Dark Screams: Volume Two
Page 11
Apart from the astonishing songs of Messrs. Tutt and Magurk, this band could be hugely successful on its own. Working with Messrs. Tutt and Magurk, a supergroup seems probable.
Like some fugitive smoke, Whatever has risen quickly from the horizon of poseurs and record-company puppets that stultify top 40 rock and roll. They are not kings yet. But there is royal talent here.
With its pristine vocals and lyrical savagery, Whatever has ascended to meaning and wonder. Something rare touches these young men.
Crawdaddy Magazine
AUGUST 1976
“It’s Hubris.”
“Stanley Hubris. One of our finest filmmakers,” says Greg Magurk, Rikki Tutt’s partner and cofounder of Whatever, grinning. He’s currently at pool’s edge, under a hundred pounds of zinc oxide—a five-foot-eleven-inch can of Crisco.
“We’re forever accused of trying to make the journalists trip up, you know? Like we trade in some quicksand prattle and dare initiates to step closer.” Tutt is fed up.
It’s an ultramarine, vaporizer day in Honolulu. Tutt, Magurk, and the rest of Whatever are taking a few days off from L.A., swatting bugs from freshly written songs for the new album, Philip’s Head, a tribute to band member Phil Zapata, who died last month in Greenwich Village. Tutt, a private pilot, flew the band to the funeral in Sag Harbor in a retired Avianca 707 the band bought and refurbished—a floating retreat, gutted and filled with warm, fuzzy hedonisms.
The jet, which Whatever members call SPOT, brought them to the islands and rockets the entourage to all shows. Random guests on the passenger list have included a prime minister’s wife, who ran away to join Tutt and Magurk’s free-associative sock hop, and a Catholic bishop who lost his faith after discovering sex that didn’t involve himself exclusively, shed his red hat and ended up living with one of the members of Sister Sledge.
In passing, I ask if it’s true about the hole in Zapata’s head.
Tutt nods, dripping pineapple on the decking of this rented house on Diamond Head. “Trepanation. Did it to himself. Decided on the drill bit size and…in he went.”
Magurk plays with a telescope, squints through precision optics, trawling for undesirables.
“He always wanted a higher state of mind. Way Phil figured it, babies are born with skull unsealed…and it’s not until we become adults that the…” He searches for an image.
“…ossified helmet,” Tutt suggests.
“…right. Anyway, that it’s formed, which encloses membranes that moat the brain and block pulsations from the heart. Idea is the brain gets too compressed and starved for sun in there and would love a little fresh air. So, Phil gets it into his head…”
“…temporarily, anyway,” adds Tutt.
“…that he was losing touch with dreams, aberrant ideation and so forth. Then he figures his mental balance is tending toward egoism and eventual psychosis, which Phil argued was man’s inheritance, collectively and individually. That’s when he decided to drill a hole in his head.”
Tutt is humming and wrestling a coconut that keeps escaping his lap and knife, rolling away.
“Anyway, he did it by hand with this weird tool he bought at a surgical store. Called a trepan. Corkscrew thing you work by hand. Sort of a metal spike surrounded by a ring of saw teeth,” explains Magurk.
Tutt takes over. “Spike was meant to be driven into the skull. Then you hold the trepan steady until the revolving saw makes a groove, after which it can be retracted. If all goes well, the saw band removes a disc of bone and exposes the brain.”
“Assuming one’s in there,” says Magurk. He lowers his voice, sadly. “It was a total mess. He bagged it, halfway.”
“Cops said it looked like he had a big flower on his forehead.”
Magurk focuses his telescope. “You can’t force imminent well-being. Who said that?”
“That guy on McHale’s Navy?”
They nod somberly.
