Blondie @40, The 92Y at 140

Debbie Harry and Chris Stein are laid back.  The founding members of Blondie took the stage at the 92 St Y last night, talking, not performing, but letting us in on what's gone on in the past 40 years.  Yes, the band started 40 years ago which is really hard to believe. 

Early photo of Blondie taken by Chris Stein

Here's what I took away from their chat:

Debbie said she knew at 5 years old that she was going to do things her way. 

The band had success in Europe first. Debbie attributes that to two things:  Their record label was based there so they knew how to work the market and the Europeans have always been open to pop music. 

Their early style came from raiding thrift stores.  At the time, the cheapest clothes were the 60's discards.  It's hard to say that she created a look because her style was so eclectic.  No matter what she wore, whether it was a garbage bag or a boy scout uniform, she always looked amazing.  I remember seeing the band at My Father's Place, Halloween 1978 and was astounded by how cool Debbie was and thinking there is no way I could pull off what she does. 

Andy Warhol used  Big Shot Polaroid Cameras to shoot photos.  The band would pick them up while on the road the bring them back to him.  The cover of their latest album features Andy Warhol's portrait of Debbie.  Chris pointed out the irony of Andy using cheap equipment and selling the art for millions of dollars.

September will see the release of Chris Stein's book of photos and anecdotes, Negative: Me, Blondie, and the Advent of Punk.  We saw a few of the photos last night.  There was a wonderful shot of Clem and Debbie on 14th St.  As Christ pointed out an onlooker looked like Matthew McConaughey in Dallas Buyers Club. 

They always wanted to be successful and therefore were prepared for their rise to rock star-ness. 

Clem Burke (the original and still drummer) is immersed in music.  He has no alternative reality.  He knows everything about every band.  Blondie played Hammersmith Odeon at the time Keith Moon died.  As a tribute, Clem threw his snare drum into the audience that night.  Clem was upset that one of their road crew retrieved the drum. 

Debbie thinks of herself as a feminist. 

The band has a new album, Blondie 4(0) Forever -Ghosts of a Download/Deluxe Redux:Greatest Hits.  They rerecorded their hits, which is part l of the package.  They don't own the original masters, so I'm sure licensing them would have been a nightmare.  Part ll is new material including Sugar on the Side which the band performed on GMA. 

Anthony DeCurtis (Rolling Stone writer) dropped the ball as the interviewer.  Was he so enamored by Debbie and Chris that he couldn't keep track of the conversation?  He asked questions that had already been answered and poised many questions that only required a yes or no.  He would have failed interview class.  Debbie has never been gregarious in interviews, so DeCurtis' questions did not solicit an elaborate answer from her.   The audience questions made for a more captivating evening.  As I left the theater I thought if only Lenny Kaye sat between these two immensely talented people....  I'll have to wait for the duo to hit the Howard Stern Show.  I can hope. 

The Charming Linda Ronstadt

--> “I’m not competitive musically.”  This seems obvious.  Linda Ronstadt is the ultimate collaborator.  She has sung with everyone from Dolly Parton to Nelson Riddle to Mariachi los Camperos de nati Cano.

She was on the road with Neil Young in Houston.   She heard about Emmylou Harris from Chris Hillman. He thought they had the same music sensibilities.  After her show, she heads over to this biker club.  It was rowdy.  Gram Parsons comes on stage and sings with Emmylou.  She said you could hear a pin drop in the place. At that moment she felt jealousy.  She loved Emmylou’s voice.  She said I could carry that jealousy or I could embrace her as a fan and maybe one day get to sing with her.  The latter was the chosen path and it resulted in Trio. 

Gracious, funny and very astute, my impression of Linda Ronstadt.  John Rockwell interviewed her last night at the 92Y last night.  I haven’t read her book Simple Dreams, but I’ve heard Rockwell and others say it is beautifully written.  The only thing she said she wrote before this book was thank you notes. She was inspired by Renee Fleming’s and Rosanne Cash’s memoirs.  Her publisher said you don’t have to write about your old boyfriends, just about the music.  She was in.  She wrote on a laptop, mostly late at night after her kids went to bed. 

