When I was in junior high, I had a gym teacher who used to talk a lot about “life’s embarrassing moments” as a way to put her students at ease. Whether the situation involved repeatedly missing a goal, completely screwing up the process of a game, or just feeling uncomfortable with one’s body, “life’s embarrassing moments” were many, and you could count on them to keep happening without fail. So, best get used to them and learn how to deal with it.
My brief meeting with the Portland folk rock band Norfolk & Western turned out to be one of those moments, though I hardly knew it when it was happening.
I actually hadn’t explicitly planned on getting footage of Norfolk when I put together my initial wish list of Parlour to Parlour artists. I figured they might be good for a second season, once I had become more familiar with their recordings. I had seen them perform live once before, at Cafe du Nord in San Francisco. Chris Robley was filling his usual role as supporting guitarist and keyboard player in their road band, so it was chance for me to see and hear him in a different context.
Chris was the one who offered to get me an interview with Norfolk, since I was going to be in Portland during a weekend when he’d be playing a gig with the band at the Aladdin Theater. It would be out of concept, in that there would be no footage at anyone’s home, but hey, these people are friggin’ busy: singer/guitarist Adam Selzer is also a regular member of M. Ward’s band and a partner at Type Foundry Studio, drummer Rachel Blumberg plays with Mirah and Jolie Holland, and bassist Dave Depper has gigs with Jolie Holland and Loch Lomond. Downtime, these people have not. (more…)
The time: September, 1984. I had just begun my junior year at Georgetown University, having taken over the job as music director at WROX, the campus radio station, and arts editor at the Georgetown Voice, the campus alternative weekly.
Even though my grades were sure to suffer (and they did), I was determined to make the most of my opportunity to become BMOC when it came to hooking up with music VIPs.
Pulling a few strings, I managed to arrange a phone interview with Joan Jett, shortly before she and the Blackhearts were about to release Glorious Results of a Misspent Youth.
Three years earlier, Jett had sat atop the pop world with her hits “I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll” and “Crimson and Clover.” It was never a perch that was apparently very comfortable for her. The idea of being a pop star didn’t exactly square with an artist who started out playing raucous live shows in cheap bars – and never got over that adrenaline rush.
By 1984, the fervor had died down and Top 40 radio had forgotten about Jett. In fact, the only places where she got regular airplay were adventurous AOR stations and college radio outlets like ours. (more…)
The weekend began on a deceptively subdued note, but this would change.
My alarm clock performed its temporal duty, jolting me a deep slumber at the unearthly hour of 5:30 A.M. A shower washed the crunchy crystals of sleep from the corners of my eyes, and two 16-ounce mugs of coffee helped me keep them open. I phoned Edward to let him know I was on the way. No answer. Mild panic. Did he already leave? Had he changed his mind about taking me with him? Those were just a couple of the thoughts scurrying through my brain, accelerated and exacerbated by the caffeine coursing through my veins.
A day earlier, Edward Van Halen had invited me to accompany him to the NAMM Show (National Association of Music Merchants) in New Orleans. This is an annual convention where retailers, manufacturers, et al, get together to preview their new lines of guitars, amplifiers, drums, and any other musically-related gadgets and gewgaws. More than anything, though, it’s a chance to drink yourself unconscious on someone else’s dime. (more…)
Every day for two weeks, I had heard the song rise from what must have been a pair of seriously powered speakers, floating out over the hills of Hollywood like some sweetly-scented audio pollen. The music had to be screaming from those distant monitors because Billy’s guitar scuttled the birds in the trees and the vocals came down from the heavens like the very voice of God himself — if the Lord had spoken in a southern dialect and had a preoccupation with modified racecars. Precisely at 11 A.M., ZZ Top’s “Manic Mechanic” was spit out into the ether, signaling to the inhabitants of Laurel Canyon that it was time to start the day — and what better way to greet it than with those tres little hombres from Texas? Today, in another hour, I’d be doing just that, driving to Beverly Hills to meet up with Billy Gibbons, Dusty Hill, and Frank Beard. And as the world’s greatest alarm clock woke up every other late sleeper in the gently sloping foothills, the song’s third verse took on even more serendipitous significance:
Showdown
You bet
And I haven’t saddled my pony yet
Well, I wasn’t heading for a showdown, exactly, more like a stimulating and witty exchange of musical theories; and, no, no pony to speak of, but there was some horsepower under the hood of my RX7 and the truth was, I hadn’t yet saddled up. I mainlined a cup of coffee, gathered up my cassette player and the band’s Deguelloalbum, jumped in the car and as Horatio Alger urged, headed west. (more…)
It was a day of unmatched California beauty; a startling and fiery sun perched high above in a crystal blue sky and blazed down promise. It was an essential day, a meteorological marvel meant to be stored away for future reference.