While Tutt and Magurk have been criticized for trading in flippant and cruel conversation, after an afternoon with them, it’s clear this sort of talk is only their private walkie-talkie humor, which delights in esoteric couplings. Indeed, they plan to give a sizable percentage of the Philip’s Head profits to Zapata’s widow, Joyce, who is left with two young sons, Lon and Will. Tutt and Magurk are the godfathers of the boys and call them often from the road. Meanwhile, they’ve brought various studio legends in to take over Zapata’s keyboard chores on the album.
And what about the new songs themselves?
“We like them. Phil would’ve liked them. But before we record, we just want to try the new stuff out in smaller clubs. It’s perfect here. Very low-key. Everybody’s happy in Hawaii.”
“Even the lepers are upbeat.”
“Anyway, we’ve come to avoid the evil ink-ees.”
He means the critics. It’s not that the band gets bad reviews. It’s that Tutt and Magurk can’t help but be appointed the voice of their time. They never angled for that pulpit.
“They treat us like we’re a cortex on a marquee. I mean, c’mon guys, who nominated us the skewering conscience of the post-hippie stupor? We’re just songwriters.”
“Look,” says Magurk, “we don’t deny what’s going on. When you’ve got the last few years filled with venal kings in the palace, with their duplicitous munchkins bugging the competitor’s HQ, and the country in that ghastly war, burning children alive, how can you just write about love?”
They fall silent. We watch waves break. Clouds inch.
Magurk scribbles in a notebook, rewriting lyrics for a new song the band has already laid down tracks for in L.A.’s Music Plant. It’s called “Flesh Diction.”
“It was easy ten years ago,” says Tutt. “You just dressed better than John Sebastian and quoted from Siddhartha to get laid.” He glances at the spearing sun with a misanthrope’s half-interest. “…Marmalade skies, y’know?”
Magurk isn’t even listening. “Hawaii is a complex braid of man and nature,” he says to no one in particular, eyeing a buxom palomino rising from the surf.
Billboard Magazine
SEPTEMBER 1971
Nominations were announced today in all Grammy categories. To no one’s surprise, Rikki Tutt and Greg Magurk’s Whatever is being considered in the Best New Rock Group and Best Album categories. The group’s debut album, Know Means Know, has been a huge seller and critical favorite and ranks at number 2 in this week’s Billboard top 100 albums.
From Taped Conversation
Eiffel Tower
Paris, France
DECEMBER 20,1974
G. G. Wall swears it’s true.
“I guess it was like some metaphor. You know, outwardly represented. It was strange.”
He claims the child would simply bleed. Instead of tears, blood would run down her eight-year-old face, and stain her dress red. Otherwise, she remained expressionless, hands folded calmly in her lap, flies sipping on her cheeks.
“I don’t see how they could’ve faked it. But people came from all over, just fascinated. They felt sorrow and remorse. But they also seemed to feel an odd sense of relief.”
He thinks that maybe it helped them work through their own pain and quiet tortures. The girl never left the chair, for the several hours she was on view. Never spoke.
“It gets fucking hot in Italy that time of year, too…it was summer, you know? And her parents just forced her to sit there in that white dress while folks lined up and walked by.”
He begins to dislike the memory.
“We were on tour, all through Europe. Played Italy for a couple weeks. I went to see her every day.”
Silence.
“After a few days, I started to feel ashamed. Watching her like that. I don’t know what it meant or why it picked her, but it was wrong what we all did…” He looks out from the Eiffel, studying nothing, lost in Paris as huge painting.
It’s been two years since Whatever played Italy. Wall says word is, the girl continues to bleed.
National Radio Broadcast
MARCH 19,1972
“And now the song that’s skinning the charts alive…Whatever’s ‘Yeah, Right,’ a tantrum anthem which seems to have taken the fevered temperature of an entire generation. Pete Townshend: take notes.”
This deal is crap,
I want my mommy.
My mantra died.
Page my swami.
Is this a joke?
Who’s in charge?
They brought me small,
I asked for large.
I’m having no fun,
I’ve lost my zip.
Where’s the laughs?
Life’s a gyp.