She has a varied cast of friends, She was asked about Phoebe Snow who she said she misses dearly.  They might not speak for a year, but when they did it was like no time had passed and they made each other laugh.  Rosemary Clooney invited her to sing at a benefit.  Linda said I’d love to talk to you about Nelson Riddle. (This was after her three records with him and he had passed.) He told Linda that Clooney was the love of his life. Clooney invited her for dinner. Linda told the funny story of how Jerry Brown just shows up at her house as she’s leaving to go to Clooney’s house. He invites himself to dinner and then high jacks roses that were sent to Linda to bring to Clooney.  She said he doesn’t spend a red cent. 

Not much of the rock era of her career was touched upon.   After playing arenas, which she said sounded horrible; she wanted to play “on a stage with a curtain”. They used to joke that it reverberated so much in those venues, that you could hear a guitar solo that was played the week before.  John Rockwell was instrumental in connecting her to Joseph Papp and then came Pirates of Penzance, which was eventually performed on a stage with a curtain.   

She is active in the bay area not for profit organization Los Cenzontles. Their goal is to create a family-like environment where young people could learn and explore traditional Mexican music and dance.

Linda was charming and sassy.  She’s well read and well versed in music.

She shared her joys with us last night.  I always thought she was the coolest and she still is.  Her book, Simple Dreams:  A Musical Memoir is out now.  

For more reading:  SF Gate. 

Linda Ronstadt

A friend and I were talking about Linda Ronstadt and how underrated we think she is.  Her voice is golden and bold, a very nice combo.  In the next few days I get the 92Y catalog and there it is on September 18th, a conversation with Linda.  I buy ticket the next day.  Two days later, the news comes that she has Parkinsons and can't sing anymore.  It's a total tragedy for our ears, but worse for her being.  As of my post, there are still tickets available. 

I'm looking forward to what she has to say and I'm sure it's a lot. Her autobiography Simple Dreams comes out in September.  The New Yorker has a nice piece on the power of Linda. 

John Irving: One Person At The 92Y

John Irving does not have the patience to be politically correct.  He tells it like he feels it.  At the 92Y last night he read excerpts from his just released novel, In One Person and spoke about the characters, his career, politics and of course as it was mother’s day, his mother. 

Irving’s reading of In One Person illuminated the character of town librarian Ms Frost.  You don’t know her until you’ve heard John read her.  (John Benjamin Hickey narrates the audio version of the book, which I’m sure it’s a treat.)  When I was reading the novel, I had an image of a bigger and broader version of the actress Wendy Malick.  Ms Frost becomes one of the many “wrong crushes” for narrator Billy Abbott.  She was the highly regarded wrestling champion of the town, when she was a he.  Billy’s grandmother has only contempt for her. Ms Frost becomes a key figure in shaping the course of Billy’s life. 

Being bisexual, Billy is a true outsider. He is not to be believed by either men or women. He does not belong to any party. 

If you were, like me, at an all-boys’ boarding school in the fall of 1960, you felt utterly alone—you trusted no one, least of all another boy your age—and you loathed yourself. I’d always been lonely, but self-hatred is worse than loneliness.    –Billy Abbott

I’ve seen John speak, read and answer questions probably 5 or 6 times. Each time something else is revealed to me.  Here’s is what I learned at the Y last night:

On his mother: The time period of his life that he thinks made his mother the happiest was when he was wrestling.  He started at 14, which coincided with the beginning of his writing career.  His mother was a prompter in the theater as is Billy’s mother in the novel.  He said that’s where the similarities end, as his mother was the most un-homophobic person he has ever known.  He read the passage from the book that really got to me as I read it.  It references the daily laying out of the clothes by Billy’s mother for him.  When Billy turns 13, she stops the ritual and that is when he believes his mother lost interest in him.  It seemed to me that maybe John lived through something similar in his life. He started off the evening by saying, “If you brought your mother here tonight (pause), I hope you bought her something else.”  His mother would not be happy to be brought to one of his readings for Mother’s Day.

The advantage of writing with hindsight:  In One Person’s narrator Billy Abbott is in his late 60’s looking back.  It starts in the 50’s and then brings him into the 1980’s AIDS epidemic. Irving wrote about the Viet Nam War in 1989’s A Prayer For Owen Meany.  The war ended in 1975.   