“Dude,” a friend would ask the following week, “do you remember how amazing it was last Tuesday?”
And of course you do. Even if the day itself was all you’d been given, that would have been gift enough. But the weather was merely an underscoring for the occasion, a gilded and golden opportunity to spend an hour with George Harrison. You’ll forget how to breathe before you forget this. Simply saying the words out loud (actually you’re reduced to mumbling them sotto voce because you’re afraid that anything above a whisper might reduce the reality to mirage) – “I am hanging with a Beatle” – is enough to render you stupid.
Then you start considering the notion that maybe Harrison himself ordered up the perfect day as an interview-ambience backdrop. We all knew that he spoke with God all the time (and if He was going to listen to anybody, He’s going to find a minute or two for a Beatle). So, anyone who recalls a glorious Tuesday back in 1974, somewhere around May or June perhaps, the presence of just a soupcon of magic embedded in the sunrays, you can thank George and God (though not necessarily in that order). (more…)
In 1973, I saw myself disappearing. I was a grammar ghost, a sentence-writing cipher with barely a byline to hang my rent on. I knew what I wanted to do – write about music and the people who made it – but I didn’t know how to go about getting there. I decided to send out concert reviews. I couldn’t send an interview because I’d never done one. But I could buy a concert ticket, go see a band, and write about it. That was within my limited financial and professional means.
Magazines did respond; they passed me over. Rolling Stone. Circus. Guitar Player. Creem. Crawdaddy. The memento mori of a career that would never be. Death head rejection letters. I was turned down by the best. There actually came a point when receiving personalized rejection notices made me feel like I was getting closer. After all, someone had to read the story in order to comment on how shitty it was. Did it matter that the work really was wonky? That I was sending live reports to publications that didn’t run that type of article? That I hand-wrote the stories because the letters a and y on my ancient Underwood manual didn’t work? The y wasn’t a problem. But you try and conjure words that don’t contain a certain letter – a vowel nonetheless – and all you can think of are words that do contain the vowel. Anonymity, shine your dim light down upon your stupidest son. I was fading like Levi’s.
Youthful exuberance and blissful ignorance is a heady potable but it will only take you so far. I needed to go farther. Change. A road trip. At that moment, changing who I was on any percipient level seemed about as likely as being published. But I could change where I was and the summer after high school, I embarked upon the wandering nomad-does-Europe incursion. I stuffed a backpack with a pair of jeans – my best faded Levi’s – a couple shirts, my best tale-telling writing pen and Kerouac’s On the Road (what else would you take?) and spent three months in Europe trying to find and lose myself. (more…)
The interview is set for 2:00 PM. At a quarter ‘til, the black hat, cascading curls, and nose ring saunter through the management office’s front doors. The receptionist raises eyes from a computer monitor and is momentarily stuck to her chair. She fights through the inertia of awe and approaches. Her hand is extended tremulously, but Slash ignores the shake and encloses her in a friendly embrace. He sees me sitting on the couch, walks over, and shakes my hand heartily. He even apologizes for being late when he’s 15 minutes early.
This is who Slash is. He understands the importance of keeping business appointments and hugging the people who work for you. Twenty years ago, back in ’87, when he recorded Guns N’ Roses’ debut, Appetite For Destruction, he set in motion the ritual beheading of the ’80s metal hair bands. With Velvet Revolver, he has synthesized the electric blues and R&B raunchiness of the Stones and Aerosmith and almost single-handedly brought about the Renaissance of the Les Paul.
At that moment in time, he made the transition from guitar player to Guitar Player God. With the metamorphosis came perks – engorged bank accounts and burning hot stripper girlfriends. Through it all, though, one thing stayed constant: His love for the guitar. He loves playing them and talking about them, and when we finally made our way to one of the conference rooms, that’s exactly what we did. (more…)
Chicago, Illinois, April 1977 — I knew what I was in for ten seconds after Guitar Player said to me: “We want you to interview Led Zeppelin.” My head filled with the clarion call of screaming guitars and in a moment of epiphany I saw it all: Jimmy Page would be my touchstone. Every story I’d ever written or ever would write would be measured against this one.