It’s not like it was.
The beer is flat.
The sun is cold.
I smell a rat.
Leave me for dead,
I’ll be fine.
There’s nothing left.
But it’s all mine.
Cut my throat,
Watch me gush.
Don’t cry, baby.
Enjoy the rush.
From My Notes
Durango
FEBRUARY 1973
Tutt’s getting married.
Inga from Germany. They say she never smiles. Just stares through your pupils, making you feel like cheap toy binoculars. She makes normal men nervous. Rockers happy. Knows all their doors and windows, how to pick locks, break in. Knows how to chat and laugh. Wears clothes so tight some say you can hear the ambition leaking through the fibers.
They also say her mother was Hitler’s private masochist, her exquisite skin his personal ashtray, the moody führer polka-dotting her with petulant tobacco scorches whenever the Reich hit a snag.
Inga is beautiful. She couldn’t have married anyone other than a star. And when she smiles at Tutt, his sky fills with puffy clouds, tweeting birds.
They all wanted Tutt. He wasn’t just an SRO pheromone. He was the one with the pretty face, sweet worry. The child without a mother who took your hand, smiled tentatively at any kindness. He was the poem only you could rhyme. The yearning vocal that stilled a stadium.
Made it weep.
Joke was he bled internally when he sang. But nobody could get over him. Even his ex-collaborator, Truce Wood.
“Know what he wanted to call our band, Petals? Cry. He always liked that name. Fit him, y’know? He’s a morose fuck. Real mood disorder.”
But what about the music? I ask Wood. He keeps throwing his knife into a tree. This succulent-laden ranchette is what he bought with what he had left, a cacti-nippled nowhere.
“It’s sorta like this. Everybody else is writing songs. Tutt and Magurk hear God. Set it to music. Bleed for our sins.”
And we all get a chance to listen to the downpour. It’s a nice image. Or is it just that Truce is born again? He won’t answer, prefers not to talk about it.
Knife pulled from tree. A lost glance. After Petals broke up, Truce released some solo work. Band called Fat Couch. First album in ’70, Happy Nap, just sat in a dull puddle and died. Nothing clicked. Label cut them before a second album even made the climb into headphones.
Now he runs a bar, TRUCE, in Durango. He admits when everything in his world bent sideways, he lost his voice and dropped acid like it was vitamin C. Soon became so despondent and paranoid, he hired a private detective to track his voice down.
The guy charged him $250 a day, plus expenses. Told Truce he tracked the voice to a diner in Wichita Falls and cornered it but that it got away. He finally claimed to have found it and sent it by registered mail in a padded box to Truce. Truce still keeps the unopened box on his fireplace mantel.
“That’s what drugs’ll do to you.” He smiles. “I keep it there as a lesson to myself. I lost everything, man. I’m lucky I’m fucking alive.” He wipes the blade on his Levi’s. “Things change. And you gotta live with the ghosts.”
And now Rikki Tutt is marrying a hundred pounds of Mercedes austerity, and Truce is worrying about just the right wedding gift.
“Tell you this, females on seven continents are in mourning.”
He’s right. Rikki is more than the one who got away. He’s the only one who ever managed to find the way in.
“Maybe I’ll get him his own box for the mantel.” Truce is nodding, dead serious. “Fame swallows you when you ain’t looking.”
Music City News
Nashville
APRIL 1971
Twenty-two-year-old G. G. Wall, lead guitarist for Whatever, was named guitarist of the year by Playboy magazine in its annual music poll. He beat out Clapton, Segovia, Beck, Hendrix, Wes Montgomery, Joe Pass, Kenny Burrell, and George Harrison. His composition “Tight Squeeze” was also voted best instrumental of the year.
Wall, who quit school at fourteen, has suffered with emotional problems since childhood and spoke about it on a recent Dick Cavett Show. When asked about the place intellect plays in the music of Whatever, Wall replied to Cavett that his mind “doesn’t stop by much, anymore. Guess it had other plans.”