Politics in his writing:  He views a political novel as one where the writer is taking a side.  A novel can be a form of advocacy.  He cited The Cider House Rules, Owen Meany, The World According To Garp and In One Person as his 4 political novels.  His most recent goal in writing this book was to broaden our tolerance for sexual differences.  He thought it would be much easier to relate to Billy for having sex with both genders, as opposed to Johnny Wheelwright (Owen Meany) who goes through his whole life never having sex.  It is thought that Johnny was in love with Owen, but never acted on it.

After writing Garp he thought he was done with sexual outcasts. He felt the need to revisit, as we’re still battling sexual discrimination.  Irving’s thoughts:  Shakespeare was more at ease with this than we are today. 

The writing process:  Many submitted questions about his writing ritual, which is to conceive the ending first and then create the backwards road map for the rest of the story.  He said it is a process and nothing that he’s married to, but it works for him.  It wasn’t until after his fourth novel, Garp that he was able to quit his other jobs and concentrate solely on writing.  His mother was not impressed when he told her of his excitement in committing to full-time writing.  Once he had the freedom to write, he struggled with it.  He said he couldn’t work for more than three hours a day on The Hotel New Hampshire.  It was a much more difficult road that he thought it would be.   His next novel, Cider House, was the first of the constructed books.  He had a method that worked for him. 

His advice to writers:  Don’t always write what you know.  How boring!  The thought exasperated him, as did the idea of Mitt Romney as president.

John Irving:  writer, wrestler and forthright.  

Listen to John on the Brian Lehrer show.

The Genius of Jac Holzman

The best part of Jac Holzman’s job was working with the artists. He loved pairing a musician with the right producer. He said last night at the 92Y’s celebration of 60 years of Elektra Records (Jac founded the label) that finding that perfect collaboration was probably the most challenging part of his job.  He told the crowd that he wanted the label to make enough money so that he could continue to put out the music that needed to be heard.

Lenny Kaye was superb in his conversation with Jac. They have a history.  Among other things, Lenny assembled the Nuggets compilations, which were a packaging of the best songs from the albums Elektra released. 1948 was a pivotal year for both Jac and music.  The 33 1/3 album was now available and this changed the music business, much like digital files have today.  The early 50’s saw the rise of independent record labels.  Lenny and Jac both commented on how similar that era is to today.  Jac’s first release was a John Gruen record with soprano Georgiana Bannister, from there it became the premier label for folk music.  Lenny pointed out that just about every important folk singer was on the label.  Jac commented that he missed one:  Bob Dylan.   Jac still seems to be beating himself up for missing the Dylan train.  At the time Dylan was playing Greenwich Village, Jac felt that New York City was being plucked from all angles, so he took a year and moved to LA to check out the scene there.  He didn’t find the music he was looking for and by the time he returned to New York, Dylan was signed to Columbia Records. 

When John Sebastian (before The Lovin’ Spoonful, he played on a lot of Elektra’s recordings) mentioned to Jac in the early 60’s that they were running out of folk songs to record, the light bulb went off and Jac realized he had to sign folk singers who were recording their own compositions.  Till that point, a folk song in the strict sense of the word, was a tune that was handed down from a generation that lived it.  Now with recorded music, the dynamics changed.  Songs were there to be heard as they were originally written and sung. They no longer had to be handed down to be reinterpreted.  Tom Rush, Phil Ochs and Tim Buckley were the new folk paradigm.  Judy Collins recorded Leonard Cohen songs. Folk music had changed. 

Jac wanted to sign a rock band. He went back to LA and as he told it, he went through the local papers and circled the names of any artists he had never heard of and decided to go see them live.  Love caught his eye.   “What a great name for a band” he told the audience.  Love’s leader Arthur Lee was wearing prismatic glasses, doing a rock version of My Little Red Book.  Jac was sold after seeing them at Bido Lido's in Hollywood.  Arthur wanted $5000 in cash to sign.  The deal was done.  Love was never a huge hit despite being an amazing rock band.  Jac thinks part of it might be that it was a racially mixed band, which meant nothing to him growing up in the melting pot of New York City.  Arthur was instrumental in Elektra’s biggest success. 

