then. The article's title was "Songs of the Road."

John Hammond, Sr. is one of the few giant figures in the recording industry. His efforts in discovering, recording, and monitoring neglected or future musical talents has long been legendary in a business short on memory. As an executive of Columbia Records and as the man best known to the rock generation for having signed up Bob Dylan, John Sr. is, in the words of his son, a "spectacular" man, one whose grace and tact are as obvious as his concern and intelligence.

So how does it feel to be John Hammond, Jr. when the year is 1970, when the really big brass rings are mostly gone and it isn't 1960 and there aren't any clubs or people left who haven't heard about Chicago Blues or Joan Baez or civil rights? Where do you go when all the months and years have slipped by and the lives of friends are measured in words like career and culture hero...

The club has character, atmosphere, as they say. No perpendicular sign outside announces its presence, only the word "Tavern" and a couple of beer ads in the dingy front window. But a chain just inside the door (due to the cover charge) suggests that this is no working man's beer-parlor; and once you dig that, you got it all. Band sound and crowd drone; ceiling looming down over parallel layers of spilled Oly, wall-to-wall bodies, and cigarette/pot haze as thick as catatonia; walls and supports decked out with such jagged addenda as mammoth deer antlers, a copy of Goya's Naked Maja, bare and glaring red lights, a vast, ragged U.S. flag, and posters proclaiming the very man now performing on the non-stage over at the left.

Clearly, the word has gone out: John Hammond's in town for three nights, and the Medicine Show Tavern in once again the place to be. (Concert halls and discotheques may control live rock these days, but the Medicine Hall is trying to make it--in backwater Seattle!--by booking in blues people: Lightnin' Hopkins and Son House in recent months, and now white practitioner John Hammond.)

Hammond's Blues Band--blacks Harry Holt, bass, and Charles Otis, drums, plus the man himself on vocals and small electric Gibson--is into the second set of the evening. All three musicians wear suits and ties, but there's no mistaking them for businessmen. Holt's bulging natural and sly smile peer around the neck of his bass, while Otis hides behind his shades and flickering sticks and his well-earned reputation as one of the best r&b drummers around. Hammond's looks are more complex: a bit of the Jagger leer framed in long dark hair, but an angular and gawky body like a high school basketball star--and the sounds issuing from his guitar and throat are flat-out black.

At 27, John Hammond has been scrabbling and scuffling on the road for over eight years. Aside from maybe Dave Van Ronk, he was the first white blues performer to get on record (in the rock era at least), both as country acoustic and then later as big-city electric; and his eight albums have even featured members of The Band and The Stones on occasion. But the chart sales have always managed to elude his grasp. So, although Hammond's deep involvement with black blues has served as the model for many young whites, performers and listeners alike, widespread popular recognition has not been his.

The audience at the Medicine Show at least voices approval--a couple of hundred hip kids, whooping and whistling and cheering wildly. The set opens with Muddy Waters' "I Can't Be Satisfied," all bottleneck strains and machine-gun drums, then moves into John Lee Hooker's "Sugar Mama," with Holt's bass heavily pronounced and Hammond getting into some wah-wah. He's really working out now, really going through changes: arching his body around, shaking the hair and sweat streamers back from his eyes, attacking the mike with his slack-jawed, explosive vocal delivery, as thick and slurred and black as two-days-old coffee.

Close your eyes and it's a South Side Chicago bar. There's "Mojo" and "Forty Days" and a "Cross Cut Saw" that stutters and booms with harsh guitar--and then "Spoonful," creeping in slow and evil and deadly, with Hammond outdoing even the Wolf, adding his own gutty and gritty inflection to those famous opening words: "Could be a spoonful o' coffee, Could be a spoonful o' tea..."

When fatigue and an increasingly erratic sound system finally bring the set to an end, the John Hammond Blues Band exits through cascading applause. Once into the tavern's combination storeroom-office-sound booth, Otis and Holt wander off to quench their thirst, but Hammond settles down to demonstrate acoustic bottlenecking techniques to a pair of inquisitive fans. he seems tired but pleased with the band's performance; and he agrees to do an interview the next afternoon.

********

At that time, Hammond arrives resplendent in jeans and a pythonskin jacket ("I'm not up to the pants yet"), armed with a mug of coffee and a pack of Camels, apologetic for his slight hoarseness, the result of having sung every night for over six weeks. With a disc of Magic Sam playing in the background, Hammond launches into a near monologue on gigs and people and dues:

"Robert Johnson was where I started. When I was 16, my father ((see intro above)) played me a record of Johnson's 'Terraplane Blues.' Something clicked in my head. That's when I became a blues singer."

Lightnin' Hopkins was another formative influence, but Hammond was playing only for himself and for friends--in the Village and during one wasted year at Antioch College--until early '62. "I had a job at a hotel in Florida, busman, roomkeeper, maintenance man, and in the off-time I was practicing guitar. I'd go into this little town, Boca Grande, and stand on the street corners playing for the black people in town. I met this cat Albert McCall who encouraged me and showed me some stuff on harmonica--I'm sure he's still playing there at the Phosphate."

That spring he began playing the club circuit in L.A.--the Satire, the Insomniac, the Troubador, the Ash Grove. After a stop in San Francisco, he moved on to Chicago in the fall. "I met up there again with John Koerner and Dave Ray, and we drove up to Minneapolis in this old hotrod V-8 Ford I had. Got a job playing with Koerner at Matty's Bar in Minneapolis. We had this duet thing going--two guitars, two harmonicas. I got to know those guys very well."

Then on to Gerde's Folk City in New York, where he attracted enough attention to get a contract from Vanguard Records. Hammond cut an album that winter, but Vanguard didn't get around to releasing it until the following September. Meanwhile he was playing dates up and down the East Coast; remember those innocent days when a white kid playing black music was still something remarkable?

Hammond continues, "Then I was asked to the Newport Folk Festival. I went over well and made some friends." He's being modest. His performance was actually an astounding success; just listen to the black artists cheering Hammond on in the background of "No Money Down" (on the first Blues at Newport album)....

((I'm splitting the article there for now, but with one bit of added info: Hammond's father was the man who staged the famous Spirituals to Swing concerts in 1938 and '39; and he tried to track down Robert Johnson to bring him up to NYC for the first one, but Johnson had been murdered by then. Younger John's connection with tragic bluesman Robert was in a way made back in 1938! Next time: The Band, Mike Bloomfield, Duane Allman, and a certain Jimmy James...))