And about the psychotherapy he’s been in for more than ten years: “I believe in it. Psychology is like restoring paintings. Bringing back the original colors.”
Much of Wall’s teen years were spent in and out of juvenile facilities for burglary. He always broke into places of worship and is known to have stolen religious artifacts from literally hundreds of churches.
“Why should the churches keep it, man?”
And what has he done with all those artifacts?
“Well…” he manages, mischief clowning on his face. “Just say I couldn’t recall and replied with an opaque stare.”
The David Frost Show
London, Ritz Hotel
SEPTEMBER 1972
“Mr. President, let’s talk a bit about your private life with the First Lady. I understand you and Pat very much like to watch sports on TV.”
“The Soviet gymnast Olga Korbut is a remarkable athlete. I’m no fan of their government, but excellence can occur in surprising places.”
“I also have spies who tell me you have a passion for the music of Stan Kenton. Do you dance in the White House? The two of you? Alone?”
Nixon laughs. Takes a sip of water offered by Frost.
“I don’t think I’d better answer that without getting the go-ahead from Pat. She’s very private about romantic things.”
“Favorite movies this year?”
“We screen movies at the White House, as you know. Have some friends over. We very much liked The Poseidon Adventure. Jeremiah Johnson. What’s Up, Doc? I liked Deliverance, but Pat was uncomfortable with the violence.”
“And rock and roll?”
“Pat is a Helen Reddy fan. Roberta Flack’s ‘The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face’ is quite lovely.”
“I’m talking about real rock and roll.”
He chuckles.
“Ask me another question.”
“Certainly you’re well aware of the Rolling Stones, the Beatles…”
“Of course. Very talented young men.”
“And Whatever?”
Nixon blinks. Sees it coming.
“Are you aware of how critical they’ve been of your foreign policy?”
“I haven’t heard that, no.”
“I can assure you, Mr. President, they seem to speak for their generation and mirror a huge dissatisfaction among the young people of America.”
“The people of Southeast Asia need our help.”
“Then what of other issues? One of the band’s number one songs, ‘World of Hurt,’ indicts what band members have been quoted as saying they perceive to be Washington’s apathy in regards to the dumping of toxic materials. Surely you’ve been told.”
Nixon grins darkly, jowls gathering; judgmental tuck and roll.
“Is that a question or a pointed object?”
“Why were members of the band beaten by police and arrested last month during a peace rally at the Wash
ington Monument? You know about the arrests?”
“Are we discussing politics or rock music?”
“We’re discussing your waning popularity with the youth of the United States, sir.”
Nixon wipes his upper lip.
“They believe that your office is running an undeclared and immoral campaign of military violence in Southeast Asia—and that you wish to mitigate voices who are raised in opposition. That you are leading the young men of your country to slaughter.”
“You don’t burn the American flag. You do not. This band…they did that onstage.”
“And what of their outrage and despair…indeed, that of young people throughout your country?”
“You do not burn the flag.”
Portion of unpublished Esquire article
JUNE 5, 1973
When Tutt first saw her, he says he saw the end.
It flashed like a precognitive REM warning, a half frame. A keyhole glimpse of a murdered form, slumped somewhere in his thoughts. A sense nothing good could come from being with her.
Tutt remembers her saying little. A smile that revealed something. Nothing. Everything he needed to believe. It was her gift; he realized it too late.
She was dark. Hair. Eyes. Jewelry. Her eyebrows were perfect on her beautiful face. She seemed strong; certain. Yet tears probably fell somewhere in her. Tutt felt it in a blink. A moment.
She smiled too easily, he remembers thinking. Wishes he’d paid more attention to the fleeting impression that soon blurred, raced away. He’d pay later for the oversight.
He was feeling at home in her eyes. Liked the heat of her skin, though he hadn’t touched it. But he sensed it was warm, like a solar beam that slips silently through shutters.