“Screw this up,” I also remembered muttering to myself, “and the closest I’ll ever get to another guitar player is looking at his picture on the cover of an album!”
I silenced the voice and plodded ahead. GP had only made one cursory call to Zeppelin’s record company offices in New York, and had left the rest up to me. I contacted Swan Song immediately. The baton had been passed and I ran with it like Forrest Gump.
“Run, Rosen, Run!”
What I thought would be a sprint turned into a marathon.
The next seven months were devoted to making phone calls and leaving messages. Dealing with Zeppelin’s demands and strange requests became a daily ritual. In many ways, they may have been testing my resolve, some sort of acid test meant to reveal just how truly motivated I was. (more…)
November 1974, St. Paul, Minnesota – In the fall of 1974, Creem magazine flew me out to the Twin Cities to interview Ritchie Blackmore. There had been a renewed interest in Deep Purple after they made a killer appearance at the Cal Jam concert seven months earlier. On that seventh day of April, the band stunned a crowd of 200,000 Ontario Motor Speedway fans when Ritchie shoved Marshall cabinets into the photographer’s pit and trashed his guitar Hendrix-style. He pushed the headstock of his Strat into a TV camera lens and shattered it, and then was nearly blown up when a flash pot ignited just inches from where he was standing.
It was rock and roll full throttle; it was Ritchie Blackmore without a leash. The show was bigger than life and crazier than hell, the elements that have been a part of every memorable concert from the Stones to Zeppelin. Purple was the greatest band in the world that evening, tearing up the night with a set list made up of songs from the just-released Burnalbum. It would be impossible to capture that kind of drama every night, however, and less than a year after that performance, Blackmore would call it quits to form Rainbow.
But there was nothing but a buzz of energy when I was finally ushered to the backstage area of the concert hall. The unique choreography of a rock and roll show was taking place. Amplifiers were given final tweaks and guitars underwent last-minute tune-ups. David Coverdale and Glenn Hughes, the newest members of Purple Mark III, were strolling about. Out front, you could hear the St. Paul auditorium filling up, the crowd happy to be out of the 47-degree cold and growing ever louder in anticipation. (more…)
January 1976, Hollywood, California – The first time I saw Paul Kossoff play was back in 1969. Free were opening for Blind Faith on their first (and only) US tour. They were appearing at the 17,000-seat Inglewood Forum, a huge arena where the Los Angeles Lakers played. This was years before I started writing and I really didn’t know much about guitar players. I didn’t remember too much from the show but I did recall Kossoff having this really aggressive rhythm style and a simple melodic approach to his soloing. You could hear the Clapton connection in his approach.
I did learn that Paul was absolutely enamored with Eric’s playing. When I finally met Koss about seven years later, he couldn’t stop his gushing.
“The first real inspiration I had to get into it was seeing Eric Clapton with John Mayall at a small club. I didn’t know who he was or what had gone down, but here’s all these people yelling, ‘God, God!’ He really caught my attention and then I wanted to play.”
Paul finally met his hero on that Blind Faith tour. During our interview in 1976, he also told me of that momentous meeting.