At the urging of Arthur, Jac came early to a Love show to see the opening act, The Doors.  Jac didn’t really get them the first time he saw them, but Arthur’s passion for the band led him to see them a few more times and when he heard them perform Alabama Song, he got what they were doing.  Unbeknownst to Jac, the band had just been dropped from Columbia Records the week before and were leery of record companies.  The band was a fan of the world music albums Jac was releasing on his sister label Nonesuch Records.  They liked that Love was on Elektra.  Jac was very close to signing them when he decided to get into their heads and think as musicians.  What would they want?  He decided it was a full on commitment to release three albums no matter what the situation.  This hadn’t been done before and it worked.  Jac thought like an artist.  He let the artist be him/herself. He was very hands on in the studio, with the artwork and with the marketing, but at the core, he let the musicians make their own music.  

The next step in Jac’s work with The Doors was to pair them with the reluctant Paul Rothchild to produce the record. Jac thought he would be perfect even though Paul did not.  He was someone who was as smart as the band and it probably didn’t hurt his standing with them that he had been arrested for  marijuana possession.  The Doors had never been into a recording studio before making the landmark Doors record in 1967.  As Jac explained it, it took them about two hours to get it and feel comfortable.   They recorded at Sunset Sound where Jim Morrison was enamored by using the same mic that Frank Sinatra used. He was a big fan.

Towards the end of the program two Elektra artists, Jackson Browne and Natalie Merchant took the stage and talked about their experiences with Elektra and then performed.  Jackson started off with My Opening Farewell.  Nathalie sang a song of Jackson’s These Days that she recorded for an Elektra 40^th Anniversary record.  Browne accompanied her on guitar.  Her voice is nothing short of a force of nature.  She exudes feeling and it seems effortless.  She’s a natural talent.  One that I’m sure Jac would have signed if he hadn’t left the company years before. 

Jac is truly a music man. He said numerous times how lucky he is to do what he does. His true passion came through when he talked about why he signed an artist. If the hairs on the back of his neck stood up when listening to her/him, the artist was worthy of a record.  He said that there had to be joy in wanting to work with these artists.  Maybe that is really his genius, letting us all in on his joy. 

John Irving Tells His Story at the 92Y

Plot is key in a John Irving novel. According to him, it’s key to any good novel. Any good writer has to feel frightened to make the reader believe the incident they are reading about is frightening. John Irving has made me suspend disbelief in every one of his novels, but somehow I buy into the storyline, because it’s riveting and the characters are so full of life.

John spoke at the 92nd Street Y last night and let us in on his story. He was the child of a theater person. His first love was acting. His mother worked at a local theater. He was 6 at the time and would hang out and watch rehearsals. His mother would tell him the plot of the play before it was produced, which he said may be why he always writes the last line or paragraph of the book first. And that line(s) has never changed. He read us the last part of his uncompleted book last night. The book has the working title In One Person, which he derived from a line in Shakespeare’s Richard ll. This is the tale of a bisexual boy who falls in love with a transgender, but he is unaware that she is a transgender. Although he didn’t reveal more than that, I’m sure there will be a bear or a child who never physically grows up somewhere in the mix.

The youngest of his children will be leaving the house next year to go to college. This is the first time in many years that he will not have a child living at home with him. In a moment of vulnerability, he confessed that being afraid for someone else informed his writing and changed his life.

He studied German in his early 20’s and had a jazz drummer as a roommate. The apartment was above a folk music hall, where the music played into the night. He read this story, which was a memoir of connecting. He asked that it not be recorded. Even though his friend, the writer Edmund White suggested he write his memoirs, he is not interested. He has written about portions of his life and in one instance he regretted it. He felt that story should have been saved and embellished, twisted or played with so that it would end up in one of his novels. John Irving tells a great story.

Malcolm Gladwell On Success at the 92nd Street Y

How is success measured? Malcolm Gladwell thinks we abuse the word "genius" and bestowing it on people is giving them too much credit. He believes (and goes on to credit his theory in his latest book: Outliers) there are many factors that are involved in a person's success and given the right cultural environment, work ethic, a sprinkle of fairy dust talent and date of birth, you have the advantages to succeed. He used numerous examples throughout the interview: Bill Gates, The Beatles, two Canadian hockey teams, KIPP Academy and J Robert Oppenheimer.

Robert Krulwich, host of Radiolab, interviewed him and was a perfect choice to challenge Gladwell on his theories. Their dialogue on the use and vocal emphasis of the word "love" was highly entertaining. Gladwell is the master of looking at a situation (he spoke passionately about the merit of Affirmative Action) and turning it upside down. He gets you thinking. It's been said there are two sides to every story and then there's the truth. We have Gladwell to show us the third side.