“Clapton came up to me and asked ‘How the hell do you do that?’ talking about my vibrato. “And I said, ‘You must be joking!’” (more…)
I actually hadn’t explicitly planned on getting footage of Norfolk when I put together my initial wish list of Parlour to Parlour artists. I figured they might be good for a second season, once I had become more familiar with their recordings. I had seen them perform live once before, at Cafe du Nord in San Francisco. Chris Robley was filling his usual role as supporting guitarist and keyboard player in their road band, so it was chance for me to see and hear him in a different context.![Joan_jett_-_album[1]](http://popdose.com/wp-content/uploads/Joan_jett_-_album1.JPG "Joan_jett_-_album[1]")
The time: September, 1984. I had just begun my junior year at Georgetown University, having taken over the job as music director at WROX, the campus radio station, and arts editor at the Georgetown Voice, the campus alternative weekly.![Eddie-Van-Halen[1]](http://popdose.com/wp-content/uploads/Eddie-Van-Halen1.jpg "Eddie-Van-Halen[1]")
![zztopbw7[1]](http://popdose.com/wp-content/uploads/zztopbw71.jpg "zztopbw7[1]")
Every day for two weeks, I had heard the song rise from what must have been a pair of seriously powered speakers, floating out over the hills of Hollywood like some sweetly-scented audio pollen. The music had to be screaming from those distant monitors because Billy’s guitar scuttled the birds in the trees and the vocals came down from the heavens like the very voice of God himself — if the Lord had spoken in a southern dialect and had a preoccupation with modified racecars. Precisely at 11 A.M., ZZ Top’s “Manic Mechanic” was spit out into the ether, signaling to the inhabitants of Laurel Canyon that it was time to start the day — and what better way to greet it than with those tres little hombres from Texas? Today, in another hour, I’d be doing just that, driving to Beverly Hills to meet up with Billy Gibbons, Dusty Hill, and Frank Beard. And as the world’s greatest alarm clock woke up every other late sleeper in the gently sloping foothills, the song’s third verse took on even more serendipitous significance:![460px-George_Harrison_1974[1]](http://popdose.com/wp-content/uploads/460px-George_Harrison_19741.jpg "460px-George_Harrison_1974[1]")
It was a day of unmatched California beauty; a startling and fiery sun perched high above in a crystal blue sky and blazed down promise. It was an essential day, a meteorological marvel meant to be stored away for future reference.![4042141[1]](http://popdose.com/wp-content/uploads/40421411.jpg "4042141[1]")
In 1973, I saw myself disappearing. I was a grammar ghost, a sentence-writing cipher with barely a byline to hang my rent on. I knew what I wanted to do – write about music and the people who made it – but I didn’t know how to go about getting there. I decided to send out concert reviews. I couldn’t send an interview because I’d never done one. But I could buy a concert ticket, go see a band, and write about it. That was within my limited financial and professional means.![slash[1]](http://popdose.com/wp-content/uploads/slash11.jpg "slash[1]")
The interview is set for 2:00 PM. At a quarter ‘til, the black hat, cascading curls, and nose ring saunter through the management office’s front doors. The receptionist raises eyes from a computer monitor and is momentarily stuck to her chair. She fights through the inertia of awe and approaches. Her hand is extended tremulously, but Slash ignores the shake and encloses her in a friendly embrace. He sees me sitting on the couch, walks over, and shakes my hand heartily. He even apologizes for being late when he’s 15 minutes early.![jimmy002_silverdome-april1977[1]](http://popdose.com/wp-content/uploads/jimmy002_silverdome-april19771.jpg "jimmy002_silverdome-april1977[1]")
Chicago, Illinois, April 1977 — I knew what I was in for ten seconds after Guitar Player said to me: “We want you to interview Led Zeppelin.” My head filled with the clarion call of screaming guitars and in a moment of epiphany I saw it all: Jimmy Page would be my touchstone. Every story I’d ever written or ever would write would be measured against this one.![images144632_Stratocaster_Blackmore_Ritchie[1]](http://popdose.com/wp-content/uploads/images144632_Stratocaster_Blackmore_Ritchie1.jpg "images144632_Stratocaster_Blackmore_Ritchie[1]")
November 1974, St. Paul, Minnesota – In the fall of 1974, Creem magazine flew me out to the Twin Cities to interview Ritchie Blackmore. There had been a renewed interest in Deep Purple after they made a killer appearance at the Cal Jam concert seven months earlier. On that seventh day of April, the band stunned a crowd of 200,000 Ontario Motor Speedway fans when Ritchie shoved Marshall cabinets into the photographer’s pit and trashed his guitar Hendrix-style. He pushed the headstock of his Strat into a TV camera lens and shattered it, and then was nearly blown up when a flash pot ignited just inches from where he was standing.
January 1976, Hollywood, California – The first time I saw Paul Kossoff play was back in 1969. Free were opening for Blind Faith on their first (and only) US tour. They were appearing at the 17,000-seat Inglewood Forum, a huge arena where the Los Angeles Lakers played. This was years before I started writing and I really didn’t know much about guitar players. I didn’t remember too much from the show but I did recall Kossoff having this really aggressive rhythm style and a simple melodic approach to his soloing. You could hear the Clapton connection in his approach.